July 2, 2018—Today, the Arlington School Board held its annual organizational meeting for the 2018-19 school year and elected Reid Goldstein as Chair and Tannia Talento as Vice Chair. The terms for the new Chair and Vice Chair begin immediately and will continue until June 30, 2019.
Goldstein thanked his School Board colleagues for the opportunity to serve as Chair and emphasized that the Board will continue its focus on creating successful outcomes for APS students and retaining top talent, while addressing enrollment growth and other key priorities in the year ahead.
“We have another big year of dynamic activity ahead of us and are committed to keeping the focus on student success as we address our relentless enrollment growth and other important issues,” said Goldstein. “We have 10,000 more students now than 10 years ago, and we are growing at a rate of one middle school a year with 8,000 more students entering APS in the next 10 years.”
Additionally, Goldstein discussed the challenges associated with being one of the geographically smallest counties in the nation, yet densely populated with little available land to expand APS school facilities. He highlighted many of the important issues and priorities that the Board will be addressing in 2018-19, which include:
- Hiring and supporting high quality teachers to keep student success at the core;
- Finding space and funding for facilities expansion;
- Investing in seat expansion in the right places at the right time;
- More effective and frequent communications internally and externally;
- Engaging more new families in APS; and
- Stretching finite resources.
Goldstein closed his remarks by stating that APS has the talent, resources and motivation to make student success happen, along with an engaged and supportive community. “Our chief activity is creating successful outcomes for our students, and we accomplish this by recruiting and retaining a high-quality workforce, by focusing our financial resources on low class sizes, and by providing a significant array of services to our students. Student success has earned APS an enviable reputation, and student success is what we are, need to be and will continue to be focused on.”
Reid Goldstein joined the School Board on Jan. 1, 2016. He has lived in Arlington for over 30 years and has two daughters who graduated from APS. As the son of two public school teachers, Goldstein has a deep commitment to public education and an extensive record of advocacy and volunteerism to his neighborhood, to APS and to the greater Arlington community. Prior to his election to the School Board, he served on the Advisory Council on Instruction, Superintendent’s Strategic Planning Committee, County Council of PTAs, Chair of the H-B Woodlawn Parent Advisory Committee, Arlington Civic Federation Schools Committee, and was an active member of the parent-teacher organizations in all of his children’s schools.
Tannia Talento joined the Arlington School Board on January 1, 2017. She is a longtime advocate for schools and the community, and previously served on several key Arlington Public Schools citizen committees, including the Career Center Parent Advisory Committee, the joint county and schools Facility Study Committee, the Superintendent’s Master Planning Working Group, and the ESOL/HILT Citizen’s Advisory Committee. Born and raised in the DC area, Talento is a proud Latina American born to immigrant parents from Guatemala. She built her advocacy career by mentoring young adults in Arlington and helping immigrant and minority students and their families navigate Arlington Public Schools and Northern Virginia Community College pathways. Professionally, Talento spent 15 years in the legal field as key support staff in major corporate and international law firms. She is currently a Board Member for The Dream Project and a member of the Arlington NAACP chapter.
Next School Board Meeting:
The next School Board meeting will be held on July 17 at 7:00 p.m. The agenda will be posted one week before the meeting on BoardDocs.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Citizens who want to comment on any items discussed at the School Board meeting should email the Board at school.board@apsva.us or call 703-228-6015. Citizens may call 703-228-2400 on the Monday after the School Board meetings to listen to a meeting summary. School Board meetings are also broadcast live on Comcast Cable Channel 70 and Verizon FiOS Channel 41; live-streamed on the APS website, and re-broadcast on Fridays at 9 p.m. and Mondays at 7:30 p.m. immediately following the meeting. All materials and minutes will be posted to the website at aps2016.apsva.us/schoolboard upon School Board approval at a subsequent meeting.
