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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A joint city-schools committee signaled support Tuesday for four-year terms for the Alexandria City School Board and agreed to keep staggered elections on the table for a later meeting, but the councilman presiding said the panel would not rush its work to meet the 2027 election, the target that prompted its creation.
"This process will take the time that it needs to," City Councilman Canek Aguirre said. "I am not going to put our staff on either side, on the school or the city side, in a position where we can make a misstep." A 2027 change remains possible, he said, if the committee agrees within two or three meetings and clears a public hearing, both governing bodies and the General Assembly. Otherwise it would recommend changes for a later year.
That fallback carries more weight than the meeting suggested. School Board member Kelly Carmichael Booz, one of the four voting members, told The Alexandria Brief in April that the window is effectively one-time. "You only really get one chance to make that change," she said then. "If we are not able to make this change for 2027, the clock starts all over again when the new board comes in in 2028." Booz did not repeat that Tuesday, though she said she would like to move forward for 2027.
The School Board has nine members, three from each of the city's three districts, all serving concurrent three-year terms. The next election is in 2027. The board wants four-year terms and staggered elections so the entire board is not on the ballot at once — a request it made by unanimous resolution in 2019 and again in November 2024, and one the council never formally answered. Michelle Rief, then the board's chair, asked the council in a May 18 memo to seek a charter amendment by fall 2026 so the 2027 General Assembly could take it up. Christopher Harris now chairs the board. The council added a fourth question — whether to shrink the board — when it created the committee in June.
The City-ACPS Ad Hoc Committee on School Board Election met for the first time Tuesday at the Patrick Henry Recreation Center and ran one hour and 41 minutes. Aguirre presided, joined by Councilwoman Sandy Marks and School Board members Abdulahi Abdalla and Booz. No public comment was taken. The committee cast no formal votes, instead going around the room to ask whether members were comfortable moving forward on each item.
Much of the night went to setting the committee's own agenda, as Mayor Alyia Gaskins said in June it would. Marks pushed members to name their goals before choosing mechanisms, and the group settled on four criteria: continuity, candidate quality and competition, the democratic process, and efficiency and governance. "Those three points with four-year terms, staggered terms, reduction size — to me it sounds like those are vehicles to get to the end goal," Abdalla said. Abdalla later proposed adding student achievement; the others said no causal link could be established, and it was set aside.
The calendar
Angie Maniglia-Turner, the city's general registrar and director of elections, said school board candidates may begin filing Jan. 2, and that filing requires declaring a district and gathering petition signatures within it.
Marks said the standard route — a council resolution, a public hearing, then presentation to the state delegation, which drafts legislation in November for the following session — could not deliver a change in time for 2027, leaving an emergency charter amendment as the only path and about a month to complete every step. City Attorney Cheran Ivery said she had worked on charter changes but never an emergency amendment, and deferred to state Sen. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker on its prospects. Aguirre said an emergency amendment requires a higher vote threshold in Richmond.
Booz said she spoke with Bennett-Parker on Tuesday, and that the legislation the senator would carry depends on which structure the committee recommends. Marks said a change effective in 2030 would need to pass the 2029 session and clear a public hearing by the fall of 2028.
Staff said changes to districts, or converting district seats to at-large seats, are covered practices under the Virginia Voting Rights Act requiring a 60-day preclearance review by the attorney general's office. Because Virginia is a Dillon Rule state, neither body can act without General Assembly approval.
Term length
Booz said Alexandria is among a small number of Virginia localities using three-year terms, and that among Northern Virginia divisions only Prince William and Fairfax counties pair four-year terms with concurrent elections. Abdalla, in his first term, said four years would let a board build on early experience rather than turn quickly to gathering signatures.
Marks said she reviewed recent candidates and found members frequently serving six to nine years already. "I have no problem with four years," she said, "but I'm not sure that there are no cons." Aligning school board elections with an existing cycle mattered more to her, she said, citing costs to the registrar's office and voter education.
Aguirre polled the table and each member voiced support, though he framed the outcome as consensus on "potentially recommending" four years rather than a settled position. He also raised, without resolving, whether the council would face the same question if the board moves to four years.
Booz noted that four-year terms would still have to be tested against whatever the committee decides on staggering and board size. Booz told the Brief in April that council has its own interest in longer terms.
Staggered elections and board size
The committee agreed only to keep discussing staggering, the second change the board requested.
Marks said she objects to removing a power voters hold. "When the voters have a right, I don't want to take that away," she said. She said four-year terms are an adequate substitute and warned that misaligned council and board cycles could trigger special elections in all three districts, at a cost to election officers and to schools used as polling places.
Booz said staggering is the more democratic option because residents weigh in more regularly, and cited board research finding that of about 50 membership changes between 1997 and 2024, 41 involved members choosing not to seek reelection and seven involved incumbents being defeated. She was defeated in 2015, she said. Rief's memo put the chance of majority turnover in a single election above 60% under the current structure.
Marks responded that staggering does not increase how often anyone votes, since a district resident still votes once per term. Aguirre said he is not a proponent but will discuss it because the board believes it would help.
Board size went undiscussed by design. Aguirre called size and staggering intertwined and said that its September meeting would take up both. The board's 2024 resolution proposed electing one member per district annually, leaving three seats on the ballot each year; how that fits nine seats and four-year terms was not worked out.
Turnover and pay
Abdalla said the committee was addressing turnover without examining its causes. "Why are they not coming back and running? Why is there not more competitive elections for school board?" he said, describing the job as demanding and poorly paid. "We can dress it up, make it as nice as we want, put lipstick on a pig."
Board members have been paid $15,000 a year since at least 2012, last among regional peers — Arlington pays $51,500, Fairfax $48,000, Prince William $26,520. The council raised its own salaries from $37,500 to $68,000 in June 2024. Booz said the board must vote any increase by Dec. 31 to affect the next cycle and plans to take it up this fall; the committee treated pay as outside its charge but agreed to note it in the final report.
Marks said the concerns may reflect a culture issue more than an electoral one. Booz said structure alone is not a solution but could support the division's work.
The committee met as the board runs its fifth superintendent search in under a decade. Melanie Kay-Wyatt resigned in March and departs Oct. 1, with Grace Taylor serving as acting superintendent. Board records show six of 10 election cycles since Alexandria moved to an elected board were followed by a superintendent change, five within 17 months.
What's next
The committee meets Sept. 15 at 6 p.m., with staggering and board size on the agenda, and one or two meetings after that, concluding by the end of October. Its report is due Nov. 10, when it dissolves.
Councilman John Chapman cast the lone vote against creating the committee in June, saying the effort risks opening the city charter without a clear connection to better outcomes for students. A parent-led petition organized by Jakob Wolf-Barnett drew more than 200 signatures in April seeking a smaller board and higher pay.
