Q1:Over the past few years, APS spending has gone up 22% for admin and 3% for teachers & other student facing positions. Do you agree with this allocation of resources?

CANTWELL: I’m a 28-year resident of Arlington and I live with my wife and three children in the Yorktown Community. My wife, Mary, is an APS Elementary School Teacher.

I am shocked, but not surprised, by the amount of money the County and APS are spending on non-core services. $8M (30% increase) for “purchased services,” $6.5M (40% increase) for “other services.”

The County and APS should spend less on non-core services and more on classroom teachers, special education assistants, and teaching assistants. The County and APS should expand their independent auditing capabilities to facilitate a better understanding of where all the money is going.

CLEMENT: In incremental financing, the annual budget for each line item typically should go up about the same amount. If the amount allocated for APS administration has gone up 3 times the amount allocated for instruction, then something is wrong. However, the excel spreadsheet provided indicates that at $3.68 million, proposed Tier 1 cuts for instruction in FY21-22 are about half Tier 1 cuts for administration. The chart on p. 155 of the FY 2022 APS budget indicates that administrative costs are 18.4 percent of the budget.https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/FY-2022-School-Boards-Adopted-Budget_final.pdf

If half the Tier 1 cuts are going to administration, which is less than 20 percent of the budget, then it appears that APS is trying to reduce administrative overhead, which I support. The fundamental problem with the school budget is that its growth (school spending) is greatly exceeding revenue (income) growth. This mismatch in growth rates will rapidly lead to a crisis without making structural changes in the APS budget, as the Budget Advisory Council (BAC) has been recommending for some time.… We recommend that APS shift to longer term planning, and tackle the structural challenges required to address future budget deficits. While recent budgets have been very focused on closing the current year’s budget gaps, future years’ projected budget deficits have been growing, alarmingly so. With a projected deficit of over $100M by FY25, we need to start planning more than one budget year at a time, and we need to identify structural rather than one-time cuts that reappear in the following year’s budget…. https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/BAC-2020-2021-Year-End-Report-.pdf

Though I may not agree with every recommendation BAC has made, its in-depth analysis of the FY2022 school budget (in the larger context of the looming budget crisis facing APS) is excellent. I urge all parents (and county residents) to read BAC’s June 24, 2021, End of Year Report and related documents: https://www.apsva.us/budget-finance/budget-advisory-council/

Unfortunately, both the elected School Board and the Superintendent continue to ignore BAC’s wise advice by continuing to propose small, short-term cuts to avoid having to deal with the structural challenges that APS is facing.

Whereas the County Board and the county can offer assistance, it should not enable the School Board and Superintendent to duck making the difficult choices that are clearly their responsibility. Again, I refer to BAC’s wise comments:

… We need to continue to negotiate with the County, but we can’t count on the County closing the whole gap. Per comments above, APS should be working closely with the County to negotiate for additional funds given the importance of our school system to the attractiveness of Arlington County, and our continued growth. The sooner and more serious those conversations are, the better. However, we can not [sic] count on them funding our entire budget gap - our gap is far larger than a tax increase can solve, and an increase in our allocation would require cutting County services elsewhere, which would require difficult tradeoffs. We need to make hard choices to show the County that we are doing everything that we can to bring them to the table…. https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Attachment-4-BAC-Input-on-the-FY22-budget-04.01.21.pdf

BAC has recommended considering a zero-based budgeting process that would look at expenditures from the ground up to determine how well they are working to fulfill APS’s core mission (educating students). The notion that APS budget is top-heavy with administration expenses isn’t new. The state’s 2012 School Efficiency Review largely concluded the same thing: https://www.doe.virginia.gov/school_finance/efficiency_reviews/arlington.pdf

Ultimately, structural reconfiguration of the APS budget is best left to the School Board and Superintendent with input from the Budget Advisory Council, teachers and parents. As voters, we all have a duty to elect responsible School Board members—not based on party affiliation but rather on the skills and expertise they can bring to the table. And if those elected officials fail to discharge their duties in a responsible and timely way, then it is up to the electorate to field and elect new candidates who can meet these challenges.

KARANTONIS: By law, the County Board cannot appropriate at the granular level that this question implies.

THEO: I do not like the heavy tilt towards non-school staff in APS. Teachers are one of the most important positions in any community, and we should treat them as such. Our teachers are suffering from burn-out and although paid decently for our area’s cost of living, they should be paid enough to be a desirable career for anyone. Allowing so much of our budget to go to administrative and other non-school staff prevents us from compensating our teachers as they deserve to be.

The fact that the budget of APS’ administrative office is not far behind the entire budget of all secondary education and that we have among the worst ratios of students to non-school staff makes it clear that we have the wrong spending priorities.

Q2: Since APS has recently requested one-time additional funding annually from the county, how will you ensure APS’s analysis of its needs and projections are accurate before allocating additional monies?

CANTWELL: After I am sworn into office in January, I will demand complete transparency of how APS is spending their money and demand more fiscal controls for future expenditures. Unlike the current county board, I will not issue a blank check to APS.

CLEMENT: While it can’t propose the APS budget, the County Board has the statutory authority to approve the APS budget. If elected, I would ask the County Manager to have his budget staff analyze the proposed APS budget (if staff isn’t already doing so) to identify potential savings, cost efficiencies and untapped revenue sources, with a special focus on the recommendations that BAC has already made.

An overreliance on “one-time” funding to resolve ongoing shortfalls in operating expenses indicates that there is a structural problem with the school budget. I concur with BAC that “one-time” money—whether it comes from the county’s unspent revenues or from the school system’s own reserve funds— should not be used to plug holes in the APS operating budget:

… We do not support using all of our reserves, especially on operating expenses. This budget would use up all of our reserves in FY22, leaving us without any reserves for future years. While we understand using some reserves for one-time expenses, and at the end when we get down to very hard choices, we don’t understand using up all of our reserves for operating expenses to balance the budget. Reserves should be saved for extenuating circumstances.

○ While we don’t yet know how much we will be allocated under the American Recovery Act, we recommend using those funds to replace the reserves in the current budget, so that they can largely be saved for the challenging years ahead of us…. https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Attachment-4-BAC-Input-on-the-FY22-budget-04.01.21.pdf

If APS can restructure its budget to more closely align its revenues (income) with its expenditures (spending), in other words to be more sustainable, then a reliance on one-time funding should no longer be required.

KARANTONIS: County Board and School Board, as well as their respective leadership and staff, have well established routines of constant collaboration and consultation. Funding requests beyond the regular annual APS appropriations need to be (and in fact are) thoroughly explained and discussed (incl. public Board meetings and joint public worksessions). During the pandemic, I voted to appropriate additional funding to cover pandemic-emergency APS needs (e.g., needs related to health, incl. mental health, safety, technology, additional instructional needs, additional staffing needs). For these appropriations a convincing and compelling, needs-based case was made before the County Board. The County Manager’s office is directed to make recommendations after working with its APS counterpart and after taking into account all other County funding priorities.

THEO: My first real passion that I turned into a paying job was working in “open source software” in my early 20’s. “Open source” is a method of software development where the underlying code isn’t kept secret. Instead it’s released into the public for anyone to look at, analyze, propose better code to fix problems, and even compile and use on their own without having to ask for permission from someone or pay any fee. Today we get the phrase “crowdsource” from this type of development.

Although I am a budget and policy wonk (which is a nice way of saying “nerd”), I am not a budget expert and I realize there are far more knowledgeable and experienced people than myself on pretty much everything.

My goal would be to shine light on all of APS’s processes, decision-making workflows, raw financial data, and contract performance evaluations to the public, allowing everyone to conduct analysis, regional comparisons, and verify best practices are being followed and requirements are being met. Transparency is key to fixing so many of our County’s problems.

Q3: According to Arlnow, in the proposed 2022 budget, 39% of the County's budget is allocated to APS and 47% of locally generated tax revenue. What do you believe is your role in evaluating whether they are spending that money wisely?

CANTWELL: Various special interest groups have too much power over current County Board and School Board budgets. The political power exerted by these groups adds unnecessary costs to the APS budget. I will bring an independent voice to the County Board and bring fiscal accountability back to the County Budget process. We must put an end to runaway spending and runaway taxes.

CLEMENT: Because almost 50 percent of locally generated tax revenue funds APS, the Arlington County Board should not rubber stamp the school budget every year. By the same token the Arlington County Board also isn’t supposed to usurp/replace the elected School Board’s decision-making authority or to enable the School Board to avoid making potentially unpopular decisions that may be required in order to produce a more sustainable budget.

The question is how to hold the School Board and school system more accountable, such that APS begins using its revenues more efficiently and effectively in a way that produces better outcomes for students.

It has been almost a decade since the state’s last efficiency review. One option may be to ask the state for a new one. An update efficiency review could identify current areas needing improvement and provide a roadmap or framework for APS structural budgetary reform.

Former County Board member John Vihstadt has been calling for closer coordination between the County’s Audit Committee and the APS Audit Committee: (quote from a 7-30-2021 email)

“Given that roughly 47% of the County budget goes to Schools, I’ve pushed for periodic collaborative meetings with our Schools Audit Committee counterparts with mixed success, the last one having been held in 2018, my last year on the County Board. Prospects for another joint meeting soon appear dim. In sharp contrast with the County Audit Committee, the APS Audit Committee is opaque and insular—consisting solely of two School Board members and senior staff…. No public members, no public meetings, virtually no opportunity for public input. The last APS audit document posted on the web was nearly 14 months ago. Where’s the follow-up, the FY 2021 Audit Report and the plan for FY 2022? …”

Though APS Audit Committee meetings are supposedly held in compliance with the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and are open to the public (as are the county’s Audit Committee meetings), there apparently are no APS Audit Committee meeting dates (prior or future) published on the APS Internal Audit web page nor anywhere else on the APS website, nor are minutes of prior meetings posted to the APS site.

I agree that closer coordination and cooperation between the two audit committees could help improve the school system’s ability to leverage its internal audit function as a way to better analyze costs and the effectiveness of APS operations. At least it would provide the County Board members who sit on the county’s Audit Committee with more regular insight into APS operations and budgeting rather than waiting until the Superintendent unveils his annual budget.

Another question may be how to support BAC in playing a more meaningful role in the APS budgeting process. Would it be useful to ask a member of the county’s Fiscal Advisory Affairs Commission to send a liaison to BAC and vice versa? Or perhaps, it might be useful to ask a representative from BAC to present its recommendations and findings to the County Board as well as to the School Board.

Finding ways to encourage APS to improve the flow of financial and auditing information between the school system and the public may also be useful.

KARANTONIS: The County Board exercises general oversight over the School Board's budget, but by law it lacks authority to appropriate for APS operations at the granular level.

THEO: The biggest challenge to *anyone* being able to evaluate APS’s budget is the horrifying lack of transparency and granular detail in APS’s financial reports. Considering the importance of our schools to the future of our community, the fact that so many key details in vendor contracts, staff benefits, and non-school programs must be squeezed out of APS with tedious emails and FOIA requests should concern everyone regardless of them being a parent or not.

My role on the County Board for evaluating APS spending decisions is to help everyone else be able to do their own evaluations by opening up all useful information. Arlington has a good online tool called “Arlington Wallet”, which does a very good job of providing boring and dense financial information in a visual way with (relatively) easy interface. It has the capability to store and provide a high level of detail and granularity. What it’s lacking is the raw information on specific contracts, individual staff benefits (carefully anonymized to fully protect personal information), and programs. I would not rest until every bit and byte of useful financial information was up on this tool for everyone to see.

Q4: How do you think school capacity should be factored into County approvals for development projects?

CANTWELL: My third priority is to curb rapid urbanization. Before the County Board approves future development projects, they must ensure the County has the infrastructure needed for the population growth. This includes adequate seats for future APS students. While I’m on the campaign trail, my favorite rhetorical question is, “where will we put the fourth comprehensive high school?”

CLEMENT: The latest WABE report indicates that Arlington has the lowest student/teacher ratio at the middle and high school level of any school system in the region (p. 29).https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/pdf/FY21-WABE-Guide.pdf Because of this artificially low ratio, Arlington’s school capacity needs are greater. Arlington is meeting the need by paving over public parks and open space to construct new schools, a situation that has resulted in a diminished quality of life for neighborhood residents.

Though the recent pandemic-related drop in enrollment is significant, it is likely a temporary reprieve. With the county’s push for significant density increases, not just along Langston Blvd. but also with its countywide “missing middle” upzoning effort, two types of new housing will predominate: attached “single-family” dwellings and committed affordable housing units (CAFs).

According to APS student-generation factors, these two housing types generate significantly more new students per unit. So large increases in the number of these dwellings are highly likely to fuel an ongoing enrollment boom.

Moreover, a recent GMU analysis of the Amazon project’s fiscal impact on Arlington revealed that, on average, Arlington spends more than $850 per person more to provide services and infrastructure for residents than it collects in tax revenue from residents: http://sfullerinstitute.gmu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/SFI_-Economic_-Fiscal_Impacts_of_Amazon-HQ2_110818.pdf

Increases in student enrollment would, therefore, be responsible for a significant portion of any additional deficit spending on the residential side (which must be made up on the commercial side from taxes generated by retail, hotel and commercial office space).

Several people have suggested that the county adopt a long-range fiscal impact tool (like the Tischler Bise tool, which Falls Church uses) to assist in long-range forecasting and planning with respect to budgets and infrastructure needs.

Accurately projecting how many new students that new development will generate is key to sustainable planning that must identify new revenue sources and ensure the timely delivery of infrastructure to support a burgeoning population. If student generation projections are higher than actual, then resources may be cut in the short term in anticipation of enrollment growth that doesn’t pan out. But if student generation factors are lower than actual, then APS is left scrambling to hire more teachers (perhaps with nonexistent funding) and to find additional classroom space that also may be nonexistent.

Today, the county works off of an annual operating budget that rarely looks ahead to project upcoming fiscal stressors (the last time was in 2018 for the FY2019 budget). Its narrow fiscal impact statements for development projects provides a piecemeal, after-the-fact snapshot once a project has already been submitted for review. There is currently no comprehensive effort to measure the cumulative impact of planned and future development on our schools, our environment or our finances.

If elected, I would press my fellow board members to adopt a more strategic, comprehensive and sustainable model to accurately assess the impacts of future development. This would permit informed, reality-driven decision-making and planning BEFORE the county goes on another upzoning spree.

KARANTONIS: Arlington has a very strong record on planning its future and this includes planning for sufficient school capacity to accommodate our population growth. I am a strong advocate of comprehensive and long term planning, including adopting innovative ways to enhance and optimize school capacity (such as a more urban format for our schools that with less land supports educational excellence). School capacity is further impacted by expansive by-right development, the impact of which needs to be considered as well.

Long term plans (e.g., Langston Blvd. or Pentagon City) need to identify with clarity the school resources necessary to support additional residential development. I am a firm supporter of thorough modelling of county-wide financial impacts of development. A study is currently underway in collaboration with a specialist consultant.

THEO: We clearly need to solve the school overcrowding problem we are facing, with our public school system relying on “temporary” trailer classrooms for years. We also desperately need more housing – especially “Missing Middle” housing for families and the working class in almost every area of the county. We cannot afford to pause or slow down implementing zoning reforms to make this “gentle density” development possible. These two needs may seem to be at a conflict with each other, but they really don’t have to be.

The immediate task is to add estimated impact on neighborhood schools to the Standard Site Plan Conditions for multi-family residential developments. Currently these Conditions include requirements for snow removal, contributions to the underground utility fund, and transportation management, but nothing for estimating and reporting any likely addition of students to the school system. This analysis should be included in the standard requirements to ensure it is considered a core part of a site plan review.

But let’s get to the real heart of the matter. What we’re really concerned about is the serious overcrowding in many of our public schools. That issue must be solved by the County leadership on a fundamental level, not just managed by a site project by site project basis. That solution is for the County Board to stop relying on a “suburban campus” model for our public schools. We need to be integrating more schools directly into our urban Rosslyn-Ballston, Route 1, Columbia Pike, and Langston Blvd corridors. These schools do not have to (and in fact should not) be expensive buildings built from the ground-up like the new Heights Building near Rosslyn, but rather be smaller “satellite” schools making use of existing office buildings with lots of vacancy. Currently, as much as 20% of our commercial office space is lying unused. The primary audience for these urban satellite schools would be families living in the developed corridors, freeing up seats in the suburban campus schools. Not every vacant office building could be applied as a school, true, but many could with moderate renovations. It’s an effort that could take care of the space and infrastructure problems of overcrowding (leaving staffing still to be tackled) within a handful of years with political will behind it.

Q5: Do you agree with how APS is utilizing its ARP funds?

CANTWELL: I am unfamiliar with the regulations related to ARP funds. The County and APS must ensure APS uses ARP funds appropriately. If the funds are not being used properly, I will ask for an independent review by the County Auditor.

CLEMENT: According to APS’ own data, over half its American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds (over $10 million) and 110 full-time equivalents (FTEs) will be allocated to virtual learning. https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/FY-2022-ARPA-Items-Descriptions.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0kTIu-IzfclsQ1CA1i2LOfIiUtlABy-xaGsrZyao2jJLiwMURt1HrhnAc

As stated in question 2, using one-time money to fund an ongoing budgetary obligation is ill advised and certainly not a best practice financially. These ARP funds are considered one-time money, leaving the funding of these 110 FTEs with no new ongoing revenue stream once the ARP funds run out.

Given the small number of students—less than 1,000—who have opted for virtual learning in the FY21-22 school year, this seems like a waste of funds that could be better spent on remedial in-classroom teaching and learning. Thus far, remote or virtual learning appears to have contributed to significant decreases in test scores and to a widening of the achievement gap: https://www.arlnow.com/2021/09/22/peters-take-amid-plummeting-test-scores-due-to-virtual-learning-aps-attention-diverted-to-new-virtual-program/.

The question is whether virtual instruction is a short-term, stop-gap response to the pandemic, or whether there will be a long-term investment (with a commitment to improved outcomes) in virtual teaching and learning that could, ultimately, reduce the pressure to build more classrooms and thus reduce capital expenditures.

Here’s BAC’s recommendation:

… We recommend longer term use of virtual schooling, in certain circumstances, for wider benefits. Rather than focusing on getting all students back into physical schools as quickly as possible, we encourage the board and APS leadership to explore maintaining a virtual high school program for those students who want to attend virtually and who have demonstrated their maturity to handle a virtual program. It has the potential to be positive for the budget and for those families who chose this option.

○ We also recommend exploring some additional virtual classes for older students to reduce the number of undersubscribed classes at the high school level. Smaller classes could be aggregated across high schools. Or students could attend classes from a more central source, like Virtual Virginia. Additional virtual options should be explored where they could reduce cost and expand choice for our older students. https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/BAC-2020-2021-Year-End-Report-.pdf

KARANTONIS:  It is the School Board’s authority to appropriate these funds as established by law.

THEO:  When it comes to how Arlington is using its portion of the American Rescue Plan, there are many allocations being done right, with it being used for vaccine roll-out to achieve 70% fully vaccinated coverage, contact tracing, and testing readily available for county staff. There are some spending projects which have not gone well, however, such as early neglect of the western end of Columbia Pike for vaccine rollout, lack of mobile units for on-site vaccination (like what Prince William County has been doing), and what I fear will be a “too little, too late” use of $2m for the “Grant 2.0” small business loans.

Q6: The last time APS released information about how it intended to expend ARP funds was June, with the proviso that further updates would be forthcoming as the summer progresses, though none such was provided. Do you think APS has been sufficiently transparent about its use of these funds?

CANTWELL: Unfortunately, the APS Director of Finance position is now vacant. The County Board, County Manager, School Board, and APS Superintendent must work together to better understand why teachers, special education teachers, behavioral health specialists, police officers, firefighters, and other key employees are leaving. Until we fill some of these key positions, APS will have difficulty providing the data and information the County Board needs to make fiscally responsible decisions.

CLEMENT:  Clearly not. However, based on the numbers APS released in June, it is evident that ARP funds had already been misallocated. When over half the money is allocated to 4 percent of students, something’s wrong. Transparency is just part of the problem.

KARANTONIS: To my knowledge APS publishes information about how it plans to invest ARPA/ESSERIII funds here: https://www.apsva.us/budget-finance/arpa-esser-fund-info/

Further, I am sure that you are aware of the following document, that describes and lists eligible items to be funded under ARPA:https://www.apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/FY-2022-ARPA-Items-Descriptions.pdf

I certainly look forward, with great interest, to the release of even more detailed additional information from APS about its plans to use of ARPA funding. This is a matter under the established authority of our elected School Board.

THEO:  No, Arlington Public Schools leadership has certainly not been transparent in its planning or decision-making process throughout the entire pandemic. This unfortunately is a sadly simple statement that shouldn’t have to be true. Transparency of information and internal processes is the greatest challenge holding back our school system, even more so than the total dollar amounts being spent on students, teachers, and administrative staff. Opening up APS must be the top priority for our school system of any candidate for County or School Board.

Find out how the school board candidates answered our Election 2021 questionnaire.