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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The public will get its first look Thursday at how Alexandria City Public Schools Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt proposes to reconcile the school board's adopted budget with the smaller appropriation the City Council approved last week.
Kay-Wyatt is scheduled to present recommended adjustments to the FY 2027 combined funds and Capital Improvement Program budgets at the school board's regular meeting at 6 p.m. at 1340 Braddock Place. The recommendations have not been publicly disclosed in advance.
The school board unanimously adopted a $408.2 million combined funds budget on Feb. 19 that assumed a $9.8 million, or 3.5%, increase in the city's operating transfer to the schools. City Manager James Parajon's proposed budget included $4.2 million of that amount — a 1.5% increase — and the council's add-delete process did not close the gap before final adoption April 29. That leaves the division roughly $5.6 million short of what its adopted budget assumed.
The shortfall has direct implications for staff. The first-ever collective bargaining agreement reached in March between ACPS and the Education Association of Alexandria — a $12.7 million package averaging a 5.35% raise for licensed personnel and 6.42% for education support professionals — is contingent on the council appropriating sufficient funds and reopens for renegotiation if it does not.
The board has not formally proposed any reductions. Board member Kelly Carmichael Booz said at an earlier meeting that some of the items discussed at joint city-school work sessions, including middle school sports, "could still be on the table" as Kay-Wyatt finalized her recommendation. Public commenters in recent weeks have urged the division to look first at vacant central office and instructional support positions before cutting student programs.
Thursday's presentation kicks off the final stretch of the budget process. The board is targeting a June 11 vote on the combined funds and CIP budgets.
Also on the agenda: a return of the long-debated 2026-28 Memorandum of Understanding between ACPS and the Alexandria Police Department governing School Resource Officers. The MOU appears on the consent calendar after the Governance Committee directed division counsel last month to make additional changes following its April 17 and May 1 reviews. The April 23 vote was scratched to allow the further work.
Among the changes that emerged from the latest committee review is a new section on immigration and citizenship status. It states that no school board, school or SRO employed by a local law enforcement agency in a public school, or any individual employed by or working as a contractor or agent of a school board, may engage in actions or practices that result in denying a free public education to a child — or excluding a child from any program or activity — based on the actual or perceived immigration or citizenship status of the child or the child's parents. The provision was added during the May 1 Governance Committee review and was not in the version the board considered in April.
The current draft also retains the most significant change from earlier negotiations: the removal of a provision in a 2025 version that would have designated SROs as "school officials" under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, allowing officers to access student records without written parental consent. Community members objected to that language at a May 2025 public hearing. This year's public hearing on April 16 adjourned after one minute, with no speakers signed up. The current agreement expires June 30.
The 2026-28 MOU runs from July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2028, and would be reviewed at least biannually. It commits both agencies to use police intervention as a last resort, embeds the SRO Triad Model — under which officers serve as law enforcement officers, public safety educators and informal counselors — and adopts new evaluation tools, including a quarterly SRO assessment form completed by principals at schools where SROs are stationed.
The board will hear four monitoring items, beginning with a year-two implementation update on the Academies at Alexandria City High School. ACHS enrolled 4,275 students across five academies and more than 25 career pathways during the 2025-26 school year, the first year of full-scale implementation after the model launched in 2024-25 as a cornerstone of the High School Project. Staff describe the year as on track, with progress in student engagement, instructional alignment and partnership development.
A related update covers career and technical education and workforce development, the federal Perkins grant programming the board approves each April. CTE pathways and labs are integrated into the academies and connect to industry-aligned credentials and work-based learning experiences with local employers.
The board will also review nine nominees for the 2026 ACPS Athletic Hall of Fame, including the 1954 George Washington High School boys crew team and the 1993 T.C. Williams High School boys 4x100-meter relay team that ran at the Penn Relays. Individual nominees include longtime Parker-Gray High School coach Louis Johnson, who led football, basketball, baseball and track and field from 1939 to 1959; Parker-Gray football and basketball player Roland Scott, Class of 1957; and T.C. Williams alumni Verna Wyatt, Class of 1980; Tyrone Shaw, Class of 1983; Thomas Boggan, Class of 1985; Jesse Gipson, Class of 1991; and Claire Constant, Class of 2017. The Athletic Hall of Fame Advisory Committee, formed by the school board in 2014, has inducted 141 members to date. The board is scheduled to vote on the nominees at its May 21 meeting, with induction set for Oct. 10.
The fourth monitoring item is a slate of proposed policy revisions teed up for adoption later this month. The package includes a rewritten policy on the non-sponsored naming and renaming of school division facilities — a charged subject in Alexandria, which renamed T.C. Williams High School to Alexandria City High School in 2021. The revised policy would limit naming honors to individuals who are deceased, create a tiered system for naming and renaming, add opportunities for donors to offset division costs and address maintenance of signage and donated items.
Other proposed revisions include an update to the Virginia Assessment Program and graduation requirements policy that would allow mid-year graduates; a five-year update to the policy on employee use of social media that would prohibit using a staff member's likeness without permission and bar instructional use of social media outside of approved curriculum; and a clarified attendance regulation governing the 10-day no-show process. A media and public relations policy on its five-year cycle would add a board belief statement, a definition of media and new sections on official ACPS messaging, advertising and personal media interviews.
Other consent items include adoption of new elementary social studies instructional materials, advisory committee appointments and personnel actions for April 20 through May 1.
The meeting opens with recognition of the ACPS Principal of the Year and Teacher of the Year. It is the board's first regular meeting of May and one of a dwindling number before Kay-Wyatt's scheduled retirement Oct. 1. The board accepted her resignation March 26 and has launched a national search for her successor. Alexandria City High School is also operating without a permanent principal; that search is expected to conclude later this month.
Meetings are broadcast on cable channel 71 and via Zoom. The full agenda and supporting documents are posted on BoardDocs.
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