County school leaders, both elected and staff, will be presenting a united front as the fiscal 2026 budget season fast approaches.
In a change from typical practice, the Arlington School Board and superintendent will present a joint budget in mid-March, Board members decided Dec. 12.
Arlington School Board members Thursday night (Dec. 12) voted unanimously to implement a bell-to-bell ban on student use of phones in county schools starting Jan. 6.
“Our schools are places of learning,” Superintendent Francisco Durán said just before the vote, saying his recommendation was “a policy that will protect that instructional space.”
With the deadline for School Board action looming, two major advocacy groups are pressing for a blanket ban on student phone use during the instructional day in Arlington.
The Arlington Education Association (AEA) and Arlington Parents for Education (APE) have sent a joint letter to School Board members and Superintendent Francisco Durán, seeking the more restrictive of two options currently being considered.
Already nearly at a record high, student enrollment in Falls Church City Public Schools is expected to grow consistently in coming decades.
With 2,711 students as of Sept. 30, the five-school district is currently just 10 students shy of its record 2,721 students in 2016, according to a recent report to the Virginia Department of Education. The report predicts enrollment will pass the 3,000 mark in 2027, before growing to about 3,250 in 2040 and 3,430 in 2050.
A proposal to restrict access to cellphones at Arlington high schools remains up for debate as a School Board decision deadline approaches.
With the decision date set for Dec. 12, Board members have one major decision left to make related to high schools:
Arlington School Board members in mid-November will consider a major overhaul to how the school system tackles boundary adjustments.
If adopted, school leaders will start looking at boundaries on a two-year cycle rather than the current five years, and will apply a new set of criteria to guide how to make them.
Two years ago, during a Washington-Liberty High School choral-department trip to New York City, students had the chance to tour Radio City Music Hall and even stand on its famous stage.
Now, they are gearing up to perform on it.
A group of Arlington Public Schools fifth graders received some unexpected attention from First Lady Jill Biden this week.
Twenty-two students from Hoffman-Boston Elementary School arrived at the White House on Monday ready for a tour of the East Wing, teacher Belinda Folb told ARLnow. They had no idea that they would be personally meeting the First Lady herself — or that five of them would be accompanying her on a private tour.
Is Arlington Public Schools a two-tiered education system, with some groups receiving needed resources while others are left behind?
That was the view, to varying degrees, of the four candidates vying for two open School Board seats.
New figures show efforts to reduce absenteeism in Arlington public schools may be bearing fruit.
When Arlington School Board members approved the system’s fiscal 2025 budget in the spring, they set a goal of ultimately reducing chronic absenteeism from the then-current level of 13.5% to less than 8%. In recently updated data, there was a bit of progress on that front.
Arlington school leaders are likely to lobby the General Assembly to permit standardized testing in languages other than English to determine student achievement.
Allowing a language option would be helpful in jurisdictions, like Arlington, where there is a significant percentage of English-language learners, advocates believe.
Three of four candidates for two open Arlington School Board seats have come out forcefully in favor of an “away-for-the-day” policy for student phone use, with exceptions available in narrow instances.
“School should be phone-free,” Paul Weiss, a retired county educator, said at a Thursday (Oct. 10) candidate forum sponsored by the Arlington Parents for Education (APE) advocacy organizations.
