Alexandria City Council moves on school board's election-reform request

This story was originally published at 5:54 a.m. on May 27. It was updated at 10:55 a.m. with a correction and clarification. Details below.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Alexandria City Council on Tuesday took its first formal step toward answering a request the Alexandria City School Board has been pressing for more than a year: a joint committee to study changing how and when school board members are elected.

During council updates at its May 26 legislative meeting, Mayor Alyia Gaskins said she wanted to direct City Manager James Parajon to draft a resolution establishing an ad hoc committee — two council members working with two school board members — to develop a recommendation and timeline for carrying out the board's Nov. 7, 2024, resolution. That resolution, signed unanimously by the board, asked the council to seek a city charter amendment extending board terms from three years to four and shifting from concurrent to staggered elections.

The board transmitted that request to every council member in a December 2024 letter. Council did not formally respond for more than 16 months. Tuesday's discussion was its first substantive move on the question.

No vote was taken. Gaskins said she had spoken with members individually and found support for a committee — but also an appetite to look beyond the staggered-terms question the board raised. "There would be a desire of the council to have a committee that is not just focused on looking at staggered terms, but also looking at staggered terms plus other types of election reform, whether that be board size, timing or representation," she said, adding that members wanted a strong focus on communicating any changes to residents.

The timing is not incidental. For any change to take effect before the 2027 school board elections, the council must act in the coming months so the General Assembly can consider a charter amendment in its 2027 session — a constraint rooted in Virginia's Dillon Rule, under which localities can restructure their elected bodies only with state authorization. Gaskins said she hoped to bring the resolution to a vote before the council's summer recess.

Councilman Abdel-Rahman Elnoubi, a former school board member, pushed to consider reducing the board's size, arguing it would make school board races more competitive. He noted that at least one district had gone uncontested every year since 2009 except 2018, while cautioning that both bodies should agree on the committee's scope first. "For the better of democracy, for the better of the community having a choice in who represents them," the council should weigh reducing the board's size, he said. He also argued school board members should have some form of staff support, which could attract more candidates.

But Elnoubi cautioned that both bodies should agree on the committee's scope before any staff work begins, citing a past joint effort in which the council was told it "tried to force things into the conversation." He said he wanted to avoid repeating that.

Councilwoman Marks said she favored moving forward but wanted to keep the effort narrow and constructive, focused on the electoral questions the board's letter raised rather than a sweeping governance review. She proposed devoting the committee's first meeting to setting its own agenda — to avoid, as she put it, "creating an ad hoc committee on creating an ad hoc committee." Vice Mayor Sarah Bagley, who served on a similar joint subcommittee last term, asked how the new committee would be staffed.

Gaskins proposed a middle path: have Parajon draft the resolution so the School Board has something concrete to react to, give the board time to weigh in before the council votes, and appoint two members afterward. The council could later extend the committee's work to other governance questions if both bodies agreed, she said.

The mayor's framing echoed an argument school board members have made publicly for years — that Alexandria's concurrent three-year terms produce destabilizing turnover. Board research cited in prior reporting found the current structure carries a greater than 60% probability of majority turnover in a single election, and that large board turnover has repeatedly coincided with superintendent departures. Roughly 90% of Virginia school boards serve four-year terms, and every comparable peer district uses staggered elections.

Corrected May 27 at 10:55 a.m.: An earlier version of this story characterized Councilman Abdel-Rahman Elnoubi's proposal in terms of district size. Elnoubi argued for reducing the size of the school board to make races more competitive; he did not specify changes to district size. The reference has been corrected.

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Publisher: Ryan Belmore, an Alexandria resident and journalist. Send feedback, story ideas, news, and tips to ryan@alexandriabrief.com.