Melanie Kay-Wyatt says that she lives by one word — impact.
With just a month under her belt as interim superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools, she’s got a mountain of responsibility to contend with, including managing the first days of the 2022-2023 school year, developing the school system’s upcoming budget, and forging relationships with city leaders.
The Alexandria City Council, on Wednesday, says that Governor’s Glenn Youngkin’s proposed new policies restricting transgender bathroom and pronoun use stigmatize and undermine children, and puts their lives at risk.
In a letter to the Virginia Department of Education, Council backed the position of Alexandria City Public Schools to essentially ignore Youngkin’s proposed new rules, which go into effect after a 30-day public comment period on October 27.
Alexandria City Public Schools is has a “crew” problem — organized groups of kids that are participating in criminal behavior, according to Police Chief Don Hayes.
If the description sounds like a gang, there’s not much difference. Hayes says that the school system is also dealing with gang activity.
It was a busy week in Alexandria, with the City Council back in session and changes on the horizon for local restaurants.
The Polk Avenue sidewalk saga came to its close with the City Council voting unanimously to strike down an appeal, authorizing the city to move forward with plans to build a new sidewalk on the north side of the street.
A new report on student safety should be taken with a grain of salt, according to members of the Alexandria School Board.
The School Board received the report Thursday night (September 22), and it includes details of 194 incidents that occurred between January and June. Not all of the incidents were criminal in nature, which led some School Board members to question the report’s validity.
Alexandria’s interim superintendent says that Governor Glenn Youngkin’s proposed new policies restricting transgender bathroom and pronoun use won’t be a distraction as the school system plans to continue its “gender-affirming policies.”
“We just want to make sure that we let our community know that we’re continuing our commitment to both implement and develop gender affirming policies for all ACPS students,” interim Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt told the School Board on Thursday night (September 22).
Beyond just low test scores, a city report on issues of suspension, reading rates and more shows that the city schools still face issues of severe racial disparity.
The City of Alexandria’s Children & Youth Community Plan 2025 (CYCP) was earlier this year, highlighted that while there has been some progress in areas like drop-out rates, suspensions have gone up at Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) and the city has failed to meet reading proficiency standards for non-white students since 2016.
Alexandria City Public Schools wants to get student and staff absenteeism under control.
A quarter of Latino students at ACPS were chronically absent last school year, and so were 16% of Black students and 22% of economically disadvantaged students, according to data presented to the School Board at a recent work session.
An Alexandria City Council member and School Board member have announced plans for a “community listening session” to get public input on the state of the city and schools.
The meeting is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 10, at 10:30 a.m. in the Beatley Library (5005 Duke Street).
(Updated 1:20 p.m.) Alexandria’s Mayor Justin Wilson and School Board Chair Meagan Alderton are pushing back against a top ranking state official’s characterization of Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) as rife with violence.
Prompted by the murder of a student earlier this year and several instances of violence in ACPS, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said in a letter to Wilson and to the Alexandria School Board that he urges Alexandria to work closely with law enforcement to strengthen the city’s School Resource Officer (SRO) program.
Alexandria is moving forward with plans to install new speed enforcement cameras with public meetings planned this fall ahead of implementation next year.
In a release, the City of Alexandria said the approved speed cameras in school zones are expected to launch in early 2023. The release said the city will provide updates on the program at the:
