Arlington School Board members on July 6 voted 5-0 in support of Cristina Diaz-Torres serving as board chairman for 2023-24.
“This one’s a no-brainer: She is more than ready,” said her School Board colleague David Priddy, who made the nomination. He pointed to her ability, vision, relationship-building and empathy.
Diaz-Torres succeeds Reid Goldstein, who chaired the body for the past year. She had served as vice chair under Goldstein.
"I am excited to take on the challenge of looking forward and charting a path for our schools and community," Diaz-Torres said.
Board members selected Priddy to serve as vice chair for the coming year.
Unlike County Board members, whose chairs rotate in and out on a calendar-year basis, the School Board generally (but not always) selects its leadership duo on a fiscal-year basis, which generally coincides with the timing of a school year.
Diaz-Torres was elected to the School Board in 2020, the same year as Priddy.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE:
The Arlington County School Board will formalize its 2023-24 leadership at an organizational board meeting on Thursday, July 6 at 10:30 a.m.
If the traditional rotation among officials continues, the board’s current vice chair – Cristina Diaz-Torres – will succeed Reid Goldstein as chair for the coming school year.
It would be the first turn as chair for Diaz-Torres, who was elected in 2020.
The last time there was any particular drama surrounding elevation of a chair was in July 2007, when the five board members then in office split 3-2 and voted to support Dave Foster for a six-month term as chair (his second and final four-year term in office was expiring Dec. 31 that year).
Foster, who remains the last non-Democrat to have sat on the School Board, was elected after the trio of himself, Libby Garvey and Frank Wilson supported his candidacy over that of Ed Fendley, who received the votes of himself and board colleague Sally Baird.
Fendley was tapped as vice chair and ascended to the top leadership post at the start of 2008 after Foster had departed.
The board chair for 2023-24 will preside over a body that is losing, in the retiring Goldstein, its last member who had service in the pre-COVID era. When 2024 begins, the board will have two members with three completed years of tenure (Diaz-Torres and David Priddy), one with two years (Mary Kadera), one with one year (Bethany Sutton) and one who is brand new (either Miranda Turner or James Vell Rives, depending on the outcome of the Nov. 7 general election).
That averages out to 1.6 years of experience per board member – a vast decline from the average a decade or two ago.
