If it plays out as announced, the 2023-24 school year at Arlington Public Schools could be a period where teachers, students, families and staff get a reprieve from what has been something of a never-ending series of new educational initiatives thrust at them.
Superintendent Francisco Durán on June 22 told School Board members that, with one exception, there will be no major educational initiatives pushed forward for the coming school year.
That drew a sigh of relief from School Board member Bethany Sutton, who acknowledged, somewhat tongue in cheek, that Arlington school leaders in recent years always have seemed to “chase the next shiny object” in educational theory.
“That’s not always in the best interests of our educators and our students,” Sutton said.
Durán’s decision to tap the brakes on an ongoing rush toward the next big thing seemed an acceptance of what teachers have been saying for the past year – constant changes in education philosophy may sound good from the School Board dais, but are exhausting to those who have to implement them at the classroom level.
And that may be one of the factors behind “a nationwide crisis – teachers are leaving the profession,” Durán said, attributing it to “a variety of reasons.”
One of those reasons, enunciated at a School Board meeting two weeks earlier, was the apparent disconnect between the rank-and-file and the county’s school leadership.
“Teacher morale is at an all-time low,” Yorktown High School teacher Lori Vena said during a public-comment broadside directed at leadership at the meeting.
“We are seen but not heard – paid lip service but not valued,” Vena said. “You are failing us and our students.”
(Vena opted to retire after 31 years in the school ranks; she told School Board members she would have preferred to stay on, but the current “us-vs.-them” mentality of top leadership made that an unpalatable option, so she’s was taking her pension and departing.)
Durán, who has been superintendent for three years after being plucked from relative obscurity among the ranks of Fairfax County Public Schools’ extensive bureaucracy, tacitly acknowledged that those in the teaching ranks – who over the years have tended not to be enamored of any Arlington superintendent-of-the-moment – were a little cranky with him, too.
“A large priority of mine next year” is a focus on dialogue with staff, he said. “Engage, listen and learn from them.”
School Board members, in their roundabout way, acknowledged challenges while accentuating the positive in what served as the board’s wrapup meeting of the 2022-23 school year.
“We have had a year of good success,” said School Board Chairman Reid Goldstein, who will be departing office in December after eight years. “We are focused on acknowledging where the challenges are and marshaling our resources to address them. They will always be there, and we will always be doing that.”
The board’s vice chair, Cristina Diaz-Torres, said the school system had made great strides under Durán’s leadership, but acknowledged that “there are many, many gaps that we need to address.”
The one exception to the no-new-initiatives rule will come in the arena of secondary-school-level literacy, “where we do need to see some changes,” Durán said.
Holding the line on further initiatives will provide “the chance for everybody to catch their breath a little bit,” Sutton said.
