City-schools subcommittee to try new format after spending much of 2025 on rejected DASH proposal
Mayor questions whether monthly meetings remain necessary
Alexandria’s joint city-school committee will overhaul its format for 2026 after spending eight months on a transit proposal the school board ultimately rejected.
Mayor Alyia Gaskins questioned whether the City Council-School Board Subcommittee should continue during Monday’s meeting.
“I have been struggling with a wondering of whether or not this committee is needed,” Gaskins said.
The subcommittee abandoned monthly updates this year to use the meetings to focus on single issues, such as using DASH buses to transport high school students. The school board rejected the proposal in September, citing concerns about bus driver hours, safety, and benefits.
“We spent eight months talking about one item that probably didn’t go where both bodies wanted to go, and we wasted a lot of time,” School Board Vice Chair Christopher Harris said.
Councilman John Chapman defended the committee but acknowledged its limits, calling the single-topic approach “an experiment” that “taught us good things and bad things.”
School Board Chair Michelle Rief proposed an annual calendar with routine topics scheduled at specific times of year, rather than checking for updates on every item each meeting.
“It’s more like you’re building a calendar where you’re having routine updates at certain times in the year,” Rief said.
Rief volunteered to draft an initial framework. Gaskins said both sides would map their major topics by month, then use January’s meeting to finalize a schedule for the year. The group agreed to begin with legislative advocacy as the General Assembly session approaches.
The committee also discussed budget constraints. Chapman said the city is “killing projects” in its capital improvement plan. Nine ACPS buildings are more than 60 years old, and Rief noted that at the current pace, addressing the backlog would take a century.
Meetings move to ACPS facilities in January while City Hall undergoes construction.
