The race for Elaine S. Furlow's seat on the five-member Arlington School Board is expected to narrow by one contender on Saturday when the Arlington County Democratic Committee holds a caucus to determine whom it will endorse in the November election.
Jim Rock, president of the Yorktown High School PTA, and Ed Fendley, president of the Drew Model School PTA, are vying for the Democratic endorsement. Others in the race for Furlow's seat are Bill Barker, a retired civilian Navy employee who is hoping to win the Republican party endorsement, and Cecelia Espenoza, an independent who is PTA president at Claremont Immersion Elementary School.
Under Virginia law, school boards are nonpartisan and candidates run as independents, but both major political parties usually endorse candidates.
Furlow, who is vacating her seat after eight years to pursue a career in book editing, has not endorsed anyone. Her seat may be the first of several board turnovers after several years with little change. Board Chair Libby Garvey, who was reelected last fall, will give up her seat early if she wins the race for the 45th District seat in the Virginia House of Delegates.
The candidates praised the school system, whose three high schools, five middle schools, 22 elementary schools and five specialty programs are well regarded academically and attract a diverse group of students. But they noted areas where it could improve.
Fendley, a career State Department officer with four children in Arlington schools, said he would push for more foreign language instruction in elementary schools, as well as the addition of "strategic" foreign languages such as Arabic and Chinese.
He also said that as a board member, he would work to improve physical fitness and student health in schools and strengthen ties between the schools and the community. "Eighty-five percent of households don't have children in our schools," he said, adding that when new facilities are built, "they should be broad centers of education; that opens them up to use by recreation groups, civic groups, and so on."
Rock, a vice president of a consulting firm who has two children at Yorktown High School, said he would concentrate on keeping class sizes small, promoting good nutrition in schools and "getting our arms around the budget."
Rock referred specifically to problems with plans for the new Washington-Lee High School. Construction estimates for the project have risen from $80.7 million to $93.1 million in the last nine months. No construction company has bid on the project yet. Also, designs for the four-story building would make it nearly 30 feet taller than the county's height limit, forcing the school system to seek a zoning change from the county.
"I think the School Board needs someone who's going to take a good, hard look at the issue and raise the tough questions, and not be worried about embarrassing the power structure in Arlington," Rock said, adding that as a political "outsider," he would do that.
Rock and Fendley have sparred recently over whether Fendley supports changing the rules of admission to Arlington Traditional School, a magnet school. ATS draws students from across the county and has a waiting list, but in January, Fendley, who lives near the school, spoke before the School Board in favor of allowing a small number of homes in the school's immediate vicinity to have preferential admission there.
"I think this is a bad idea," Rock said, adding that it would cut South Arlington children out of the popular program and drive up property values for the homes included.
Fendley said that as a candidate, he has not proposed any changes to the program. "This isn't a campaign issue for me," he said, adding that he strongly supports countywide programs such as Arlington Traditional School.
But he added that he was open to discussion. "If a family living near a public elementary school wants their child to have preferential access, then my approach would be to open a community dialogue with all parents," he said.
Barker, who has a daughter at Washington-Lee, joined Rock in criticizing the cost of the school's reconstruction and its design problems. "How did we wind up designing a facility that doesn't even meet code?" he said.
He added that more schools should be meeting the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act and doing more to close the "achievement gap" among ethnic groups. "It's narrowing a little bit, but not as much as it could be."
Espenoza, a senior general counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice who has a fourth-grader at Claremont Elementary, said she also would seek to close the achievement gap and added that she would push for programs -- such as police ride-alongs and visits to community colleges -- that show adolescents positive alternatives to joining gangs.
She added that the fact that she is Latina would help to the district's large Spanish-speaking population. Thirty-one percent of the district's 18,522 students are Hispanic. "There's no one that looks like them, there's no one that necessarily understands," she said. "Parents feel they can talk to me."
