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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Alexandria City School Board is giving itself an extra week to work through Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt's adjusted FY 2027 budget, with the next work session moved to Wednesday, May 20 and the deadline for board members to file add/delete proposals pushed back four days, to Friday, May 22.
The schedule change, announced Thursday in a joint blog post by Strategy and Accountability Committee Chair Ryan Reyna (District A), Vice Chair Christopher Harris (District C), and Budget Advisory Committee liaison Kelly Carmichael Booz (District B), follows the board's May 12 public hearing and first work session on the adjusted plan. Final budget adoption is still targeted for June 11.
The trigger for the delay: 97 written questions board members submitted to staff ahead of Tuesday's work session. Staff's written responses post publicly today on the ACPS website. The May 14 work session, originally scheduled for Thursday, was canceled to give the board, staff, and community time to read those answers before the next round of decisions.
What the questions cover
The 97 questions span the full territory of the proposed cuts: the rationale for specific position eliminations, how long vacancies have remained open, healthcare cost trends and the proposed employer/employee cost-share shift, central office staffing patterns compared with other Northern Virginia divisions, technology spending and the case for scaling back 1-to-1 devices in younger grades, and — perhaps most consequentially — what staff would restore first if additional state or local funding materializes.
That last question is not academic. The board members noted in their update that ACPS is still waiting on the Virginia state budget and any associated funding implications, which they expect to have within the next couple of weeks.
The compensation gap, in a single table
Reyna, Harris, and Booz used the post to lay out — line by line — how the renegotiated compensation package differs from the original tentative agreement reached with the Education Association of Alexandria in March. Step increases remain for all eligible employees, and the adjusted plan adds a new top step for staff who have maxed out. But the cost-of-living adjustment for licensed staff falls from 2.0% to 1.25%; for education support professionals, from 3.5% to 1.25%. An additional step for licensed staff hired in 2010–2011 and a $2,000 longevity bonus every five years for ESPs are gone. The total package drops from $12.73 million to $10.5 million.
The Alexandria Brief reported on May 7 that Kay-Wyatt's renegotiated agreement now averages a 4.2% raise across both bargaining units, down from the original $12.7 million package that automatically reopened when City Council adopted a 1.5% increase in the operating transfer rather than the 3.5% the school board had requested.
Two clarifications the board wants on the record
The Thursday post worked hard to correct what the three members appear to view as misimpressions from public discussion of the cuts.
First, on class size: the elementary classroom ratios are not changing next year. ACPS classrooms have been running at 24/26/28 students (kindergarten/grades 1–2/grades 3–5) for two years already. What is changing is the budgeting formula behind those classrooms, which had been set at 22/24/26. A parent walking into an elementary classroom in September will see the same class sizes they saw last spring.
Second, on the 27 homeroom teacher and six kindergarten instructional assistant reductions: those are vacant positions, being handled through retirements, resignations, and transfers rather than terminations. The central office reductions are a different story — those include filled positions, meaning some current ACPS employees there will be affected.
Central office, recounted
CFO Dominic Turner used the May 12 work session to push back on a recurring critique of ACPS staffing patterns: that central office is bloated relative to schools. Of the roughly 420 FTEs budgeted at central office, Turner said, about 211 work in schools every day — special education teachers and aides, occupational and physical therapists, speech-language pathologists, English Learner teachers, technology integration specialists, building engineers, substance abuse counselors. They are budgeted centrally because their assignments shift across buildings.
That leaves roughly 213 FTEs in the central office building itself: Finance, HR, Communications, Facilities, Technology, Community Relations, and the School Board Office. Several of the 97 board questions ask for a cleaner public breakdown of those two categories.
What's on the table, and what stayed off it
The cuts the board is now weighing reflect Kay-Wyatt's May 7 plan, which closed the $5.6 million shortfall between the school board's request and Council's appropriation by eliminating 45.6 FTEs. The package cuts 27 homeroom teachers, six kindergarten instructional assistants, and 3.6 student support team positions including social workers and psychologists. Two Afghan family liaison positions, two advanced academic services teachers, an English Learner teacher, and the city's only middle school Latin teacher are also on the list.
Tuesday's public hearing drew sustained opposition to the proposed shift in healthcare premium costs, the rollback of compensation in the tentative agreement, and the proposed $350,000 elimination of ACPS funding for Communities in Schools of Northern Virginia.
One reduction floated earlier in the spring did not survive into the adjusted plan: middle school athletics, once on a March 4 balancing list at $500,000, were largely preserved, with only an $85,100 line cut and the elimination of a 0.5 FTE middle school athletic trainer.
How we got here
The arithmetic that produced this moment has not moved much since The Alexandria Brief began tracking the cycle in February. City Manager James Parajon's October 2025 guidance held the ACPS operating transfer to a 1.5% increase. Kay-Wyatt's January 22 proposal sought 2.0% — about $5.6 million more — to fund the first-ever ACPS collective bargaining agreements. The board approved that request in February. Parajon's February 24 budget held the line at 1.5%, growing the ACPS transfer at a slower rate than overall General Fund revenue, which grew 2.4%.
On April 29, City Council unanimously adopted Parajon's $979.1 million budget. As The Alexandria Brief reported, no add/delete amendment with co-sponsor support was proposed to increase the allocation to ACPS. Council had set a $1.145 advertised tax rate ceiling in March to preserve a one-cent option for closing the school gap, but did not use it.
A roughly $2 million increase in projected healthcare costs between February and May added to the gap Kay-Wyatt had to close in her adjusted budget, bringing the total to about $7.6 million.
What's next
- Today (Friday, May 15): Staff answers to the 97 board questions post on the ACPS website.
- Wednesday, May 20: Second budget work session.
- Friday, May 22: Add/delete submissions due from board members.
- Wednesday, June 11: Final FY27 budget adoption.
Public comment is open at regular board meetings, and the board accepts written comment at board@acps.k12.va.us.
