District overview
Alexandria City Public Schools
How Alexandria's schools are funded and governed, and what is underway now
Who pays for Alexandria's schools, and who decides?
Alexandria City Public Schools is one of Virginia's 133 school divisions and enrolls 16,442 students. Like every Virginia city division it is fiscally dependent: the School Board decides what the schools need and adopts a budget request, but it cannot levy a tax. The money arrives as an appropriation from Alexandria City Council, plus state aid distributed under Virginia's Standards of Quality formula and federal grants. In the superintendent's proposed FY 2027 budget the city appropriation is $292.27 million of a $374.47 million operating budget, so local city money carries about 78 percent of operating costs and the state and federal share is comparatively small. That is why the budget year runs as a negotiation between two elected bodies, and why the board and council meet jointly. ACPS calls its operating budget the Combined Funds budget, and separates the ten-year building programme into a Capital Improvement Program budget adopted on its own schedule.
The board proposes, the city appropriates
The FY 2027 cycle ran from a budget process resolution adopted Sept. 18, 2025 through a fiscal forecast work session, a public hearing on Jan. 27, 2026, an add/delete work session on Feb. 17, adoption on Feb. 19, a joint City Council budget work session on March 4, adjusted-budget hearings and work sessions in May, and final adoption on June 11, 2026. The board then adopted a revised FY 2027 budget on Aug. 27, 2026.
Nine members, elected three per district
The city is divided into three voting districts and three board members are elected from each, serving three-year concurrent terms. The whole board was elected in November 2024 and inducted in January 2025. A City-ACPS ad hoc committee began reviewing the election cycle and board structure in 2026.
The board is currently led by an acting superintendent
The board accepted Superintendent Dr. Melanie Kay-Wyatt's resignation on March 26, 2026 and appointed Dr. Grace Taylor as Acting Superintendent on Aug. 12, 2026. A search for a permanent superintendent is under way.
Committees do the detail work in public
Beyond full board meetings the division posts Governance, Operational Excellence, and Strategy and Accountability committee meetings, plus a Budget Advisory Committee, a Special Education Advisory Committee, a School Health Advisory Board and other advisory bodies. In the year reviewed those bodies accounted for most of the 146 posted meetings.
None of this means the division is badly run. Alexandria posts an unusually complete meeting record, with 146 meetings and 1,437 agenda items published in a single year, and it puts its capital plan, its police agreement and its facility renaming through separate public hearings rather than consent votes.
Where the division stands
Total division students reported in the superintendent's proposed FY 2027 budget summary.
Up from $22,431 in the FY 2026 final budget and $21,836 actual in FY 2025. This is a division-wide average across all funds, not a per-school allocation, so it includes transport, benefits, facilities and central services.
The City of Alexandria's $292.27 million appropriation divided by 16,442 students. The gap to the $23,248 total is state aid, federal grants, nutrition fund revenue and other sources.
Reported as $374.47M, alongside $19.18M in grants and special projects and a $12.81M school nutrition fund.
Reported as $340.37M. The board adopted the FY 2027-2036 CIP budget on Dec. 18, 2025 and adopted the CIP budget plan again on June 11, 2026.
Reported alongside 38 percent English learners, 127 native languages spoken and 118 countries of birth.
A teacher starting with a master's degree begins at $64,988. The division reports 2,731 total FTE, including 1,350 teachers, 842 support staff and 176 other licensed staff.
Counted from the board's own published meeting index. Includes full board meetings, work sessions, public hearings, joint sessions with City Council and advisory committee meetings. Four were posted and then cancelled.
Every item the board listed, including procedural ones such as roll call and the pledge.
The board approves minutes at nearly every meeting, and the index records those approvals, but the minutes files themselves sit behind BoardDocs attachment paths that are not publicly readable from outside the portal. The board's approval of minutes is on the record; the text of the minutes is not.
Major projects
George Mason Elementary School modernization
Under construction, contracts advancing through guaranteed maximum price stagesGeorge Mason Elementary School is being modernized under a series of guaranteed maximum price contract stages. The board approved a GMP 2 contract amendment on Oct. 9, 2025 specifically 'to advance the project completion on time and on budget', a further modernization contract on Dec. 18, 2025, and a GMP4 contract on March 26, 2026.
- Board approves GMP 2 contract amendment to keep the project on schedule and budget
- Board approves a further George Mason modernization contract
- Board approves the GMP4 contract
Funding
Capital Improvement Program, funded through the City of Alexandria
School boundary redistricting implementation
In implementation, with engagement continuingACPS is putting new school attendance boundaries into effect. Redistricting implementation appeared as a board monitoring item repeatedly through the year and is named twice in the superintendent's proposed FY 2027 budget priorities, once under a safe, caring and inclusive environment and once under community engagement. Budget staff flagged 'the projected impact of redistricting on overall class sizes and enrollment distribution' when weighing individual staffing requests.
- Redistricting implementation update to the board
- Redistricting update to the board
- Redistricting update to the joint City Council / School Board subcommittee
- Redistricting implementation update to the board
Funding
Operating budget, named as an FY 2027 budget priority
Superintendent search
Under way, with an acting superintendent in postThe board accepted Superintendent Dr. Melanie Kay-Wyatt's resignation on March 26, 2026, approved Amendment No. 1 to her separation agreement on Aug. 12, 2026, and appointed Dr. Grace Taylor as Acting Superintendent at the same meeting. The division's board page describes a superintendent search in progress.
- Board accepts the superintendent's resignation in closed session
- Board appoints three designees of the division superintendent, including Dr. Grace Taylor
- Board approves the acting superintendent agreement appointing Dr. Grace Taylor
Funding
Operating budget
Long Range Educational Facilities Plan
Scope of work agreed with the city; capacity pressure identified but unresolvedThe School Board and City Council are developing a Long Range Educational Facilities Plan jointly. It appeared at their joint work session in September 2025, at the joint subcommittee in October and November 2025, and as a scope of work item in March 2026. Alongside it the board reviewed a middle school capacity update and a land acquisition update in October 2025, and returned to student generation rates and enrollment projections in May 2026.
- Long Range Educational Facilities Plan at the joint City Council / School Board work session
- Board receives a middle school capacity update and a land acquisition update
- Joint subcommittee agrees the plan's scope of work
- Joint subcommittee reviews student generation and enrollment projections
Funding
Joint City Council and School Board work; no separate funding recorded in the collected record
Recent news
Built from two official sources. The first is the Alexandria City School Board's own BoardDocs meeting index, an XML feed the board publishes covering every meeting posted since 2010; the trailing-year slice, Sept. 2, 2025 to Aug. 31, 2026, contains 146 meetings and 1,437 agenda items with their categories, titles, action types and recommended actions. The second is the division's budget page on www.acps.k12.va.us, which carries the FY 2027 proposed budget book, the budget-at-a-glance summary, the budget calendar, the add/delete co-sponsorship forms recording which board members sponsored each proposed change, staff answers to board budget questions, and the enrollment projections infographic. Twenty-one documents were collected and reviewed.
Get alerts for Alexandria City Public Schools
We read every agenda, packet, and set of minutes, and write up the decisions that affect families — each one linked to the document it came from.
View alerts for this district