Practical solutions. Honest answers. For everyone.

To be an effective leader, you need a foundation of core values that drive your decisions. You must be able to maintain your core ideals while working collaboratively to solve macro and micro-level problems.

We need to listen more to the people who are in the schools cultivating our children’s love of learning and the families who are impacted by APS decisions.  We have to ensure that proposed solutions are actually solving the identified problem.  We must rely on accurate data and be transparent with our reporting to make decisions that allow all students to achieve their potential.

If you’re interested in a real-world example of how I use data to ensure equity in our community that goes beyond visionary platitudes, check out my op-ed: Arlington’s School Board Caucus Furthers North-South Inequities With Vote-By-Mail Process.

During our campaign, various organizations have asked us to respond to questionnaires. We will post our responses below after the organization releases the responses to the community, so please check back for updates.

Practical Solutions

  1. Increase teacher compensation to be competitive with neighboring districts.  APS is great because our teachers are great. Arlington used to be a leader in teacher compensation. Today, neighboring districts pay their teachers more than Arlington pays our teachers.  We need to start increasing teacher compensation to show how much we truly appreciate their dedication to our children. When an older teacher leaves APS and is replaced by a younger teacher who makes less money and whose benefits are less expensive, it creates a saving called “lapse” or “turnover” money.  After reviewing the last ten years of APS budgets, I calculated that the total saved was approximately $132.3 million, but only $27.5 million was reallocated back to teacher compensation. The remaining funds were reallocated to a plethora of other expenses and reserve funds. We are losing teachers to neighboring districts because we are asking teachers to drive through their own district and through a neighboring district to teacher in Arlington and make less money. This is simply not a sustainable position and we need to begin providing ongoing performance and cost of living increases to our teachers to begin the long-term process of correcting this disparity in teacher compensation.

  2. Bring Back Summer Enrichment Programming for Students. Families rely on APS for programs like extended day and summer enrichment. Arlington has a world-class education system because of these programs -- not simply because of the outstanding in classroom instruction.  Plus, these programs provide an additional income source for our teachers and staff. When APS is considering changes that would eliminate a program like elementary school summer enrichment, APS should provide the community with clear and ample notice and when a decision is made, APS should be clear about the decision.  For example, for weeks after the decision was made to cancel the enrichment programs, the Summer School website said nothing about the elimination of the summer enrichment program, which is relied upon by families across the County (the website has since been updated). The summer enrichment program should be reinstated with a sliding scale fee structure based on family income because the program benefits students and teachers.

  3. Stand Up Against Boundary Changes and School Moves that Destroy Communities. For Arlington Public Schools to continue its excellence, we must ensure that we have the correct number of seats for our students in the right areas – especially as the county grows and neighborhoods are developed.  However, determining exactly where seats are needed, how many seats are needed, when the seats are needed, and how new seats are obtained is a huge challenge. Without this critical information, decisions should not be made. Moving schools and destroying communities should be the absolute last resort for APS – not the first solution attempted.

Honest Answers 

  1. Serve as a Check Against Undisciplined Spending by Focussing on Fiscal Responsibility and Transparency. For FY 2020, the APS budget is $669.6 million of which $532.3 million is from Arlington County ($522.4 million in ongoing and $9.9 million in one-time funding) with the bulk of remaining funding from the Commonwealth and federal sources. The County provided portion is a $31.5 million increase from the 2019 budget — in large part to address shortfalls associated with building new schools and other capacity issues. Decisions about how to use this money should be data and community driven to allow these resources to be distributed to address all of the factors which drive student success including programs for our children, increased pay and better training for our incredibly hard-working teachers and staff, and building improvements. From 2009 - 2019, APS reallocated approximately $262.2 million dollars or $23.8 million per year. We have to be more diligent and intentional in our spending decisions and transparent in the rationale for how we use tax payer dollars.

  2. Support World Languages by Expanding the Spanish Immersion Program. Students in dual-language immersion programs have earned higher achievement in their English coursework. In addition to academic achievement, studies show that dual-language "immersion students who begin the program as English speakers consistently develop native-like levels of comprehension, such as listening and reading skills, in their second language" and also demonstrate strengths in areas of divergent thinking, pattern recognition, and problem solving. With the mission of APS being for all students to learn and thrive, we should apply this data to the decision making process and immersion by starting a kindergarten immersion class at a third elementary school

  3. Reevaluate the use of technology in our schools.  The average Arlington middle school student spends 7.4 hours a day on a screen and the average high school student spends 9.5 hours a day on a screen. It is unclear if students are actually benefiting from this system of personalized learning while the technology industry may be harvesting data of our children’s use. Concurrently, our children are not following manufacture or OSHA guidelines regarding how to physically use the devices (posture, distance from face, etc.) because our teachers are not training in this area and the manufacturer's scripted guidelines are based on FTC's experiments on adults (it's unethical to test on children). Further, the increase in screen time is believed to correspond to an increase in myopia (short-sightedness) in children. The first long-term study on how screen time affects children's brains suggests more than 2 hours a day could do damage and there is new research suggesting that excessive screen time increases the likelihood that a student has one risk factor for suicide (there are many factors). Until we have better data on the impacts of technology, we should end the 1:1 iPad program in the elementary schools, especially because many families do not need another device, install blue light filters on screens, and carefully review the data on the impact technology has on our students.

For Everyone 

  1. Help our middle school and high school students overcome the emotional and physical challenges that they face.  Our students are overworked and are struggling to cope with the pressures of a highly competitive education system and everyday social pressures. Middle school and high school should be a time to develop social skills and long-lasting relationships with other students while still having fun as a teenager. Unfortunately, when you look at the data, the reality is that students are cracking and are unable to adequately cope with mounting pressures and unrealistic expectations:

    • Fewer than 1 in 3 teens feel that they can talk to their parent or caregiver about difficult topics;

    • 11% of middle school students do not identify an adult they would go to if they were upset; 

    • Approximately 23% to 37% of high school students (variation based on race) experienced feelings of hopelessness or sadness for 2 or more weeks in a row; 

    • 46% of female high school students experienced sexual harassment on school property; 

    • More middle school boys (85%) and girls (88%) have passed an aerobic fitness test than high school boys (71%) and girls (68%); and

    • Students of color get significantly less exercise per week than white students in middle school and high school.

    In 2018-19 APS had 1 school social worker for 959 students, 1 school psychologist for 885 students, and 1 school counselor for 250 students. We need to make sure schools are properly staffed with social workers, psychologists, and counselors based on the school’s need and not just X number of staff per school based on school size. In addition, we need other adults and staff such as nurses, teachers, substance abuse counselors, administrators, parents, coaches, extended day staff, and front office staff to play a key role in making connections with our youth. For more information about these issues and to read more about these statistics, please check out the 2019 Community Report on the Status of Children, Young, and Families produced by the Arlington Partnership for Children, Youth, and Families.

  2. Appoint a Student Advocate to the School Board. Innovation and problem solving should include the students impacted by school board decisions. Offering students an opportunity to engage with the policy makers impacting their daily lives on a more regular and substantive basis would provide additional education outside of the classroom and develop the future generation of elected officials and policy makers

  3. Set A Net-Zero Goal to Fight Climate Change. Millions of students across the world are campaigning to convince their elected officials to take meaningful action on climate change. Although the County Board is currently taking steps to reduce Arlington’s ecological footprint and APS has taken significant steps by ensuring that many buildings obtain LEED certification when construction took place (including Discovery, Wakefield, Yorktown, Reed, Washington-Liberty, and Kenmore), APS should also embrace this student-driven initiative and set a net-zero goal to reduce carbon emissions. 

  4. Insist on Equity for All Students — regardless of race, gender, religion, nationality, gender identity, legal status, physical or mental challenges, and/or socio-economic status. Arlington has one of the most diverse education systems in the country – from curriculum-focused programs (e.g., language immersion) to student-focused curriculum (e.g., H.B. Woodlawn).  However, simply being “open” to all students via an application process does not mean that every choice is truly available for all students. Further, we need to address the flaws in the system that results in a lower percentage of minority students enrolling in high level classes, a higher number of minority students classified as special needs, and comparatively more severe punishments and discipline for students of color and student with disabilities. We must use data by (a) producing a comprehensive Equity Report, similar to The Partnership’s Student Wellness report, and (b) amending the current 2018-2024 Strategic Plan to include indicators or benchmarks in all our strategic plans, not just some of them, to compare the data against our indicators to know if we’re actually solving problems and closing the opportunity gap to stop implementing changes that worsen disparities among schools and students. Equity means giving all students the same opportunities to achieve their greatness.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO ADD YOUR NAME TO OUR LIST OF SUPPORTERS If you believe in our vision for Arlington Public Schools.

Embed Block
Add an embed URL or code. Learn more