Summary of January 16, 2025 School Board Meeting

Written By Arlington Parents for Education

MEETING OPENING: 

Call to Order - 7 PM by Ms. Kadera. 

  • Ms. Zecher Sutton, Ms. Turner, Ms. Kadera, Ms. Tapia-Hadley and Ms. Clark were in attendance. 

  • Ms. Kadera recognized National Board Certified Teachers.  Currently the are 218 National Board Certified Teachers in APS.  There was a detailed presentation. 

  • Ms. Kadera extended a welcome to the new Board members – Ms. Clark and Ms. Tapia-Hadley.

    • All Board members made welcoming comments and Dr. Durán extended a welcome, speaking to the need for passion for public education.  

CONSENT ITEMS:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Board Announcements

  • Dates for upcoming meetings were announced.

  • Ms. Kadera announced: 

    • Abingdon Elementary – “Amazing Abingdon” – partnership with the Kennedy Center on April 4th ; and Day of Service on Monday January 20th event in partnership with Doorways (local organization) 

Superintendent's Announcements and Updates

  • Highlighted the “Walk Bike to School Program” and Principal Appreciation Week 

  • 2025 Your Voice Matters Survey will be out – Feb. 12 – March 14 

    • Families will now receive an anonymous link 

    • Students in grades 4 and above will receive a link at school 

  • Budget Timeline – working on a collaborative budget with County Board 

    • March 12th – Joint School Board & County Board Work Session

    • March 13th – Board Presentation

    • March 25th and April 3rd – Budget Work Sessions 

    • May 1st School Board Action to Adopt FY 2026 

  • Recognized an Arlington Career Center Teacher who received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching – Gerri Maskelony 

  • Dr. Durán extended a thank you to the snow removal crew – custodians, relief custodians and quality control specialists. 

Questions

  • Ms. Turner: how could we further assist the county in prepare the side roads? There seems to be a disconnect between county offices being open and school bus routes not being ready. 

  • Ms. Zecher Sutton: has been speaking with bike enthusiast and would like to encourage bike culture in schools. 

  • Ms. Kadera: on Your Voice Matters what languages are available? Is there anonymity for staff as well as families? 

    • Mr. Stockton replied the survey was in all five languages typically offered.

    • Additional steps were added to make the survey anonymous 

PUBLIC COMMENT ON AGENDA AND NON-AGENDA ITEMS:

Speakers:

  • An Arlington Resident spoke on behalf of three environmental organizations: spoke in support of sustainability and climate initiatives. 

  • An APS teacher spoke on behalf of Arlington Education Association.  She spoke on issues of inclusivity and diversity. 

  • An APS teacher spoke about planning factors and need to reduce class sizes particularly in early grades. 

  • An APS teacher spoke on contingency issues related to hiring new teachers to support planning factors. 

  • An APS staff member spoke on issues of trust between teachers and staff members at Syphax.  He mentioned that 30% of sub jobs were unfulfilled on Thursday January 9th post snow days. 

  • A community member spoke on school resource officers and a desire to reinstate them. She spoke to issues of bullying and harassment in her children’s schools. 

MONITORING ITEMS:

Facilities and Operations Update (FACE) ;  presented by Dr. Mayo and other staff members including Mr. Adusumili, Ms. Harber, Mr. Hawkins. 

  • Providing updates on how work within the F&O aligns with the strategic plan

  • Information Services: 

    • Bright Spots - looking for opportunities to protect data related to staff and students and find opportunities for automation.  Ensuring data is reportable and accessible. 

    • By 2030, goal is for APS technology systems and operational services to be fully functional and available for use by students, staff and community 99.9% of the year. 

    • Cybersecurity tested through phishing simulations conducted Sept. – Nov. 2024. 380 staff were compromised and referred to an online course 

  • Finance and Management Services: Food Services

    • Nine schools are part of community eligibility program (CEP).  All students are eligible for breakfast and lunch.  Stretch goal is to have 100% of schools part of CEP by 2030. 

    • Food Services is switching to a new platform called “Meal Viewer” which allows parents to see more nutritional information and is more user friendly. 

    • Schools that were added to CEP had breakfast and lunch participation increase by 6.6 and 8.9% respectively. 

  • Facilities and Operations

    • Transportation Services – reduced number of buses in use 

    • APS has reduced natural gas usage by 20% and overall carbon emissions by 35%

    • All school entry vestibule upgrades have been completed, providing accessible, monitored entry to all schools.  

    • By 2030, the goal is for APS to maintain 95% or above on-time arrival at schools currently at that level and improve on-time arrival by 10% annually at schools below 95%.  

    • APS currently operates 3 Electric Vehicle (EV) buses.  Through an EPA grant, APS will add 5 more EV buses by Late Spring 2025.

Questions

  • Information Services: 

    • Ms. Zecher Sutton: how do we get laptops to High School students that are arriving and enrolling at various times? How do you currently handle turning in student laptops for updates? 

    • Ms. Kadera: how do we address device updates for students with disabilities who might have their own software? 

    • Ms. Clark: how is IS working with adding new apps? 

    • Ms. Turner: can you describe the technology review process? How do we get a list of what apps or technology are students are currently using and a cost estimate? 

    • Ms. Clark: it would be great for the Board to see a list of these items and the costs. 

    • Ms. Tapia- Hadley: does there have to be an instructional need to install the application? 

    • Ms. Kadera: how much information are we asking vendors or partners to provide to us about their practices? Is it more than someone representing that they have the practices? How would we notify staff and students of a breach? 

  • Food Services

    • Ms. Zecher - Sutton: would we need to go to local funding or grants if there is a gap in funding for Food Service? What is the extent of underreported eligibility in APS?

    • Ms. Tapia- Hadley: why did we switch vendors to access meal information? 

    • Ms. Turner: when will we hear about the EPA grant dealing with a circular economy? Is a share table budget neutral? 

    • Ms. Kadera: does the chef come out of the food services budget? 

  • Transportation 

    • Ms. Tapia – Hadley: what baseline are we using to measure progress against these goals? What are the challenges for Middle Schools that are routinely not arriving on time. 

    • Ms. Zecher – Stutton: do the schools that are not meeting on time arrivals change or is it the same schools? Is there a goal for a times that you would expect busses to depart? 

    • Ms. Kadera: asked for follow up on two bus routes (Kenmore and Arlington Career Center).  Are there solutions which rebalance the issue?

    • Ms. Clark – how is technology and software being utilized? 

  • Sustainability Goals

    • Ms. Zecher-Sutton: have we spent 100% of the budget on 80+ percent of the sustainability goal? 

    • Ms. Tapia-Hadley: is the partnership with George Mason University helping with challenges in moving to an all electric fleet. 

    • Ms. Clark: we should be careful about language surrounding universal design and accessibility. 

    • Ms. Kadera: are energy performance management contracts something we should look at more than we do currently? Should we look at debt servicing. 

ACTION ITEMS

Final Close-Out Status Report Recommendations: This item was presented at the December school board meeting and there have been no changes. 

  • No questions – Ms. Turner read the resolutions contained in the report. 

Approved by the Board 5-0

INFORMATION ITEMS:

Annual Summer School Report and Proposed Fees for Summer School 2025: presented by Kim Graves, Wendy Pilch and Chris Willmore. 

  • This is not an action item as there are no increased fees proposed.  The Board will not vote on this at the next meeting, however the budget work sessions will include information about Summer School 2025.  This information item is to reflect on Summer School 2024.   

  • Summer 2024: used 7 elementary cluster sites; 1 middle school cluster site; 1 high school cluster and Arlington Community High School 

  • Data reveals that High School students struggle to complete the program – began with 1,721 and ended with 1,013 enrolled.  Students are un-enrolled after missing 3 days (not Extended School Year (ESY) students) 

  • Provided counseling staff at all summer school sites.  Needed to rely on contractors to fill a few special education teacher positions. 

  • Recommendations for Summer Learning 2025: 

    • Prek – 7th - target ESY; summer skills boost program and pathways to progress for English learners.  Will also offer outdoor lab summer camp. 

    • 9th – 12th – ESY; bridging courses; credit recovery; 1 week introduction to AP and Advanced Courses

    • 8th Grade – new model focuses on pre-teaching 

  • Summer School 2025 will be part of the proposed budget coming in March 

Questions

  • Ms. Turner: what are the goals for EL in terms of enrollment compared with last year? Do you have expectations for 2025? 

  • Ms. Zecher-Sutton: how do you deal with the fact that High School students unenroll and then you have extra staff? Do you plan on staffing the virtual tutoring offering online with APS teachers or an outside company? 

  • Ms. Tapia-Hadley: have we considered evaluating the children wholistically beyond just the NWEA scores? Things like behavior, etc.  Have we looked at whether the duration of the summer program is long enough? Do we notify parents when the students are unenrolled after three days of absences.  Why has the cost gone down from one year to the next? 

  • Ms. Turner: extended an offer to support collaborative efforts at the elected official level. 

NEW BUSINESS: None. 

ADJOURNMENT

Arlington Parents for Education
Next

Summary of December 12, 2024 School Board Meeting