Even given the possibility of declining enrollment at Arlington Public Schools over the next decade, school leaders say they’re disinclined to dispose of any facilities.
Jeffrey Chambers, the school system’s director of design and construction, said the school system learned from a decision to do that several decades ago.
“In the 1970s, [Arlington Public Schools] sold a bunch of buildings because ‘we were never going to grow again’ — and that’s the wrong thing to do,” said Chambers.
“Enrollment is cyclical,” Chambers told members of the Joint Facilities Advisory Commission on Sept. 24. “We don’t want to make any rash decisions.”
In the 1970-80s, school leaders did indeed close and, in some cases, sell buildings that were seen as surplus due to the end of the Baby Boom. By 2010, a mini-boom had arrived, leading school leaders to embark on a crash course in construction to keep pace.
Growth spurts “can happen again,” Chambers said, acknowledging that school leaders have no crystal ball.
“We really don’t know,” he said.
Arlington Public Schools counted 27,603 students in pre-kindergarten to 12th-grade classes on Sept. 4, Superintendent Francisco Durán reported to School Board members that evening.
That’s a decline of slightly more than 1% from a year before, and was 819 students below projections made in the spring of 2025.
The largest shortfall — 619 students — came at the elementary-school level, with middle schools 102 students below projections and high schools 98 below.
Figures may be down, but they remain near record highs. Even at the apex of the Baby Boom in 1963-64, enrollment was less than 27,000 students.
The 619 shortfall at the elementary-school level is more than the capacity of even the largest of the county’s elementaries. School leaders have begun to talk cautiously about the possibility of consolidating elementary schools in the future.
Should closures come to pass, Chambers said, there are a number of options available to School Board members.
“Do we eventually close some buildings or mothball them?” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to give up the properties.”
School Board members will publicly kick off planning for the school system’s 2027-36 capital-improvement program, or CIP, on Oct. 9.
On Oct. 23, Board members are slated to give Superintendent Francisco Durán formal direction on their expectations, tasking him to come back next spring with a full-fledged plan.
“It should be an interesting next couple of months,” Chambers said.
Funding to support the CIP comes largely from bond issues sent to voters, usually in even-numbered years, with the next slated for November 2026.
Voters for more than two generations have approved every school bond on the ballot. The last to be rejected was in the 1970s, and over the past 25 years, most have passed with 70% to 80% support.
The Joint Facilities Advisory Commission is a panel looking at major capital projects on both the general-government and schools side of the budget. At the Sept. 24 meeting, County Board member Susan Cunningham and School Board member Kathleen Clark were in attendance.
Andy Greenwood, who chairs the commission, said he was looking forward to development of the school system’s updated CIP.
“The next few months will certainly be more telling,” he said. “We’ll do what we can to help.”
