Fairfax County buys a school it does not need
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.
In August 2025, Fairfax County Public Schools purchased the former King Abdullah Academy in the western part of the county for $150 million. The purchase adds to a growing set of data points highlighting the district’s irresponsible leadership.
Skyview High School, the name school board members unanimously approved for the new school in February, has been in the district’s capital budget planning since 2015 to address overcrowding and expectations of an increasing student population.
Those projections, however, didn’t account for the mass exodus of students fleeing from a public school district in significant decline.
From 2015 to 2025, Fairfax County Public Schools experienced the largest decrease in student enrollment of any district in the state. It lost 6,894 students, according to the University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. From 2020 to 2025 alone, enrollment fell by 11,348 students.
The district’s enrollment is expected to decline by an additional 6.6% from 2025 to 2030, according to Weldon Cooper Center projections.
In 2015, when the county’s leaders anticipated that a new high school would be necessary, student enrollment was about 186,800. Ten years later, the district’s enrollment was 177,007 and was slated to be 165,325 in 2030.
Taxpayers are puzzled about why a new school is needed when there is a projected drop of 20,000 students from 2015 to 2030. The county’s Board of Supervisors also had questions about Skyview High School as it worked on the fiscal year 2027 budget.
Supervisor Pat Herrity, a Republican representing the Springfield district, requested that the district’s leaders “detail the proposed increase in operational expenses, including the costs that are associated with the new high school (e.g., principal salary).”
The district responded with what Mr. Herrity, in an email, called “a completely unacceptable, garbage answer that excluded many of the costs.”
District leaders wrote that the costs for fiscal year 2027 would total $4.7 million, including $3.8 million for personnel, $700,000 for utilities and $200,000 for hourly and logistics funding.
In an effort to better understand the new high school’s actual costs, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request seeking additional information on costs associated with building renovations, athletic facilities, parking lot modification, installation of technology infrastructure, transportation, and furniture and equipment.
The (notoriously abusive) FOIA office determined that the cost of providing a taxpayer with such information would be $455. I emailed Superintendent Michelle Reid and Division Counsel John Foster, who oversees FOIA matters, to request a more reasonable FOIA fee and greater transparency regarding the new high school.
Not surprisingly, they haven’t responded.
Although the district paid $150 million for the school and additional costs are significant — perhaps much higher than it is willing to disclose to the county’s Board of Supervisors and taxpayers — it is having trouble finding students to fill the classrooms.
District leaders planned a phased opening of Skyview High School, aiming to enroll approximately 500 freshmen and 500 sophomores for the 2026-2027 school year and reach full enrollment of about 2,000 students by the 2028-2029 school year.
The intended feeder patterns primarily included the Centreville, Chantilly and Westfield pyramids, with portions of the Oakton and South Lakes pyramids also considered in boundary scenarios. Although the initial opt-in deadline was Jan. 16, the district sent a systemwide email to all FCPS families on April 28 promoting the “opportunity” to be part of the inaugural Skyview community.
It is abundantly clear to taxpayers that Skyview High School is not as highly coveted as school board members had hoped. Whereas there was supposed to be a lottery system if more than 1,000 students applied for the school when it opened, district leaders are now desperately trying to poach students from other schools, likely to justify their unnecessary purchase.
Adding insult to injury, the county is in financial trouble because its tax revenue is declining. Waste is problematic even in times of abundance, but it is even more egregious when fiscal conditions tighten and competing demands on public funding increase.
Taken together, these decisions reflect reckless leadership. The purchase of Skyview High School, combined with declining public school enrollment and rising costs, raises serious questions about the district’s fiscal stewardship and planning discipline.
At a time when enrollment trends point downward and county revenue is under pressure, major capital commitments of this scale warrant heightened scrutiny, clearer justification and stronger accountability to taxpayers.
