Summary: Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) Meeting
The APS Board met on September 23, 2021 to discuss the CIP for the 10-year period 2023-2032. (Watch here.) The Board has identified six projects that will be the focus of the 2022-24 CIP. To date the Board has allocated $140 million to those projects. But the Arlington Career Center project is still being developed and a budget for that project is not finalized. The six projects and their projected costs include:
o HVAC renovations ($73M)
o Kitchen Renovations ($25M)
o Career Center Development ($21M budgeted to date)
o Revision for the Heights ($14.2M)
o Synthetic Fields ($2.4M)
o School entrance renovations ($1.8M)
The Career Center development is anticipated to house 1700 students, and to support the following programs: (1) Arlington Career Center students; (2) Arlington Community HS; (3) Arlington Tech HS; (4) Arlington Tech MS (does not currently exist); and (5) other programs (Academic academy, EL, and PEP). In sum, the programs that are intended to be supported by the Career Center development currently support approximately 600 students, 354 of which are Arlington Tech students. If built, the career center development would support an additional 1000-1100 student seats.
APS’ bonding capacity over the next 10 years is between $467-$533 million (depending on various county growth projections). This is premised on a debt service ratio target of no more than 9.8% (currently, debt service ($57M/year in 2021) accounts for approximately 8.5% of the APS budget). If the Board approves a CIP plan to the maximum limit of the available debt capacity, APS estimates that it would increase debt service costs by $12-23M per year over the next ten years. This is an approximately 20-40% increase over the existing $57M debt service cost from 2021.
We have many questions about the CIP proposal, including (i) whether the career center development plans will make sense given the enrollment declines seen over the past two years, (ii) whether the new seats created by the Career Center development would be better allocated to supporting general middle and high school seats, rather than growing the Arlington Tech program that has so far seen modest community interest; and (iii) whether the increase in debt service – which might otherwise fund potentially hundreds of additional teachers – is the best priority for APS. Public input into the CIP plan is projected for February to May of 2022, and the Superintendent’s final proposal is due May 12, 2022. We will continue to monitor the CIP proposals.
