Summary of March 13, 2025 School Board Meeting
Chair Kadera opened the meeting by thanking all community member participation in this public meeting as it ensures accountability in this institution committed to making Arlington students thrive.
Career Center JROTC Space Force Cadet Corps presented colors and everyone shared the pledge of allegiance.
Consent Agenda
Adopt Consent Agenda
Approved new appointments to various positions
March 25th Budget Works session #1 at 1pm in the Board conference room, session #2 at 2:45pm, closed meeting at 4:30pm, March 27th closed meeting at 5:30 immediately before SB meeting that night.
APS is accepting nominations for 2025 Honored Citizen Awards for individiaul who has made significant contributions on a volunteer basis. Due by COB on March 28.
Superintendent Durán explains there is no monitoring report at this meeting, sharing a bright spot in the form of 2025 Employees of the year:
Teacher of the Year: Katherine Garcia-Larner at Arlington Community High School,
Principal of the Year: Ellen Smith of Dorothy Hamm Middle School,
Assistant Principal of the Year: Octavia Knigge of Kenmore Middle School,
Leader of the Year: Dr. Ty Byrd, Executive Director of DEI,
Support Employee of the Year: Roxy Hernandez-Torres, Extended day Supervisor at Cardinal Elementary
Celebration will be held on May 28th at W-L High for all winners as well as the Teacher of the Year and Support Employee of the Year for every APS school.
Public Comment
APS Parent: IS is a specialized program, she has a child with complex medical needs, IS only accounts for roughly 1 million, or 1/8th of a percentage of the budget. If this elimination moves forward there will be more problems, not less, with children at home schools not set up to support them.
Student at Taylor ES, says they use iPads when they don’t need them at all; kids took pictures of her and airdropped them to the whole classroom and she was really scared because she thought it was a stalker and the principal had to call the police; the iPads make it hard for me to be good at school. Younger sister is autistic and has made huge improvement at IS, and thinks IS is more important than iPads or the new AI program they are planning to adopt.
Student council member from Glebe advocating for library assistants who are critical to library functioning, the library is her safe space and librarians more than just her teachers, they’re her friends.
School library isn’t just an idle place to check out books, librarian assistants provide critical support for keeping library presentable for kids.
APS Parent: son at 2.5 started at IS, currently a thriving 7th grader lost his IEP at 4th grade, and absolutely attribute that to integration station. IS is exceptional and made the difference in enabling him to enter integrated classrooms.
APS IS Staffer: serving IS as SLP, 11 years at IS, every student counts videos initiative; these tenants should apply to staff . Preschool is all we do.
APS Parent: family loves their librarian and assistant at Drew elementary, that role is critical to the functioning of the library because librarian is very busy managing many classes of students
Father of 4 year old at IS; special program with special mission that cannot be replicated at other sites.
IS teacher: MIPA program is for children with significant disabilities and provides so much flexibility to “please cut things; not programs, not people”.
DMV UnPlugged volunteer: Challenges common defenses of EdTech and devices like ipads in schools. “equity is not putting ipads in hands of every student, especially when kids with most common diagnosis—ADHD—are harmed by digital products”
APS parent of 2 kids, one at IS; please do not shut down our children’s progress. Has been proud of Arlington standing up for students in this political environment—urges APS to stand up for children with disabilities and do not shut down their school. IS “is not a luxury, it is a lifeline”
ITC at Innovation ES: ITCs are more than just tech support, are instructional leaders, student advocates, but ITCs being disproportionally
Librarian: library staff being cut is “direct hit” on students, they’re safe spaces, a library assistant is the first person to greet students. Library is “hub for DEI” and cutting low salaries of these assistants will not save the budget but will really hurt students. “Not balance the budget on the backs of students who need us the most”
IS teacher; show us that students are really first and do not cut IS
APS Parent: Thank you for civic engagement as a value in Arlington; hope that you will see by the group assembled here tonight that IS is very important to us, we have not been able to find/receive this kind of quality program for our son until IS
ITC at ASFS: “excited to prepare students for the digital world they will inherent”; Miller explained 3-5 grade lesson plans
Parent with child at IS: TCS students neurotypical peers learn about neurodiverse kids at IS, programs in other areas of APS to replace this cannot be scaled up so fast, expect quality will drop and costs will go up if this is
IS staff member who designs first IEP and collaborates with neurotypical peers, magic is in the collaboration in this specific space
Father of 2 gen ed kids at Taylor and one child at IS; you do not have to make cuts of these vulnerable kids, closing IS will be another bad and shortsighted decision which takes pressure off overwhelmed special ed classrooms; centralizes expertise so you can help kids who need it most ; may balance columns this year but will drain county in future when you struggle to replace what you already had.
Mom of 3 year old with rare neurological disorder; she’s not “the other” at IS, she has friends and schools and only 5 months there she’s made amazing progress. Structure is what makes it work; special ed and general ed; she’s making breakthroughs there. Why get rid of a program that is working at something so many others have failed to.
Mom at IS; “IS is a gem of Arlington, how could it be closed?”, asks to work together to find other ways to offset these funds. Collaborate between SB and Children’s School to find a solution.
Dad of IS student, both IS and TCS need to be preserved; we go to Children’s National, Fairfax for specialists, etc. because we look for the best, and IS is the best. If special needs are important for you, Tapia Hadley focus for DEI for social media, we all know what is at risk here and we hear horror story after horror story of kids that were left behind. Pleads for Kadera to have saving IS as an accomplishment of her tenure on SB.
AEA vice president: SB needs to show integrity and follow through on policy promises, support staff don’t make living wages, losing high quality educators in “brain drain” to other districts
ITC for 29 years who says cut to 11-month status, but will still work 97% of current hours but at a pay cut, while administrators will have 36 days of paid leave, earn multiple weeks of leave, if private company did this they wouldn’t be in business for long, but on backs of Arlington taxpayers
AEA rep and APS teacher: 2% COLA was preordained rather than negotiated with AEA, negotiations are not finished, inflation is at 2% itself, AEA says money could be found in OPEP trust fund,
Parent of ASFS, ATS, Dorothy Hamm, Yorktown students & is an Innovation ES library assistant: asks to keep library fully staffed/open, represent APS core values, libraries facilitate first amendment rights
Director of Children’s School: IS is a model of intervention being replicated nationally and internationally, do not dismantle our special model
Action Items
Motion to make change order to ACC construction
Passes 5-0
SB & Superintendent Joint Proposed 2026 Budget
Durán present budget draft with “significant funding needs”
Started budget process last July, with many meetings including with the public, advisory councils, etc.
Not traditional Superintendent’s budget, but a unique collaborative effort and outside advice, including an outside (Baker Tilly) consultant
More meetings to come: March 14, March 15, April 3, April 8, with May 1st adoption
$41.4 M deficit has been discussed for an extended period of time starting last July
Focusing on strategic realignments rather than across the board percentage cuts
Every study says good instruction depends not on materials but on staff
Built the budget with staff compensation and benefits from the forefront
Have not increased class sizes
FY 2026 proposal is $845M increase of 2.31% increase, including a budget transfer from the County
Will receive around $9M from the state, still in review
Connected budget to strategic plan objectives
Student-centered workforce
Step and COLA increases, increase of parental leave
Total investment: $24.96M
Retention rate has increased by 5% over last 4 years to pre-pandemic levels, average employee compensation has increased 25% over past 4 years
Student academic growth & success
Investment of $11.5M for growth projections, for growth in EL population and Special Ed students, maintaining existing resources and supports, and grow staff based on enrollment/demographics
Reductions: library aids to half time, ITC contracts from 12 to 11 months, move Integration Station to neighborhood schools, cap AP test costs to 3 paid by APS, cap TJHSST slots at 105
Adding 6 FTE School Safety Personnel
Operational Excellence: $2.71M investment
Immersion school staffing, classify bus drivers as 10 month 7-hour day contracts, including $1.8M baseline cost of maintaining Apple Financing and repair and insurance costs of electronic devices
Cuts: “Optimizing” student/teacher ratios, resulting in 56 fewer positions at schools, without pushing class sizes above the maximum (but could increase actual average class size, just not push past allowed maximums), reduce E days, reduce central office vendor contracts, reduce 23.5 central office positions
Summary: $22.36M reductions
$12.66M in central office funding reductions
$9.7M division-wide reductions
Unfunded Needs
Need more funding from the state
JLRC study, if funded properly would be receiving $51M from the state; If had that would do the following:
Reduce class sizes by 3, hire math and literacy interventionists, hire 200+ FTEs for English learner population, increase supply budget for teachers, increase special ed, counselors, psychologists and social worker staff, and increase staff compensation by 2%, increase budget for ongoing maintenance/facilities costs
Chair Kadera: APS & Budget Reserves
Reserves are being used very judiciously, only for one-time needs, etc.
Budget timeline of events between now and May 1: public hearing, work sessions, are open to public and Kadera welcomes the feedback to help them improve and course-correct the draft budget, and please send in any feedback as well.
Vote required just to recognize that the budget is the SB-proposed budget, Kadera motions. Comments on motion?
Comments on Budget Presentation
Kadera is grateful for work of Hawkins, Miller, and Mayo on the budget, and for partnership with Dr. Durán; she considered what other SBs have done, and noted that retirement benefits are often a target. APS did not do that, did not increase class size caps, did not close any neighborhood schools, did not roll back programs for court-involved students, etc. We’re showing our work to the public and asking for your input and help elaborating on and improving it. Understand these cuts are very emotional for everyone, and thank you for your help and contributions.
Zecher-Sutton: this has been a very difficult year, follows a budget deficit last year already, we needed to go deeper to make the budget work. How we deliver education has changed a lot but how we are funded has not; we have used reserve funds, like our savings account, too frequently. Part of our long-term strategy is to reduce our use of reserves for ongoing costs. This has contributed to why it’s so hard to do the budget this year.
Tapia-Hadley: While the budget process was done differently, as a new board member the ability this provided us to explore new avenues and opportunity to ask a great deal of questions. I was guided by what values and goals do we have? We’re restrained, can’t tax residents as a body, so unfortunately we cannot do it all nor fund it all. My foci are equity/inclusion, excellence, and transparency.
Clark: If we were fully funded by the state we would have no need to make $41M in cuts. I used BT report as baseline for understanding our budget outliers as compared with our peer districts, as many of you have requested for years. We worked hard to ensure the budget was aligned with our strategic plan; it’s part of a longterm plan to support special ed and EL students. Planning factors haven’t been updated since 90s, and fund classrooms which segregate classrooms, and is first step towards fully inclusive classrooms. Regarding IS: agree it’s an amazing place, but APS has increased its provision of preK throughout the system and made large inroads in serving this population, have county-wide assets (i.e. buildings/classrooms) which can be better leveraged to provide more preK, after-school programming, etc. for entire population, increase overall access. Have attending lots of listening sessions and engaged with IS advocates. Will use what is working at IS and replicate those classroom types in these county-wide locations, i.e. CPP program, i.e. on-site OT and speech, want to leverage this synergy at more schools.
Turner: Big thank you to Mary Kadera for all her hard work, and welcoming everyone to come and stay for this meeting. Tonight has focused on three areas (ITCs, library assistants, and IS), what I want to look at is our holiday/leave policy for 12 month versus 10 month employees—have heard a lot about this and think it should be addressed. I read everything from IS families, their stories were deeply personal, and I would like to look at how IS fits into other special education offerings and how we can make all of these programs what we would like them to be in order to address these specific concerns about other programs simply not being available to address these needs. This is not a final package, just a draft.
Vote on adopting this draft as SB PROPOSED budget package: motion passes 5-0.
Budget Development: Background Documents
July 2024 – March 2024 School Board Budget Questions and Responses
September 2024 School Board Requested Items for Internal Analysis
Community, Advisory, and Staff Feedback from Fall 2024:
FY 2026 Budget Development Calendar (updated December 6, 2024)
