With less than a month until its adoption, city officials are pushing Alexandria City Public Schools leaders to make further cuts to the district’s 10-year Capital Improvements Program, stressing budget constraints.
The $340 million CIP proposal exceeds the city’s recommendation by $54.5 million and arrives during a period of expected citywide budget cuts. Officials underscored the need to limit budgets across the board during a City Council/School Board Subcommittee meeting on Monday night, which followed two ACPS work sessions to fine-tune the proposal.
“We can’t address any needs without the fiscal reality, and so there has to be money to pay for each of those needs,” Mayor Alyia Gaskins said. “And I think, what I would hope, is that our School Board colleagues know … we are doing the same exercise, and we understand those needs.”
The school district is seeking to fund four major capacity projects totaling nearly $150 million over the next ten years. This was proposed days after City Manager Jim Parajon asked all city departments for a 1% budget cut and no more than 1.5% budget growth from ACPS at the city’s Nov. 3 budget retreat.
Councilman John Chapman emphasized the city does not have the financial breadth to afford the current CIP, “unless we hit a home run on an economic development project.”
“I think we’ve been very polite in saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to get to that place where money is not existing to fund things,'” Chapman said. “And I think we’re here at that point, and I don’t want to be rude, but I also don’t want to be overly polite and have folks miss that actual perspective.”
Alexandria City School Board Chair Michelle Rief floated the potential of deferring some of the proposed capacity projects to trim the budget.
“If you take the Cora Kelly project, plus all of our non-capacity projects — so those are all the things that we’re doing to keep our buildings in a state of good repair — that is, that totals the guidance from the city right there, even goes over a little bit,” she said.
Rief also noted the district has nine buildings that are each over 60 years old and require modernizations.
“If it’s one school modernization every 10 years, that’s a 100-year CIP plan, you know?” Rief said. “I’m just trying to think about how we, you know, just how we think about this going forward.”
Parajon suggested district leaders make note of their highest priorities as the CIP is slated for alterations — something Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt assured the district is doing.
“While it may not be presented in the way that you all are discussing it, we are definitely having those conversations,” she said.
The CIP’s upcoming add-and-delete sessions are scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 11 and Tuesday, Dec. 16, ahead of the plan’s final adoption on Dec. 18.
