Good Thursday morning, Alexandria!
🌤️ Today’s weather: The weather will be partly sunny with temperatures reaching a high of around 77°F, accompanied by a northwest wind blowing at 6 to 9 mph. In the evening, expect increasing clouds and a low temperature around 49°F, with an east wind at the same speed of 6 to 9 mph.
🚨 You need to know
Alexandria City Public Schools is looking for public feedback on its weapons abatement program. The metal detectors have been in place in Alexandria City High School and the city’s secondary school locations, and the school system is conducting a survey on the pilot that will end at 11:59 p.m. on Friday.
According to ACPS:
The Department of Facilities and Operations, Office of Safety and Security at Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) is administering a survey on the current pilot weapons screening equipment program that is open through Fri., April 19, 2024. As shared during the February 22, 2024, School Board meeting, the weapons screening equipment program started in May 2023 and has been ongoing at all secondary school locations (not including the K-8 schools).
This survey is an opportunity for all stakeholders (students, staff, families and community members) to provide thoughts and feedback on the pilot program. The results of this survey will help inform the formal staff recommendation to the School Board regarding the future of the weapons screening equipment program in ACPS.
The last ACPS survey on the subject was conducted in March 2023 — two months before the pilot program started. There were more than 4,000 respondents, with about 85% supporting some form of weapons abatement.
📈 Wednesday’s most read
The following are the most-read ALXnow articles for Apr 17, 2024.
- Notes: Old Town North building sold for $15.4 million to be turned into mixed-use apartment building (2655 views)
- Alexandria City Council approves new ‘neighborhood’ at former Vulcan Materials site (1191 views)
- Mystic BBQ & Grill opens on Lee Street in Old Town (862 views)
📅 Upcoming events
Here is what’s going on today in Alexandria, from our event calendar.
The Alexandria School Board unanimously approved a collective bargaining resolution Thursday night, setting the ground rules for how the school system will negotiate with staff on wages and benefits.
Dawn Lucas, president of the Education Association of Alexandria, was pleased with a number of changes that she recommended the Board make to the proposed resolution.
“I feel like we’re in a good place,” Lucas said. “Our teachers and staff are going to have seats at the table, and their voices will be heard.”
School Board Chair Michelle Rief said that Alexandria City Public Schools wants to come to a collective bargaining agreement by the end of 2024.
“I think it’s a milestone moment for our school division,” Rief said. ” I want to thank the Education Association of Alexandria, our ACPS staff and community members who were engaged in this process. We heard your feedback, we incorporated your feedback and I’m very pleased with where we landed with this final collective bargaining resolution.”
The school system is currently experiencing a staffing crisis. Last October, EAA sent the Board an employee certification on behalf of licensed teachers. That submission gave the Board 120 days to adopt a framework for the resolution.
Among the changes to the draft document was Board Member Abdel Elnoubi’s recommendation to remove a 30% voting threshold for employees to establish two unions for bargaining. Those units can now be chosen with a simple majority of staff.
Elnoubi said that the Board’s work on the resolution was the best experience he’s had throughout his single term.
“I got to roll my sleeves and do work and get involved in the work from the beginning and be part of the process,” Elnoubi said. “I don’t think as board members we get to do that a lot, so that was a really good experience, to feel that we are actually solving problems and working hands-on.”
The Board also increased the number of yet-to-be-determined bargaining topics from four to six, and left the door open for more topics if voted on by the bargaining units. Additionally, after the first agreement expires after three years, collective bargaining to administrative staff.
ACPS middle school teacher David Paladin Fernandez was also pleased with the resolution. Fernandez is running against Lucas for EAA president in a union election this summer.
“I do appreciate the immense amount of work that the Board has done to improve this document from where it was last week when it was first released,” Fernandez said. “The fact that they struck out the voter participation threshold is a tremendous win for not just employees here in ACPS, but for Democracy itself.”
Alexandria City High School English teacher Eva Irwin was at a loss for words when her name was called and the packed gymnasium erupted in applause.
This afternoon at a school assembly, Irwin was recognized as a top-tier teacher and surprised with the $25,000 Milken Educator Award.
It’s the first time that an Alexandria City Public Schools teacher has won the award, which has been presented to approximately 3,000 other educators over the past 37 years. There is also no formal nominating process or application that goes into selecting recipients.
“As you can tell, I’m shaking,” Irwin told the audience of students, teachers and administrators. “This is the last thing I ever expected.”
An English teacher with more than 100 11th-grade students, Irwin said that she tries to get her students to feel ownership with their assignments.
“I don’t have any children on my own, so they really are like my kids,” Irwin later told reporters. “I really try with my students to have a lot of collaboration. My teaching style is very student-centered, so I really try to get them to feel like they have ownership over their learning offered a lot of choice and how they can you know, complete assignments based on their best learning modalities.”
Philanthropist Lowell Milken started the awards in 1987 to recognize early-to-mid-career teachers.
“You cannot apply for our award,” Milken told the audience in the ACHS gymnasium. “We find you.”
The event was also attended by Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Coons, Alexandria School Board Chair Michelle Rief and ACPS Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt.
Milken told Irwin that the funds will help her unleash her potential.
“As we unleash that additional potential, we are expecting even greater things of the future,” he said.
Irwin said that the money will pay for her $23,500 master’s degree in educational and instructional leadership from Virginia Tech.
When asked about how the recipients of the award are chosen, Milken said that the foundation works with state boards of education, and that names surface through other sources to the Milken Family Foundation.
“I’d love to tell you, but it’s a secret,” Milken told ALXnow. “I think that what we can identify with this group of nearly 3,000 is that they’re all strong instructional leaders. They’re also powerful mentors for other teachers and they’re invested in their communities.”
The final touches are being made to Alexandria City High School’s expansion of its Minnie Howard Campus.
The five-story, $174 million high school project is on-budget and on-track for “substantial completion this spring,” according to an Alexandria City Public School staff report that will be presented to the School Board on Thursday.
“Construction of the new Minnie Howard building has been ongoing since the spring of 2022 and is on track to be substantially completed this spring for occupancy in August 2024,” staff wrote.
The 1,600-student school, which nearly doubled in its capacity, will feature an aquatics facility and expanded career and technical education (CTE) lab spaces for “potential new offerings in game design/development, robotics, emergency medical sciences, cyber security, (and) firefighting,” according to ACPS.
Staff also reported that construction the gymnasium and auxiliary gym are complete, that furniture is being moved in and that interior finishing touches are being made.
Next steps for the project include inspection by the Health Department and getting a final occupancy permit.
It was standing-room-only at a City Council budget hearing yesterday (Monday) and most of the speakers had one of two things on their mind: affordable housing and fully funding Alexandria City Public Schools.
The push for more funding to the city’s affordable housing programs came from a mix of housing nonprofit leaders and residents from neighborhoods like Arlandria/Chirilagua staring down the barrel at gentrification.
“We recognize that $12 million for the Housing Trust Fund isn’t enough to reach each affordable housing target,” said Jill Norcross, executive director of the Northern Virginia Affordable Housing Alliance.
Norcross and others called for the city to fund the Community Lodgings redevelopment of Elbert Avenue Apartments and Wesley Housing’s ParcView II development for a total of 464 affordable housing, much of it considered ‘deeply affordable’ — ie for residents at around 40% of area median income or lower income levels.
At least half of those in City Council chambers were there with Tenants and Workers United (TWU), an organization that supports low-income communities of color, immigrants, low-wage workers and more.
“Our families are not part of the city’s growth,” said Ingris Moran, a lifelong resident of Alexandria and community organizer for TWU. “We do not see proactive tools that will stabilize our families and keep our families in the city.”
As the city prepares for redevelopment at the former Landmark site and Potomac Yard, Moran said residents in Arlandria and low-income communities fear displacement. Moran said TWU supports the city investing $10 million to create a voucher program for families earning less than 40% of AMI, investment into the expansion of the guaranteed income pilot, and funding for the aforementioned affordable housing projects.
“The City needs to make bold decisions to make good, sustainable investments,” Moran said. “The City Council supporting funding, creating and expanding these programs would be the City Council supporting working class families in the city.”
Carlos Rubio, an Arlandria resident, said wages have not kept pace with rent increases around Arlandria. Rubio asked the City Council to provide support through rent relief programs.
“Last year I had to leave my apartment where I was living for 20 years,” Rubio said. “I was okay leaving there, but then suddenly I received a rent increase that was way too high for me. It was more than a $400 increase. Now I live in another property, where it’s not that affordable but it is better.”
The other half of the public comment, on the other hand, primarily featured teachers and parents pushing for the City Council to fully fund the Alexandria City Public Schools’ $384.4 million combined budget request by the School Board. That budget has been a battleground for City Council and School Board leadership, with many on the Council expressing displeasure at a lack of long-term planning in the school budget and last-minute budget requests.
Mayor Justin Wilson told the School Board that fully funding that budget would require a six-cent tax rate increase, calling the proposal not viable.
Advocates from the ACPS community said, regardless of the enmity between the boards, the City Council should fully fund the ACPS budget.
“I recognize this city is facing a difficult year, however, without a strong public school system, we run the risk of negatively affecting the entire city,” said ACPS parent Catie Brownback. “As we continue to increase affordable housing options in this city, which we should do, we will also increase the enrollment in our public school system. With the rising cost of living, we can’t expect the budget to stay flat. Please help keep Alexandria a thriving city long-term by fully funding our schools.”
Twenty three Alexandria middle schoolers and eight Alexandria City High School students were arrested in the first two quarters of this school year, according to a report that the School Board will receive Thursday.
There were also 213 incidents requiring a police response, including five weapons-related incidents, 43 students needing EMS assistance, 56 fights/assaults and three reports of sexual assault.
Weapons seized include three stun guns/tasers, a pellet gun and a knife.
There were 17 students arrested in the first two quarters of the 2022-2023 school year (last year), and 41 arrested in the final two quarters, totaling 58 arrests and resulting in a 26% increase in students arrested over the previous school year.
Of those arrested so far this year, 20 of them were Black students, making up 55%.
There were 95 incidents reported at the Alexandria City High School campuses, 70 incidents at the city’s two middle schools (Francis C Hammond and George Washington Middle Schools), 35 incidents at elementary schools and 13 incidents at K-8 schools.
There were also 118 police calls for service — 56 at the high school campuses, 46 at the middle schools, four at K-8 schools and 12 at elementary schools.
Incidents in the first semester of this school year include:
- 57 incidents characterized as “other” (including two students discussing weapons, four cases of disorderly conduct, two reports of public intoxication, one fraudulent 911 call)
- 56 fights/assaults
- 43 injuries that required medical assistance
- Five confiscated weapons
- Nine controlled substances
- Nine threats (verbal/cyber/social media)
- Six missing student reports
- Four reports of suspicious activity
- Three alarms pulled
- Three reports of sexual misconduct
- Six thefts
- Seven reports of possessing prohibited materials
The Alexandria School Board unanimously authorized starting the collective bargaining process with its teachers and licensed staff Thursday night, kickstarting an extensive period of negotiation on employee rights, wages and benefits.
A number of Alexandria teachers an union representatives voiced their displeasure, however, with stipulations in the ACPS draft collective bargaining resolution.
The 17-page document states ACPS will bargain with an employee organization if 30% of those bargaining employees (also known in groups as “units”) endorse it. The draft resolution also outlines rules for a three-year agreement that would cover four yet-to-be-identified topics. After the agreement expires three years later, two additional topics could be added for negotiation. Topics covered could include wages, benefits and terms and conditions of employment.
“We want a normal, democratic election without an election participation threshold,” said Dawn Lucas, president of the Education Association of Alexandria (EAA).
Last October, EAA started the collective bargaining process by sending the Board an employee certification submission on behalf of all licensed teachers. That submission gave the Board 120 days to authorize the collective bargaining process by Feb. 13. A full board action on the resolution is anticipated to occur on Thursday, March 21.
School Board Chair Michelle Rief said that she anticipates a future public hearing dedicated to the collective bargaining resolution.
“This has been a long time coming, for sure,” Rief said. “At the end of the day we really want our teachers to know that we value you.”
ACPS is currently experiencing a staffing crisis, and James Rutigliano, a second grade teacher at Jefferson-Houston K-8 School, said that without an agreement that he and other teachers will quit.
“Talented teachers will not come to ACPs if they feel their labor, ideas, and work product will be exploited,” Rutigliano told the Board. “We must negotiate in good faith, and an election participation threshold is simply undemocratic. It tells our students and our community that the voice will only matter if and only if they hold power.”
The draft resolution also says that there will be two bargaining units, one made of licensed personnel (teachers, school counselors, specialists, librarians, school psychologists, social workers, speech pathologists, department chairs, and 10-month, 11-month, and 12-month Licensed Personnel) and a second unit made up of “education support professionals.” Administrative employees are not included in the draft agreement. They include principals, assistant principals and supervisors.
Rief said last month that the school system wants to reach a collective bargaining agreement by the end of this calendar year. Such a deadline means that any major changes to staff benefits and compensation could be realized with next year’s passage of the Fiscal Year 2026 budget.
School Board Member Tim Beaty, a former leader with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, won a recent special election by mostly campaigning on the importance of collective bargaining. He said that it might be helpful for EAA and the School Board to discuss the school system’s needs in a meeting.
“I’m persuaded by the arguments that were made that it would be helpful to have a direct conversation between the Board and the EAA about the draft resolution,” Beaty said.
Lucas said that it feels as if the needs and desires of her members were not considered when ACPS created the draft resolution. She said that the association wants bargaining rights for all employees, including licensed staff, support staff, and administrators.
“All employees deserve bargaining rights,” Lucas said. “We want the right to bargain over the many topics related to our working and learning conditions, including current policies, regulations, procedures and practices. If we are unable to bargain over the terms and conditions of employment, there is very little, if anything, left to bargain.”
Alexandria approved collective bargaining in 2021, after former Governor Ralph Northam announced the law in 2020. It took the city nearly two years to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with police and firefighters.
An Alexandria City High School student suffered a suspected non-fatal overdose inside the school, Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt announced to parents this afternoon.
“I am writing to make you aware of a suspected school-connected, non-fatal student overdose that happened today at Alexandria City High School — King St. Campus,” Kay-Wyatt wrote.
The last suspected overdose at ACHS was on Dec. 15.
Kay-Wyatt directed families to the Alexandria City Public Schools substance abuse education and prevention page.
According to ACPS:
For any student who wants to share any thoughts or feelings they may have at this time, there are resources in place. At ACHS, students can aleays reach out to a counselor, administrator or any trusted adult in the school if they are in need of help. Our students can also reach out to CrisiText and Crisis Link at any time, 24/7, through the contacts below:
- Text: CONNECT to 85511
- Call CrisisLink: 703-527-4077
We encourage all students, staff and families to please share any concerns you may have about substance abuse within our schools using our anonymous reporting system that is accessible in multiple languages,. All tips are anonymous and are responded to in a timely manner.
Additionally, a fire alarm was pulled at ACHS at around 1:45 p.m., the school was evacuated and no fire or emergency was found, according to the Fire Department scanner.
Alexandria City Public Schools officials want to reach a collective bargaining agreement by the end of this year, and a resolution to approve the process will be presented to the School Board next week.
The draft collective bargaining resolution was reviewed last Thursday by the Board’s Collective Bargaining Committee, and Board Chair Michelle Rief said that the school system has a goal of coming to an agreement with staff by the end of this year. Such a deadline means that any major changes to staff benefits and compensation would be realized with next year’s passage of the Fiscal Year 2026 budget.
“Just to be clear, we are looking and doing this, depending on how it goes, this year in 2024,” Rief said last Thursday night.
In October, the Education Association of Alexandria (EAA) formally started the process by sending the Board an employee certification submission on behalf of all licensed teachers. That submission gave the Board 120 days to adopt a collective bargaining resolution with a deadline of Feb. 13. The Board will be presented with the resolution for adoption at its upcoming meeting on Thursday, Feb. 8, and a full board action is expected at the March 21 school board meeting.
“This is something that can go really well or really not well,” said Board Member Meagan Alderton. “I think we are on the path of doing really well, and so we need to continue that path and be deliberate and intentional about everything we do.”
ACPS is looking for a three-year agreement that covers four topics, which have yet to be identified. Those topics could include wages, benefits and terms and conditions of employment, and every subsequent negotiation can include the addition of two additional topics, according to the draft resolution.
The school system is currently experiencing a staffing crisis, and the proposed $374 million fiscal year 2025 budget provides a full step increase and a 2% market rate adjustment for eligible staff. It does not, however, provide a cost of living increase.
ACPS middle school teacher David Paladin Fernandez has been vocal in asking the Board and city leaders for wage increases for staff.
“Educator retention and pay are serious issues, and I want to see ACPs leadership making bold choices,” he said.
Alexandria was 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 increases in pay budgeted into the city’s fiscal year 2024 budget.
Dawn Lucas has been EAA president for nearly a decade and said that the organization will be tapping into its membership in the coming days to elect a bargaining representative and identify bargaining issues.
“I would have never thought this would happen, for us to have collective bargaining rights in the state of Virginia,” Lucas said. “When that happened, we knew
that we could possibly be on the path to come into this day.”
The draft resolution says the following:
Whereas, in April 2020, the Virginia General Assembly passed legislation permitting local governing bodies, including school boards to enter into collective bargaining agreements with respect to any matter relating to employment provided by the public body adopts an ordinance or resolution authorizing as much; and
Whereas, pursuant to section 40.1 Dash five 7.2 C of Virginia code, any school board that has not adopted a resolution providing for collective bargaining may receive any employee certification was the federal majority of employees who self identify as a bargaining unit, and within 120 days of receipt of such employee certification shall take a vote on whether to adopt or not adopt a resolution to provide for collective bargaining; and
Whereas, the Code of Virginia does not require or any school board to adopt the resolution authorizing collective bargaining; and
Whereas, on October 16 2023, the school board clerk received an employee certification submission from the Education Association of Alexandria on behalf of all licensed teachers; and
Whereas, the school board has 120 days from the date, the certification was submitted, or until February 13, 2024, to take a vote to adopt or not adopt a resolution to provide for collective bargaining,
Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Alexandria City School Board hereby agreed to adopt this resolution authorizing collective bargaining by licensed teachers and any other school board employees deemed appropriate by the Alexandria City School Board; and
Be it further resolved that the Alexandria City School Board shall adopt a collective bargaining resolution no later than 60 days after the adoption of this resolution; and
Be it further resolved, that the execution of this resolution is conclusive evidence of Alexandria School Board’s approval of this action.
(Updated at 4 p.m. on Jan. 29) Critics contend that the proposed Alexandria City Public Schools budget shortchanges staff, but that’s not what the superintendent is saying.
Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt says that her proposed $374 million fiscal year 2025 budget focuses on retention with a full step increase and a 2% market rate adjustment for eligible staff. The school system is currently experiencing a staffing crisis, and the budget also increases bus driver salaries to $24 an hour for new drivers and more than $47 per hour for senior drivers with more than a decade experience with the school system. The budget also opens the door to the creation of a collective bargaining agreement with staff.
At Thursday night’s public hearing on Kay-Wyatt’s budget, Alexandria Middle School teacher David Paladin Fernandez said that the school system needs to come to a collective bargaining agreement. He also said that the budget does not provide a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for staff.
“If I asked everyone in this room if our educators deserved more, I have no doubt that every single one of us would say yes,” Fernandez told the School Board. “We’ve had a record exodus of top-tier educators to surrounding school districts with no plan to address it, and we have members of ACPS leadership suggesting the preposterous idea that a step (increase) is the same thing as a cost of living adjustment… A step is related to my experience and loyalty to the organization and a cost of living adjustment is related to larger economic realities we have no control over. They are not the same thing and they should be recognized in this budget.”
ACPS Chief Financial Officer Dominic Turner said in a Jan. 11 School Board retreat that the school system has seen a lot of turnover in school leadership over the past several years. An ACPS teacher with a bachelor’s degree makes about $58,000 and an ACPS teacher with a master’s degree makes an average of $90,000, and the majority of ACPS teachers are on a Master’s degree scale.
“In the past three years we’ve had 14 new principals and we’ve had 20 new members on the SLT (senior leadership team),” Turner told the Board.
Robin Benatti is the parent of an 8th grader and 6th grader at Francis C. Hammond Middle School, and said at the public hearing that she was “appalled that the budget does not include a COLA.
“This poor decision is going to hurt our students, and further damage our reputation,” Benatti told the Board Thursday. “Teachers in ACPS deserve to make reasonable compensation. This proposal falls short, big time. The struggle to hire qualified teachers for our extremely dense school district will only intensify if you don’t also include a COLA. Be bold. Be aggressive in your position to show the community that you believe in investing in our educational talent.”
Alicia Hosmer has children at Alexandria City High School and at Hammond, and said that a COLA will make the school system more attractive for staff.
“My 8th grader and his classmates have been without an Algebra teacher and their learning is suffering,” Hosmer told the Board. “We cannot recruit and keep top talent when surrounding districts such as Fairfax and Arlington are proposing to give teachers both a COLA and step increases. We will lose more teachers to surrounding districts which means more empty classrooms and more strain on the teachers who remain with ACPS.”
School Board Member Meagan Alderton said at the Jan. 11 retreat that a positive work environment is as important incentive as compensation for staff retention.
“I think pay is 100% essential,” Alderton said. “But we need to be thinking about the job environment we provide to make people want to stay in this profession. There are plenty of people who just love teaching, who love education, and I do believe that if people feel successful in this work, that will also make them stay.”
In the meantime, Board Chair Michelle Rief is concerned that the budget is asking for a 4% increase in the city’s appropriation ($258.69 million) and a 4.1% increase from the state (about $2.5 million), but that the Governor’s proposed budget would transfer only 2-to-3% of requested funding.
“If we don’t receive the state and the city funding that we need, we are not going to be able to pass this budget,” Rief said.
ACPS will hold a public meeting on collective bargaining on Jan. 25. The Board will adopt its budget on Feb. 16, and it will then be incorporated into City Manager Jim Parajon’s budget, which will be presented on March 14.
