Legislation that allows Arlington School Board members to raise their pay beyond current limits was a hard sell in the General Assembly, its patron acknowledged.
“It should have passed easily,” Del. Patrick Hope (D-47th) sighed at a March 10 legislative roundup sponsored by the Leadership Center for Excellence.
But the measure almost stalled in the House of Delegates, winning on a narrow 55-44 vote. It later cleared the state Senate on a more comfortable 35-5 tally.
The bill removes the current cap of $25,000 on salaries of Arlington School Board members. Arlington is the only jurisdiction in the commonwealth with an elected school board that has such a limit.
Since January, Arlington School Board members have been receiving the maximum amount. The board chairman earns slightly more, which state law permits.
Hope said some lawmakers were wary of his measure. “Some members came up to me and said, ‘My school board doesn’t get paid anything,’” he said.
Hope framed the matter as one of fairness: That Arlington shouldn’t be limited when other jurisdictions are not.
“I think I got that message through,” he said. “I had to work pretty significantly behind the scenes.”
Exactly why there has been a statutory limit put on the pay of Arlington School Board members appears lost to history, although Hope surmises that someone in the legislature was mad at Arlington (or a specific Arlington lawmaker) when the decision was made back in the 1990s.
Although Arlington’s salary for School Board members currently is capped, the pay remains the second highest in the commonwealth, behind only Fairfax County.
Under Hope’s bill, which is expected to be signed by Gov. McAuliffe, the first chance Arlington School Board members would have to raise their pay beyond the current $25,000 would be in 2021.