Summary of June 6, 2024 School Board Meeting
Meeting Open: Cristina Diaz-Torres open the meeting, which was followed by various recognitions of students.
Consent Agenda Unanimously Adopted
Approved new appointments at APS
Approved transfers to two retirement funds
Adopted Elementary and Secondary Education Act program applications
Approved changes to School Board advisory committees
Board Announcements:
A public hearing on the CIP will be on June 11th
Next non-closed School Board meeting is on June 20th
Superintendent’s Announcements and Updates
Every Student Counts video focused on Sustainability at Alice West Fleet Elementary School
June is Pride month
Graduations will be held from June 7 – 14, with a reminder that families should educate their kids on risks associated with drinking
The School Board is considering a prevailing wage policy for all future contracts valued over $250,000; the School Board will adopt the resolution on July 18, 2024 and it will become effective on September 1, 2024
The public hearing on the 2025-35 CIP will be on June 11, with final adoption on June 20; the CIP will:
Finalize safety and security vestibules and kitchen renovations at all schools;
Complete synthetic turf field replacements;
Proceed with the Arlington Career Center construction project;
Prioritize additional school roof replacements, HVAC systems, and other maintenance projects; and
Upgrade employee resource system to improve efficiency
Public Comment
An APS high school student spoke about the shortage of special education teachers.
An APS middle school student spoke about the need for wider hallways in Swanson.
Two APS parents spoke against the reduction in pre-K classes at Campbell.
An APS parent spoke about the lack of funding in the CIP for the HVAC system at Tuckahoe, and concern regarding the funding for Montessori Public School of Arlington in the CIP.
An Arlington resident said APS needs to support students more who are pro-Palestine.
An APS parent spoke against APS’ level of compensation of teachers, and general treatment of teachers.
An APS teacher criticized the proposed CIP, and potential effect on future budgets.
Two APS parents thanked APS for integrating students with disabilities in a general education setting and pursuing an inclusive environment.
An APS parent spoke against the CIP, and the lack of priority of refurbishments to Thomas Jefferson Middle School.
Claire Noakes, speaking on behalf of the Executive Board of the CCPTA, criticized the CIP for its lack of available funding to do all proposed projects.
An APS teacher spoke about problems with APS’ HR department in taking leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, and general problems with APS’ HR department.
An Arlington resident spoke in favor of Strategic Plan provisions in support of LGBTQ students.
An Arlington resident spoke against the lack of improvements to Drew in the CIP, and how Drew is losing students to option schools.
For a recap of the School Board meeting budget and CIP discussion, please see our June 11, 2024 newsletter here.
Strategic Plan
Jonathan Turisi, Special Projects, Office of the Chief of Staff presented
Kathleen Clark, Vice Chair and Maggie Sly, Chair also presented
RTI - Megan Doyle, was the consultant for the Strategic Plan (she was an Arlington student in Elementary School)
Dr. Durán says this strategic plan was formed with a lot of feedback and developed, written and refined by our community.
This is the Phase 2 of the process where they are presenting the monitoring elements.
This is a multi phase process, next step is implementation
Steering was made up of 20 members including staff and parents, teachers and administrators
Priority Teams made edits based on feedback.
Priority teams were built around the 5 priorities: Student Well-being, Student-centered Workforce, operational excellence, student academic growth and success, and school, community, family partnerships.
They had about 50 focus groups, 1.2K questionnaire responses and two community forums.
First was strategic priorities, then performance objectives with strategies to specify the methods with KPIs
Ms. Clark and Ms. Clark talked about their pride that students were involved in the process and stressed implementing the strategic plan with fidelity and flagging that future budget constraints will require prioritization.
Ms. Doyle talked about RTI’s work and that they were humbled to be a part of the process.
Slides were read
Questions and Comments:
Ms. Zecher-Sutton thanked them for the inclusion of increasing diversity of teaching staff. She hopes including it elevates the intentionality and value of it. She also said she stumbled over the ‘having a voice’ in the goals. “It means something slightly different to everyone” so she wishes them well on how they will measure that.
Ms. Diaz-Torres that removing the specific metrics on YVM allows options to be opened up going forward. Having “pulse checks” that contribute to the macro metrics.
Ms. Turner started by stating thank you for all the work. She appreciated the focus on rigor and closing gaps. She asked about suspensions and suggested a tweak of the wording. She asked that the added clause “with a focus on incidents that do not pose a safety risk to self or others (e.g. attendance infractions, certain disruptive behaviors)” be moved. She also asked about LBTQ+ identification baseline and why it was removed. Mr. Turisi said they wanted LBTQ+ to be similar to the other goal for all student groups of 80%. Mr. Turisi says the identification process is more of a strategy. She also brought up the importance of implementing with fidelity and said that a lot of this is tied into our planning factor work. And “in order to implement the planning factor recommendations, we need to have the budget space to do it and we need to move back towards a sustainable operating budget
Ms. Kadera mentioned she sent comments in email. She also brought up sustainability and thanked them for listening to the community. She mentioned Slide 32 about student’s having a voice. She wants us to consider students as partners in learning. It’s important to say not just that students have voices but that they are partners. She suggests that students could design their own grading rubric not just pick between a presentation, paper or an iMovie.
Priddy said he’ll ask questions off line.
