2023 Arlington County Board Candidate Questionnaire
Question 1 of 5
According to Arlington County’s FY2023 Budget, 39 percent of the County's budget is allocated to APS, which represents 46.6 percent of ongoing local tax revenues. As the County Board, what do you believe is your role with regards to evaluating whether APS is spending that money wisely?
Audrey Clement: According to Arlington County’s FY 2024 budget, “The FY 2024 adopted transfer to APS at existing tax rates is $594,385,235 in ongoing FY 2024 local tax revenues – a $30.5 million increase from the FY 2023 adopted budget. These funds are generated from a 46.8 percent share of ongoing local tax revenues. In addition to the transfer from revenue sharing principles, the Schools will receive $13.8 million in one-time funding. Total adopted School funding for FY 2024 at the current tax rate is $608,226,735 (p.68).” There is no question that the County’s FY 2024 allocation to APS is generous. The question is the quality of the stewardship that County Board exercises in monitoring the expenditure of those funds. Given the division of legal authority between the two bodies, the opportunities for County oversight of the APS budget are limited. One such opportunity is the annual budget work session that the County conducts with school officials.
On March 31, 2023 County Board conducted an APS budget work session consisting of presentations by both the County Manager and the School Superintendent, as well as a joint presentation by Dr. Darrell Sampson, Executive Director of Student Services Arlington Public Schools and Deborah Warren, Deputy Director, Arlington County Department of Human Services on joint programs for mental health and substance abuse. The latter presentation dominated the work session with most of the talking done by Deborah Warren of DHS.
There are two issues here.
1) The agenda of this work session left little opportunity for Board members to fulfill their obligation to oversight APS’s budget. Cursory questions were asked by Board members about the use of reserves and additional hires. But the flow of information was from the County to the Schools not vice versa.
2) Even though substance abuse in the schools has reached crisis stage with the overdose death of yet another student at Wakefield High School, the focus of the follow-on presentation by Ms. Warren and Dr. Sampson was on crisis management rather than prevention. Little curiosity was expressed by Board members on the origins of the crisis and whether or how long the Student Services can continue to manage it.
If elected, I would limit the agenda of the County’s annual work session with APS officials to the budget categories outlined in VA Code 22.1-115. I would remove the County Manager’s presentation entirely. For further information about the County Budget, I would direct School officials to the County Manager’s annual budget presentation to County Board, which is available online. I would use the additional time to get more detailed information about APS operations.
Maureen Coffey: I see the County Board’s role with the APS budget as more of a partnership than it has been in the past. The idea of transferring two-fifths of our budget to the School Board and having no interest or authority over how it is spent is concerning. I would ideally want to work towards a more collaborative process, with greater conversations and points of collaboration outside of just the budget season. Both the County Board and School Board would benefit from introducing more regular program evaluation so that we understand the return on investment across different policies. I would like to see more joint public meetings with opportunities for Arlington parents to address both Boards at the same time.
Susan Cunningham: Our elected school board holds the primary responsibility for APS budgeting and accountability. Since the County Board sets rates and collects tax revenues, they also have a stake in effective school spending and accountability. In addition, the economic health and attractiveness of the county is intimately related to our schools quality, so this will always be an important topic for our entire community. Specifically, the County Board has several roles in setting this budget and monitoring spending:
1. Set the tax rate and the overall revenue share with APS. Recently this has been a fixed percentage to ensure stability within APS budgeting and staffing, it is wise to revisit it regularly as community needs and demographics evolve.
2. Consider one-time funding (and staffing support) requests, for example during a national health emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic and when one-time end-of-year funds are available.
3. Jointly plan and budget for capital improvements, new facilities, and space sharing. While we have made some progress in the last decade, there is still more work to do here.
4. Support and fund school board salaries, including moving this compensation level to reflect current cost of living and population size.
5. Confirm that basic school board accountability and transparency measures are in place, for instance an independent auditor who reports directly to the school board and transparent budgeting and spending reports.
In addition, there are likely opportunities for improved county-schools collaboration and efficiency, for instance:
1. Facilities and operations:
a. Transportation routes and management, including buses and safe pedestrian/bicycle routes to school.
b. Planning, land use and adaptive reuse of buildings.
c. Field, open space, and tree maintenance.
d. Building maintenance, commissioning, and energy efficiency.
e. Physical and life safety.
f. Purchase leverage, including benefits and insurance coordination.
2. Programs and staffing:
a. Workforce development, pipeline, and housing access for teachers and staff.
b. Child care and early childhood programming, access, workforce, and quality.
c. Out-of-school time coordination to complement in-school goals and programs and connect young people to the community – including recreation, literacy, civic engagement, and employment.
d. Coordinated services to APS families, including model programs like the Carlin Springs Community School.
e. Health supports, including mental health and substance abuse interventions and prevention.
I am passionate about, and deeply experienced at, managing productive county and schools coordination. As the only candidate parenting current APS students and a former school administrator, I will ally with parents and schools to connect and support our young people with data-driven, effective, and efficient programs.
Juan Carlos Fierro: The County’s APS allocation is only one part of a more complicated budget reality for the County: contributions to both APS and WMATA suck up all the air in the room leaving very little resources for needed programs such as Mental Health and public safety. While the County Board has an obligation to adequately fund APS, one needs to recognize that APS has above average financial resources as compared to other School Districts in the state of Virginia. Arlington is currently blessed with a very high expenditure rate per student - $23,521 (FY 2023 Washington Boards of EDucation (WABE) Guide (apsva.us)), p.6., almost twice the average for the state of Virginia - $12,638 Per Pupil Spending by State [Updated June 2023] (worldpopulationreview.com). Given this situation I would encourage my colleagues on the County Board to renegotiate agreements with the County and APS so that funds provided by the County to APS has conditionality statements such as cost containment, indicating what percentage of the contribution needs to go towards student instruction (as opposed to administrative areas). I would also include a statement that engagement processes be transparent, and that APS does not hide information of the student from their parents.