The proposed $845 million fiscal 2026 budget to fund Arlington Public Schools (APS) for the 2025-26 school year has again brought up concerns over how much funding should go into classrooms and how much is needed to provide central-office oversight.

Given fiscal challenges faced by the county government and school system, and the ongoing uncertainty over the region’s economic future, those concerns may be more pronounced this year.

Despite budget constraints, the APS spending package unveiled March 13 by Superintendent Francisco Durán and School Board members represents an increase of $19 million from fiscal 2025. Though modest by traditional year-over-year increases, it adds to spending that has increased almost $100 million per year since fiscal 2023.

Some of the proposed cuts , including eliminating the Integration Station program for preschoolers with special needs and reducing library aides to part-time posts, have drawn concerns about the impact of cuts on students.

Is the school system spending too much on central-office staff? ARLnow reached out for comment from APS leadership, and also has monitored discussions among residents from a number of online venues.

Catherine Ashby, the school system’s assistant superintendent for school and community relations, said the budget was designed with a classroom-first viewpoint.

“There were approximately 27 central-office staffing reductions and zero proposed central-office staffing additions to the budget,” she told ARLnow.

That equates to about 2.5% of the central-office workforce and represents a savings of $12.7 million, she said.

Reductions “span many different departments and scales, beginning at the Cabinet level with the chief operating officer position,” Ashby said. “There are also eight executive-director or director-level positions within Academics, School Support and Operations, which are either being eliminated or moved to partial grant funding.”

The proposed fiscal 2026 reductions are on top of 21 full-time-equivalent jobs eliminated in the fiscal 2025 budget, Ashby told ARLnow.

The new budget package puts a “strong focus on retaining core student supports and school-based staffing,” she said. “The only proposed new expenditures to the budget are for school-based staff including adding roughly 49 positions to support special education and English-learner students, and three new [positions] to support safety and security in schools.”

ARLnow extended the opportunity for comment to all five current School Board members, but did not receive replies.

For some in the community, the school system feels top-heavy.

Writing on Patch, local resident Thomas Puglisi said parents “should pay attention to what is happening at APS to ensure that the school system’s constant increased spending is going to their children through the staff and programs that actually benefit them.”

He went on: “Making this spending trend even more concerning is that the elected School Board is not reining it in — the School Board worked hand-in-hand with the superintendent to develop this budget. This is a first: In the past, the superintendent presented the budget to the School Board, [which] then spent weeks getting feedback from constituents.”

Others in the community also used local media to get their views across.

“Classroom-facing positions that directly impact teaching and learning in schools should be a top priority,” said civic/budget activist Suzanne Sundburg on a comment on ARLnow, where she criticized school-system leadership’s “unwillingness to reduce its overhead/administrative and infrastructure costs.”

“Cutting from the top is frequently more likely to result in larger savings that could be applied to the classroom,” Sundburg wrote. “And that is where I would look for cuts. A preschool initiative that helps students with autism and other learning/development delays/deficits better prepare to enter the classroom is a sound investment — that’s not where I would look to make cuts.”

June Prakash, president of the Arlington Education Association , told ARLnow she hopes county education leaders were taking a nuanced approach in determining staffing.

“As a union, we would never advocate for the removal or reduction of any positions,” Prakash told ARLnow. “What we do hope is that those making decisions are considering the impacts on both staff and students.”

Prakash is one of two candidates vying in the upcoming Democratic caucus for the School Board seat being vacated by Mary Kadera . Also on the ballot is Monique “Moe” Bryant.

Bryant also told ARLnow that nuance is needed if staff positions had to be cut.

“Our school system is facing some very tough choices in a really challenging budget year, but if we’ve learned anything from the DOGE approach to budgeting, it’s that we can’t just cut staff and programs by blanket percentages without taking a hard look at the real world impact,” she said.

“This is why engagement is so critical,” Bryant said. “We need informed community input to make sure that even tough budget decisions have the least impact on students.”

A public hearing on the APS budget is slated for Thursday, April 3. Once the county government finalizes its own budget and sets tax rates later that month, final approval of the school-system budget is expected May 1.

The fiscal 2026 budget goes into effect July 1.

The situation in Arlington is hardly unique among Northern Virginia school divisions in facing a challenging budget season.

In neighboring Falls Church, the School Board has scaled back the initial budget plan of Superintendent Peter Noonan to meet restraints imposed by city leadership. In Fairfax County, County Executive Bryan Hill’s proposed budget included about $150 million less in school funding than sought by Superintendent Michelle Reid.

In Arlington, the relationship between the County Board and School Board is governed by a longstanding revenue-sharing agreement. It funnels 46.8% of General Fund revenue to schools.

When the economy is roaring and county coffers are flush with cash, that’s good news for the school division. But over the past two years, when the county government has seen significant declines in the value of commercial properties, the flow of additional funding slows.

How all the budget machinations impact overall per-student spending levels in the region won’t be known until after the budgets are approved and total 2025-26 student enrollment is determined.

Arlington’s per-student spending in the current fiscal year leads Northern Virginia at $25,175, according to an analysis done by the Washington Area Boards of Education, or WABE.

Compared to its immediate neighbors, Arlington’s current spending is 6.1% more per student than is spent by Falls Church, 15.6% more than in Alexandria and 20.22% more than in Fairfax County, according to the WABE data.