Is Arlington Public Schools a two-tiered education system, with some groups receiving needed resources while others are left behind?
That was the view, to varying degrees, of the four candidates vying for two open School Board seats.
Speaking at a Monday (Oct. 21) online forum sponsored by the Arlington NAACP, the contenders all suggested school-system policies and leadership were not doing well by students of color and some groups having specialized needs.
“The statistics and the data just demonstrate we are not meeting our kids’ needs — these are structural issues,” said Zuraya Tapia-Hadley, who with Paul Weiss, Kathleen Clark and James “Vell” Rives IV is seeking to succeed incumbents Cristina Diaz-Torres and David Priddy.
Those incumbents opted not to seek re-election after serving single four-year terms.
Comments by Tapia-Hadley were mirrored by other candidates, who also expressed concerns about the level of support for Black and Latino students, as well as English-language learners and those with disabilities:
Rives: “Arlington Public Schools is not serving students of color well. We see that in our achievement gaps.”
Clark: “We are not taking education for minority groups seriously. We are not actually addressing learning needs.”
Weiss: “As a system … we are not serving them well.”
Weiss, who retired in July after more than two decades as a county educator, said failings of leadership and policy should not be used to indict front-line teachers and support personnel.
“They are true heroes,” he said.
And Weiss pushed back on those, in the race and in current school leadership, he believes overemphasize data-driven analysis in problem-solving.
“Our students are more than statistics and data,” Weiss said.
Concerns about disparities in educational outcomes are not new and surface in nearly every School Board election. Achievement gaps between students of different races, ethnicities and socio-economic groups are perpetual challenges for the county school system, and the situation was exacerbated during the pandemic, when Arlington moved to online learning.
At $24,600 for fiscal 2024, Arlington Public Schools already spends more — in some cases significantly more — per student than any other jurisdiction in the D.C. suburbs.
Declines in the value of commercial property in Arlington, meanwhile, are impacting the revenue streams of the county government, which provides the majority of the school system’s $800+ million annual budget funding. That could cause heartburn for school leaders as they embark on budgeting for fiscal 2026, which begins next July.
In May, Tapia-Hadley and Clark won the Democratic endorsement caucus for the open seats. Having their names on the party’s sample ballot gives them a decided advantage, as the last time a non-Democrat was elected to the county’s School Board was in 2003.
Weiss campaigns as a Democrat, but because he was still employed by the school system in the spring chose not to seek the party’s endorsement. Rives is running as the race’s only true independent, he said at the forum, but also has backing of the Green Party and Forward Party.
The full give and take between candidates is expected to be posted on the Arlington NAACP’s website.
