A Lyon Park private school has received a thumbs up from county leaders on a request to double is student capacity.
But Arlington County Board members cautioned leaders of Tyndale Christian School to be more responsive to community concerns if they hope to maintain, and potentially expand, maximum enrollment.
Board members voted 5-0 on Saturday in support of a staff recommendation to increase, from 40 to 80, enrollment at the K-8 school located on N. Hudson Street in the Clarendon area.
The school is housed in the former Bloss Memorial Free Will Baptist Church, a block north of Pershing Drive, and is surrounded by mostly older single-family homes.
School leaders last spring had requested a maximum capacity of 135 students. Board members capped the initial limit at 40 after concerns were raised about parking (only four spaces are available for school use) and other issues by neighbors and staff.
In December, Board members renewed the use permit for the school. While staff proposed increasing the maximum student count to 80, Board members kept it at 40.
With the Jan. 25 action, the total will rise to 80 and stay there until the next Board review, set for July 2026.
Several county leaders pressed the school to ramp up community-building initiatives with its neighbors over the coming 18 months.
“This does not, I hope, end your commitment to community engagement and outreach,” Board member Maureen Coffey said as approval loomed. “There needs to be a continuous follow-up with the neighbors.”
For school leaders, not getting approval for more than 80 students wasn’t ideal — but they said keeping it at 40 would have been catastrophic.
“It’s essential that we reach 80 students … in order to make the school viable,” said head of school Kimberly Johns.
Among those supporting the expansion was Jessica Swanson, a parent of a Tyndale student.
“We have demonstrably not affected parking or traffic,” Swanson said. “This site can support 80 students.”
Swanson told Board member Tyndale offers a specialized curriculum, and “families should be able to choose a model that works for their children.”
But Andrew McWhirt, who lives two doors away from the school, raised noise and traffic concerns and said communication from the leadership has been nonexistent.
“We have never received a letter or outreach,” he said. “We have also never received a knock on our door to discuss any of the issues.”
Leadership of the Lyon Park Citizens Association in December came out in support of retaining the 40-student cap rather than going to 80, but did so by a narrow (12-10) margin.
Issues related to the school centered on “noise levels, safety concerns, playground size and parking inadequacies on site,” association president Michael Kunkler said in a Jan. 15 letter to county officials.
The Arlington Chamber of Commerce used the Saturday public hearing to voice its support for an 80-student cap. John Musso, the Chamber’s government-affairs staffer, said the increase would represent “a step in the right direction” in making the school viable.
While voting unanimously on behalf of expansion, Board members said there was no guarantee the school would be allowed to grow on the site in the future. And if there continues to be friction with the community, Board members could lower the number of students allowed by the use permit.
“It wouldn’t be unheard of, it something doesn’t go well, that we’d have to remediate it and take appropriate action,” chairman Takis Karantonis said.
Johns said the school leadership seeks to have smooth relations going forward.
“We love Barton Street and we love the Lyon Park community,” she said. “And we are committed to working with all of our neighbors and addressing anything of material impact.”
County Board member JD Spain, Sr., who made the motion to increase the student count, said local leaders — and residents — needed to be cognizant of filling up unused and underused buildings in Arlington, often in creative ways.
“We need to reimagine and repurpose, if need be, some of our spaces and dwellings,” he said.
Tyndale School’s website says its curriculum is rooted in historic Anglicanism. It is named for William Tyndale, a leading figure in England’s Protestant Reformation who in 1536 was burned at the stake in the Netherlands for heresy.
More than three-quarters of the words in the authorized 1611 King James version of the English Bible come from Tyndale’s translations of nearly a century before.
Photo via Tyndale Christian School/Facebook
