At a School Board meeting tonight (Thursday), parents and other community members from Jefferson-Houston voiced strong opposition to plans to convert Jefferson-Houston and Patrick Henry, both K-8 schools, into a middle school and elementary school respectively.
The goal of the plan is to relieve overcrowding at Alexandria’s middle schools, though the conversions aren’t expected to take place until 2030 and 2032.
School staff have said keeping schools as-is is untenable. Capacity at the schools is projected to cap at 117% by 2027, though it will go down to 111% by 2029 — all of which will still be before the school conversations are scheduled to kick off. Data shows that school populations at ACPS are likely to decrease over the next ten years rather than increase.
Parents at the School Board meeting said they were “shocked” by the announcement. Many said the decision was made abruptly with little community input and drives a stake into the heart of the Jefferson-Houston community. Others noted that both Jefferson-Houston and Patrick Henry are the only two black-majority schools at the elementary level.
“ACPS leadership, including the School Board, has crippled Jefferson-Houston for years,” said Kathleen Sheehy. “Jefferson-Houston has finally begun to succeed, not because of District leadership but in spite of it.”
Sheehy pointed to challenges finding a permanent principal for the school and asked what faculty member or family would want to go to a school that might be replaced with a new facility in a few years.
“You’re literally driving kids away from ACPS,” Sheehy said. “The district has been crippling Jefferson-Houston for years. That needs to stop now.”
“A community is a precious, fragile thing, like a spiderweb,” another parent said. “Like a spiderweb, a community can be broken by carelessness. Don’t break this community in the name of the cheapest solution. Don’t break this community at a time when community is what we need more than anything.”
Gina Baum, a Jefferson-Houston neighbor and former Parks and Recreation Commission chair who ran for School Board in 2023, said the plan was short-sighted and could create more costs in the long-run.
“The Patrick Henry Recreation Center was built smaller, not bigger, to serve an elementary school population in a smaller neighborhood,” Baum said. “Now, you intend to invite half the city to a rec center that will be woefully inadequate, so please add another $20-30 million to your projections to modify the rec center accordingly.”
Baum also criticized the Jefferson-Houston decision as seemingly happening behind closed doors. Former School Board members Abdel Elnoubi and Jacinta Greene, both now City Council members, voted in opposition to the plan because of the lack of public engagement and transparency.
“Every deliberation must take place in public on the dais,” Baum said. “This body plays fast and loose with the rules and the laws.”
