ARLnow9%
Upcoming APS school year will bring more iPad restrictions, new facilities and more 3%
By Ryan Cole16%
8/3/2026, 11:45:39 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 8 faulty reasoning types, including Optimism Bias, Hasty Generalization, and Availability Heuristic, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 8.2% saturation with 90 hits. Analysis detected 355 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,101 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 9.5% and a BS Rank of 3% (26,258 of 26,881 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 97.70% of the article peer group.
A late Labor Day is giving Arlington Public Schools students until Aug. 31 to enjoy summer break, but changes are coming when the year begins.
A new pilot program to curb iPad use is kicking off at some schools, with different options being tested at different grade levels.
Additionally, the new home for the Arlington Career Center will open at the beginning of the school year, while Arlington Community High School is moving into Amazon’s HQ2 campus.
Here’s a roundup of some notable changes coming to APS in the upcoming year.
### iPad pilot program
This school year marks year one of a two-year pilot program seeking to strike a balance between providing enough technology and not allowing too much access to elementary students.
“There are many wonderful uses of technology,” School Board Chair Miranda Turner told ARLnow.
“But in terms of basic instructional uses and student learning, there’s not a lot of evidence that instructional technology is improving over analog methods of teaching and learning.
”
Elementary schools in Arlington began providing a personal iPad to every student in 2020.
Last year, APS stopped providing a personal device to preschool through first grade.
This year, in participating schools, students in preschool and kindergarten will no longer have access to any iPads.
First- and second-grade classes will reserve shared, grade-level iPad carts.
Fourth and fifth graders will have one cart per classroom, while third graders will be split between the two cart systems, according to Turner.
“There are questions and concerns about screen time, and whether it could be physically affecting younger students’ eyes, whether it could be affecting attention spans, whether it displaces traditional skills like handwriting,” Turner said.
Schools included in the pilot include Ashlawn, Discovery, Claremont, Montessori, Oakridge and Nottingham.
At Oakridge and Nottingham, third graders will join first and second graders in using the grade-level carts as opposed to the class carts.
A full-scale rollout of new elementary school iPad policy is planned for the 2027-28 school year, although what that policy looks like depends on the results of this year’s pilot and will be further discussed.
“Part of the ideal behind any pilot is to figure out what works and identify things you didn’t necessarily anticipate,” Turner said.
“We could potentially decide we would like to go even farther.
”
Superintendent Francisco Durán said this May that public feedback will be taken into consideration.
“We’re going to continue to receive that feedback as we move through the next two years,” Durán said.
“We want to hear from our teachers … we want to hear from our parents … and we definitely want to hear from our students.”
APS is also planning to shift middle school students to MacBook Neo devices instead of iPads.
H-B Woodlawn will make the transition this year to test it out.
“They’ll do that this year, and then in year two, so 2027-28, all of our middle schools should be transitioning students to laptops,” Turner said.
### Grace Hopper Center opening
The Arlington Career Center is opening a new building at 816 S.
Walter Reed Drive next to its existing building.
The Grace Hopper Center will be ready for students at the beginning of this school year, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony coming later in September, Turner said.
The new building will allow for a considerable expansion of the Arlington Tech Governor’s STEM Academy.
While 462 students are enrolled in Arlington Tech for the coming school year, the program will have a capacity for 250 ninth-grade students starting in the 2026-27 school year, APS spokesperson Andrew Robinson previously said.
“This move represents a bold step forward in our commitment to academic excellence, innovation, and preparing students for success in college, careers, and life,” Career Center Principal Margaret Chung said in a May update.
“This is a school that will benefit our entire APS community, and we cannot wait to share it with all of you.”
The old career center building will undergo renovations in preparation to house the Montessori Public School of Arlington, currently located at 701 S.
Highland Street on the same campus as both career center buildings.
The current Montessori building will be demolished to make more room for a new play field and a repaved bus loop.
Turner estimates the full project will be finished by fall of 2027.
### Arlington Community High School moving to HQ2
The all-ages APS high school designed to help students on diverse educational pathways is moving to more than 30,000 square feet of space at Amazon’s 1450 S.
Eads Street in the Metropolitan Park complex in Pentagon City.
Final School Board approval of a 30-year lease with Amazon was given in June, and a ribbon-cutting will be scheduled in August, Turner said.
“It is a bit of an alternative high school program that offers some flexibility that our traditional high schools don’t,” Turner said.
“It runs essentially two shifts of classes for students, so students can take classes in the later afternoon and evening if they, for example, work during the day.
”
This year’s graduating class included students ranging in age from 16 to 46.
The school will occupy four levels of the building, and it will have its own entrance.
Amazon is providing the space at no cost except routine maintenance and repairs.
Arlington Community High School was most recently located in a Ballston office building at 4420 Fairfax Drive.
It moved there after being displaced from the Arlington Career Center property by Grace Hopper Center construction.
## Other things happening
* Phone pouches will continue to be required in APS high schools this year.
Turner said the school system received positive feedback last year from teachers regarding student participation in class and their ability to focus “because of the expectation that phones would be away.
”
* Kevin Clark is being replaced as Yorktown High School’s principal by former Swanson Middle School Principal Bridget Loft.
* APS is in partnership with Edu-Futuro’s chronic absenteeism program to “conduct intensive outreach to hundreds of chronically absent students, with the goal of returning youth to the classroom and reducing dropout rates for some of our region’s most vulnerable populations.
” Chronic absenteeism rates went up in Arlington during the pandemic, Turner said.
* According to Virginia House Bill 924, passed this year, Standards of Learning (SOL) testing must occur during the final two weeks of school.
Turner said the board is still determining the logistics of complying with that law, including how to handle the school calendar to allow for retakes.
Speakers
4speakers45%attributed speech610writer words
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100%flagged-word coverageMargaret Chung
56 attributed words11% of attributed speech2.1% writer coverage
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