Thank you! 

In the fall of 2022, the Arlington Central School District launched a community-led effort to bring parents, staff and community members together to develop goals and priorities to improve Arlington schools and to plan for our future.

A team of 20 parents, community leaders and school district staff is leading this effort. This diverse team, known as the Arlington Connect Facilitating Team, began meeting in the spring of 2022 to put the program together and continues to meet regularly to provide coordination and leadership. While this team is responsible for putting the program together, the decisions about the future of our schools come from our community.  

Arlington Connect held seven informational community engagement sessions from October of 2022 through April of 2023. Everyone in the community was invited to participate through direct mail, email, social media outreach and personal invitations. More than 180 local community members attended at least one session.

At each Arlington Connect community engagement session, participants learned from a brief topical presentation and then worked together to complete a series of work activities related to the presentation topic. Click here for the list of community engagement session topics. You can find the presentations and feedback from each community engagement session on the menu to the left.  

In addition, 1, 933 people completed an online community engagement survey. The survey was available from August 24 – September 24, 2022.

Next Steps

The Facilitating Team is meeting this spring to review the recommendations from the survey and from each of the community engagements sessions. During the fall of 2023, we will hold a series of building-level community engagement sessions and tours at each of our schools. These will be an opportunity for the community to see our buildings firsthand, to learn more about how students learn in Arlington and to provide feedback.  During October, the District will also conduct a second community telephone and electronic survey.  

The Facilitating Team will then draft a preliminary set of recommendations based on the feedback from both surveys, the community engagement sessions, and the building tours. We will hold a community engagement session on Thursday, November 2 to review the draft report.

Based on community feedback, the Facilitating Team will further refine the report for final public comment during the last community engagement session on Thursday, November 30. In December 2023, the Facilitating Team will present the recommendations to the Board of Education for their consideration.  

We look forward to seeing you this fall!