Arlington Public Schools leaders hope to return to a lower, pre-Covid level of student absenteeism by 2030.
“That last year before the pandemic, 2018-19, we were around [an] 8% rate. We have been using that number as a goal, our star, for the last couple of years,” said Darrell Simpson, executive director for student services, during a Nov. 13 briefing of School Board members.
SNAP Benefits Resume — “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Update – Nov. 17, 2025. The federal shutdown is over. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits have resumed, and December benefits are expected to be issued according to the normal schedule.” [Arlington DHS/X]
Educator Event at Barrett — The National Education Association on Monday launched its American Education Week celebration with a special event at Arlington’s Barrett Elementary School, attended by NEA president Becky Pringle and cookbook author Jeremy Scheck. The organization also made two financial contributions, one to help pay down unpaid student-lunch balances across Arlington Public Schools and another to support the school’s healthy-food education programs. [NEA]
White House Flyover — From AlertDC: “The U.S. Military will conduct an Aircraft Flyover in the NCR over the White House on Tuesday, November 18 at approximately 11:08AM.”
Crystal City Crash on Camera — “I hate this intersection. The crash this morning is a very common scenario at Route 1 & 23rd Street… Drivers are left to guess when the light changes. Often they guess wrong.” [Dave Statter/X]
Design Awards Deadline Extended — “DESIGNArlington is a biennial awards program that seeks to increase public awareness of outstanding design and to recognize and encourage design excellence… All submissions must be received by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 21, 2025.” [Arlington County]
Exhibit at Arlington Nat’l Cemetery — “Army National Military Cemeteries (ANMC) is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit in the Memorial Amphitheater Display Room, featuring a rare artifact from the USS Maine. The U.S. Navy ship tragically exploded in Cuba’s Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898—killing more than 260 sailors and Marines and leading to the Spanish-American War.” [Press Release]
Some Counties Invited to W. Va. — “Texas is no longer the only state Virginia lawmakers are currently quarreling with. Earlier this month, West Virginia state senator Chris Rose created a resolution that invites 27 Virginia counties and three Maryland counties to join the Mountain State.” [Northern Virginia Mag]
Flu Season Could Be Bad — “Experts worldwide are warning of a new flu outbreak as the DMV begins tracking seasonal flu cases. It could be a cold-season double whammy, with a new flu strain and a chillier-than-normal winter forecast for D.C. The new flu strain, a version of H3N2, emerged over the summer. Experts are worried that it doesn’t match the strain used to create this year’s flu vaccine.” [Axios]
Alexandria Keeping NSF — “The National Science Foundation (NSF) will remain in Carlyle, after it announced an official search for office space last summer. Through NSF’s decision, Alexandria will retain 1,600 NSF federal employees and scientist jobs, the city announced.” [ALXnow]
Cold Blast Coming — “As of now, Thanksgiving week is looking rather mild, with highs most days in the mid-50s to low 60s. By the weekend after Thanksgiving, however, models suggest we’ll transition to much colder weather as a dip in the jet stream allows Arctic air to surge in from the north.” [CWG]
It’s Tuesday — Rain is likely after 1pm, with increasing clouds and highs around 50°F. Afternoon winds will come from the southwest at around 5 mph. Precipitation chances are 50%. Tuesday night, rain is expected mainly before 1am, with lows around 41°F. Rain chances rise to 90%, with new amounts between a quarter and half of an inch. [NWS]
Flickr pool photo by Alan Kotok
When Eddie Kaufholz and his family moved to Arlington nearly five years ago, they were not thinking about starting a business. They wanted to live in a place that was diverse, interesting and full of opportunity, with a school system they could rely on. Arlington fit.
In the years that followed, working out of a home office off Columbia Pike, he consulted with organizations across Northern Virginia and around the country: nonprofits, advocacy groups, mid-sized companies, agencies of various sizes. The work itself was good. But somewhere across all those projects, he started to notice a pattern.
”The agency model has gotten really bloated,” Kaufholz says. ”Layers, handoffs, middle management. The senior people who pitch the work often disappear once it starts. The idea with PILLAR was to strip all of that down; keep senior people on the work, approach each client with humility and care, do world-class strategy and execution, and pass the efficiency back to the client instead of absorbing it as agency margin.”
That thinking, slowly, became PILLAR, the Arlington-headquartered creative, communications and marketing agency Kaufholz founded.
PILLAR, he says, is built on an old idea. ”An idea that has always been possible but rarely practiced: that an agency should be structured to serve the work itself.” The team that delivers the work is assembled around the specific needs of each client and only stays as long as the work calls for them.
”The senior strategist on your kick-off call is the senior strategist writing your messaging,” Kaufholz says. ”Every person on a project is there because the work specifically calls for them.”
PILLAR’s recent work has spanned human rights, executive leadership, higher education, advocacy and direct-to-consumer ecommerce. The roster has included national nonprofits, a national multimillion-dollar direct-to-consumer brand and a number of institutions navigating significant moments of strategic change. The model is built to scale up to be the agency of record for a national brand, or to scale down to design a logo for a neighborhood nonprofit. PILLAR takes equal pride and care in both.
What Kaufholz did not understand when he started, he said, was how much the County itself would matter in making any of it possible. (more…)
Good Monday evening, Arlington. Let’s take a look back at today’s stories and a look forward to tomorrow’s event calendar.
The following articles were published earlier today — Nov 17, 2025.
Here is what’s going on Tuesday in Arlington, from our event calendar.
Rain is likely after 1pm, with increasing clouds and highs around 50°F. Afternoon winds will come from the southwest at around 5 mph. Precipitation chances are 50%. For Tuesday night, rain is expected mainly before 1am, with lows around 41°F and southeast winds at 3 to 5 mph. Precipitation chances rise to 90%, with new amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. See more from Weather.gov.
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
– Mark Twain
The MonumentCam screenshot above is used with permission of the Trust for the National Mall and courtesy of EarthCam.
Thanks for reading! If you have something to say about an issue of local note not covered today, feel free to post it as a letter to the editor on our new forum.
For a fifth season, the Bishop O’Connell Knights girls field-hockey team continued to find success under the leadership of Megan Sullivan.
This fall, the high school squad won the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference tournament for the first time, nipping top seed St. John’s, 1-0, in the championship match.
*Mamistad Groups meet IN PERSON-only the introductory Zoom call is virtual. :)
Pregnancy and new mom groups are a lifesaver when it comes to normalizing those feelings we just can’t be prepared for.
County Board members have set public hearings next month on increasing taxi fares, expanding a Green Valley Park and designating a home as a local historic district.
The Board also set a hearing on possible changes to the county’s residential parking program, adopted a meeting schedule for 2026, approved an office-to-residential conversion project in Courthouse and approved a contract for new pedestrian bridges in two parks.
Three Virginia men are each facing multiple charges after a shoplifting incident in Pentagon City led to a significant drug discovery.
The shoplifting happened just before 4:30 p.m. Friday on the 900 block of Army Navy Drive, which is near both the Pentagon City mall and the Westpost shopping center.
Arlington Public Schools leaders have set their plans in place for deciding when to close schools for wintry weather.
The school system has 12 snow days built into the calendar for elementary school, 15 for middle and high school. Should those numbers be exceeded, leaders plan to move to virtual learning — a staple of the pandemic era — rather than lengthen the school year to meet the state minimum of 180 days or 990 hours of instructional time.
The 2025 high-school football season began and ended in a similar fashion for the Yorktown Patriots — with bookend losses to the South Lakes Seahawks.
Playing at home, Yorktown fell to South Lakes, 24-17, Friday evening (Nov. 14) in a first-round game of the 6D North Region tournament playoffs.
A bakery serving pastries, burgers and all-day breakfast plans to open in Falls Church next year.
Best Buns Bakery & Burgers is expected to open in a park outside the West Falls development at 265 West Falls Station Blvd, serving bites ranging from cinnamon rolls and sticky buns to fried chicken sandwiches.
