Alexandria City Public Schools wants a formalized collective bargaining agreement sent to the city manager by the end of the year, but it comes as the city is renegotiating its agreements with police, fire, and administrative and technical staff.
It’s been a year since the school system failed to reach a collective bargaining agreement with the Education Association of Alexandria (EAA). Last year, the School Board held a public hearing and approved a draft collective bargaining resolution with the goal of presenting the package to City Manager Jim Parajon for inclusion in the Fiscal Year 2026 budget.
The process stalled for a year, and now the school system is looking to restart the process this month with EAA, and then present an agreement to Parajon by the end of this year for inclusion in the FY 2027 budget.
ALXnow has reached out to ACPS and EAA for more details.
Alexandria was the first Northern Virginia jurisdiction to pass the measures for employee rights and wages in 2021, after former Governor Ralph Northam announced statewide implementation of the law in 2020. It took Alexandria nearly two years to negotiate collective bargaining for police and firefighters, who both saw pay increases budgeted into the city’s fiscal year 2024 budget.
The challenge this time is that the city’s collective bargaining agreement with police, fire, and administrative and technical staff is coming up for renewal, and the city will undergo a collective bargaining process at the same time as the school system.
Parajon said in last week’s City Council/School Board Subcommittee meeting that his office and the City Council need as much information as possible on the negotiations to create his FY 2027 budget.
“I think we’re going to maybe agree to disagree a little bit on this,” Parajon said. “I really feel really strongly about this, that I feel receiving a draft finalized agreement that the partner who is the financial and community partner, receiving that at the very last minute without being part of the negotiation presents in my mind an unacceptable risk that is not something that is going to be a successful approach, especially with some of the uncertainty that we’re dealing with in our current environment, having the ability to have the interaction early on without stepping into the what I’ll call educationally core focus.”
However, ACPS Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt said that information will be shared once a final agreement on wages, benefits, terms and conditions of employment, and other issues is reached.
“Until something is final, I think it’s very hard to kind of share the interim steps in what we’re negotiating so we can make sure all of that information remains confidential,” Kay-Wyatt said. “I do not want to interrupt negotiations and all the legal things that go along with that. But if we could make sure that when we’re moving through this process, that we are mindful that those negotiations will be closed until it is final, I just want to make sure that that information is not shared out that would compromise that work that we’re doing behind the scenes.”
Kay-Wyatt maintained that, while she would keep the city manager abreast of the negotiations, the finer details would be kept secret. She also said that the school system will work within the budgetary framework that Parajon sends to all city departments each fall.
“I think there needs to be a more in-depth conversation around funding between the two bodies,” Kay-Wyatt said. “If the budget guidance is given to the city as it has been in past years, then those team members that I have on staff who are negotiating are very well aware of funding limitations for that budget year.”
School Board Chair Michelle Rief said that negotiations should wrap up with a formalized agreement in December, just in time for submission to the city in January 2026.
“I know this year you gave us budget guidance that you shared with Dr. Kay-Wyatt in the fall,” Rief told Parajon. “Maybe if that could be pushed back earlier, that can maybe help inform us as we’re going into the negotiations.”
Mayor Alyia Gaskins said that there will likely be more uncertainty with next year’s budget.
“I think our expectation is that somebody from the city be involved (in the ACPS collective bargaining process),” Gaskins said. “What’s involvement mean? It’s not sitting directly across in the negotiation room, but is a part of the strategy from the place of here’s what the city can and cannot support, so that you guys have all of that on the table from the beginning in your negotiation.”
