Anonymous wrote:
What do you mean the board doesn't know why we spend more than other counties?

This is something a current board member told me when I asked about it. I know that about half the gap is due to us paying debt service (from CIP school bonds) from our operating budget. For other school systems like Alexandria and Montgomery County the city/county handles CIP funds or the bond payments instead of the school system. The other half of the gap is harder to explain -- adjusted for student population we have similar class sizes, number of schools, student-teacher ratios, and transportation costs as our neighbors. Our teachers are more tenured on average (so higher on the step scale), but we pay them less, and it almost exactly evens out. We also have similar programs (option or magnet schools, extra curriculars, etc).

Anonymous wrote:
Four-fifths of the budget is staff salaries and Arlington has lower class sizes and smaller schools than most other counties (i.e., more staff).

Our school sizes are comparable. We do have slightly smaller class sizes (compared to say Fairfax), but similar to FCC and Manassas City. It doesn't account for the full difference.
Any real differences provides opportunities to increase efficiency. Even if we can reduce costs by 3%, it would more than close our budget deficit.

Anonymous wrote:
You talk about special ed staffing above--this is all based on planning factors and the number of students in the school with IEPs. You're suggesting that each school be allocated different numbers of staff based on (something) instead of having a uniform staffing model? How would that work? Who determines how many staff are really needed at each school? And as for letting go the "youngest" teacher, you probably mean the teacher with the least tenure, which is how that works in every school district in the country. Not to mention that APS staff are offered positions elsewhere in the system if a position is eliminated at a specific school.

Maybe you should volunteer for some committees and learn some more about how school systems work before running for one of the five board seats--we don't need another board member who only started paying attention when their kids hit elementary school and is now going to learn on the job by asking questions that have already been asked and answered a thousand times. You might also learn about what a school board is responsible for versus the paid school administration, and why you don't get answers from the people you are asking.

I understand your concern -- I know I have a lot to learn. On the other hand, I was an English Language learner who relied on in-school free meals, and my current level of success was due in large part to the amazing teachers I had in my public school education. I care deeply about the success of our public school system. And yes my kids are young, but that means that I am invested in this for the long term.

I think I bring a unique set of skills to the school board (technology, data) that they are currently lacking. I also appreciate that I'm in a privileged position to be able to serve on a school board in the first place. It's not something I do lightly or for vanity.

Anonymous wrote:Chen seems sincere but has he done anything in APS literally at all?

(Reposting from the other similar thread: https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/30/1185438.page. Please read my replies to various questions there.)

Hi. Honestly not a whole lot -- I've done the standard things that an involved and privileged parent has done -- I've joined my school's PTA, I've donated, I've volunteered in the classroom and as a chaperone.
Outside of APS proper, I teach ballroom dance at College Park, I coach my daughter's soccer team, I tutor undergraduate CS students, and I'm mentoring a couple of high school students (one in APS).

My wife and I moved to Arlington for the excellent schools. It wasn't something I thought I needed to worry about. I got involved because of the boundary change process. During public hearings I, along with others, asked questions for which we received responses but not real answers. At the time I didn't know whether they didn't want to give us the answer or if they didn't have the answer. So I started digging -- reading board docs, watching old board meetings, asked followup questions, etc., and it became obvious that they often didn't have the answer.

This kind of problem isn't unique to APS. I've seen this in many organizations where some things are done a certain way because of risk aversion, because it was the easy thing to do, or because "it's always been done that way". I have a lot of experience trying (successfully and unsuccessfully) to fix these underlying problems. I believe that this skill set -- active listening, problem solving, people coordination -- would be a useful one for the school board.

Since then I've been learning as much as I can -- talking with teachers, parents, principals, facilities folks, and (since declaring) every member of the current board except CDT.
I know I have a lot to learn still, but I'm a fast learner and public education is something I truly care about.

Anonymous wrote:Are there more candidate forums coming up?

Arlington Democrats may have a candidate forum during their next monthly meeting on 4/3 (it's planned but not yet announced).
The Arlington NAACP will host one on 4/15 from 7-9pm.
The Arlington Chamber of Commerce will host one on 4/23 from 3-4pm.
The CivFed and the League of Women Voters will host one on 4/24 from 6:30-8:30pm

That's all the ones I know of so far. 😅

I'll post information and links on my facebook page https://facebook.com/chen4arlington when I have them. I'll also post links to the forums afterwards.

Anonymous wrote:Appreciate you answering each question specifically - and in this forum, rather than just referring to your website.

You're welcome!

Anonymous wrote:
I hope you will consider the idea that the APS boundary policy itself is a problem and consider, if starting from a blank slate with no policy, how APS can most effectively balance enrollment across schools and provide classroom environments and experiences as comparable as possible across the system.

Yes -- we haven't had a full realignment of boundaries for a while. Apparently there was one in the 70's and another in the 90's, and we've been making only small adjustments since. I can't speak to whether there has been evaluations that were not public, or if a larger realignment would produce something better. It needs a careful look though -- if nothing else because we're currently on a financially unsustainable path, and a one time realignment may provide structural savings.

Anonymous wrote:
Similarly, if our schools are not going to be comparable across the system (ie demographics and level of student needs), please think about what planning factors would actually give the schools in most need the teacher resources they need to serve their students and most effectively close (narrow as much as possible) gaps.

Yes -- planning factors should be more based on need (this school has a reading gap, so should be allocated more reading coaches/interventionalists). That being said, I understand why planning factors exist but the concept is so crazy. If we were to give a school 0.5 more reading coaches, then unless they can find someone good who's willing to work as a 0.5 FTE it just doesn't work. What principals do is "oh I happen to have a teacher who's willing to go from working 0.8 to 0.5, and I get beg for another 0.2 from contingency funds, so I can actually hire a reading coach which I really need".

Instead, I think APS has been using planning factors so slowly reduce staff ("you get 2.2 PE/Art/Music teachers now instead of 2.7"), and making each school scramble to figure it out.

I would also encourage everyone to contact countyboard@arlingtonva.us to ask for more funding for APS -- one that's more aligned with actual need.

Anonymous wrote:I don't think Chen Ling even understands what a School Board member can and can't do. Pass.

The school board sets policy, and hires and manages the superintendent. The school board can direct the superintendent. The school board can take a vote on any action by the superintendent and on any policy. The school board provides oversight and accountability to the school system, to make sure that it serves the best interests of the students and teachers.
The school board cannot insert themselves into staff operations.

For example, take this question from Priddy https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/arlington/Board.nsf/files/D3GV4V7CE247/$file/25-02%20Replace%20MacBook%20Air%20with%20Chromebooks.pdf asking about what the cost/benefit would be to switching from Macbook Airs with Chromebooks, as suggested by some people as a cost-saving measure. The answer from the Assistant Superintendent for Information Services is just...wrong. We currently pay $779/Macbook Air (which is a great price), and we get ~$125 of it back when the student graduates and returns the laptop, with a true cost of $654/student. That's fine. They then state that a "comparable" Chromebook would cost $759 per student. For comparison, Fairfax uses Chromebooks for I believe middle school and above. They pay $279 per Chromebook. The link in the response itself (Wirecutter's Best Chromebook) says the "best" Chromebook is currently retails at Best Buy for....$499. That's without bulk or educational discounts. They talk about transition costs which is fair. Then they say how they get free cloud storage with Macbooks but not for Chromebooks. This is not true. In addition, Microsoft 365 (the A1 tier) is free for schools and students, which also includes free cloud storage.

School Board members can continue to ask questions and keep the Superintendent and his office accountable.

Anonymous wrote:Chen - how would you address the county and state drastically UNDERfunding APS?

Youngkin is cutting the budget in times when our COL costs are rising.

Fortunately the GA passed a bill that adds some money back to schools. Unfortunately, the state budget is only ~13% of our revenue. For FY24, Virginia is the 44th state in terms of how well it funds public education. If it was merely average, we would have a budget surplus. The budget is unlikely to drastically change while Youngkin is governor.

The county is supposed to fund 80% of our revenue -- by State policy, so when they say "we're raising teacher salaries by 3%", they expect Arlington County to pay for 80% of that. Unfortunately, the County only pays about ~75% of our budget.

We have a revenue sharing agreement with the County -- we get 46.8% of tax receipts. We're one of two NoVA school systems that do this -- others do a need-based budget and negotiate with their counties every year (Falls Church City does a hybrid). When times are good, this is good for APS -- we have enough money. When times are bad (2007/8 recession, loss of commercial tax revenue post-Covid), not so much. I encourage everyone to email countyboard@arlingtonva.us and speak up on fully funding our schools.

I know I harp on the 20% more we pay per student compared to our neighbors. Half of that is because we pay debt service on school bonds using our operating budget. Neighbors like Alexandria and Montgomery County do not (CIP budgets and bond payments are part of the county budget and not the school). I'm working on identifying the other half. The reason is that when the School Board goes to the County Board and asks for more money, the response is often to point out how we already pay more per student and can APS please be more efficient first please.

Anonymous wrote:Chen Ling "I think the current members of the school board care about the teachers and students. I think the other people running care as well, but caring is not enough -- you have to have a plan."

This really rubs me the wrong way. Who is Chen Ling to think he is the only one with a plan who can save APS? What is that based on? It's so arrogant and more than a little Trumpian for a guy with literally zero experience in APS.

I'm sorry it rubbed you the wrong way. It's the trade off of trying to be succinct. I believe I can bring a unique skill set that will help how APS makes and communicates decisions. I'm also someone who will always listen -- even to criticism and to those that compare me to Biden's predecessor.

Anonymous wrote:
Appreciate the post; but disagree it is helpful.
Chen Ling, do you know the answer to why APS spends more per student? (There's some discussion and explanation on an AEM thread)

We spend about 20% more than our neighbors. About half of that is debt service -- we pay out the bonds used for CIP using our operating funds. For FY25 we'll be paying $67.3 million, which is close to our statutory maximum. The other 10% is actually rather odd -- adjusted for student population, we have similar class sizes, student-teacher ratios, number of schools, and transportation costs. I thought that our teachers were more tenured (and so are higher on the step scale), but since we pay our teachers less, it actually almost exactly evens out.

The "the board doesn't understand why we pay more" is a quote from a current board member.

Anonymous wrote:And what are your skills that you bring? What are your positions on various policies? What are your thoughts on instruction?

I encourage you to visit my website: https://chen4arlington.org
If you have a more specific question, I'd be happy to answer it in this forum.

Anonymous wrote:How would you manage boundaries/enrollment across schools?

I'll answer this question in two parts -- one for criteria and one about planning.

You can read the current APS policy here: https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/arlington/Board.nsf/files/AZ2V3D5FA2B8/$file/B-2.1%20Boundaries.pdf.
They don't follow this policy. There are planning units that get split off from most of their peers when going from elementary to middle, and split off again from their peers when they move again to high school. There are those (in the current MS boundary proposal) who can see their current MS from their house but will now be bussed to a school further away.

It's possible that this actually makes sense, but that is not communicated to the community. What I want to see is clearer criteria -- how are conflicts between different considerations resolved, what it means to be "small groups of students", etc. And I want to see the different proposals that are considered, and how each proposal is measured against the published criteria. As a parent, if you're doing something that affects my child, I want to know that the decision was actually well thought out and defensible.

For planning, it really gets intermingled with how APS does planning factors (e.g., you have this many students so you get 2.2 Music teachers and 1.8 counselors). Because you can't hire fractional people (most of the time), principals do swaps. They get 2 music teachers, 1 counselor, and can get another special ed teacher that they desperately need. What should happen is a Monte Carlo simulation of possible future enrollments to determine two things: (1) thresholds where we can't serve the student population properly without adding additional staff -- i.e., there is a 70% chance that we'll have X students which will require Y classes which will in turn require an addition set of PE/Music/Art teachers, and (2) optimal configurations which will be the least likely to require future boundary changes.

Anonymous wrote:Chen, thank you for posting. What have you actually done in APS?

Hi. Honestly not a whole lot -- I've done the standard things that an involved and priviledged parent has done -- I've joined my school's PTA, I've donated, I've volunteered in the classroom and as a chaperone.
Outside of APS proper, I teach ballroom dance at College Park, I coach my daughter's soccer team, I tutor undergraduate CS students, and I'm mentoring a couple of high school students (one in APS).

My wife and I moved to Arlington for the excellent schools. It wasn't something I thought I needed to worry about. I got involved because of the boundary change process. During public hearings I, along with others, asked questions for which we received responses but not real answers. At the time I didn't know whether they didn't want to give us the answer or if they didn't have the answer. So I started digging -- reading board docs, watching old board meetings, asked followup questions, etc., and it became obvious that they often didn't have the answer.

This kind of problem isn't unique to APS. I've seen this in many organizations where some things are done a certain way because of risk aversion, because it was the easy thing to do, or because "it's always been done that way". I have a lot of experience trying (successfully and unsuccessfully) to fix these underlying problems. I believe that this skill set -- active listening, problem solving, people coordination -- would be a useful one for the school board.

Since then I've been learning as much as I can -- talking with teachers, parents, principals, facilities folks, and (since declaring) every member of the current board except CDT.
I know I have a lot to learn still, but I'm a fast learner and public education is something I truly care about.

Anonymous wrote:The budget is posted. Have you taken a look at it?

Yes, along with those of Alexandria, Fairfax, and Montgomery County MD.
One major part of why we pay more is that we pay school bonds (from the Capital Improvement Plans) out of operating expenses.
This went from $55.7 million in 2023 to $64.9 million in 2024, and budgeted to be $67.3 million in FY 2025. That is basically the statutory maximum.
That does account for about half the overage compared to others -- Alexandria and Montgomery County's debts are handled by their counties, and Fairfax's debt payments amount to about $3.3 million for FY 2025.

However the other 10% is hard to account for. Compared to those 3 districts we have similar class sizes, similar number of schools per capita, similar student-teacher ratios (if you take into account all student facing positions). I think our teachers are more tenured (have been here longer) so are higher on the pay scale, but because we pay them less compared to our neighbors it almost exactly evens out.

It may just be too many positions at Syphax, but the budget really obfuscates that.

For context, now that the State has passed a high education budget, APS' FY 2025 budget is only about $20 million in the red. Last year we spent ~$40+ million of our reserves. Our reserves are down to $6 million now.
And this is with more cuts to almost every school that has already been cut to the bone.

Hello everyone -- Chen Ling here.

For the person who asked, here is the link to the candidate forum hosted by APE and moderated by Jo DeVoe from ArlNow: https://vimeo.com/923302481?share=copy

I have an engineering/science/data background, with a focus on bringing visibility and understandability to complex data systems. I think that is a skill the current school board is sorely lacking.

For example, APS pays about 20% more per student than our neighboring locales, and *no one on the board knows why*. You can read the report from their Budget Advisory Council for the last several years where they call this out. We pay our teachers less -- we're on average 5th out of 8 in the area.

What they have done instead is to make small cuts uniformly across all of the schools, to the point where many schools are on a tipping point. I spoke with one principal who is losing yet another special ed teacher spot, after losing multiple teacher and staff positions in the last few years. Because of the rules, they have to get rid of their youngest teacher, who is apparently amazing. Right now they can barely provide enough special ed services to meet the needs of at need students in their school. They were down one at the beginning of the year, and the classroom teachers were not able to manage the classes because those students became too disruptive. With that extra special ed teacher, they were able to provide help for those kids and now everyone in those classes can focus on learning.

What the current board has been doing has not been enough. When you ask them questions you get a response, but often not a real answer, especially on the why. When I encountered this, I wondered whether they didn't want to give an answer or if they didn't know the answer, and it quickly because obvious that they didn't know the answer.

This is why I'm running. Like many of you, my wife and I moved to Arlington for the great schools and the great community. But our schools are in trouble, and what the board is currently doing is not enough. I think my unique skills will help provide clarity to the decision making process, and I will not stop asking questions or pushing until we start providing real answers. I think the current members of the school board care about the teachers and students. I think the other people running care as well, but caring is not enough -- you have to have a plan. I will do something different. I may fail, but it will not be for lack of trying.

Thank you if you've gotten to the end.
I'd be happy to respond to any questions.
You can see more about me and my platforms at: https://chen4arlington.org, or send me an email at chen@chen4arlington.org.

Hello everyone -- Chen Ling here.

For the person who asked, here is the link to the candidate forum hosted by APE and moderated by Jo DeVoe from ArlNow: https://vimeo.com/923302481?share=copy

I have an engineering/science/data background, with a focus on bringing visibility and understandability to complex data systems. I think that is a skill the current school board is sorely lacking.

For example, APS pays about 20% more per student than our neighboring locales, and *no one on the board knows why*. You can read the report from their Budget Advisory Council for the last several years where they call this out. We pay our teachers less -- we're on average 5th out of 8 in the area.

What they have done instead is to make small cuts uniformly across all of the schools, to the point where many schools are on a tipping point. I spoke with one principal who is losing yet another special ed teacher spot, after losing multiple teacher and staff positions in the last few years. Because of the rules, they have to get rid of their youngest teacher, who is apparently amazing. Right now they can barely provide enough special ed services to meet the needs of at need students in their school. They were down one at the beginning of the year, and the classroom teachers were not able to manage the classes because those students became too disruptive. With that extra special ed teacher, they were able to provide help for those kids and now everyone in those classes can focus on learning.

What the current board has been doing has not been enough. When you ask them questions you get a response, but often not a real answer, especially on the why. When I encountered this, I wondered whether they didn't want to give an answer or if they didn't know the answer, and it quickly because obvious that they didn't know the answer.

This is why I'm running. Like many of you, my wife and I moved to Arlington for the great schools and the great community. But our schools are in trouble, and what the board is currently doing is not enough. I think my unique skills will help provide clarity to the decision making process, and I will not stop asking questions or pushing until we start providing real answers. I think the current members of the school board care about the teachers and students. I think the other people running care as well, but caring is not enough -- you have to have a plan. I will do something different. I may fail, but it will not be for lack of trying.

Thank you if you've read to the end.
I'd be happy to respond to any questions.
You can see more about me and my platforms at: https://chen4arlington.org, or send me an email at chen@chen4arlington.org.