Category: Opinion

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for IW Features, The Federalist and the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network. Her articles have also appeared in National Review, Fox News Digital, The Daily Signal and Townhall. Originally appeared on WMAL.

In 2025, as Fairfax County Public Schools’ (FCPS) leaders eliminated 275 teaching positions, school board members voted in a closed meeting to add “staff directors” to the payroll in addition to their “staff assistants.”

Given that school board members are supported by district administrative staff, a total of 10 school board–specific staff members likely would be sufficient to assist the 12 part-time board members in carrying out their duties. Instead, the school board employs 28 other support staff. Including board members’ earnings, total annual expenditures for board-related salaries—excluding benefits—amount to $3.7 million.

School Board Members and Staff (2025-2026)

Source: FOIA Request

In addition to school board staff, FCPS employs 1,532 additional district administrators (totaling 1,572 central administrative staff members). The total fiscal year 2026 expenditure for central staff salaries is $187 million. The scale of support staff dedicated to part-time school board members and central administration more broadly is symptomatic of corruption and poor leadership within the district.

Saundra Davis, an independent candidate running for the open school board seat in Fairfax County’s Braddock District, believes that FCPS leadership needs to refocus on its main mission—education. She said, “Fairfax County School Board members and their staff should be focused on serving students and schools.”

It seems that some of these staff members, however, are not simply focused on their performing their job duties. Complaints have alleged that Stephanie Sedgwick, Gille Coda, Laura Stokes, and Liam Fischer, (staff members for Rachna Sizemore Heizer and Kyle McDaniel) were working on Heizer’s campaign for the Board of Supervisors during work hours. Davis said, “It’s critical that public resources are used efficiently and focused on serving students and schools, not political campaigns during school hours.”

Taken together, these decisions reveal a troubling misalignment of priorities within FCPS leadership. At a time when classrooms are absorbing the impact of eliminated teaching positions and increasing student needs, the school board has expanded its own staffing footprint far beyond what is reasonably required for part-time governance. The scale and cost of board-dedicated personnel—layered on top of an already expansive central administration—undermines public trust and raises serious questions about fiscal stewardship, transparency, and accountability.

Fairfax County parents and taxpayers deserve a school system that puts students first, not one that appears to prioritize political ambition and bureaucratic self-expansion over educational outcomes. Restoring confidence will require more than rhetoric; it will require a renewed commitment to ethical governance, responsible budgeting, and a clear focus on the core mission of public education. Without meaningful reform, FCPS risks continuing down a path where resources flow upward to administrators and political staffers, while students and teachers are left to do more with less.

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for IW Features, The Federalist and the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network. Her articles have also appeared in National Review, Fox News Digital, The Daily Signal and Townhall. Originally appeared on The Washington Times.

Virginia Delegate Dan Helmer, District 10 Democrat, introduced a bill this week encouraging public school boards to adopt an instructional program that would mandate portraying the events of Jan. 6, 2021, exclusively as a violent insurrection and bar discussion of 2020 election fraud claims.

It’s just one example of many in which Democrats are clearly trying to institutionalize their beliefs in our children’s public school policies and curricula.

Northern Virginia’s public school districts’ leaders don’t need any further encouragement from state legislators. In 2020, for example, Fairfax County Public Schools paid Ibram X. Kendi $20,000 for an hourlong virtual presentation to district leaders and principals on his beliefs that all policies are either “racist” or “not racist,” with nothing in between.

Now, Northern Virginia’s school district leaders are engaged in a legal battle with the federal government to allow boys in girls’ bathrooms and sports. Rather than abiding by Title IX and requiring transgender-identifying students to use single-use bathrooms or those based on their sex, Democratic activist leaders in these school districts are compelling speech with mandated “preferred pronouns” and sacrificing the comfort of the many for the whims of the very few.

For these activists, identity boxes are prioritized above education. In addition to making sure children are taught the “right way” to think about Jan. 6, Delegate Joshua Cole, District 65 Democrat, introduced a bill this session that changes the definition of “bullying” to specify “the real or perceived power imbalance” between students based on their membership in a protected class.

In other words, if this bill passes, when two students have an argument in their public school, then the cross-section of all their identities is likely to become more important than the conflict itself.

Regardless of political inclinations, it seems that everyone should agree that the purpose of public education is to educate children. Based on Virginia Democrats’ priorities — pushing political narratives and institutionalizing identity hierarchies — one might think the primary mission is accomplished and students are excelling in their public schools.

That’s not the case. Ironically, while Mr. Helmer tries to control the Jan. 6 narrative, according to the Virginia Department of Education, 34% of Virginia’s public school students failed their history standards of learning test last year. Delegates would better spend their work hours and efforts remedying the fact that fully one-third of Virginia’s students have a poor understanding of basic history.

Across the state, 29% of students failed their science standards of learning test, 28% failed math, 24% failed English writing and 26% failed English reading. The failure rates are even more dismal for Virginia’s economically disadvantaged children.

According to the Virginia Department of Education, 39% of economically disadvantaged students failed their English reading standards of learning test, 38% failed English writing, 41% failed math, 43% failed science and 46% failed history.

So while Virginia Democrats such as Messrs. Helmer and Cole and other equity warriors are introducing and passing legislation to prioritize fringe issues in public education, Virginia’s poorer students are failing at alarming rates. That’s the opposite of equity.

If state legislators truly want to improve public education for Virginia’s children, they should introduce legislation that requires school boards to allocate public funds based on students’ academic outcomes and limit expenditures in categories such as administrative staff and legal fees.

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor to Independent Women’s Features, The Federalist and the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network. Originally appeared on The Federalist.

Last month, Zenaida Perez, a teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), filed a lawsuit against the district for defamation and retaliation against a whistleblower. Strangely, King & Spalding, the law firm that the district’s superintendent, Michelle Reid, hired to be the “external independent investigator” of Perez’s allegations, is now representing FCPS in its defense.

In May 2022, Perez, who has taught FCPS’s English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students since 2008, told Centreville High School’s principal, Chad Lehman, that the school’s social worker, Carolina Diaz, facilitated an abortion for a minor student without her guardian’s consent.

In her signed statement (translated from Spanish), the student wrote, “Mrs. Carolina Diaz scheduled the appointment for me at the abortion clinic in Fairfax, paid the costs of that medical procedure, and kept everything quiet without informing my family.”

After Perez told Lehman about the school staff member’s involvement in the minor’s abortion, she says that she faced multiple incidents of retaliation and defamation from school and district administration. For example, her lawsuit states, “On April 8, 2025, an 18-year-old male student… confided to Perez that [Assistant Principal Montell] Brown instructed him to ask Perez for a ride in her personal vehicle to Costco, and that once Perez gave him the ride, he was to report the incident to Brown, so that he could write Perez up.”

Julie Perry, a teacher at Centreville High School who is familiar with the case and knows the student involved, believes that FCPS is retaliating against Perez for being a whistleblower. She said, “It makes me very sad to see my colleague, Zenaida, being heavily retaliated against because she was only doing the right thing by reporting illegal activity.”

Oddly, the district’s leaders didn’t seem concerned with Perez’s claims until the public was made aware of them. Only after the media reported on the abortion allegations did district leadership hire the expensive law firm to investigate. In an email to Centreville High School staff, dated Aug. 7, 2025, Reid wrote, “[T]he division has taken immediate action to engage an external independent investigator to get all the facts.”

Ongoing Investigation

In August and September, Fairfax County Public Schools paid the law firm $980,515.14 in taxpayer funds to investigate Perez’s claims. And while there is still an ongoing Virginia State Police criminal investigation into the matter, on Oct. 16, King & Spalding issued an inconclusive report stating that Perez’s allegations were “likely untrue.”

It seems that FCPS’s leaders are more interested in appearing to try to get to the bottom of things only when there is concern among the public that threatens the district’s image.

Conflict of Interest

Monique Miles, Perez’s attorney, noted that “King & Spalding can’t be both neutral fact finder and defense. There is an inherent conflict of interest in King & Spalding representing FCPS as counsel in both matters.” 

Miles further argues that “FCPS has lost all credibility by hiring King & Spalding to do an external independent investigation, where they released a preliminary report to the Senate [Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions] HELP Committee and the U.S. Department of Education Acting General Counsel inferring that Perez was a liar and claiming that the evidence doesn’t support her claims (when it does, especially the audio recordings), and then by hiring King & Spalding’s same attorneys, the very next week, to represent FCPS in defending against Perez’s lawsuit for defamation and retaliation.”

Perez on Administrative Leave

After King & Spalding released its inconclusive report in October, and while Diaz keeps her job as school social worker and Lehman was promoted, FCPS placed Perez on administrative leave. Perez believes that her suspension is permanent because, she said, district leaders insisted that she turn in her laptop, keys, and all district property. They also, according to Perez, terminated her email account and revoked her access to the student information system.

FCPS’s leaders were not interested in getting to the bottom of things until their public image was threatened. Now Perez’s lawsuit should reveal more about how they retaliated against the whistleblower.

This op-ed was written by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a contributor to Independent Women’s Features, The Federalist and the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network. Originally appeared in The Washington Times.

Last month, Zenaida Perez, a Fairfax County Public Schools teacher, filed a lawsuit alleging that school and district officials defamed her character and retaliated against her for being a whistleblower.

According to the lawsuit, in May 2022, Ms. Perez told Chad Lehman, the principal of Centreville High School, that a minor student had undergone an abortion without the knowledge of her guardian. Ms. Perez alleged that Carolina Diaz, the school’s social worker, facilitated the abortion.

In a signed statement (translated from Spanish), the student who had the abortion wrote, “Mrs. Carolina Diaz scheduled the appointment for me at the abortion clinic in Fairfax, paid the costs of that medical procedure, and kept everything quiet without informing my family.”

After reporting the abortion, Ms. Perez said, she faced multiple incidents of retaliation before the district placed her on administrative leave. For example, her lawsuit states, “On April 8, 2025, an 18-year-old male student … confided to Perez that [Assistant Principal Montell] Brown instructed him to ask Perez for a ride in her personal vehicle to Costco, and that once Perez gave him the ride, he was to report the incident to Brown, so that he could write Perez up.”

Given that school officials were aware of Ms. Perez’s allegations in 2022, many parents are wondering why FCPS waited until this August, after media reports about the abortion, to hire an expensive law firm, King & Spalding, to initiate an investigation. In August and September, the district paid the firm $980,515.14.

Ms. Perez argues that the firm is meant to maintain the district’s image. She said, “If they had nothing to hide, they wouldn’t have hired that expensive law firm to conceal what they did.”

One of Ms. Perez’s colleagues at Centreville High School, Julie Perry, who knows the students involved and is intimately familiar with the case, said school officials are retaliating against Ms. Perez. Ms. Perry said, “It makes me very sad to see my colleague, Zenaida, being heavily retaliated against because she was only doing the right thing by reporting illegal activity.”

Ms. Perez’s case is far from the only example of FCPS’s retaliation against community members who are inconvenient to its reputation or political agenda. “Kate” — an alias name used in the courtroom for a former FCPS student who alleges that school and district leadership are responsible for a sexual assault she experienced in 2011 when she was in seventh grade — is quite familiar with the district’s wrath under the leadership of “Queen” Michelle Reid, the superintendent.

In 2024, attorneys for the district reportedly demanded that Kate undergo vaginal and anal exams, even though she allegedly sustained the injuries in 2011. The attorneys also insisted that she owed the district approximately $250,000 for legal fees.

In 2021, in Fairfax County School Board v. Tisler and Oettinger, the district sued two mothers, Debra Tisler and Callie Oettinger, because they obtained information from a Freedom of Information Act request that was arguably embarrassing to the district and then published the documents on the internet. The mothers were forced to retain counsel but ended up prevailing.

Judge Richard Gardiner ruled in the defendants’ favor. He acknowledged that Ms. Tisler and Ms. Oettinger lawfully obtained truthful information via the FOIA request and referred to the school board’s argument as “frivolous.” He said, “It’s clearly also about a matter of public significance because this has to do with legal bills that are being paid by the taxpayers of Fairfax County.” He added, “The Board, for whatever reason, maybe it was ineptness … made the decision to turn over the information, and they’re stuck with that.”

About a year later, in 2022, FCPS suspended my three sons for 39 cumulative days because of “dress code” violations for not wearing masks — after Gov. Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order permitting parents to opt out of school mask mandates. Despite my subsequent appeal, all the way up to “Queen” Reid, the district refused to expunge these obviously political penalties. Next fall, my eldest will be applying to colleges with these suspensions on his academic record. Really, nothing says retaliation more clearly than politically persecuting children.

Since 2019, FCPS’s leaders have spent $44 million on legal fees. At least some of this money, coming from its massive $4 billion annual budget, is being used to bully parents, children and community members who are inconvenient for their image or agenda. As Kate said, “The school district’s traditional defense whenever anyone speaks up is to scream that they’re lying or fraudulent. Then, they hire big law defense firms billing millions in taxpayer dollars to crush the everyday person and polish their own image through public relations.”

There is no better way to challenge bullies than to take their weapons. In this case, Fairfax County’s residents must demand an independent, external audit of the district’s massive budget and insist that tax dollars not be used to bully its community members into submission.