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Alexandria City Public Schools' school board meets tonight at 6 p.m. for a work session at the School Board Meeting Room, 1340 Braddock Place. The session is not a voting meeting — both agenda items are informational — but the data being presented offers the clearest picture yet of how the district's new five-year strategic plan is taking hold at the halfway point of its first year.
The meeting can be viewed via Zoom through the school board's meetings page.
What's on the agenda
The board will review two items: a mid-year update on the ACPS 2030 Strategic Plan, and a Data Digest produced in collaboration with Hanover Research that compiles key performance indicators from the previous strategic plan through the 2024–2025 school year.
The ACPS 2030 plan, organized around six goal areas, was adopted last year under the tagline "Nurture. Educate. Inspire." Tonight's update covers implementation progress through February 10 and is being presented by Chief of Accountability and Research Clinton Page.
The headline number: most areas moving, one flashing yellow
Across five of six goal areas, the division reports meaningful movement from "not started" into "in progress" and "completed" status between the end of the first quarter and mid-year — a sign that implementation routines are taking hold.
The exception is Recruit, Develop, and Retain Staff, where the share of action steps flagged as "stuck" jumped from 2% at the end of the first quarter to 21% at mid-year. The documents identify the problem clearly: the stuck work is concentrated in efforts to build and implement a uniform professional learning framework and strengthen Professional Learning Communities across schools — work that cuts across multiple departments and has run into capacity constraints and coordination challenges.
Staff recruitment and retention is not an abstract concern at ACPS. The district's proposed FY 2027 budget includes a 3.5% increase in city appropriations, driven in part by a $12.7 million teacher pay agreement the city learned about through a press release. That request is currently $5.6 million above what City Manager James Parajon proposed — a gap that remains unresolved as the city's budget process continues.
The other five goal areas
Safe, Caring, and Inclusive Environment showed the strongest mid-year profile, with 57% of action steps in progress and only 7% not started. Work includes student voice surveys, PBIS and Restorative Practices implementation, and school walkthroughs that began in late February.
Achieve Academic Excellence moved from 17% completed at the end of Q1 to 46% completed at mid-year — the largest jump of any goal area — with the division reporting progress in empowering school leaders as instructional leaders.
Community Engagement and Communication still shows 54% of action steps not started, but the documents explain that this reflects new action steps added during Q2 rather than stalled work — much of the community engagement activity is deliberately sequenced for the second half of the year. New initiatives include a StudentSquare rollout and a website update.
Students Prepared for Postsecondary Success has 45% of action steps not started, also back-loaded by design, with a focus on K-12 career exploration sequenced by grade band.
Division Conditions — the internal infrastructure goal — has moved to 21% completed, up from 4% at the start of the year, with the team reporting that it now has a full staff after recent transitions and has begun standardizing operating procedures across departments.
The Data Digest: a system-wide look in the mirror
The second agenda item is a structured data dialogue around the SY 2025–2026 Data Digest, a comprehensive document produced in collaboration with Hanover Research that compiles trend data across the division through the 2024–2025 school year. The digest covers six areas: enrollment and demographics, key performance indicators, academic achievement, behavior and social-emotional learning, stakeholder perceptions, and staffing and operations.
Tonight's session is not a presentation in the traditional sense — staff will guide the board through a "3-2-1" analysis protocol, asking members to identify three observations, two trends, and one key takeaway from the data before moving to discussion. The goal, per the agenda materials, is to generate questions rather than deliver conclusions.
The digest has been a tool since 2019, when ACPS began consolidating data to inform strategic planning. Going forward, the annual deliverable will be accelerated and realigned to match fall reporting timelines for the ACPS 2030 plan and Virginia Department of Education school accountability reporting.
The actual data in the digest — including disaggregated academic achievement, discipline, and staffing figures — will inform tonight's discussion. The full 66-page digest is available here. The Brief will report on key findings following the meeting.
What comes next
Year 2 planning begins this spring. The district will convene its Strategic Planning Committee in April for feedback on Year 1 implementation, with goal teams drafting Year 2 action plans by May or June. Any adjustments at the strategy or goal level will come back to the board for action. Year 1 Key Performance Indicator results will be presented to the board in fall 2026.
Tonight's work session begins at 6 p.m. and can be viewed on Zoom or cable channel 71 in Alexandria.
