Largely due to parents' misunderstanding or misconceptions of the relationship between Arlington Tech and the school system's broader Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs, school officials are again reconsidering how the new Grace Hopper building housing Arlington Tech and the Career Center programs will be used. This comes at a time when nearly all STEM education funding and state and federal priorities are explicitly connected to developing the future technical workforce.
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Amid controversy, School Board delays programming decisions at new Career Center space
School Board members are giving themselves extra time before making final decisions on rearranging the locations of some non-traditional secondary programs.
Rather than being taken up the first week of February, as would be the typical cycle following its Jan. 22 presentation as an information item, final discussion and vote will be taken two weeks later.
The delay will allow for more community engagement, School Board Chair Bethany Zecher Sutton said at the meeting.
Waiting until the Feb. 19 meeting for final action will “give us four weeks to continue to hear from the community, engage with staff and make sure we have done all of our homework,” Zecher Sutton said.
In November, Superintendent Francisco Durán and staff outlined a plan to create several new specialty secondary programs and to group them with existing programs in a number of school buildings.
Of the four primary pieces of the staff package, the most controversy has been generated by a plan to move students in the Langston High-School Continuation Program from their current home at the Langston-Brown Community Center into the Grace Hopper Center, the forthcoming home of the Arlington Career Center.
Most of that new building, set to open in August, will accommodate the Arlington Tech program. Since November, parents at Arlington Tech have voiced concerns about how the Langston program would be integrated into the building’s operations.
A number of concerned parents and other advocates used the public-comment period on Jan. 22 to voice ongoing unease about the proposal. Many were concerned about what they saw as a ready-fire-aim approach by staff in coming up with a plan without gathering community input.
Lindsay Kitay, the parent of an Arlington Tech student, said the proposal was being pushed through with “limited meaningful engagement with the various school communities that would be affected.”
“Students, parents and staff have been asked to comment on fragments of information rather than a complete plan,” Kitay said. “Decisions of this magnitude … deserve transparency.”
Another speaker, Dima Hakura, said county staff was merely paying “lip service to transparency” and not detailing how the various programs designed for the Grace Hopper Center would interact with one another.
“How a program is structured or administered plays a big role in its success or failure, and public input can highlight considerations that staff have overlooked,” she said.
The issue of public engagement resurfaced later in the four-hour Board meeting, when Board members were briefed by staff on the proposal.
“There’s a disconnect” between what staff sees as sufficient outreach and what the community expects, Board member Miranda Turner said.
“That’s a concern,” she said.
Turner’s views were amplified by Monique “Moe” Bryant, who said that “we have the ability to course-correct.”
“Many members of the community feel that they were not heard,” she said, pressing staff to do better in coming weeks.
Kimberley Graves, the school system’s chief of school support, said efforts would be made.
“There are always opportunities to do better,” she said. “We need to hear more — we need to circle back.”
Under existing school-system policies, it appears to be an open question whether a School Board vote is required for the staff proposals to take effect. Zecher Sutton said one would occur, regardless.
The Langston program is open to students who are at least 15 years old and have reached at least the 10th grade. It provides “flexibility in how and when students complete their high school education, tailored to their unique needs,” school officials say on the Langston website.
Students can earn up to eight credits per year, with graduation ceremonies in January and June each year.
If the staff plan is approved, the expanding Arlington Tech program would share the Grace Hopper building not only with the Langston program, but also a new Multilingual Pathways Program and the existing Program for Employment Preparedness and Teen Parenting Program.
Career and technical education (CTE) programming would move with the Arlington Tech program from the existing Career Center building to the new facility, located across the parking lot.
In remarks that capped the lengthy meeting, Zecher Sutton said she had lingering questions about how the varied programs planned for the Grace Hopper Center would be administered.
But she said she was puzzled about concerns by Arlington Tech parents about the impact of moving the relatively small Langston Program into the building.
“We already colocated a number of programs at the Career Center,” Zecher Sutton said.
Incorporating the Langston program into the building would not take space away from Arlington Tech or impact its planned expansion, staff said. But that was not the lone concern from some who have voiced concerns.
Having two non-complementary programs like Arlington Tech and Langston sharing space could prove an administrative challenge, speaker Ted Black said.
“It likely diverts energy and efforts to make things work, rather than to focus on innovating for the future,” he told Board members.
After the meeting, the Arlington Tech Advisory Committee (ATAC) said it remains convinced the superintendent’s proposal is a step in the wrong direction.
Moving the Langston program from its current self-contained home at Langston-Brown Community Center to a larger school facility likely would negatively impact its students, ATAC said in a statement addressing the matter.
“Langston is a successful program that serves students who benefit from a smaller learning environment, individualized classroom support, flexibility during periods of mental health, grief [or] health challenges or simply wanting a faster pace of classes,” the statement read in part.
To date, there seems to have been little input from current Langston students, parents or other advocates on their views about a potential move.
In the statement penned by its chair, Jody Al-Saigh, ATAC said that if that input occurs, and if there is a groundswell of support for moving to the new building, the organization would be willing to back it:
“If the Langston community — through a transparent and open community engagement process — supports the move to the Grace Hopper Center, ATAC stands ready to support a transition co-created and led by Langston and ACC students, families and staff.”
Even if that occurs, the organization continues to have concerns about the administrative structure within the building. ATAC voiced support for one principal/director overseeing the entire building, rather than separate programs having their own leadership structures.
“This integrated one-school model has thrived [at the Career Center] under the leadership of its current principal,” the organization said.
Also still an open question is how career and technical education courses at the building would be administered, and whether any student groups would receive priority status in signing up for them.
Board member Zuraya Tapia-Hadley praised the county’s CTE offerings, and pressed school administrators toward “opening up all those opportunities to all students.”
Despite controversy swirling around the Arlington Tech/Langston part of the staff proposal, some of the other facets have won praise from Board members and the public.
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