The best public schools in Virginia are in Arlington and Falls Church, according to new 2025 rankings.
Arlington Public Schools rank No. 2, right behind Falls Church City Public Schools at No. 1, the education research firm Niche found. Only one other school district in the state received an overall A+ rating.
Career victory number 300 came teasingly close to reality for longtime high-school football coach Bruce Hanson the night of Sept. 27, but the coveted milestone will have to wait until at least the next game after his Yorktown Patriots suffered an overtime loss.
Yorktown (3-2) led the host West Springfield Spartans, 22-14, with 2:08 left in regulation play in the non-district tilt, was ahead again 28-22 in overtime, then lost 29-28. The difference was a missed extra point in OT by Yorktown, then a made point after by the Spartans in their walkoff win.
The Washington-Liberty Generals improved to 5-0 with a 49-14 road win over the Falls Church Jaguars in a Sept. 27 non-district high-school football game.
The defending Liberty District champion Generals also started the season 5-0 last fall. The Generals have scored 40 points or more in each victory.
A teacher at Washington-Liberty High School received a threat the same day articles came out accusing a faculty member there of “drilling students on anti-Israel talking points.”
The Tuesday afternoon dispatch to the school did not say which teacher received the “strong” threats via email, prompting a police response. But it happened as articles were published on the conservative news site The Daily Wire and the New York Post about W-L English teacher Shayma Al-Hanooti.
Today’s pop quiz: What do kangaroos, wombats, koalas and students at a number of Arlington schools all have that others do not?
The answer: pouches.
The second Wakefield High School car show is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 26 at 8 a.m. in the school’s front parking lot.
The event is a fundraiser for the Class of 2025. There will be a food vendor in the parking lot.
Arlington Public Schools is proposing to significantly increase its budget next year to support more staffing and a pay raise for personnel.
The proposal, which Superintendent Francisco Durán and the Arlington School Board discussed at a work session yesterday (Tuesday), calls for gradually adding 252 new full-time positions and a 3% cost-of-living increase over the next three years.
Sports facilities at Washington-Liberty High School were vandalized ahead of a big football game over the weekend.
The vandalism happened overnight Friday into Saturday, before W-L was set to face cross-county rival Yorktown. A tipster tells ARLnow that the school’s track was damaged.
A Kenmore Middle School seventh grader is receiving national recognition for a project studying massive bursts of plasma from the sun.
Maedot Tinsae Ayalew has been named one of 30 finalists in the Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge, a contest that celebrates middle schoolers who excel in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
Two new synthetic turf fields could be coming to Kenmore Middle School by spring 2027.
Pending final design approval and a proposed $2 million contribution from two local sports organizations, construction on the new fields is slated to begin in winter 2025.
Tests of three new weather sirens near Arlington high schools will be taking place this Friday.
The sirens — located at athletic fields at Wakefield, Washington-Liberty and Yorktown high schools — will sound a 15-second, one-horn blast and flash strobe lights. Under ordinary circumstances, this means that lightning has been detected within a 10-mile radius and people should shelter indoors for 30 minutes.
A series of recent internal audits at Arlington Public Schools have revealed inconsistencies in the school system’s financial management practices.
The audits, which reviewed spending from 2022 to 2024, found that APS lacks clear policies for managing purchasing card usage, fuel expenses and school activity funds. They also highlighted limited training for employees overseeing these areas and weaknesses in oversight systems.
