Capital Improvement

At its meeting on December 18, the School Board voted on its Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) Direction. I voted against approving this Direction, and my comments below explain why.  Although I am leaving the board this month, I think this particular issue is so consequential that I want to share what concerns me.


At our October meeting, I shared four words I hoped would guide our CIP work: Holistic, Strategic, Flexible, and Creative. But there's a fifth word—one that may be most important given our school division's values: Equity.

​The Oxford English Dictionary defines equity as 'the quality of being fair and just, especially in a way that takes account of and seeks to address existing inequalities.' The Cambridge Dictionary describes it as 'the situation in which everyone is treated fairly according to their needs and no group of people is given special treatment.'

What does that mean when we’re talking about school buildings?

We all know that school buildings—in the DC area and nationwide—vary greatly in condition and amenities. While Arlington's schools are in better shape than many communities', disparities exist here too. Our 2023 Facilities Condition Assessment, updated this year, comprehensively documents the differences and needs across all our buildings. The report identifies approximately $599 million in major infrastructure work needed over the next ten years. This figure is an estimate that could shift in either direction: lower if we can extend the life of roofs, HVAC systems, and other components (though some replacements are already overdue), or higher given that it's calculated in today's dollars and doesn't account for future cost increases.

Beyond infrastructure needs, some of our buildings offer lower-quality learning environments due to inadequate educational specifications—for example, classroom size, natural lighting, and insufficient common areas like cafeterias, gyms, and playgrounds. At our last School Board meeting, students and staff from Thomas Jefferson Middle School spoke directly to these challenges.

Addressing these deficiencies will require major renovations at TJ and several other facilities. The feasibility studies we completed for five schools earlier this year confirm the need for hundreds of millions of dollars in renovation work, with five additional schools likely requiring similar attention.

Given these significant needs, how we allocate our limited capital funding is critical. As the body responsible for directing and approving the CIP, the School Board must ensure that every project is absolutely necessary. This is fundamental to equity—our commitment to being fair and just while addressing existing inequalities.

I'm not convinced all our current projects meet this threshold, and I believe we need rigorous analysis to demonstrate they do. This is good financial stewardship.

Imagine you're unfamiliar with Arlington and hearing about another school division's capital plans. This district is building a new career and technical education center for high school students. It's also spending $45 million to convert its existing high school CTE center into an elementary school.
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You might reasonably assume: 'This district must need more elementary seats. And if they're converting a space clearly not designed for elementary students—at significant cost—this must be the most cost-effective way to add the seats they need.'

Under those conditions, the project would make sense. But Arlington faces very different conditions. We have a surplus of over 1,700 elementary seats—one that isn't disappearing anytime soon. Even after demolishing the Patrick Henry elementary building and losing its 463 seats, we'll maintain a comfortable margin of excess capacity. So why are we spending $45 million on a project we don't need?

​I've heard two rationales. First, we don't want to move this elementary option program further from where most of its students live. As a parting observation, I'll suggest that Arlington needs clarity on whether proximity applies equally to option programs and neighborhood schools, and I will gently suggest that it might make sense to create a clear understanding that when you sign up for an option program, you are enrolling in a program, not a geographic location. If proximity is the driving factor for families, their neighborhood school is probably the more appropriate choice. 

Second, relocating this program would require moving it into a neighborhood school building and rezoning those students elsewhere—a significant disruption. But how much disruption, and where? We don't know because the School Board has never directed that this analysis be done.

I've repeatedly asked for any analysis done before I joined the board, and none exists. During my tenure, we came closest to this analysis in our last CIP cycle. In December 2023, Reid Goldstein and I were the only School Board members who voted to include a study of alternatives to this $45 million project in the CIP Direction. With only two votes, it failed.

Yet despite this decision, materials were pulled together at the last minute in June 2024—the week of our CIP vote—at a former board chair's request. Most board members and the entire public saw this information for the first time during the meeting itself, moments before we voted. This isn't what I would consider robust analysis, nor is it how the School Board should conduct business. To be clear: this misstep belongs to the previous board, not our staff.

So we have no real analysis of alternatives to date, while evidence of facility needs across our division continues to mount. Now the board has another chance to request an analysis of alternative locations for MPSA—and is again choosing not to. This means spending $45 million on a project that may be unnecessary, while forgoing other projects that need investment.

I don't want to minimize the negative impacts of relocating MPSA. Converting a neighborhood school into an option school and rezoning students would be painful. We know this because over the past decade, APS has moved or closed nine schools and programs for various reasons. It has happened before and may need to happen again—if not now, then in the future.

​In two of these nine cases, we closed neighborhood schools so their buildings could house option programs: Patrick Henry and McKinley. Some bristle when I call these closings, but in both cases, the School Board approved plans to cease operating a neighborhood school at that location with the intention to rezone its students to multiple other sites. To me—and I believe to the general public—that's closing a school.

If we now believe this approach is inconsistent with our values and would never repeat it, then I implore this board to codify that in policy and PIP. Otherwise, this board and future boards risk applying this logic inconsistently or not at all—and when the goalposts appear to shift from decision to decision, public trust erodes.

The inconvenient truth is that we do close and move schools and programs. This board contemplated closing Integration Station, an APS preschool, earlier this year. At the other end of the age spectrum, consider Arlington Community High School: by the time it moves into its new home at Amazon HQ2, APS will have relocated that school community five times in 20 years—including moving it off the Career Center campus. It serves the highest percentage of economically disadvantaged students of any APS school, and it troubles me to wonder if it might have enjoyed greater stability with a more affluent, well-organized parent advocacy base.

Four years ago, we relocated the Escuela Key elementary option program. At the time, Key's student body was 56% Hispanic and 34% economically disadvantaged. We moved it three miles farther from where most of its students lived, into a building operating at 133% capacity. Mold contaminated some relocatables. When teachers arrived in August, many classrooms lacked basic furniture—teacher desks, student desks, tables, bookshelves. The cafeteria remained unfinished for the first three months of school. While most issues have since been resolved, Key still operates at 124% capacity.

Equity.

Equity means the quality of being fair and just, especially in a way that takes account of and seeks to address existing inequalities. Addressing existing inequalities will take investment—a lot of it. That may necessitate some very hard choices.

​It’s important for the board to have every bit of available information and analysis to make the hard choices in front of us, and to make choices in a way that applies our values consistently over time. To be good financial stewards, the board must explore alternatives before investing in specific projects with tunnel vision. For these reasons, I am voting no on this CIP Direction.