Arlington Greens on Oct. 5, 2021 voted to oppose the parks and recreation $6.8 million bond on the November ballot for Arlington voters, and urge voters to vote ‘no” on the ballot.   Nearly three-quarters ($5 million) of this bond will be used to repave tennis courts at Bluemont Park, and then $1 million for a new Arlington boathouse.  

Greens believe spending $5 million to repave tennis courts to be wasteful and too expensive.  A new boathouse is unneeded as there are plenty of high-school rowing facilities in the District of Columbia, used for decades by high school teams, private and public schools.

During 2016-20, Arlington voters already approved $52 million for parks and recreation, an amount mostly used to build new recreation centers.   The county board refused during this period to buy more parkland to accommodate Arlington’s rising population and heavy park use.  In April 2021, the county board voted to deny historic preservation for the 9 acre Febrey-Lothrop estate which is the last largest tract of open, undeveloped land in the county that could have been added to Arlington parks.

The Greens are neutral on the other three bonds on the November ballot–which total $79 million ($39 million for Metro and transportation; $23 million schools, and $17 million county infrastructure).  There are good reasons to approve these bonds, but also compelling reasons to reject them. 

During 2016-2020, voters approved $653 million in bonds for these three purposes–$164 million for metro and transportation; $295 million for schools, and $194 million for county infrastructure, a significant amount even for a county with an over billion dollar annual operating budget.  The school board has nearly $27 million in bond authority not used, and the county board $54 million in unused bond authority to issue more bonds.

Arlington Greens Oppose as Wasteful the Three County and School Bonds on the Arlington County, Virginia November Ballot, but Support the Metro Bond

Arlington Greens voted at their October meeting to oppose three of the four bonds on the November ballot, but to support the $75 million bond for Metro and transportation.  Greens felt that the need for more spending on Metrorail is imperative given safety, and improving bus and rail reliability, and urged Arlington voters to vote “Yes” for the Metro bond on the ballot referendum.

Greens however oppose the $29 million parks and recreation bond, the $37 million community infrastructure, and the $103 million public schools bond.  None of these three bonds are based on well thought out projects that have already been carefully designed, bid for construction costs, and scrutinized for waste.  The parks and recreation bonds will actually destroy or impair parkland since it will be used to build and pave over existing green space, demolish trees, and build extravagant energy-wasteful buildings.

The county government is issuing $80 million in bonds this year, and moreover has another $108 million in unused authority to issue more bonds, with more than sufficient funds for its needs. The county government and the school board both need to go back to the planning boards, and come back with precise and accurate information on projects for Arlington voters to consider.

About $44 million of the proposed $103 million school bond is to be used to build an entirely new Reed Elementary School in Westover.  The latest estimated cost of Reed is already far more at least $55 million, with possibly tens of millions of dollars in costs for a parking garage.  The school board has no idea what Reed School will cost.  In 2009, the school board spent about $20 million to fully renovate and expand Reed School which now will be demolished. Why?

The City of Alexandria just opened a new elementary school that cost around $22 million and was completed in about one year.   The City bought an commercial office building and re-modeled it into a 500-student school that opened in one year.   Fairfax County Public Schools did this several years ago to build an elementary school at 7-Corners within one year.   Why does Arlington have to build the most expensive schools in the U.S. and then tear them down ten years later?

If the county goes ahead and issues another $243 million of bonds on the ballot in November, it will likely endanger the county’s triple-A bond rating for municipal bonds since this will pass the 10 percent limit on bond service used by leading municipal bond rating companies.

The county already has issued $1.1 billion in bonds, and adding $243 million as well as the $188 million in already authorized bond will raise the debt service to over 10 percent of the county’s general revenue.

Greens Share with American High School Students at the Junior State of America Student Conference in Crystal City, Arlington

Two Greens, Miriam Gennari and Kirit Mookerjee, were invited to present at and attend the Annual Junior State of America Conference at the Double Tree Hotel in Arlington on Saturday, February 18, 2017. Like many of us, Greens have been a bit down about the state of our political system—political division, few new ideas and very little straight talk. But that was certainly not the case with the young people from around the U.S. who visited the Green Party table. They listened attentively to one another’s questions, and paid close attention to every answer Miriam and Kirit gave about the Arlington and National Green party.

More than 200 students looked over the 10 Key Values of the Green Party and then shared their reflections on what we Greens stood for. They wanted to know how decentralized government would address issues like gun control and the distribution of wealth. They wanted to know what financial impact free college would have on the countries fiscal future and they wanted to know what our foreign policy and value of non violence would mean when our allies were threatened.

Many of these high school students are frustrated with our nation’s environmental policy, and seemed certain that if there were more than two political parties at the table, common ground would be found to advance progress towards a cleaner greener environment. Even more were skeptical that the two major political parties’ grip on power would relieve itself without a major change in campaign rules that allow the rich and corporations unlimited power over our elections.

Letter to the Arlington County Board April 7, 2016

Thank you again for meeting with the Greens regarding housing grants and other issues several weeks ago. We wanted to provide you some concrete data that can be instrumental in your consideration of expanding the housing vouchers program in the future. These numbers connect housing and education.

Academic achievement gap between North Arlington and west Pike schools is wide
Data illustrate there is a large achievement gap between south Arlington and North Arlington public schools. For example, below are the Standards of Learning (SOL) results for 2015/16 (three year average) for two south Arlington elementary schools on the west end of Columbia Pike, Barcroft Elementary and Carlin Springs Elementary. Both of these typically feed into Kenmore MS. The west end of the Pike has a large concentration of private market-rate affordable housing and committed affordable subsidized units (CAFs).
By contrast, if one examines the scores of students in some North Arlington schools (Tuckahoe Elementary and Williamsburg Middle School) the scores are much higher; results are the passing rate in percentage of students tested. https://p1pe.doe.virginia.gov/reportcard/
There are far fewer market-rate affordable and CAFs in North Arlington where SOL scores are highest.
Tuckahoe Barcroft Carlin Spring Kenmore Williamsburg APS avg. all students
English 92% 82 80 73 91 86
Math 92% 81 90 80 94 87
Science 95% 71 72 74 95 85
Share of students receiving
free or reduced lunch 3% 61 82 52 9 30

The share of students receiving free or reduced lunch is a widely accepted indicator of poverty among students; source: APS for October 2015 http://apsva.us//site/Default.aspx?PageID=33492

The gap between the north and south Arlington elementary schools is as much as 24 percentage points on science, and as much as 12 percent points on English and math. The economic disparity as reflected in the share of students receiving free or reduced lunch is as much as 79 percentage points. There are almost no students receiving free lunch in the North Arlington elementary school, whereas between 61-82 percent of the two South Arlington School students receive free lunch.

This economic and academic gap persists in middle schools. Nearly half of Kenmore Middle School students receive subsidized lunch. About 9% percent of North Arlington Williamsburg Middle School receives meal assistance.
Academic research is clear that the socioeconomic status of the school does affect academic outcomes. For example, Richard Kahlenberg of The Century Foundation states, in A New Hope for School Integration, “In the last decade, the research has become even more convincing. A 2010 review of 59 studies on the relationship between a school’s SES (socioeconomic status) and outcomes in math found consistent and unambiguous evidence that higher school poverty concentrations are linked with less learning for students irrespective of their age, race, or family’s SES.” https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Kahlenberg.pdf

Test scores of Arlington students above illustrate this situation.

Housing Grants are distributed countywide; they do not concentrate lower income recipients to a few neighborhoods. A larger number of housing grants would create economic diversity throughout the county; subsequently schools in all of Arlington would become more pluralistic. Rather than concentrating lower income students in a few schools along Columbia Pike where most recent CAFs have been built (e.g. Arlington Mills, Columbia Gardens, and Arlington Presbyterian Church site), children all over Arlington could learn together in a neighborhood school and live side by in the same neighborhoods.

No CAF units were built in north and northwest Arlington in the past four years
Over the past 10 years, the county has not met its housing target of geographically distributing new CAFs across the county. In the past four years, the county added about 1,200 new CAFs; none were added north of Lee Highway and in northwest Arlington. The county’s housing target was to add 300 new CAF units (25% of total new CAFs) in those areas—none were added.
http://arlingtonva.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2016/02/Annual-Affordable-Housing-Targets-Report-FY-2015.pdf page 26.

The current AHIF program enhances economic segregation. Economic segregation is associated with income inequality and even more so than with wage inequality. Its effects appear to compound those of economic inequality and may well be more socially, and economically deleterious than inequality alone. See Richard Florida, City Lab, “America’s most economically segregated cities,” http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/02/americas-most-economically-segregated-cities/385709/.

The result of Arlington’s current residential pattern in private housing is widening economic segregation among students in Arlington public schools. Moving forward, affordable public housing projects and programs should include integration that would result in the same in public schools without the necessity of the school board’s redrawing school boundaries.
We Greens believe that expanding housing grants across our community will decentralize lower income tenants, and dramatically help our public schools narrow the very wide achievement gap that better teaching methods and teachers alone cannot solve. The unintended consequence of our current AHIF program is to concentrate lower income students in already struggling public schools in a narrow section of our 22-square mile county.

The Arlington Greens

Wilson School

I attended the County Board meeting this AM (April 18). Almost all business was focused on my neighborhood greenspace: the Wilson School and adjoining Rosslyn Highlands Park. To no ones surprise, the plan emerging from today’s meeting remains: ‘knock down the historic school, cede parkland to a developer (in exchange for his building a firestation). Walt Tejada was the sole dissenting voice, a tongue far less silver than the rest of speakers, but far more honest.

I was particularly disturbed by Mr. Vihstadt’s arguments. He spoke highly of the “robust” (his words) Western Rosslyn Area Planning Study (WRAPS) which the county set up to engage the community on plans for this site. But WRAPS wasn’t ‘robust.’ Most of my community, most community activists throughout Arlington, know that WRAPS was a staged event to provide cover for a prearranged deal. Most WRAPS meetings occurred after the County had already secretly signed an MOU to cede land to the developer. On one occasion the WRAPS process slipped and allowed citizens a poll. Participants voted overwhelmingly against putting a road through a diminished Rosslyn Highlands park. But the road is still in the plans.

I recommend we think long and hard about ever endorsing Mr. Vihstadt again.

Mark Antell

Rosslyn resident and long-time member AGP

(photo of Reed School with Westover Library)

Arlington Greens chairman speech to Arlington Council of PTAs, on Oct. 20, 2014

Good evening members of Arlington PTAs. Let me congratulate you for your volunteer work to improve our community’s public education.

I am John Reeder, an Arlington resident, graduate of Yorktown High School, father of three daughters all graduates of Arlington Public Schools, and chairman of the Arlington Green Party. My wife was a 40-year Fairfax elementary school teacher, and my daughter teaches English in Washington, D.C.

I support spending for public education for all children and excellent salaries for our teachers and school staff. I support capital spending to provide more class rooms, but cannot support throwing money at capital projects without foresight and planning.

I urge you and other Arlington voters to reject the $105.8 million dollar school bond on the November ballot.

Here’s the short answer as to why voters should vote no: the school system is not ready to thoughtfully spend $106 million to add seats to last 30 years.
We voters cannot trust APS to effectively invest these funds without a detailed and a comprehensive plan that parents, educators, and the community all can support. Unfortunately, the APS has failed to accurately project enrollment and capacity over the past two decades.
The board should first prepare a specific plan that supports students and educational programs and adds seats, with engineering and reasonable cost estimates. Then ask voters for an adequate bond for very specific projects, be it for $106 million or $306 million.

Capital funds do not immediately produce new seats. We should not hurry to waste and misapply one hundred million dollars building the wrong or too small schools, and then have to rebuild the same schools in five years. Just 5 years ago, a new, $100 million W-L high school was opened for 1,500 students, but now has 2,046 students.

The school board spends over $500 million annually for operating costs, and now without a detailed, engineering plan, it will get another $106 million to spend somewhere and hope for the best.

There is confusion and missing leadership among school board members and the superintendent. There will be two new school board members this year; parents and PTAs are still divided over where and how new seats should be added. The school board failed to timely adopt a CIP which would have settled the capacity expansion.

There are many unanswered questions:
Will HB Woodlawn move to the Reed School or to a new Wilson site?
Will APS build a new elementary school next to TJ Middle School?
Where should more seats be added and how?
Can we preserve green space around our schools?
Will engineering plans reduce the carbon footprint of new buildings?
Can APS reduce the over $70,000 cost of adding one seat?

Voters: Please reject this bond request.

APS should come back to voters in a year and provide citizens with a well thought out, detailed plan to address the enrollment increase, and then present a detailed bond question to voters so that we in the community can make an informed decision.
Thank you

The Washington Post reported on October 13 about a new elementary school in Baileys Crossroads, Fairfax that is a former office building that can hold 800 students. The cost of the Baileys building including the $9 million cost of buying the empty office building was about $20 million for a student capacity of 795 (they have 700 students today). Baileys Elementary is considered one of the premier elementary schools in Fairfax County, specializing in art and music and drawing students from all over Fairfax as well as the Baileys Crossroads.

(photo of new Baileys Elementary School, courtesy of Fairfax County Public Schools)

So an 800-student school cost $20 million; that’s about $25,000 per student. Arlington is building a new elementary at Williamsburg MS for a $73,000 per student cost, nearly 3 times the Fairfax cost, and the land there is free unlike Baileys.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/digger/wp/2014/10/08/what-to-do-with-dying-suburban-office-buildings-turn-them-into-schools/

Why can’t Arlington Public Schools buy an empty office building and convert it into a 800-student elementary like Fairfax for $20 million? Drive a hard bargain like FCPS did, and buy a vacant office building. Several months, we wrote an article for Arlington Greens about the over 25 percent office vacancy rate in Crystal City and Rosslyn and the need to recycle these empty office buildings into residential apartments and schools.

Suppose APS paid $20 million for a similar sized building in Crystal City or Rosslyn, and spent $14,000 per student to remodel it into a school like FCPS, a 800 student school would still cost only $32 million or $40,000 per student.

APS is spending $46 million to build the new elementary for only 630 students at the Williamsburg MS campus in 97,000 square feet of space, slightly smaller than the new Baileys Crossroads School. APS cost does not include any funds to buy an existing office building just construction costs using public land. Also, do they really think that only 690 students will enroll there?
http://www.apsva.us/Page/18930
So the cost per student is $46 million / 630 = $73,000 per student seat at the new Williamsburg ES

Arlington is supposed to add 6,000 more students over the next ten years; at $73k per student seat, the APS will need to spend about $440 million for 6,000 more seats. That would mean issuing $440 million in school bonds.

Arlington Greens Vote to Oppose All Four Arlington Bond Questions on the November Ballot

October 6, 2014

The Arlington Greens voted unanimously at their October 2nd meeting to ask Arlington voters to deny the four bonds on the ballot on November 4: the four bonds total $218 million, the largest being $106 million for Arlington Public Schools.

The Greens indicated that the bond questions on the ballot for voter approval or denial were too broad and non-specific, and were essentially blank checks to the Arlington School Board and to the Arlington County Board to spend money for undefined purposes and without any cost or engineering plans.

John Reeder the Arlington Greens chairman said, “Arlington parents distrust the school board, and many feel duped by the School Board’s failure to approve a detailed CIP (Capital Improvement Plan). South Arlington parents were promised years ago a new elementary school, now proposed to be built on scarce parkland next to TJ Middle School.” He added, “Arlington parents should remember that critical on-going school programs were put on the chopping block in the past spring; and now a confused school board and a superintendent propose to rush spending $106 million on plans that are less than educationally optimal for our students.”

Reeder said the County Board similarly failed to specify for its three bond questions exactly where and how it will spend $61 million on transportation infrastructure, $13 million for local parks and recreation, and $39 million on “county facilities, information technology, and infrastructure.” He said, “voters should be wary of allowing the county board to spend over $100 million without detailed engineering and vetted plans because of these past abuses.”

Reeder added, “This county board built a million dollar bus stop on Columbia Pike, diverted many millions of park bond dollars approved by voters for park land acquisition to remodeling a failed Artisphere, and now proposes to spend over $300 million on a doomed trolley.”

The Arlington Green Party has run candidates for the Arlington County Board for the past 8 years. This year it has endorsed, independent county board member John Vihstadt for election in the November election.

A group of parents and residents are circulating a petition to the APS board against a mega school proposed to cover most of the Wilson School site. Mark Antell, a Green members, heartily supports their perspective and recommend that civic minded citizens sign the petition.

The Arlington Green Party has NOT taken a position on this petition, but several Green members endorse this petition and oppose building a mega school at the Wilson School site. Community activists have mentioned other locations for a needed middle school in the county–for example, two closed schools–the Fairlington Community Center in south Arlington, and the Madison Recreation Center near Chain Bridge in north Arlington, as well as existing empty commercial office buildings in Crystal City, Rosslyn, and other locations.

Here’s the petition site

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/vote-no-to-1300-seat?source=s.icn.em.cp&r_by=10703771

Subject: Don’t cut the Autism Program for Arlington middle and high school students!

Friends –

Please sign the petition to stop proposed cuts to the Autism program for Arlington middle and high school students. The School Board is proposing to cut seven positions from this very successful program which helps students with Autism take all of their main subjects in regular classrooms. The board is cutting $271,000 at a time when the number of young people diagnosed with Autism is increasing. The cuts would hurt 58 children who are currently in the program at Thomas Jefferson Middle School, H B Woodlawn, Washington &Lee High School, and Yorktown High School, as well as many future students now in elementary school who will be entering the middle and high schools in coming years. We believe the program is good for all students, who benefit from having peers with special needs supported in their classrooms.

http://www.change.org/petitions/don-t-cut-the-autism-program-for-middle-and-high-school-students?recruiter=79127559&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

In addition to signing the petition, there are two more ways you can help.

First, please forward the petition link to your friends who live in Arlington. And spread the word throughout Arlington through listervs and other communication networks. Every new signature on the petition generates a message with comments sent to each School Board member. We’re trying to reach 1,000 signatures by May 8.

Second, please join us at the Public Hearing on the School Budget on Thursday, May 8 — arrive at 7:00pm at 1426 N Quincy Street — to speak (if you like) or just show your support. Families and hand made signs are welcome. Bring as many friends as you can. Please RSVP at this link http://bit.ly/1h9O7Ob.

With all of the heartfelt support that people are giving, we’re more and more hopeful that we can persuade the Board to reject the cuts and instead work with parents and teachers to evaluate and expand the program to more children and schools.

Thanks again,

Gordon, Julia, Peter, Liz, Maria, Margaret, Maria, Doina and all of the other Concerned Parents of Students with Asperger’s/Autism

More information:

The petition site change.org requires that people be 13 years or older to sign the petition

Background: The Arlington School District is proposing to cut 7 staff members from the District’s successful Autism program for middle and high school students. The $271,000 in cuts would hurt our children by making it harder for them to participate in regular classrooms with their peers who are not in special education. Arlington’s middle and high school Autism program is successful because the 58 students who currently participate receive social skills instruction from teachers who understand Autism and Asperger’s, and direct support from assistants in regular mainstream classrooms. All students, with or without disabilities, benefit from increased attention and the expertise of the staff. Cutting more than half of the assistants would undermine the program. With the number of children being diagnosed with Autism rising, we need to expand, not cut, successful programs. Here is a report put together by parents about the program and its success.