ACPS FY27 Budget: Where Things Stand After the May 12 Public Hearing and Work Session

May 14, 2026

By: Members of the Strategy and Accountability Committee: Kelly Carmichael Booz (District B), Christopher Harris (District C), and Ryan Reyna (District A)

On Tuesday, May 12, the School Board held a public hearing on the Superintendent's Adjusted FY27 Combined Funds Budget, followed by our first work session on the adjusted budget. Both surfaced important questions that will shape the decisions ahead. We want to take a few minutes to walk through what happened, what is changing in the timeline, and how families and staff can stay engaged as we move toward final budget adoption on June 11.

This is a hard budget cycle. The reductions on the table are real, the trade-offs are difficult, and the structural pressures driving them are not going away after FY27. We are committed to working through this thoughtfully, and to being as transparent as possible with the community about where things stand at every step.

ACPS FY27 Budget: How We Got Here. A Quick Process Refresher

Here is the ACPS FY27 budget timeline sequence:

• October 6, 2025: City Manager's Budget Guidance. Each fall, the City Manager provides ACPS with preliminary funding guidance, an estimate of how much City revenue is expected to be available for the ACPS operating transfer. This is a planning figure, not a final appropriation. The City Manager's October 6 guidance asked ACPS to limit its operating transfer request to a 1.5% increase. This guidance was reaffirmed by City Council on November 12, 2025.

• November 1, 2025: Council Budget Retreat. ACPS presented City Council with the projected FY27 cost drivers, which include $8.9 million in step increases, $5.8 million in market rate adjustments and COLA, $3.1 million in healthcare premiums, and $1.5 million in non-personnel inflation, for a total of $19.3 million in new costs. These cost drivers were above the projected $4.2 million in new City revenue at the 1.5% guidance level. The presentation identified a $15.1 million funding gap and outlined potential expenditure reductions, including elementary class size changes, kindergarten instructional assistant ratios, English Learner staff/student ratios, and a shift in employee/employer healthcare cost share, as ways to close the gap if the City appropriation remained at the 1.5% guidance.

• January 22, 2026: Superintendent's Proposed Budget. The Superintendent proposed an FY27 operating budget with a City appropriation request of $292.27 million, approximately $5.6 million (2.0%) above the City Manager's guidance. The $5.6 million increase was directed to the staff increases identified in the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA).

• February 2026: School Board Approval. The Board approved a budget request that reflected the Superintendent's proposal with some modifications, but did not increase the total request above the Superintendent's proposed $292.27 million.

• February 24, 2026: City Manager's Proposed Budget to Council. The City Manager presented his proposed FY27 budget to the City Council, projecting overall City General Fund revenue growth of 2.4%. Within that overall growth, the proposed ACPS operating transfer was $286.6 million, a $4.2 million (1.5%) increase over FY26. This was consistent with the October guidance, and $5.6 million (2.0%) below the Superintendent's request. The 1.5% growth in the ACPS transfer was below the 2.4% growth in overall City revenue, which means the share of total City revenue allocated to schools was slightly less than the growth of the city. Had the ACPS transfer grown at the same 2.4% rate as overall City revenue, the operating transfer would have been approximately $2.5 million higher.

• April 29, 2026: City Council Appropriation. On April 29, Council adopted the City Manager's proposed transfer of $286.6 million, or $5.6 million (1.9%) below the School Board's approved request.  As a lead-up to the Council’s budget adoption, City Council considered the City Manager's proposed City budget and the School Board's approved budget request. Under the Council's own budget process, any Council member can propose an "add/delete" amendment to modify the City Manager's proposed allocation to ACPS, for example, to increase or decrease the operating transfer. Add/delete amendments require two Council co-sponsors to be considered during the budget approval process. No amendment with co-sponsor support was proposed to increase the allocation to ACPS. This created a gap that must be closed before final ACPS budget adoption.

• Spring 2026: Healthcare Cost Update. Between the Board's February approval and the Superintendent's adjusted budget, the projected FY27 healthcare costs increased by approximately $2 million compared with the original budget assumptions. Combined with the $5.6 million shortfall in the Council appropriation, this brought the total amount the Superintendent had to close in the adjusted budget to approximately $7.6 million.

• May 7, 2026: Superintendent's Adjusted Budget. The Superintendent presented her adjusted FY27 budget showing how staff propose to close the gap.

• May 12, 2026: Public Hearing and First Work Session. The Board held its public hearing and first work session on the adjusted budget.

• June 11, 2026: Final Budget Adoption.

This is where we are now: between the Superintendent's adjusted budget and the Board's add/delete process.

ACPS FY27 Budget: What Happened on May 12

The public hearing brought parents, educators, community partners, and the Education Association of Alexandria (EAA) to the podium. Speakers raised concerns about the proposed shift in healthcare premium costs, the rollback of compensation enhancements included in the tentative collective bargaining agreement, the proposed elimination of ACPS funding for Communities in Schools of Northern Virginia, and the balance between central office and school-based reductions.

In the work session that followed, CFO Dominic Turner walked the Board through the major components of the adjusted budget, including where the reductions are being made, how staffing is structured between central office and school-based positions, what the proposed compensation changes look like, and the rising healthcare costs that have shaped much of this conversation. 

Compensation: Original Tentative Agreement vs. Superintendent's Adjusted Budget

Component	Original Tentative Agreement (March 2026)	Superintendent's Adjusted Budget (May 2026)
Step increase for all eligible employees	✓ Yes	✓ Yes
Additional step for Licensed staff hired 2010–2011	✓ Yes	✗ No
Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) — Licensed	2.0%	1.25%
Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) — ESP	3.5%	1.25%
$2,000 longevity bonus for ESP every 5 years	✓ Yes (~$220,000)	✗ No
Total compensation package	$12.73 million	$10.5 million

ACPS FY27 Budget: A Note on the Proposed Position Reductions

Two clarifications from the May 12 work session are worth sharing because they affect how the proposed reductions are likely to be experienced by current ACPS staff and students.

Classroom ratios are not changing next year. ACPS classrooms have been operating at 24/26/28 students per homeroom (kindergarten/grades 1–2/grades 3–5) for the past two years. The adjusted budget changes the budgeting formula, which had been 22/24/26, to match the ratios classrooms are already running at.  This is not a new physical ratio for next year. A family walking into an ACPS elementary classroom in September will see the same class sizes they have been seeing.

The proposed reductions of 27 homeroom teachers and 6 kindergarten instructional assistants reflect vacant positions, not terminations. The vast majority of these reductions are being handled through natural attrition — retirements, resignations, and transfers — with placement options identified for the small number of employees affected. The vacancies themselves reflect both declining enrollment and the proposed budget reductions.

This is not the same as saying these reductions have no impact. Not backfilling vacancies still affects future staffing levels, classroom dynamics, and the workload of remaining staff. But it does mean current ACPS employees in these roles are not losing their jobs. The reductions on the central office side, by contrast, include filled positions, meaning some current ACPS employees there will be affected.

A Note on Central Office Staffing

One important clarification from the May 12 work session was how central office FTEs are counted. ACPS CFO Dominic Turner explained that the ACPS budget shows approximately 420 FTEs budgeted at central office, but about half of those positions, roughly 211 FTEs, work in our schools directly every day, not in the central office building. These include special education teachers and instructional assistants assigned to specific students, occupational and physical therapists, speech-language pathologists, English Learner teachers, technology integration specialists, building engineers, substance abuse counselors, and others. They are budgeted centrally because their assignments shift across schools based on student need or because they serve multiple buildings.

This distinction matters when evaluating proposed reductions. The roughly 213 FTEs that work in the central office building, Finance, Human Resources, Communications, Facilities and Operations, Technology, Community Relations, and the School Board Office, are a different set of positions from the itinerant school-based staff. Several of the 97 questions seek a clearer breakdown of these two categories.

The 97 Board Questions and What's Coming Friday

Ahead of the May 12 work session, the Board collectively submitted 97 written questions to staff. These cover a wide range of topics. Examples of the topic areas asked include: questions on the proposed position and program cuts, including the rationale for specific eliminations and the criteria used to choose them; vacant positions across the division and how long they have remained open; healthcare cost trends, the proposed shift in employee/employer cost-sharing, and comparisons to surrounding jurisdictions; central office staffing patterns and comparisons to other Northern Virginia divisions; technology spending and the potential for reducing 1-to-1 devices in lower grades; the structural drivers of cost growth in future years; and what staff would recommend restoring first if additional state or local funding materializes.

The board questions and the staff's written responses will be posted publicly on Friday, May 15. 

ACPS FY27 Budget: A Change to the Budget Timeline

At the Tuesday, May 12 budget work session, the Board agreed to make two adjustments to the budget calendar to give the Board, staff, and community time to digest the answers to those 97 questions before voting on changes.

First, the work session originally scheduled for Thursday, May 14, has been canceled. In its place, the Board will hold its next budget work session next week on Wednesday, May 20. This shift gives the Board time to digest the staff's answers to the Board questions before the next work session. The next budget work session can then focus on substantive follow-up questions to help better inform potential add/deletes.

Second, the add/delete submission deadline is being pushed back by four days. Add/delete submissions, the process where the Board can propose modifications to the Superintendent's adjusted budget, were originally due May 18. The new deadline is Friday, May 22, after our second budget work session.

The final budget adoption date of June 11 is unchanged. This timeline shift keeps us on track for adoption while giving the Board an additional week to do this work carefully. The extra week will not change the funding gap or the hard choices. But it does mean that the proposals the Board ultimately considers on add/delete will be better informed.

ACPS FY27 Budget: How to Stay Engaged

The next two weeks are the most consequential of this budget cycle, and we will also need support for next year’s budget. Here is how to follow along and weigh in:

• Read the staff answers when they post on Friday, May 15. They will be available on the ACPS website.

• Watch or attend the next budget work session on Wednesday, May 20. All Board meetings are recorded and available for public viewing.

• Submit feedback by email to the Board at any time: board@acps.k12.va.us.

• Speak at an upcoming School Board meeting. Public comment is available at regular meetings.

• Invite Board members to speak at PTA meetings, civic association meetings, or other community gatherings.

• Advocate for sustained funding during next year's budget cycle and beyond.

The work between now and June 11 is to find every recoverable dollar without sacrificing what happens in the classroom, and to be straightforward with our community about what this allocation will and will not allow us to do. We are also waiting on the Virginia state budget and any potential additional funding implications, which we expect to know within the next couple of weeks.

Public education works because the community invests in it with attention, with advocacy, and with sustained support for the local funding that makes our schools possible. ACPS serves roughly 16,000 students, and the choices made in this budget cycle and in cycles to come will be shaped as much by what families, educators, and residents tell their elected officials as by anything the Board or Council does in a meeting room. This is hard work, and we cannot do it well without you.

Kelly Carmichael Booz, District B

Budget Advisory Committee (BAC) Board Liaison

ACPS School Board Member

Chris Harris, District C

Vice Chair, ACPS School Board

Ryan Reyna, District A

Chair, Strategy and Accountability Committee

ACPS School Board Member