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:
The summer break is nearly over, and Alexandria City Public Schools students will walk into more secure buildings on Monday, August 22.
That’s the message from ACPS, which after a violent last school year, has new security upgrades and procedures this time around.
An email from Alexandria City Public Schools went out Saturday morning warning of a “Security Alert!”, but the schools later sent out another alert warning that the first email was a phishing scam.
The follow-up email said the email was the result of a compromised account.
The Alexandria School Board promoted Melanie Kay-Wyatt as the interim superintendent on Thursday night (July 28).
Kay-Wyatt was hired last year as the chief of human resources for Alexandria City Public Schools, and will have the interim superintendent position for at least the 2022-2023 school year or until a permanent superintendent is chosen.
The 2021-2022 school year was “crazy”, says René Islas, the parent of four Alexandria City Public Schools students.
Islas leads The Community Group, a new movement of locals with a list of safety recommendations for the city and school system. After a school year punctuated by violent events, Islas said ACPS needs to work on prevention, justice, and accountability.
