Opinion Archives

Fairfax County Public Schools leadership displays disdain for parents — again

Posted on July 8, 2024July 8, 2024 by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network. This piece originally appeared on Washington Examiner.

Last Thursday, as the first presidential debate was making national headlines, Fairfax County School Board members held a meeting during which they voted on controversial changes to family life education curriculum. The takeaway for the few of us able to attend or watch it virtually was that the district’s leadership hates parents — or, at the very least, is severely inconvenienced by us.

Darcy Healy, one of the speakers during public comment, delivered an impassioned statement that represents how many parents in Fairfax County are feeling. She said, “We are parents, and we want you to listen to us, but we feel that that’s just not happening. … The survey that was done in May and June [shows] 80% are against this co-ed situation. Let’s continue to debate this. Don’t do it over the summer. And don’t do the vote on the evening of the presidential debate. This is an important topic. Show us that you want it to be important.”

Healy is right. In surveys both this year and last year, parents and community members made it clear that they did not support co-ed sex education or gender ideology instruction in their children’s elementary classrooms. Several community members made this exact point during the last two school board meetings’ public comment periods on June 13 and June 27.

Instead of being inclusive and accepting community feedback, the Fairfax County School Board was hostile — most notably among them, the board’s vice chairwoman, Melanie Meren.

First, Meren spoke indignantly about the curriculum’s opt-out option. She said, “And, you know, what I want to convey is that we need to make decisions of curriculum for the benefit of, you know, as many children as possible. And this is why parents and families have the option to opt out if they don’t feel the content is appropriate for their children when it comes to family life education.”

But why include unwanted, political nonsense such as gender ideology in a public school district’s sex education curriculum and then place the burden of opting out on the parents? Here’s why: because district leadership knows that many parents are preoccupied with our many other obligations and will forget to complete the extra administrative task of opting out our children from curriculum lessons.

District leaders should not be experimenting with our children, but since they seem to insist on doing so, this curriculum should require parents to opt in rather than opt out.

Meren then delivered an angry rant about the illegitimacy of the community’s feedback mechanisms. She said, “I also do want to underscore that the comments that have been referred to as a survey, um, it actually was not a survey. There was a call for public comments. … There was also not a methodology to ensure that comments were unique contributors. So, of the 2,500 comments, it’s unknown how many were contributed more than once.”

The takeaway is that if the district’s leaders don’t like community feedback, they blame the comment forum. Last year, for example, Karl Frisch, the school board chairman, similarly dismissed the survey as feedback from “Reddit warriors.”

In contrast, Ilryong Moon, a school board member who does not appear to be completely disgusted and inconvenienced by the district’s parents, seemed to realize the absurdity of his colleagues’ comments right away. The at-large member responded that if there was a problem with the feedback mechanism for community input, it was the board’s responsibility to fix the process. Moon further said he valued community input and thanked the 2,539 survey respondents for their time.

Unfortunately, in spite of the negative feedback on the proposal, school board members, including Moon, voted to include gender ideology instruction in the seventh grade family life education curriculum. And they did not vote against gender ideology indoctrination for elementary school children. They instead postponed that decision — perhaps in the hopes that they can pass it when fewer parents are paying attention.

Or even worse, they will include such measures surreptitiously and without a vote. Acting on her “majority doesn’t always dictate” philosophy, Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid has already used a back-door, anti-democratic, administrative method to introduce co-ed instruction for sex education in the district’s new pilot program in 14 elementary schools that she likely intends to expand.

And so, to Healy I say, I feel your pain, and we will continue to debate this. But sadly, it seems that Reid, Frisch, Meren, and their tyrannical leftist activist minority have already decided what is best for our children. They seem to believe that we, the parents, are roadblocks obstructing their path, to be circumvented or run over.

Virginia’s Fairfax County is paying the price for Biden’s border crisis

Posted on June 21, 2024June 21, 2024 by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for The Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network. This piece originally appeared on Washington Examiner.

Earlier this week, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to signal he is interested in doing something to address the crisis at the southern border. But it is too little, too late.

Prior to his realization that the porous southern border is a top concern in voters’ minds, Biden could not be bothered to discuss the national security problem of illegal immigration. He ignored cities facing rising crime and homelessness despite mayors’ pleas for help. Biden further said after his State of the Union address in March that he regretted using the term “illegal” to describe an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela who allegedly killed Laken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia.

Crime across the country has increased with the surge of illegal immigrants crossing Biden’s open border. Customs and Border Protection reports that from fiscal 2021 through April 2024, there have been almost 10 million border encounters. It is also unknown how many terrorists and spies have crossed over with the criminals and those many others just seeking a better life.

While Biden’s actions have led us to this point, the voters’ concerns appear to have his attention now. In a tight race during a presidential election year, Biden is finally pretending to care and perhaps forgetting that he manufactured this national crisis by enabling a multiyear invasion at the border.

Locally, his about-face does not undo the harm the porous border has caused residents in Fairfax County, Virginia. While Democrats such as Rachel Maddow and Jen Psaki mocked Virginia voters for worrying about the consequences of mass illegal immigration in March, Fairfax County residents genuinely are feeling the burden. In April, we learned that Fairfax County, a sanctuary county for illegal immigrants, repeatedly released a Honduran man charged with sex crimes against a child.

Being a sanctuary county means that the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center does not honor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations’ immigration detainers. Despite the fact that ICE had stated the Honduran noncitizen “represented a threat to the children of the Washington, D.C. area,” Fairfax County released the man from custody on a $10,000 bond on July 10, 2023.

Not only are we honoring the protection of illegal immigrants above the safety of our children, but Fairfax County’s taxpayers are also paying substantial amounts of money to educate the children of the illegal immigrants moving to the county. As Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors voted again this year to increase our taxes, residents began taking a closer look at the education budget, which accounts for more than half of the county’s spending.

Illegal immigration is partially responsible for the school district’s ballooning budget and higher taxes. Per-pupil expenditures have increased significantly because of the need for English for Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, teachers. The number of students who are not proficient in English has increased by 5% since fiscal 2020. Unsurprisingly, expenditures on ESOL teachers increased with the school district’s non-English speaking students. The fiscal 2024 expenditure on ESOLs in Fairfax County was $141.7 million, up from $118.7 million in fiscal 2023 and $93.9 million in fiscal 2019.

As it turns out, being a leader who opts for a sanctuary county or country has consequences. In Fairfax County, our leaders release criminals onto our streets who threaten the safety of our children. We further watch helplessly as our locally elected officials increase our tax burden to support a sanctuary in spite of our objections. Meanwhile, at the federal level, Biden has cleared the way for millions of illegal immigrants to cross our border, and he is far too close to the iceberg to alter course now.

Biden’s problem? Voters are not as dumb as he would like to believe.

Fauci’s testimony proves that mask suspensions in public schools were politically motivated

Posted on June 21, 2024June 21, 2024 by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora

In Fairfax County’s public schools, where drug possession on school grounds does not necessarily result in suspensions, political infractions, such as attending school maskless or “misgendering” peers, have been severely punished.

Fairfax County’s code of conduct transcends “the science.” Even students in elementary school know from the highly technical “smell a fart test” that masks do not stop the transmission of COVID-19. But this fact seems to have eluded the district’s leadership for years.

In January 2022, when the harms of mask mandates on children had become abundantly clear, the recently elected Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) implemented Executive Order Two, which gave Virginia’s parents the ability to opt out their children from wearing masks at school. In a defiant political response, Fairfax County’s school district leadership, including its 12 Democratic-endorsed school board members, surreptitiously altered its dress code to include masks in order to circumvent the governor’s executive order.

When the district’s students, including my sons, exercised their rights under state law and arrived at school without masks, school principals were forced to issue suspensions based on the new dress code. It is the first time in the district’s history that students were suspended for multiple days based on the dress code. The draconian punishment is almost laughable in light of what some students are wearing to school with impunity.

And in case it was unclear before, now we know without a doubt that Fairfax County Public Schools’s “dress code” policy and its resulting punishment were based on something other than science.

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s coronavirus adviser during the pandemic, testified in front of Congress last week that the recommended six feet of social distancing was not based on science. Earlier this year, Fauci further admitted that he could not recall reviewing studies that supported the masking of children in public schools.

As the mother of three students in Fairfax County’s public schools who were suspended for a cumulative total of 39 days for not wearing their masks, I think it is past time for the district to apologize to all of the students it unjustly suspended, and then issue expungements.

Yet last year, adding insult to injury, the school district’s seemingly vindictive leaders denied the expungement request for my sons, who were in third, fifth, and seventh grades when they were suspended. Notably, the suspensions will remain on my oldest son’s disciplinary record when he applies to college.

Each day that the elementary and middle school principals suspended my sons, they expressed regret. They also said that the appeal process would be at their discretion and requested that I appeal for expungement. But at some time between suspensions and appeal, the district commandeered that decision. I received two identically worded letters of refusal – one from each principal.

Perhaps relatedly, the district’s principals are leaving in droves — maybe because district leadership is creating a toxic environment for its school principals. I would imagine that many principals, for example, likely do not support the district playing games with children’s futures for political reasons and usurping their local discretion. In fact, from the 2020-21 school year to November 2023, 53 principals in Fairfax County’s public schools resigned or retired. Meanwhile, only nine principals in neighboring Loudoun County left during the same time period.

The mask suspensions and the leadership’s subsequent refusal to expunge them highlight its glaring hypocrisy. The Fairfax County School Board has had many meetings in the past couple years about how to reduce the district’s out-of-school suspensions for infractions such as drug possession and physical altercations. The district’s present concerns of chronic absenteeism also did not seem to be an issue for district leadership as it banned my young children from their classrooms for several days — 15 days for my then 8-year-old son.

How do we not interpret such decisions as clear examples of a two-tiered justice system in public schools? In the case of masking, the penalties for students found guilty of political transgressions are far more substantial than those committing more dangerous and violent infractions.

And now, Fauci has confirmed that the “science” school district officials claimed to follow was in fact not science after all. Fairfax County’s public school officials owe an apology to my sons and other students in the district who clearly were suspended in the name of politics, not science.

‘Unfrosted’ Transports Viewers From 2024 Politics To The Cereal Aisles Of A Simpler America

Posted on June 9, 2024June 25, 2024 by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora

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

Last week, I was in the cereal aisle of a grocery store in Fairfax County, Virginia, arguing with my son about breakfast choices. He insisted on a box of sugary cereal, so I encouraged him to read the nutritional label.

Engrossed in the specificities of the label on a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, 12 grams of sugar per one cup of cereal, a woman we did not know approached us. She asked us if we had watched the movie  “Unfrosted,” released last month on Netflix. When we told her we hadn’t yet seen it, she insisted we must, especially in light of our argument — which was very public, apparently.

I appreciated the brief encounter with the random stranger just outside our nation’s capital. In my experience, those types of interactions happen all the time in the Midwest where I grew up — and in fairness, I am usually the one to initiate them. But not so much on the East Coast, where joggers who wave to people passing by are usually ignored. I knew it was kismet. We had to see this movie that the kind stranger, probably also from the Midwest, recommended.

Over the weekend, I asked my sons to indulge me and watch  “Unfrosted”  in an attempt to expand their attention spans beyond the YouTube shorts their generation is so accustomed to. The movie, set in Battle Creek, Michigan, is not far from where I grew up and is about a mostly fictitious rivalry between two cereal companies, Kellogg’s and Post, and their race in 1963 to make and market a breakfast cake that children could heat in the toaster.

My sons didn’t find it as funny as I did. Unlike those of us raised in the latter half of the 20th century, fewer people in their generation are raised on box cereal and Pop-Tarts. While I was belly-laughing throughout the movie, they enjoyed it but didn’t find it quite as amusing.

But for those of us who spent mornings before school reading the backs of cereal boxes and searching for the surprise inside as we indulged in our sugary breakfasts, I thought the plot was relatable and brilliant.

It brought back great memories of my childhood — such as when I figured out frosted Pop-Tarts could be made even better with a slab of butter on top and when my brother and I were comedically territorial over our respective Cocoa Pebbles and Fruity Pebbles as we ignored any recommendations of a serving size. And seriously, who ate just a cup of cereal for breakfast?

“Unfrosted”  also might have the most star-studded cast of any movie that went straight to streaming. Directed and co-written by Jerry Seinfeld, his A-list Hollywood friends showed up for him. Actors joining him in starring and making appearances in the movie include Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant, Amy Schumer, Max Greenfield, Christian Slater, Bill Burr, Daniel Levy, James Marsden, Jack McBrayer, Thomas Lennon, Bobby Moynihan, Adrian Martinez, Sarah Cooper, and Fred Armisen.

Other than the famous actors and the film’s relatability, the main reason I enjoyed “ Unfrosted”  so much is that it’s just a funny movie. There’s no political message, lecture, fealty to the pander-verse, or recommendation for future political action on the audience’s part. Rather, silly entertainment is its end goal. It provides a wonderful 90-minute escape from the political woes of today’s society. And we need more of that, especially in a presidential election year.

Even in the most heated arguments, there is some room for agreement and mutual understanding. In the end, my son and I agreed in the supermarket that we would buy a box of cereal as a dessert option and stick with steel-cut oats for breakfast. Hopefully, Americans of all political persuasions can agree there is room for entertainment and comedy in our movies without politics, pandering, or pontification.

Parents have a right to know within 24 hours of fentanyl overdoses in Virginia’s schools

Posted on June 7, 2024June 7, 2024 by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora

Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report showing there were 2,339 reported overdose deaths in Virginia from December 2022 to December 2023. Drug overdose is now the leading cause of unnatural death in the state. As fentanyl flows over our porous southern border, the drug is stealing the lives of not only adults, but an increasing number of children across the country.

While the CDC’s data on youth overdose deaths are incomplete from 2023, in 2022, 45 children in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., died of fentanyl overdoses. The number of children ages 12 to 17 who have perished from fentanyl has doubled since the beginning of the pandemic. And for every fentanyl death, there are many more fentanyl overdoses that result in the hospitalization of America’s children.

Most of us are acutely aware that we are in a war against fentanyl that knows no boundaries and is coming for our children. But someone needs to tell Virginia’s House Democrats.

In November 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) issued executive order No. 28 requiring Virginia’s public schools to issue notifications to parents of school-related overdoses within 24 hours. Until Youngkin’s order, the data were not publicly available in many districts, including Fairfax County. In some cases, students were overdosing in public school bathrooms and parents with children at that school had no idea.

Such a notification system should garner bipartisan support. When parents are quickly notified of fentanyl in their schools, they are more aware of its presence and can act accordingly. Given that this is killing our children, it seems logical that we would collaboratively — regardless of political affiliation — want all hands on deck to combat such a dangerous enemy.

Earlier this year, state legislators introduced bills to codify Youngkin’s executive order into state law — likely because liberal school districts, such as Fairfax County, have a history of completely ignoring the governor’s executive orders and model policies.

Last month, Virginia’s state senators voted unanimously in favor of the bill. But like petulant little children, House Democrats, led by Delegate Holly Seibold, voted against the 24-hour notification window.

Why? It’s unclear. Seibold’s explanation is vague and makes her sound like a cantankerous teenager rebelling against her father. She said, “How we approach these overdoses must be well thought out policy and more than just a governor’s mandate.”

Seibold did not elaborate on why she thought the 24-hour notification was not “well thought out.” And she refused to speak about it with the media.

If House Democrats do not want to help us legislatively protect our children against fentanyl in public schools, they should at least explain their reasoning. And it should be more profound than clear oppositional defiance that sounds like, “If dad wants it, then I’m against it.”

The Democrats’ objection to notifying parents of fentanyl overdoses within 24 hours is particularly ironic given that in Seibold’s district, Fairfax County’s parents were sent near daily notifications about COVID-19 cases in the schools. Does this mean that House Democrats believe that COVID is more dangerous than fentanyl for children? I certainly hope not, but I would not put it past them.

Likely, this is just another example of Democrats supporting the politically expedient filtering of information to parents from their children’s public schools, to children’s peril.

Race-based policies are not only immoral, they are dangerous

Posted on June 2, 2024June 5, 2024 by Stephanie Lundquist-Arora

There are times when we collectively understand that discrimination in hiring and admissions is wrong. Last week, for example, a Virginia-based technology firm was forced to pay more than $38,000 in penalties for a 2023 job advertisement in search of white applicants.

In a U.S. Department of Justice press release, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division stated, “The Justice Department, working with other government agencies, will continue to hold employers accountable when they violate our nation’s federal civil rights laws.”

Michele Hodge, acting director of the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, joined Clarke in her justified outrage. She said, “We are committed to holding federal contractors accountable for outrageous discriminatory practices like this advertisement.”

Indeed, discrimination on the basis of race is outrageously wrong. Isn’t that what they are saying?

Sadly, no. Rather, the Left enjoys levying discriminatory policy against whites and Asians, even if they are children. According to their hero, Ibram X. Kendi, these types of so-called anti-racist policies essentially are payback for history, and the only way to make up for unjust past discrimination is with unjust present discrimination.

So while we breathe a gasp of moral indignation together about the “whites only” job advertisement at the technology company, our unity, ironically, ends there.

Take medical schools as another example. Many leftist medical schools, such as the University of California, Los Angeles, have reportedly engaged in race-based admissions despite a state law prohibiting such policies.

In order to achieve racial balance, the schools’ metrics have changed from grades and test scores to, well, mostly just race. They may as well hang a sign that says, “Asians need not apply because we don’t need any more of you.”

Does the Left have a problem with this? No, it seems they don’t. But they should.

First, discrimination against any race is morally reprehensible and unconstitutional.

That aside, admissions programs and applications based on so-called equity rather than merit are quite literally dangerous for our health and safety. Following UCLA’s focus on race in admissions, their rank and students’ performance dropped precipitously.

The unintended consequences of such policies for specialized fields, such as medicine, are disastrous. Obviously, no one wants an incompetent doctor, even wealthy leftists.

As the public becomes aware of such considerations in medical schools, they will use information shortcuts to select doctors who have not been given “special consideration” in medical school, which without doubt would include heterosexual Asian males. Their competence will be as guaranteed as it gets because it’s crystal clear that no one is offering them any special favors.

Meanwhile, very qualified individuals belonging to racial groups that have been given a “helping hand” for the sake of “equity” will be viewed with a lens of skepticism and perhaps even avoided. Eventually, reviews and research will show who the most competent doctors are, and which ones have no business practicing medicine.

And guess who gets stuck with the incompetent doctors from the “do-good” medical schools? Poor people. Is that the equality we are targeting in America? I hope not.

So, while we rightly admonish firms with racist hiring policies that are in search of only white applicants, it is also time that we join together in the realization that merit, not equity, wins the day. And all selection decisions based on racial identity are not only immoral, but counterproductive.