APS budget is unacceptable

[Anonymous]

^^^ I mean those numbers are insane

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw a post on AEM that we should all go to the county board meeting and ask the county for even more money. This is insane to me. APS needs to live within its means. Make the hard choices, have the tough conversations and move on. Not one more penny from the county until the Syphax bloat is cut.

Reducing a few positions in Syphax isn't going to materially affect the discrepancy in the budget.

If our community values education (it should) then it should appropriately pay for it.

Think again...APS Organizational Chart 2023 - 2024 https://apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2024/02/APS-Organizational-Chart-020124.pdf

Superintendent’s Cabinet: 8 people
Executive Leadership Team: 30 people (includes Principals)
Chief of Staff Office: 18 people
Chief Operating Office: 23 people
Chief of School Support Office: 38 people (includes Principals)
Chief Academic Office: 26 people (not including Supervisors, Specialists, etc.- maybe another 40 people?)
Division Counsel Office: 3 people
Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Student Support Office: 13 people
School & Community Relations: 10 people

Not included above: administrative assistants, others.
It's not just the number of positions, it's also all the additional paid leave Syphax positions were granted.

There should be a hiring freeze on all administrative support jobs in Syphax. As people retire, responsibilities can be combined with other individuals and the professional staff can handle their own damn clerical work. Teachers don’t have administrative support; some more people at Syphax should get used to that too. We’re talking ridiculous ratios at Syphax… Two-person departments with their own administrative support staff. Give me a break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw a post on AEM that we should all go to the county board meeting and ask the county for even more money. This is insane to me. APS needs to live within its means. Make the hard choices, have the tough conversations and move on. Not one more penny from the county until the Syphax bloat is cut.

Reducing a few positions in Syphax isn't going to materially affect the discrepancy in the budget.

If our community values education (it should) then it should appropriately pay for it.

Think again...APS Organizational Chart 2023 - 2024 https://apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2024/02/APS-Organizational-Chart-020124.pdf

Superintendent’s Cabinet: 8 people
Executive Leadership Team: 30 people (includes Principals)
Chief of Staff Office: 18 people
Chief Operating Office: 23 people
Chief of School Support Office: 38 people (includes Principals)
Chief Academic Office: 26 people (not including Supervisors, Specialists, etc.- maybe another 40 people?)
Division Counsel Office: 3 people
Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Student Support Office: 13 people
School & Community Relations: 10 people

Not included above: administrative assistants, others.
It's not just the number of positions, it's also all the additional paid leave Syphax positions were granted.

EIGHTEEN PEOPLE in the Chief of Staff office??? What, pray tell, do they do?? Please enlighten me.

[Anonymous]

10 in the school and community relations? Absurd!

[Anonymous]

Do NOT raise taxes to fund this mess

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw a post on AEM that we should all go to the county board meeting and ask the county for even more money. This is insane to me. APS needs to live within its means. Make the hard choices, have the tough conversations and move on. Not one more penny from the county until the Syphax bloat is cut.

Reducing a few positions in Syphax isn't going to materially affect the discrepancy in the budget.

If our community values education (it should) then it should appropriately pay for it.

Think again...APS Organizational Chart 2023 - 2024 https://apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2024/02/APS-Organizational-Chart-020124.pdf

Superintendent’s Cabinet: 8 people
Executive Leadership Team: 30 people (includes Principals)
Chief of Staff Office: 18 people
Chief Operating Office: 23 people
Chief of School Support Office: 38 people (includes Principals)
Chief Academic Office: 26 people (not including Supervisors, Specialists, etc.- maybe another 40 people?)
Division Counsel Office: 3 people
Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Student Support Office: 13 people
School & Community Relations: 10 people

Not included above: administrative assistants, others.
It's not just the number of positions, it's also all the additional paid leave Syphax positions were granted.

There should be a hiring freeze on all administrative support jobs in Syphax. As people retire, responsibilities can be combined with other individuals and the professional staff can handle their own damn clerical work. Teachers don’t have administrative support; some more people at Syphax should get used to that too. We’re talking ridiculous ratios at Syphax… Two-person departments with their own administrative support staff. Give me a break.

What kind of employer pays government “administrative support staff” these days? Serious question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw a post on AEM that we should all go to the county board meeting and ask the county for even more money. This is insane to me. APS needs to live within its means. Make the hard choices, have the tough conversations and move on. Not one more penny from the county until the Syphax bloat is cut.

Reducing a few positions in Syphax isn't going to materially affect the discrepancy in the budget.

If our community values education (it should) then it should appropriately pay for it.

Think again...APS Organizational Chart 2023 - 2024 https://apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2024/02/APS-Organizational-Chart-020124.pdf

Superintendent’s Cabinet: 8 people
Executive Leadership Team: 30 people (includes Principals)
Chief of Staff Office: 18 people
Chief Operating Office: 23 people
Chief of School Support Office: 38 people (includes Principals)
Chief Academic Office: 26 people (not including Supervisors, Specialists, etc.- maybe another 40 people?)
Division Counsel Office: 3 people
Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Student Support Office: 13 people
School & Community Relations: 10 people

Not included above: administrative assistants, others.
It's not just the number of positions, it's also all the additional paid leave Syphax positions were granted.

EIGHTEEN PEOPLE in the Chief of Staff office??? What, pray tell, do they do?? Please enlighten me.

I'm sure if you looked across all the county departments, which have a similar budget and similar number of employees, you would see a similar number of executive/management positions (although they would not have the same titles/organization). Regardless of what these people are currently named/titled, it takes a lot of people to run a $0.6B agency with 5,000 employees, multiple "divisions," and 30-something buildings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is the 2.5¢ tax Duran is asking for?

APS is very well funded already. They just WASTE those funds on unnecessary programs and positions. Get rid of Syphax bloat. Cut Outdoor Lab. Cut the 80/20 immersion program back to 50/50 if it’s more expensive. Get rid of ALL the option schools if they’re more expensive to run than neighborhood schools. FFS, get rid of iPads in K-5, switch to Chromebooks for 6-12.

Agree and disagree.
Rid the bloat - YES.

Cut relatively inexpensive programs that provide a unique and often lasting/life-changing learning experience like Outdoor Lab that are unique to APS? NO. (That goes for TJHSST, too)

80/20 immersion is only "more expensive" as they transition to the model and implement the new parts of the curriculum and provide teacher training. Once the model is established, it is no longer has the extra expense. And again, if this is an instructional model that has a notable positive impact on learning and achievement, especially for English learners and underprivileged students - and especially especially for underprivileged English learners - then NO.

Get rid of option schools that do not show a significant benefit for students v. a typical neighborhood school of similar demographics or less diverse? YES.
Get rid of option programs that are not clearly distinctive from non-option programs and any specific characteristics of which could be incorporated into every school? YES. (looking at you, MPSA, ATS, and HB)

Get rid of iPads entirely? YES YES and YES
Replace iPads 6-8 with laptops/Macbooks? YES. (But maybe not start 1:1 at all until 7th. 6th can continue with classroom sets)
Replace MacBooks with Chromebooks - POSSIBLY. I'd like to see the side-by-side comparisons in costs and security, maintenance, etc.

Im a pro-immersion person too, but you should be really careful about holding up your program as some hallmark of pedagogy. You’re not. You’re in massive flux, you just got rewritten, in part because the old model nd old locations were proving unsustainable. You literally couldn’t get the students you needed. Can it be certified? Do you have more than best practices and a mission statement to point to? By contrast, Montessori is internationally recognized as a pedagogy and certified. There are two US institutions that certify both Montessori schools and teachers. Recently there was a study about public Montessori v. traditional. The Career Center nd ArlTech programs are all run on recognized and often certified pedagogies too. Immersion is somewhere in between all of those and ATS, so be careful about volunteering criteria.

Hilarious that this person thinks their pet immersion program should stay but wants to cut all the other option programs - even though most of the other option programs don't cost more $ and immersion does. So self serving.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw a post on AEM that we should all go to the county board meeting and ask the county for even more money. This is insane to me. APS needs to live within its means. Make the hard choices, have the tough conversations and move on. Not one more penny from the county until the Syphax bloat is cut.

Reducing a few positions in Syphax isn't going to materially affect the discrepancy in the budget.

If our community values education (it should) then it should appropriately pay for it.

Think again...APS Organizational Chart 2023 - 2024 https://apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2024/02/APS-Organizational-Chart-020124.pdf

Superintendent’s Cabinet: 8 people
Executive Leadership Team: 30 people (includes Principals)
Chief of Staff Office: 18 people
Chief Operating Office: 23 people
Chief of School Support Office: 38 people (includes Principals)
Chief Academic Office: 26 people (not including Supervisors, Specialists, etc.- maybe another 40 people?)
Division Counsel Office: 3 people
Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Student Support Office: 13 people
School & Community Relations: 10 people

Not included above: administrative assistants, others.
It's not just the number of positions, it's also all the additional paid leave Syphax positions were granted.

There should be a hiring freeze on all administrative support jobs in Syphax. As people retire, responsibilities can be combined with other individuals and the professional staff can handle their own damn clerical work. Teachers don’t have administrative support; some more people at Syphax should get used to that too. We’re talking ridiculous ratios at Syphax… Two-person departments with their own administrative support staff. Give me a break.

What kind of employer pays government “administrative support staff” these days? Serious question.

do you want the superintendent to waste time scheduling his own meetings? i don't.

[Anonymous]

I don't know that any parent has a precise idea of how many people it takes to run a school system the size of APS, but many of us have had enough interactions with Syphax to know that it's not efficient or well managed. If you call or email, you likely won't get a response. The "teaching and learning" materials and apps rolled out to teachers and students are half baked at best. The rezoning and building plans are poorly conceived. The test results we get back are missing any of the background to explain what we're receiving. SOL results aren't shared in a timely manner, leaving families scrambling. Schools that have electrical, plumbing, HVAC, mold or pest problems don't have them fixed for years on end. HR screwed up teacher health insurance this year and takes ages to fill vacancies, despite people saying they've applied with no response from APS. And on top of all that, nearly every decision is allocated to individual schools so Syphax isn't even responsible for that much despite making everyone's lives harder. That makes the perception of bloating so much worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw a post on AEM that we should all go to the county board meeting and ask the county for even more money. This is insane to me. APS needs to live within its means. Make the hard choices, have the tough conversations and move on. Not one more penny from the county until the Syphax bloat is cut.

Reducing a few positions in Syphax isn't going to materially affect the discrepancy in the budget.

If our community values education (it should) then it should appropriately pay for it.

Think again...APS Organizational Chart 2023 - 2024 https://apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2024/02/APS-Organizational-Chart-020124.pdf

Superintendent’s Cabinet: 8 people
Executive Leadership Team: 30 people (includes Principals)
Chief of Staff Office: 18 people
Chief Operating Office: 23 people
Chief of School Support Office: 38 people (includes Principals)
Chief Academic Office: 26 people (not including Supervisors, Specialists, etc.- maybe another 40 people?)
Division Counsel Office: 3 people
Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Student Support Office: 13 people
School & Community Relations: 10 people

Not included above: administrative assistants, others.
It's not just the number of positions, it's also all the additional paid leave Syphax positions were granted.

There should be a hiring freeze on all administrative support jobs in Syphax. As people retire, responsibilities can be combined with other individuals and the professional staff can handle their own damn clerical work. Teachers don’t have administrative support; some more people at Syphax should get used to that too. We’re talking ridiculous ratios at Syphax… Two-person departments with their own administrative support staff. Give me a break.

What kind of employer pays government “administrative support staff” these days? Serious question.

do you want the superintendent to waste time scheduling his own meetings? i don't.

No I don’t want the superintendent to schedule his own meetings. But Im a white collar worker and most of my peer organizations (public and private) have reduced and for the most part eliminated these positions. Even for fancy big wig types who have to share an admin. I cannot believe that we have many more than one of these people at APS which is not a high powered corporate organization but rather people should be expected to schedule their own meetings and make their own copies or whatever it is that an admin assistant might do. What do they do? How many do you have at your organization?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know that any parent has a precise idea of how many people it takes to run a school system the size of APS, but many of us have had enough interactions with Syphax to know that it's not efficient or well managed. If you call or email, you likely won't get a response. The "teaching and learning" materials and apps rolled out to teachers and students are half baked at best. The rezoning and building plans are poorly conceived. The test results we get back are missing any of the background to explain what we're receiving. SOL results aren't shared in a timely manner, leaving families scrambling. Schools that have electrical, plumbing, HVAC, mold or pest problems don't have them fixed for years on end. HR screwed up teacher health insurance this year and takes ages to fill vacancies, despite people saying they've applied with no response from APS. And on top of all that, nearly every decision is allocated to individual schools so Syphax isn't even responsible for that much despite making everyone's lives harder. That makes the perception of bloating so much worse.

I would agree with all of this, but this is an argument for keeping the positions but firing the people in them and hiring competent ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I saw a post on AEM that we should all go to the county board meeting and ask the county for even more money. This is insane to me. APS needs to live within its means. Make the hard choices, have the tough conversations and move on. Not one more penny from the county until the Syphax bloat is cut.

Reducing a few positions in Syphax isn't going to materially affect the discrepancy in the budget.

If our community values education (it should) then it should appropriately pay for it.

Think again...APS Organizational Chart 2023 - 2024 https://apsva.us/wp-content/uploads/sites/57/2024/02/APS-Organizational-Chart-020124.pdf

Superintendent’s Cabinet: 8 people
Executive Leadership Team: 30 people (includes Principals)
Chief of Staff Office: 18 people
Chief Operating Office: 23 people
Chief of School Support Office: 38 people (includes Principals)
Chief Academic Office: 26 people (not including Supervisors, Specialists, etc.- maybe another 40 people?)
Division Counsel Office: 3 people
Chief Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Student Support Office: 13 people
School & Community Relations: 10 people

Not included above: administrative assistants, others.
It's not just the number of positions, it's also all the additional paid leave Syphax positions were granted.

There should be a hiring freeze on all administrative support jobs in Syphax. As people retire, responsibilities can be combined with other individuals and the professional staff can handle their own damn clerical work. Teachers don’t have administrative support; some more people at Syphax should get used to that too. We’re talking ridiculous ratios at Syphax… Two-person departments with their own administrative support staff. Give me a break.

What kind of employer pays government “administrative support staff” these days? Serious question.

do you want the superintendent to waste time scheduling his own meetings? i don't.

No I don’t want the superintendent to schedule his own meetings. But Im a white collar worker and most of my peer organizations (public and private) have reduced and for the most part eliminated these positions. Even for fancy big wig types who have to share an admin. I cannot believe that we have many more than one of these people at APS which is not a high powered corporate organization but rather people should be expected to schedule their own meetings and make their own copies or whatever it is that an admin assistant might do. What do they do? How many do you have at your organization?

I actually do my own admin so I know how much time it actually takes (a lot), and that's why I want the superintendent to focus on more important things. I am also not running an org the size of APS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eyes on the prize, people! The per-seat cost of HBW/Shriver was exactly the same as the per-seat cost of the Hamm expansion. Totally agree, recent building expenses were absurd, but what's done is done. Let's focus on how to get class sizes smaller and how to actually pay great staff competitively with Fairfax. Debating slides and "the Heights" and the Outdoor Lab won't get us there. It will require sustained pressure to the County Board to prioritize schools over their myriad vanity projects, pressure on state elected officials to fix the ridiculous underfunding of Arlington schools relative to our neighboring districts, and pressure on the School Board to cut more Syphax bloat.

Ok, I'll bite, please identify which exact positions you would cut in Syphax. I'll wait.

You say this like it's hard. Let's start with the cabinet: Mann is good. Graves is good. I have no opinion of Crawford. Mayo and Stockton can both go because both were at least adjacent to scandals in Maryland districts and they both do jobs that SHOULD be done by a superintendent who wants to be more than a figurehead who hands out balloons.

Stockton was Chief of Staff in MCPS and therefore likely complicit when their recently fired Sueprintendant allowed a known sexual harrasser to be promoted multiple times. Mayo was the head of HR in Baltimore County when he did not disclose income from SUPES Academy, a company that helped school districts train administrators. The superintendent at the time, Dallas Dance, was sentenced to six months in prison for falsifying financial disclosure statements submitted to the school system. Mayo's incorrect financial disclosure statements were later destroyed. Instead of facing his own investigation, Mayo came here to APS.
https://davidplymyer.com/2018/09/04/baltimore-county-schools-record-purge-more-significant-than-public-realizes/
You may recall that our last permanent superintendent, Patrick Murphy, was also disgraced and fired in MCPS for his involvement in the MCPS scandal.

I think the finance office has grown ridiculously in recent years, so I would cut Mark McLaughlin. Cut the Director of Labor Relations, Stephanie Maltz, which is a position that no other local school district doing collective bargaining has. We have both an executive director of curriculum and instruction and a Director of Curriculum and Instruction. That's the same position, cut one of them, I don't care which. I'd definitely cut from some of the publicity and "community relations" team.

I would gladly go on.

Stockton was with MCPS for a blink of an eye. Not sure I find that persuasive that he knew everything that had gone on and was going on there.
Murphy? Don't know how long he was there. I think it's odd that you paint these people as totally corrupt by only citing things that happened when they were at MCPS, which is for both of them only a blip in their entire careers. Mayo another story, clearly.

While I believe many positions could be eliminated at Syphax, I think you should be eliminating positions because they're unnecessary and not because of who currently holds them. Move the competent people into the positions that should be retained; don't keep a position because a competent person is in it. The problem answering the PP's question is that it is unclear to most ordinary citizens what all the positions supposedly do in order to be able to answer which ones should go. But the added layers Duran has put in is likely a good start.

Murphy was one of the few people fired for that MCPS scandal, so it’s definitely fair to paint him as corrupt. Apparently someone had attempted a coverup/ destroyed relevant files, and it seems it was likely him.

Stockton was the Chief of Staff for goodness sake. No one said he was corrupt, just that he was in the circle of people who were. He didn’t blow the whistle to WaPo, that fell to those who were harassed. When he left MCPS, their press release said it was because he had been in a long distance relationship. That struck me as odd because moving to Arlington doesn’t change that.

Plus, those are positions that are new within the last five years. Duran should be able to run the school system, it’s not nearly as big as FCPS or MCPS. It’s redundancy at the top, which is why I’d start there. There are many examples of bloat at the lower levels of Syphax too, and I agree with other particular examples cited above.

Stockton apparently married another superintendent in IL. (Don't ask me why I know this. I must have read it in an article in an MCPS forum.) My guess is that he's only filling in for the school year as a favor to Duran before he leaves too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eyes on the prize, people! The per-seat cost of HBW/Shriver was exactly the same as the per-seat cost of the Hamm expansion. Totally agree, recent building expenses were absurd, but what's done is done. Let's focus on how to get class sizes smaller and how to actually pay great staff competitively with Fairfax. Debating slides and "the Heights" and the Outdoor Lab won't get us there. It will require sustained pressure to the County Board to prioritize schools over their myriad vanity projects, pressure on state elected officials to fix the ridiculous underfunding of Arlington schools relative to our neighboring districts, and pressure on the School Board to cut more Syphax bloat.

Ok, I'll bite, please identify which exact positions you would cut in Syphax. I'll wait.

You say this like it's hard. Let's start with the cabinet: Mann is good. Graves is good. I have no opinion of Crawford. Mayo and Stockton can both go because both were at least adjacent to scandals in Maryland districts and they both do jobs that SHOULD be done by a superintendent who wants to be more than a figurehead who hands out balloons.

Stockton was Chief of Staff in MCPS and therefore likely complicit when their recently fired Sueprintendant allowed a known sexual harrasser to be promoted multiple times. Mayo was the head of HR in Baltimore County when he did not disclose income from SUPES Academy, a company that helped school districts train administrators. The superintendent at the time, Dallas Dance, was sentenced to six months in prison for falsifying financial disclosure statements submitted to the school system. Mayo's incorrect financial disclosure statements were later destroyed. Instead of facing his own investigation, Mayo came here to APS.
https://davidplymyer.com/2018/09/04/baltimore-county-schools-record-purge-more-significant-than-public-realizes/
You may recall that our last permanent superintendent, Patrick Murphy, was also disgraced and fired in MCPS for his involvement in the MCPS scandal.

I think the finance office has grown ridiculously in recent years, so I would cut Mark McLaughlin. Cut the Director of Labor Relations, Stephanie Maltz, which is a position that no other local school district doing collective bargaining has. We have both an executive director of curriculum and instruction and a Director of Curriculum and Instruction. That's the same position, cut one of them, I don't care which. I'd definitely cut from some of the publicity and "community relations" team.

I would gladly go on.

Stockton was with MCPS for a blink of an eye. Not sure I find that persuasive that he knew everything that had gone on and was going on there.
Murphy? Don't know how long he was there. I think it's odd that you paint these people as totally corrupt by only citing things that happened when they were at MCPS, which is for both of them only a blip in their entire careers. Mayo another story, clearly.

While I believe many positions could be eliminated at Syphax, I think you should be eliminating positions because they're unnecessary and not because of who currently holds them. Move the competent people into the positions that should be retained; don't keep a position because a competent person is in it. The problem answering the PP's question is that it is unclear to most ordinary citizens what all the positions supposedly do in order to be able to answer which ones should go. But the added layers Duran has put in is likely a good start.

Murphy was one of the few people fired for that MCPS scandal, so it’s definitely fair to paint him as corrupt. Apparently someone had attempted a coverup/ destroyed relevant files, and it seems it was likely him.

Stockton was the Chief of Staff for goodness sake. No one said he was corrupt, just that he was in the circle of people who were. He didn’t blow the whistle to WaPo, that fell to those who were harassed. When he left MCPS, their press release said it was because he had been in a long distance relationship. That struck me as odd because moving to Arlington doesn’t change that.

Plus, those are positions that are new within the last five years. Duran should be able to run the school system, it’s not nearly as big as FCPS or MCPS. It’s redundancy at the top, which is why I’d start there. There are many examples of bloat at the lower levels of Syphax too, and I agree with other particular examples cited above.

Stockton apparently married another superintendent in IL. (Don't ask me why I know this. I must have read it in an article in an MCPS forum.) My guess is that he's only filling in for the school year as a favor to Duran before he leaves too.

Then why did he leave MCPS?