School Board members have tasked Superintendent Francisco Durán and staff to come back in the spring with options for renovations to two aging middle schools.
Whether there will be enough money in the future to fund major upgrades to Thomas Jefferson and Swanson middle schools remains an open question, but Board members said they are committed to finding ways to make improvements.
“It’s not an either/or,” Board member Kathleen Clark said. “There is a lot of work that needs to happen in those two buildings.”
Clark was speaking at a Dec. 18 meeting when Board members voted 4-1 on guidance to staff as it prepares the school system’s 2027-34 capital improvement plan for release in the spring.
The guidance includes a figure of $150 million for work on the two schools — one that will fall well short of major renovations or, in the case of Thomas Jefferson, building an entirely new facility.
A recent consultants’ study concluded that renovations or a replacement to Thomas Jefferson alone would range from $126 million to $231 million, figures sure to escalate owing to increasing construction costs.
At the Dec. 18 meeting, School Board Chair Bethany Zecher Sutton said the $150 million figure was essentially a placeholder to get the conversation started.
“We do not intend that to be a cap, we do not intend that to be a limit,” she said. “We would like to see what is possible for that amount of money.”
The guidance directs school personnel to consider and report back with other, more expensive options, as well.
The Dec. 18 meeting brought out speakers in favor of renovations to both middle schools.
Alia, an 8th-grade student at Swanson, said her 85-year-old building has multiple issues.
“We deal with leaking pipes and cracked paint, but there are also larger issues,” she told School Board members.
She noted a lack of natural sunlight in some classrooms and hallways that are overcrowded during class switches.
“With a few updates and improvements, I believe Swanson can become an even better place to learn and grow,” Alia told School Board members.
(For privacy reasons, ARLnow is not reporting last names of students who spoke at the meeting.)
Another Swanson 8th-grader, Mallika, said students have to share lockers and the auditorium is both too small and afflicted with mold.
She related the story of toilet water from a boys bathroom leaking into a classroom she was in during the school day.
“We had to evacuate to the library for the rest of the day,” Mallika said.
The lack of updates has not gone unnoticed by Swanson students, she told School Board members.
“It makes them feel like other schools are favored,” she said.
In mid-November, a large group of Thomas Jefferson students, staff and parents had turned up at a School Board meeting to press for improvements to their school. Others came to add their voices on Dec. 18.
Lila, a TJ student, noted that among its many problems, the school is perceived by some as a fire trap.
With narrow hallways and no sprinkler system, “there is no safe way that the students can get out of the building,” she said. “Instead, we’re all crammed into tiny stairwells while our building is burning.”
Lila said the correct solution was spending $200 million “for a whole new building” to replace the current structure, which dates from the early 1970s.
Demolishing the existing Thomas Jefferson and replacing it with a new building on another part of the campus is one option available to school leadership. Razing Swanson, though, would not be an option, as the school long has been designated a local historic district.
That does not mean the school system can’t make alterations to Swanson, as they did when the historic former Stratford Junior High School building was converted into Dorothy Hamm Middle School. But it adds complexities, and costs, to any renovation that might be sought.
The lone “no” vote on the overall capital-spending guidance came from Board member Mary Kadera. She did not raise issues with the middle-school projects, but voiced concern that the package did not make serious choices in a tough budget environment.
“We simply do not have enough money for all this work,” Kadera said.
Kadera, who did not seek re-election and is leaving the board at the end of the month, questioned the plan to spend approximately $45 million to move students from Montessori Public School of Arlington to the Arlington Career Center building nearby. The Career Center will be vacated next fall when students there move to the new Grace Hopper Center.
Kadera said a move to the adjacent Career Center building may have made sense in the past. But with elementary-age enrollment declining and the possibility that one or more elementary schools may have to be shuttered as a result, it may not make sense now, she suggested.
“There has been no robust analysis of alternative locations,” Kadera said.
“I understand that the alternative, which involves moving [the Montessori school] and closing a neighborhood school in order to house it, is really serious,” she said. But it has been done before, Kadera said, and “inconsistent application of our values erodes public trust.”
Her view was supported by Lois Koontz, a veteran schools’ activist who spoke at the Dec. 18 meeting.
Instead of spending money to create new spaces for elementary-school students, “let’s use the ones we have,” Koontz said.
The cost savings could be allocated to making needed improvements in other school buildings, Koontz said.
“These needs are expensive and getting more so,” Koontz told School Board members. “You risk putting your heads in the sand and acting irresponsibly with tens of millions of dollars.”
The approved development plan for the Arlington Career Center campus calls for moving the Montessori school to the vacated Career Center, then tearing down the vacant elementary. The proposal that redevelopment might not occur as promised brought a heated response both from the Montessori school community along with leaders of the Columbia Pike corridor.
School officials have not said what might become of the Career Center building if the Montessori school is moved elsewhere. But if the school system opts for a raze-and-replace strategy for the nearby Thomas Jefferson Middle, displaced TJ students would have to be put somewhere, and the nearby Career Center building might be a logical option.
