Arlington ISD’s Board of Trustees held its first meeting of the upcoming 2025-2026 school year last night, and here are a few of the highlights.
This is an exciting and busy time of year! With the first day of school – August 13 – next week, a lot of the board business had to do with approving new hires and making purchases for the school year.
The meeting started with the pledges of allegiance led by one of our own students, Charlotte Edwards. Charlotte will be a fourth grader at Wimbish World Language Academy this year, and she did a great job.
Then the board celebrated some of our own who are doing great things, and they started with Trustee Melody Fowler. Melody recently graduated from Leadership TASB and earned the distinguished designation of Master Trustee.
Then the board called up Linh Nguyen, Arlington ISD’s visual arts director, to recognize the Visual Arts department for receiving the Texas Art Education Association’s District of Distinction Award – an award only 8% of districts in Texas earned. This is a tremendous honor and a reflection of the talent and dedication of Arlington ISD visual arts educators.
Finally, we honored five of our outstanding elementary students who were named finalists in the prestigious National Math Stars competition. They are among only 200 finalists selected from a competitive pool of more than 4,500 applicants across Texas.
After the honors, the trustees got down to business. They routinely need to make district policy updates to stay in line with changing legal requirements, and that was the case last night as the board approved a number of policy updates in response to legislation passed in the recent Texas Legislative Session.
Of course, the one that students and parents are most interested in is about cell phones. House Bill 1481 requires all districts to adopt a policy prohibiting students from using cell phones or any kind of telecommunications devices during the school day. So, the board adopted Arlington ISD’s policy last night – called Away for the Day. Read all the details and FAQs about Away for the Day here.
One other highlight was the reapproval of an interlocal agreement with the University of Texas at Austin to continue the district’s partnership with the OnRamps program. It’s a great partnership that offers our students the opportunity to earn college credit from UT through a dual-enrollment model. Plus, it offers training and professional learning for high school teachers.
Those are just a few of the highlights from the board meeting. If you would like more details on any of these, or any of the items not covered, please click here to watch the entire meeting.