Arlington School Board members May 9 voted 4-0 to authorize nearly $140 million in construction contracts for the new Arlington Career Center, setting the stage for ground-breaking ceremonies to take place on May 15.
Board members do plan to consider issues brought up by labor activists when it comes to planning for future projects, but said it was unreasonable to retroactively apply them to the Career Center, which would likely lead to a year’s delay in construction to re-bid the contract.
“This project is caught between how we’ve worked in the past and how we want to work in the future,” board member Bethany Sutton said.
Acting School Board chairman David Priddy closed the discussion with a not-too-veiled criticism of those who wanted to hold up the effort over the labor provisions, specifically a “prevailing wage” requirement.
“People would like to put politics over kids – I’m choosing students over politics,” he said, noting long delays already in getting the project moving.
Mary Kadera and Miranda Turner also voted for the construction contract. School Board Chairman Cristina Diaz-Torres, who is on maternity leave through June, did not take part in the discussion or vote.
Turner, who at times appeared the most likely to vote against moving forward without labor provisions, ultimately was on board. But she was critical that what she perceived as too much of the board/staff discussion on the proposal had been conducted behind the scenes, out of view of the public.
“It shields from the public information that belongs to the public,” she said. “I hope we can improve going forward.”
School officials are planning a ground-breaking ceremony on May 15 at 10 a.m. Whether labor activists will stop by to voice their displeasure with the approval remains to be seen.
The votes taken May 9 allocate the $132.5 million construction contract to Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., along with a contract of $4.8 million for construction-management services to Turner & Townsend Heery. They are part of a total project budget of $175 million, nearly all of it to be funded by bonds approved by county voters.
With the construction plan in place, the goal is to have the new Career Center open by the start of the 2026-27 school year.
Labor advocates and the left-leaning groups that supported them did come away with one victory at the May 9 meeting. Rather than wait until fall to propose new labor requirements for construction contracts, that effort will be moved up.
The School Board will send out proposed changes for review on June 6 with anticipated adoption on July 18, Superintendent Francisco Durán said at the meeting.
Once adopted, those provisions will apply to construction projects approved after September.
Durán said Whiting-Turner had agreed to several steps to protect workers on the project, and that the school system would provide more direct oversight of the project.
Beyond these steps, staff leadership was unwilling to bend. Despite concerns raised by School Board members at an April 25 discussion on the project, Durán’s final recommendation was for no changes to the construction contracts.
The superintendent said that Whiting-Turner, which has worked on two previous major projects for the school system, completed them “on time, on budget, with no major labor or construction issues.”
