In a world where tenants are departing and downsizing commercial office space in droves, why is the staff leadership of the Arlington school system trying to rent more of it?
That was a question not just taxpayers, but several School Board members, seem to have as a proposal moves forward for the school system to spend $186,000 next year – and more every succeeding year – to rent additional office space in its leased headquarters facility.
The proposal, which also would involve spending to set up and furnish the additional space, is set for action by the School Board tonight [Aug. 3], but based on discussions held July 20, things could get interesting.
School Board member Mary Kadera, speaking at the July 20 meeting, suggested the staff proposal seemed to fly in the face of current realities.
“In the larger world, there’s this trend where you’re remote-working or you’re hybrid-working or you don’t have a dedicated office with your name on the door any more – you’re sharing space,” she said, encouraging staff to “think about more flexible ways of using the space we have.”
Not done there, Kadera said that when she walks through the school-system headquarters, “I see a lot of cubicles and other spaces that are not occupied at every moment of the day.” (Those occupants probably are out working in the schools, she added.)
Superintendent Francisco Durán and top school administrators are seeking authorization to occupy an additional 4,881 square feet of space in the Sequoia Plaza II office building near Washington Boulevard in the Penrose community. The school system’s central offices have been there for about a decade, currently occupying 141,000 square feet of space spread across four floors.
Adding the additional space – recently vacated by the March of Dimes – would allow more personnel to be brought in from other locations and permit the consolidation of departments and the cohabiting of staff with similar job responsibilities.
“The goal always was, as best possible, to bring various departments together,” said Durán, who at times seemed to be swimming upstream against School Board skepticism.
Durán said the consolidation was a “much, much more effective way to work together,” but that didn’t much impress School Board member Reid Goldstein, who during his eight years in office has tended to be a fiscal hawk.
“I’m not sure how big a problem this is,” Goldstein said. “What’s the urgency?”
The school system currently pays about $5.5 million a year to lease space in what it calls the Syphax Education Center (in honor of educator and one-time School Board member Evelyn Reid Syphax). The extra space would be leased starting Jan. 1 at a rate of $38.19 per square foot, escalating to $46.53 over the remainder of the lease.
The property owner would give the school system a partial rebate to support outfitting of the new space, but school officials still estimate there would be a net cost of more than $185,000 to build it out to needed specifications.
If the proposal goes forward, it will offer critics of current school leadership another cudgel to wield. Durán, who has been superintendent for three years and recently received a new contract, faced criticism (as perhaps all superintendents do) of aggregating authority at the central-office level, thus harming morale among rank-and-file educators and staff at the county’s schools.
