Update:

Melanie Kay-Wyatt will become the superintendent of Alexandria City Public Schools beginning this summer, after serving in the role on an interim basis since September. Kay-Wyatt will be the first Black woman to head the Virginia school district. She starts in July.

“She is an experienced, forward-thinking leader, and is exactly what we need for our school division’s success. She brings to this role a focus on academic excellence and social-emotional well-being for our students, and will continue to emphasize and ensure that we have safe schools,” said Alexandria City School Board Chair Meagan L. Alderton in a statement.

Original: The Alexandria school board has hired a new superintendent to lead the city’s schools. After an extensive search process, the board will announce their decision at a public meeting tonight.

Alexandria City Public Schools serves nearly 16,000 students and operates 18 schools. More than half of students are eligible for free and reduced price lunch, a measure of poverty.

The schools’ new leader is expected to take up the post at ACPS over the summer, almost exactly a year after the previous superintendent, Gregory Hutchings, announced his departure from the role after almost four years of service.

Hutchings navigated the school system through the pandemic, and he was vocal in defending ACPS’ focus on equity, calling for an “antiracist counter narrative” for public education in the face of political opposition from the Youngkin administration and other Virginia Republicans. Hutchings now runs his own education consulting firm, Revolutionary ED, which specializes in antiracist and equity work, topics he has also focused on as an expert at the American University School of Education. (American University holds the license to WAMU, which publishes DCist.)

Melanie Kay-Wyatt, Alexandria schools’ human resources chief, was appointed interim superintendent while the search for a permanent leader began.

Kay-Wyatt presided over this year’s budget process, which allocated more than $331 million to cover the schools’ expenses for the new fiscal year, which starts in July. The budget focuses on staff recruitment and retention, student social and emotional trauma, and academic learning loss. The school board approved the budget in February, and the City Council approved the city’s contribution to the schools in its budget vote on Wednesday night.

Conversations conducted during the search process for the new permanent superintendent uncovered a consistent list of issues community members want the new schools chief to tackle, according to a published summary of interviews with teachers, students, parents, bus drivers, central office staff, and principals. They include addressing overcrowding at some elementary schools and under-enrollment at others; raising questions about re-examining school boundaries; managing facilities and capital projects to meet projected future enrollment needs, including shepherding the new addition to the high school’s Minnie Howard campus, which is currently under construction; and continuing the school system’s Equity for All five-year strategic plan.

Security inside school buildings was also a common concern. In 2021, the Alexandria City Council diverted funds away from the school resource officer program and into a mental health initiative, becoming one of several school districts in the D.C. region to remove police officers from schools. Some studies suggest that school resource officers do not necessarily reduce crime — and can have the effect of disproportionately criminalizing students of color.

But months later, the school board voted to reinstate the officers in the wake of a threat that put Alexandria City High School into lockdown and resulted in a student being arrested while in possession of a handgun.

In a separate incident, an ACHS senior was stabbed to death in a fight that involved dozens of ACHS students and took place at a nearby shopping center in May 2022. The death rocked the community, touching off further calls for an evaluation of school safety. The school district also put in place some new security measures at the beginning of this school year, and this spring the school board approved a pilot program to use metal detectors in the high school to screen for weapons.

ACPS data for the first half of the current school year suggests that the number of safety incidents in the school system has mostly declined compared to the previous reporting period, though incidents in middle schools are up. A public hearing on the renewal of ACPS’ agreement with the city’s police department, which provides school resource officers, is set for later this month.

And just this week, another ACHS student died. Though a cause of death has not been officially reported, ALXnow reports police scanner traffic indicated that police officers administered naloxone. Area school systems have been reporting a spike in opioid-related overdoses and deaths in recent months.

“School safety, whether it is a real or a perceived concern, must be addressed throughout the division,” was one of the general issues named in the interviews for the superintendent search. Students interviewed noted high turnover rates among security guards in the high school, as well as frustrations over “hostility” towards students from guards.

Amanda Michelle Gomez contributed reporting.