16 Takeaways on Staffing + Instruction in the APS Budget

Voters deserve to know what School Board candidates think about the APS proposed budget. Here are some of my takeaways about staffing and instructional costs; next week I’ll cover facilities and operations, central office administration, and overall budget sustainability. You’ll see equity highlighted throughout.

First, a few general headlines:

1. Federal aid: The good news item of the week is the American Rescue Plan Act passed by Congress, providing $126 billion for K-12 education. APS could receive up to $20 million, which it could use to address learning loss, purchase technology, provide mental health services to students, and more.
2. Baseline adjustments: Each year, APS begins budgeting by reviewing the previous year's budget and adjusting up or down as needed. Reductions are triggered “when historical spending patterns or other data indicate that the funds budgeted in the previous year will not be required in the next.” It’s not clear how rigorous this review process is or what criteria are being used. In a January 26 letter I sent to the Assistant Superintendent of Finance, I suggested that APS should have a separate, instructionally-driven “academic return on investment” process as used in many other school districts. I didn’t receive any response.
3. Clear goals and measures: There’s a lot of empty "boilerplate" language in the 544-page budget document, and in some places not a lot of specificity about why we’re making changes or how they will be evaluated. An example is the request for an Immersion Revisioning Consultant (pp. 68-70). What is the specific deliverable? How will we measure the quality of the work? Why are we justifying it by listing 12 very general APS performance objectives?  If you’d like to see a contrasting example of this done well, look at the Family and Community Engagement Coordinator stipend (pp.45-46) which provides a clear rationale, specific evaluation measures, and describes the steps APS will take to course-correct as needed. 

Six Takeaways on Staffing Costs
Staffing is the biggest spend for school districts, so it’s often the first place people look to find cost savings. Here’s what I am seeing in this category:

1. Increasing class size: APS is proposing a Tier 2 budget cut that would increase class sizes in kindergarten and in high school, for a savings of about $1 million. Before we increase class size, we should take steps to reduce the number of empty seats  within our current class size guidelines. Research suggests that school districts can save tens of millions of dollars by doing this; I shared more detailed information about the strategies involved in my January 26 letter to the Assistant Superintendent.
2. A needs-based budget?  APS is presenting this as a “needs-based” budget, which means it reflects the true cost of operating the school system. I question whether this is truly needs-based, however, because it doesn’t include the full cost of staff compensation. Most school systems operate using a “step-and-lane” salary scale, including APS. Step increases are fundamental in this model, not an extra. APS staff have not had a full step increase and cost of living adjustment (COLA) since 2008. Even if we end up cutting step increases or COLA later in the budget, we need to show the true cost of compensation.
3. $200,000 compensation study: APS has included $200,000 to continue a compensation study it’s been doing since FY20. What are we going to learn in this study that we didn’t learn in last year’s study? Couldn’t we direct this money to actual staffing costs--like providing paid maternity and paternity leave, which County employees get but APS staff doesn’t?
4. Professional development: This budget includes more than $240,000 in possible cuts to professional development (PD) for staff. I am generally very pro-PD: we need our teachers and school leaders to keep learning and improving. But across the U.S., districts annually spend thousands of dollars per teacher on PD, often with little or no evidence of impact.  In APS, the 2020 Your Voice Matters survey results show that only 35% of teachers believe district-provided PD is meeting their needs, and only 37% report that they think it’s improved their students’ achievement. Clearly there’s room for improvement. I support the $80,000 requested by the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for PD--89% of staff responded favorably to PD offered by DEI last year. As a School Board member, I would ask whether the DEI professional development will conform to PD best practices (sustained, differentiated) and I’d want to know about overlap with PD provided by the separate Office of Equity and Excellence.
5. Tuition reimbursement and National Board Certification: I support restoring funding for tuition reimbursement, which helps staff members pursue recertification and advanced degrees. APS is proposing a $20,000 Tier 2 cut that would reduce support for teachers pursuing National Board Certification, and this is a bad move. This is a national program headquartered in our own county with proven positive impact on student achievement, particularly for students of color and students from lower-income families.
6. Scholarships and support for paraprofessionals: I’m pleased that APS preserved funding that provides scholarships and testing support for paraprofessionals.  Nationally, this is an important part of a “Grow-Your-Own” strategy to recruit and retain more teachers of color. 
   
   
   

Nine Takeaways on Instructional Costs

1. Screening tools: I support DIBELS reading screening and expanded access to math screening. There’s good evidence to suggest that DIBELS will be better at catching reading problems for more students than the tests we’ve been using, and this will be particularly important as we come back from COVID. As for universal social-emotional screening, I’d want to know more about what is being measured. If we’re looking for evidence of trauma or mental health issues, absolutely yes. But I think we have to be careful about screeners that purport to measure things like grit, growth mindset, and conflict resolution skills, because many times these include implicit racial bias.
2. English Language Arts curriculum: The Department of Teaching and Learning (DTL) is asking for $400,000 to identify and implement a new curriculum, with additional related costs in the coming years (total price tag: $1 million). This is a tough one for me. Do we need an effective language arts curriculum? Without a doubt. Did we just adopt one, and spend lots of time and money training teachers to use it, within the past five years? Yes. DTL writes in the budget: “At this time, we feel that our previously adopted (and currently purchased) resources are lacking in efficacy, as well as a strong research foundation, and they are not entirely evidenced-based. Our data trends support a need for us to go in a different direction.” As a School Board member, I would be upset to read this, and I’d want to know what we are going to do differently in the future to ensure that such waste doesn’t happen again.
3. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology: APS is proposing a $290,000 Tier 1 cut that would eliminate tuition for Arlington students to attend TJHSST, a regional Governors School for high-ability STEM students. I oppose this cut, and here’s why: APS describes TJHSST as an “option program” at the high school level. We shouldn’t be eliminating option programs in a budget process--that’s an instructional decision, and it needs to be made in the context of a holistic evaluation of all of our instructional offerings. Would we propose the wholesale elimination of Immersion or H.B. Woodlawn or other option programs in a budget? No.
4. Gifted Education: I support the expansion of the Office of Gifted Education, an office that’s currently staffed by two people--a supervisor and an administrative assistant, working to support a gifted student population that ranges between 20-30% at different grade levels. Adding two Gifted Specialists over the next two years will provide better support to school-based resource teachers, and it can help us increase the identification of historically underrepresented populations like students of color and students from lower-income families.
5. Instructional Apps: APS is asking for funding to create two new “Instructional Application Analyst” positions in order to support the rapidly-expanding use of instructional apps, which APS says now number “in the hundreds.” As a School Board member, I’d be concerned about the job description for this role, which focuses on technical troubleshooting and setting up classroom accounts; instead, I would hope that at least one of these new positions will be dedicated to ongoing evaluation of whether these apps actually improve student learning.
6. Summer School: APS is proposing a Tier 1 cut that would eliminate funding for a Summer School Coordinator and Assistant, plus reductions that would require all communication with families to occur through Parent VUE and other digital platforms--no printing. Given the importance of summer school in addressing COVID-related learning loss, I question these cuts and the equity implications of limiting how families will receive information.
7. Arlington Tiered System of Supports (ATSS): A proposed Tier 2 cut would eliminate funding to hire an ATSS Specialist. I’m concerned that leaving this position vacant would impact our ability to provide targeted support to students as they return full-time to school buildings. That said, I’m also hearing that ATSS is being implemented inconsistently at schools, with wide variation in its effectiveness. As a School Board member, I’d want to see specific baseline data about this program and what measures we’ll use to target improvement. 
8. High School Counselors: A Tier 2 proposed cut would reduce the number of counselors in our high schools. I don’t think this is a wise move as we work to support students post-pandemic.
9. Student Behavior and Climate Coordinator: APS wants to create a new position to improve school climate and culture. I strongly believe that healthy school culture drives better teaching and learning, and so I support the creation of this role. I object, however, to the focus on “Student Behavior” and a reporting structure which puts this position within the Department of Administration. This department focuses on things like School Resource Officers, student discipline, and incident reporting: essentially, preventing all the things that could go wrong in a school. It’s necessary to ensure school safety, but healthy school climate involves much more, as indicated by students’ responses to the 2020 Your Voice Matters survey: only two-thirds of APS students report that they feel connected to other students at school, and just 42% say they feel their culture and history is reflected in their school--a number that drops to 35% for Black students and 33% for Asian students.