Arlington School Board Interview: Reid Goldstein

1)   a) Who are you and why are you running for Arlington School Board?  

I am a 22-year resident who cares passionately about the community I live and work in - Arlington!  I am a neighbor and a friend and a taxpayer and a husband - and I'm the father of 2 girls who are Arlington Public Schools students.  Professionally, I am a management consultant and strategic planner, although my avocation for the last 15 years has been as a civic leader and activist.  I have held leadership positions in every PTA of every school my daughters have attended.  

much more on the "flip"

        At the elementary level, I worked with the Randolph PTA to resolve severe overcrowding.  As a member of the Exemplary Project Selection Committee of the Jefferson Middle School PTA, I was a leader in the adoption of the International Baccalaureate program for the middle school years.  I was on the first Arlington Public Schools Strategic Plan committee that adopted 'closing the achievement gap' as a strategic goal -- a goal that continues into our current strategic plan today. Currently, I am the Chair of the H-B Woodlawn Parent Advisory Committee.  

I've also held leadership positions in my neighborhood, in the Columbia Pike corridor and in County-wide commissions and task forces.  As President of the Douglas Park Civic Association, I completed our Neighborhood Conservation Plan to bring my civic association into the Neighborhood Conservation Program. As a result, we now have curb, gutters, sidewalks, streetlights and park improvements where there were none before.  I was President of the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization (CPRO) when we adopted the Columbia Pike Initiative.  I founded a coalition of school and neighborhood leaders so we could speak with one voice on common problems of schools, housing, and traffic.   I've been on the county's Housing Commission for 8 years, helping to create new solutions for the persistent and difficult affordable housing problem in our County.

  b) What skill sets would you bring to the School Board that would make you a valuable member?

As a long-time civic activist, advocating for schools and neighborhoods, I bring my professional skills in developing consensus in dynamic and chaotic environments with multiple stakeholders.  I have brought together divergent viewpoints to help create agreements in schools for the IB program, to resolve overcrowding, and to help craft long-term strategic planning where none previously existed.  I have experienced the history of many issues as they progressed through the Arlington Way and I also have long established relationships with many other civic leaders that help me gather and apply the lessons we have all learned.

I am also a skilled leader, with the forethought and courage to bring many divergent groups together to help craft solutions which improve the lives of many in our community, not just a small few.  Today, literally thousands of drivers every day benefit from my leadership in bringing together Arlington County, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and community members to address the problematic intersection of S. Glebe Rd and Columbia Pike.  Today there are turn lanes which have eliminated the neighborhood cut-through traffic.  

I also showed this same leadership in helping such organizations as the Columbia Pike Revitalization Organization (CPRO), which I served as President.  In creating the Columbia Pike Initiative, we engaged the community on its goals for mixed-use/mixed-income development and adopted what is recognized today as an innovative nationwide model for urban planning and controlled development meeting the needs of all residents.

I have the leadership experience to design planning processes that engage stakeholders in community-wide solutions.

2)  a) What do you believe the Arlington School Board is currently doing well?

Arlington Public Schools has recognized that it must serve the needs of a diverse set of students and families.  Due to our affluence and the relatively low percentage of households with school-age children, we are able to spend $19,000 per student each year.  This has given us the ability to have early childhood, special education, teen parenting, ESOL, New Directions and other programs in far greater depth and breadth than most other communities.    The School Board has recognized that investment in these programs enable many more students to more fully benefit from primary and secondary education on their way to becoming productive citizens.

     b) How could it be done even better?

At the recent Town Hall meeting I had with the Community Services Board, I saw that APS is a segment of a continuum that is necessary to assure that our community serves ALL its members to the best of our ability.  Attention and intervention by APS, early in the lives of students with special needs, can increase the chances of these students making an effective transition into the community.  We must do a better job of linking with the County side of that continuum and recognize that the County and APS, as community institutions, are jointly responsible for crafting the World-Class community that Arlingtonians expect.

3.

     a) What, if anything, do you believe the Arlington School Board is not currently doing well?  

     I've seen many processes over the years - like the recent boundary adjustment process and capital funds budgeting process - that have caused tremendous dissension in the community.  School Board-initiated processes have exacerbated a "civil war" approach in our neighborhoods and school communities, believing the only way for each to win is for another to lose.  What's lost is the idea that we are all one community and that our process must focus on raising the level of benefit for the WHOLE community - not for portions of the community to come out of the process as sharply unequal winners and losers.

     b) How would you address this issue/these issues if you're elected (or re-elected) to the Board?

     As a professional strategic planner, I have experience developing processes that achieve consensus among multiple stakeholders in resolving complex problems in dynamic and chaotic environments.  I look forward to bringing this experience to my work on the Arlington School Board.

4. What would you say are the top three challenges facing Arlington County school system right now, and what should be done about those challenges?

     1 - Facility Planning, Repair and Renovation

     The last APS Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) reflected poor planning and poor fiscal management.  There was simply no responsible plan to achieve all the promises made to Yorktown HS and to South Arlington sites, no plan to fix HVAC problems - simply keep on promising new facilities.  APS's big spending plans violated the County's prudent limits on debt spending, so the big plans were simply rolled forward into the 2008 bond.  Somehow the School Board thought they would be able to borrow $97M in 2008, even though they could only borrow $34M in 2006.

     All the signs were there in 2006 that the real estate bubble was already deflating, and with it our property-tax revenue that pays bond debt.  Only, one group was not seeing it: the School Board.  Now it's all come true: APS has to delay construction on Yorktown HS until they see how much money they can spend (!?!).  Jefferson Middle School is being kicked to the curb, AGAIN.  And while almost no one in APS will admit it, Wakefield HS can't start construction for nearly a decade.  There simply will not be sufficient borrowing capacity available, what with a nationwide recession, decreased sales and property tax revenues, and significantly increased costs in fuel and construction materials.  

     Despite these fiscal realities and planning failures, the School Board is blithely planning a FIFTH high school to be shoehorned into the Career Center site, despite 3 other uses on the same small property.  

     The sad truth is that the CIP has been used in the worst way - as a political tool to curry favor with the voters.  

     Call me old-fashioned, but I believe in sound fiscal management!

     Among the ideas I think we should consider are:

         o Authorize a real, no-foolin' engineering analysis on the best way to bring our facilities to the educational adequacy standards that we require.  Create an engineering basis for the decision, not a political one: is it repair, upgrade, renovation, or demolition and reconstruction that's required?  For too long we've been led to believe that new facilities are the only way to achieve productive schools.  Everyone's expectations have been raised that these new facilities are a heartbeat away.
         o Use the expertise in the Arlington community to investigate how public/private partnerships can be applied to this situation.
         o Re-think the 62%/38% County/APS split on bonding capacity - the historical spending has nothing to do with upcoming needs.
         o Convince the County that they are a partner in meeting needs for the ENTIRE community and to include joint-use facilities like Jefferson and the Career Center in its CIP plans.

     A current School Board initiative which is more than a day late and a dollar short is the HVAC Task Force.  APS is finally seeking the advice of experts for a problem which parents and teachers have been screaming about for years.  This should have been done years ago - now it will be very difficult to find the resources.  The sad fact is that APS's own consultants have documented these problems for many years in studies submitted to the Superintendent and the School Board.  Despite having to close parts of schools down, despite air quality problems, despite repeated complaints by PTAs to individual School Board members, little was done.  Now the School Board proposes a Task Force to solve a problem which literally thousands of office building managers are able to address every day - how to create a habitable environment for the occupants of the building for which they are responsible.

     2 - Aligning the Curriculum to the Realities of a New Global Economy.  

     This is the environment in which our children, during their adult lives, will live and work.  We must continue to expand the skills and capabilities children will need as they become professionals and leaders in adulthood.  My three focus areas to meet this priority are to

     (a) broaden foreign language curriculum beginning in elementary school

     (b) expand the availability of early childhood instruction, and

     (c) close the college gap.

     I will broaden the foreign language curriculum in 3 ways:

         o Start foreign language education in elementary school
         o Offer foreign languages relevant to the 21st century needs of our students, our community and our nation
         o Introduce non-classroom foreign language opportunities by establishing connections to Arlington-based language resources, such as the Department of State's Foreign Language Institute.  By using their curriculum and testing materials, we can enable families to help our young people learn the mother tongue of their heritage, not lose it.  By far, the greatest opportunity to learn a foreign language in Arlington is not in a French or Spanish class, but at home, where 100 languages are spoken by the families of our students.

     I will expand early childhood instruction by:

         o Expanding the number of seats available for pre-K children
         o Adding money to the early childhood budget
         o Locating early childhood programs most convenient for families to use them.

     Early childhood, birth through third grade, is a critical time for the formation of a child's ability to respond to instruction - to absorb it and to use it to their advantage.  Too many children step through the classroom door on the first day of kindergarten not ready to learn.  A World Class school system remedies this while setting these students on the path to social, economic and personal success.

     I will focus on closing the 'college gap.'

     Historically, education has been the path to social and economic upward mobility in America.  While our low-income and newcomer families look forward to an Arlington-standard quality of education, this is not enough in the 21st Century.  We must encourage and enable a college track for those with the ability and the interest to attend.  Too often it is the second-generation who attends college because the first-generation is conditioned by family history and lack the process know-how.  We must show our newcomer families that the path to the American Dream that education offers is achievable by their children, too.

     I will close the 'College Gap' for newly-arrived and low-income families by:

         o counseling elementary school families about the necessity and availability of college
         o preparing children in middle school with the right pre-requisite courses to pursue challenging college-track courses
         o supporting pro-college activities and planning through an aggressive identification of students needing help for the college enrollment decision

     3 - Attracting, Retaining and Rewarding a World-Class Teaching Force.

     A World-Class teaching force is critical to achieving a World-Class school system.  A World-Class school system recognizes the value of its teachers - recognizes and supports.  Teachers are a school system's most important resource.  Teachers connect the curriculum to the community.  Everyone has a memory of an outstanding teacher - one who inspired them to love a subject or to achieve a higher grade or even one responsible for their career field trajectory.  "Everything is interesting," a teacher of mine said, "it just depends on how it's presented."

     We need to attract, retain and enrich our teachers - but there is a lot of competition.  Loudoun County will build 20 new schools in the next 10 years and housing is cheaper there.  We can attract new, young teachers by offering a superior compensation package.  Living in Arlington is more desirable, more dynamic, more exciting than living in Loudoun.  But it's also more expensive.  We can retain our excellent teachers with assistance to help them live in Arlington.  And we can enrich our teachers by supporting and promoting professional development opportunities, including the National Board Certification program - the industry standard for professional teaching excellence.  

     I will invest in our teachers by:

         o boosting housing assistance for Arlington's "Live Near Your Work" program for the APS workforce
         o promoting teacher professional development by bearing the costs of National Board Certification and by rewarding Board-certified teachers with pay increases.

5. Anything else you'd like to add about your vision for the Arlington County school system?

Community service is a necessary component of educating the future citizen.  There is a symbiotic relationship between the schools and the community.  Schools are the most important factor in the perception of a community's livability and desirability.  Our community generously contributes to the schools financially - but the schools do not require students to give back.  That's left to individual initiative or an 'Aha!' realization sometime in adulthood.

To their credit, there are many ad hoc community service efforts by Arlington schools, classes and teachers.  Providing an institutional structure would more effectively join the servers to the services.

I want to build a community service component into the curriculum at all levels.  Even young children can learn that their contribution can have an effect.  At the upper grades, there are nearly 9000 middle and high school students in Arlington.  Organizing even a single day that devotes them to community service - eg, reading to younger children, making meals for the homeless, cleaning up a stream - would have an enormous effect on a community as small as Arlington.

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