Alexandria’s school board approved its budget for the upcoming school year at a meeting February 26, despite receiving mixed reactions from school staff and students, with many saying that the funds set aside for a teacher pay raise were too low.
However, in the citywide budget, Alexandria’s city manager Jim Parajon’s proposed funds for the school district are $7.1 million short of what the school board requested, meaning that teachers may receive even less than what was expected from the school board’s budget.
The school board’s budget included a “step increase” and a 1 percent market rate adjustment — or MRA — which aims to keep pay competitive in comparison to neighboring counties. Alexandria City Public Schools’ chief financial officer, Dominic Turner, previously told Theogony ACPS treats an MRA as a way to adjust salaries for inflation, so it acts as a cost-of-living-adjustment, or COLA, as well.
The step system is intended to recognize improved performance as staff gain experience. Each year a teacher is employed, they typically raise a step and receive a higher salary, up until a maximum of step 22 or 23, depending on their teaching degree — though the school district did not provide this increase multiple times in the 2010s. This year’s budget increases the maximum step by one, enabling educators to eventually receive higher salaries, though there will be little change for those on lower steps.
While each of these moves improves teacher pay, some feel that they are the bare minimum. And since Parajon’s budget does not fully fund the school board’s request, it is up to ACPS to decide where to cut funds, which could lead to an even smaller increase in pay.
“I appreciated some of the raises for teachers and staff, but it didn’t feel to me that it went far enough,” said social studies teacher Shannon Campos-Dowdy about the school board’s budget.
One issue that Campos-Dowdy and others had with the budget is the inconsistency between the MRA and the current rate of inflation. In this past year, the U.S. inflation rate has increased about 3%, but this year’s MRA provides teachers with a 1% increase.
“It’s all just about if you can afford to live in the community that you want to work in. And a lot of people who work at ACPS cannot afford to live in this community,” said Campos-Dowdy.
Teachers faced a discrepancy like this with last year’s budget as well, resulting in major backlash from staff. Campos-Dowdy said that she believed ACPS staff deserved acknowledgment of their advocacy in this year’s budget. But other teachers had different reactions.
Gabriel Elias, an ACHS IA teacher who led an online advocacy campaign last budget cycle — ultimately leading to the school board adding a COLA — said he was not surprised when this year’s budget came out, as he understands the school district and city have other priorities they must invest in.
“Last year I got to see how the system works and the difficulties that a lot of people in city jobs and school jobs go through,” said Elias. “The thing that made me really not surprised this year is that it’s just a difficult situation, with all the expenses we have. Because we’re also a very expensive school district.”
Forty-six percent of students in ACPS are designated as “english learners,” also known as EL students. This statistic is much higher than other districts. For example, in the 2023-24 school year only 21 percent of public school stundents in Fairfax County were ELs, in the 2024-25 school year only 14 percent of public school students in Loudoun County Students were ELs and in the 2022-23 school year only 20% of public school students in Arlington County were ELs.
The high rate of EL students — in addition to other unique costs for ACPS, including a four-campus high school — contributes to how ACPS decides to distribute the budget across the district, as it only has a set amount of money provided from the City Council.
“To fund any salary enhancement, [the funds] must be offset by a corresponding revenue enhancement and/or an offsetting expenditure reduction from another area,” said Turner, the CFO of ACPS, in a written statement.
“A change that may ‘negatively’ affect one or a few staff may, in turn, provide a great benefit to a multitude of students, staff and the school division,” he said in the statement.
Turner explained that there are many factors that need to be considered when making the budget and that can lead to making hard sacrifices.
“The challenge … is rooted in feasibility. Is it feasible to project a revenue increase enough to fund a requested salary enhancement,” he said. “Likewise, how would it be feasible to reduce expenditures without having a detrimental impact to students and/or staff in another area.”
Some teachers believe that these changes will have harmful effects on teacher retention and recruitment, especially when compared to the budgets of surrounding districts — Fairfax County’s school district, for example, has proposed a 7% increase in teacher pay. ACPS, however, claimed that retention is about more than just the pay.
“Retention is influenced by a variety of factors, many of which are personal to each individual educator,” said Turner in the written statement. “We remain committed to fostering an environment where teachers feel valued, supported, and empowered to grow professionally, while recognizing that each educator’s decision to stay is shaped by a combination of factors.”
Nevertheless, some said they feel the best proof that teachers are valued ultimately comes down to the pay.
“I believe that a budget is your value statement,” said Campos-Dowdy. “You’re saying what your values are as a school, based on what you’re investing your money in. People do read into that and so you have to stand by how much you invest.
At a time when student focus is slipping and there is a nationwide teacher shortage, many students agree that showing teachers they are appreciated is important now more than ever. In the past several years, increasing numbers of students have experienced empty classrooms.
“Having a teacher, especially a core teacher, gone for a long time can really have lasting effects on students,” said junior Laura Barry-Lenger, who didn’t have an Algebra 2 teacher for a quarter of the school year. “When we finally got a teacher, the class started to begin to catch up but whenever I would ask the other kids with different teachers what they were doing, I wouldn’t have a clue what they were talking about.”
As the citywide budget has not yet been approved, it is unclear how much teacher’s will ultimately receive. The completed budget will be voted on at the end of April, so for the next month, the City is hosting public meetings and hearings to discuss the final decisions.
Until then, teachers like Campos-Dowdy still feel that their voices can be heard.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I also don’t think that teachers and educators should think that it’s out of their control,” said Campos-Dowdy. “It’s up to us to go to the school board and to speak out and to advocate for ourselves.”
