There’s nothing like a good birthday cake, and on Friday (July 18), 24 cupcakes were delivered to make two-year-old Matilda feel special on the big day.
Natasha Gannon baked the cupcakes and delivered them to the United Community – Early Learning Center in the Alexandria area of Fairfax County. Since 2020, Gannon has baked upward of 50 cakes for the Northern Virginia chapter of Cake4Kids, which recently delivered its 10,000th cake to underserved youth.
Rubbing elbows with community leaders and participating in interactive workshops are in store for participants of Alexandria’s upcoming 12th annual Youth Leadership Conference.
Registration for rising 9th to 12th graders closes Aug. 8, and the event will be held Aug. 12-14 (Tuesday to Thursday) at the Del Pepper Community Resource Center (4850 Mark Center Drive). This year’s theme is “Young Voices, Powerful Choices!”
Alexandria City Public Schools has launched its annual Backpack & School Supply Drive with the goal of collecting 3,500 backpacks by Monday, Aug. 4.
Groups can arrange a pickup of large donations to the school system, and individuals can drop off backpacks and supplies Monday through Thursday at Alexandria City High School (3330 King Street) and Mount Vernon Community School (2601 Commonwealth Avenue).
Disturbing allegations of child abuse have been leveled against a daycare in Old Town by the Virginia Department of Social Services.
Over seven months (October 2024 to May 2025), a now-fired employee at Two Birds Daycare (1737 King Street) was observed allegedly physically striking and roughly handling children, yanking children’s hair, putting them in a dark closet as punishment, making demeaning comments about their clothes, and slapping kids who had toilet accidents, according to a May 21 DSS inspection of the facility.
It took months of community meetings and work sessions, and on Thursday (June 12), the Alexandria School Board approved redistricting maps for its elementary and middle schools.
The Board whittled down its choices to the Triangle 3 map for elementary schools and Option E for middle schools. Here’s what that means:
Twice a week, Bethany Skvortsova gets a break while her young daughters put on rainbow tutus and learn how to dance in Del Ray.
Her seven-year-old appreciates being taken seriously as a dancer, Skvortsova says. At the moment, her daughter is rehearsing for The Nutcracker, which the school will be performing this year on the main stage of Capital One Hall in Tysons.
What a week we just had in Alexandria!
Here’s our recap of everything worth talking and reading about over the past week in the Port City. This week, Alexandria was named a Sanctuary Jurisdiction by the Trump administration, a distinction Mayor Alyia Gaskins said “wrongly targets and mischaracterizes Alexandria and dismisses core principles that make up the foundation of our democracy.”
The Alexandria Sheriff’s Office is making free identification cards for kids at community events.
ASO launched the program last month with a donation from Dominion Energy. Look for ASO staff at public events, like the city’s monthly community cookouts, to get a free photo identification card for kids with a photograph and fingerprint. Parents will get the only copies of the identifications, and ASO will not store the data.
According to a draft memorandum of understanding between the school system and police, the Alexandria Police Department officers are considered “school officials” with access to the records of Alexandria City Public Schools students.
The School Board is conducting a public hearing on the draft MOU on Tuesday night, May 27. The 40-page document is an update to the two-year agreement between police and ACPS. Once approved, the updated agreement will be in effect from July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2027. APD provides school resource officers at Alexandria City High School and the city’s two middle schools.
Welcome to Friday! Here’s a look back at our most-read stories of the week.
Our top story this week is on Episcopal High School being named a training site for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. To accommodate an international soccer team with a home-away-from-home atmosphere, the private school is asking the city for permission to install field lighting with 47 light poles between 40-to-100-feet-tall.
What started as a simple policy change has erupted into a full-blown fight over the First Amendment in Alexandria City Public Schools.
Facing backlash from city leaders, the Alexandria School Board officially went back to the drawing board Thursday night (May 8), by announcing that its intended policy changes on the oversight of Alexandria City High School’s student publications have been put on hold. The announcement was made as more than a dozen student journalists held signs and demanded their editorial independence from ACPS administrators. So far, their Voices Unbound plan has the backing of City Council members and Mayor Alyia Gaskins.
