Issue: Schools

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.

Fairfax County Public Schools has spent more than $12 million in legal fees so far this academic year.

As part of this jaw-dropping bill, the district has paid attorneys up to $1,850 per hour to “independently investigate” multiple scandals plaguing it.

This year, for example, 13 brave girls at Fairfax High School stepped forward to alert school administrators that Israel Flores Ortiz — an adult illegal immigrant from El Salvador who was enrolled as a junior at the school — sexually assaulted them in the hallways during school hours.

In April, Mr. Ortiz was sentenced to 360 days in jail for multiple counts of assault and battery. After his arrest, Fairfax County Public Schools leaders hired law firm McGuireWoods to conduct a comprehensive review of this matter.

In a statement Monday that came as no surprise, Superintendent Michelle Reid, who earns $445,353 this year, announced, “The external investigation confirmed that our administration acted promptly and appropriately to stop this behavior.”

Of course it did.

Indeed, Fairfax High School’s serial groping case is not the first time a Fairfax-subsidized “independent” investigator has found no wrongdoing by school or district administrators.

In fact, a finding against the very people paying the bills would be the more surprising outcome.

It is like a candy company funding a study on the relationship between sugar consumption and Type 2 diabetes. The public is assured that the process is objective, the experts are independent and the conclusions are evidence-based. Then the study finds little cause for concern. Nothing to see here.

This pattern extends well beyond Fairfax High School. When school officials delayed notifying students at Thomas Jefferson High School of their National Merit Scholarship “Commended” status in 2023, Fairfax County Public Schools hired a law firm to investigate.

When Hayfield High School faced allegations of football recruiting in 2024, district leaders brought in outside counsel. When a teacher raised concerns regarding a student abortion scandal at Centreville High School, the district once more turned to attorneys.

The most serious problem is that these firms are often presented as neutral fact-finders when they are anything but. At the same time King & Spalding was conducting an “independent” investigation for Fairfax County Public Schools, the firm was also representing the district in a related whistleblower lawsuit — a clear conflict of interest that raises serious questions about the credibility and impartiality of its findings.

Monique Miles, the whistleblower’s attorney, said, “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.”

Not surprisingly, all these “external” investigations concluded that Fairfax leaders acted appropriately. Yet the public record suggests a much more complicated reality.

In the Fairfax High School case, for example, records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request indicate that school administrators failed to make Title IX referrals after multiple students reported being sexually assaulted in a school hallway.

At the end of the day, Fairfax County residents deserve greater transparency and accountability from their school system. Instead of spending taxpayer dollars on expensive investigations that appear designed to validate predetermined conclusions, district leaders should focus on addressing misconduct and restoring public trust.

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 EdNews Virginia.

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Fairfax County’s school board members are scheduled to vote today on the fiscal year 2027 $4.1 billion budget. Although there will be a $197 million increase in funds from last year, district leaders are still pointing to what they describe as a $28 million “budget gap,” referring to the county’s Board of Supervisors not transferring FCPS’s full requested amount. 

Rather than addressing administrative bloat, district leadership is shifting resources away from classrooms to close the so-called “budget gap.” A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that FCPS spent $272 million on salaries for 2,346 non-school-based administrators in fiscal year 2026.  Meanwhile, the district plans to reduce school reserve staffing by $8.8 million, eliminating 70 positions, which raises serious concerns. As class sizes increase in Fall 2026, some grades may require additional teachers, but reducing reserve staffing will limit flexibility to respond to enrollment shifts and will ultimately contribute to larger class sizes and reduced instructional support.

Increasing administrative spending while simultaneously cutting school-level resources and increasing class sizes raises serious concerns about fiscal priorities. And a 36% increase in the superintendent’s salary since 2019, as shown in the table below, has not coincided with improved student outcomes. In fact, since 2019, Fairfax County Public Schools’ average SAT score has declined by 35 points.  

Fiscal Year	Cost Per Pupil	Total Budget	Superintendent Salary		Avg. SAT Score
2019	$15,293	$2.9B	$340,000	(Brabrand)	1218
2020	$16,043	$3.0B	$350,000	(Brabrand)	1211
2021	$16,505	$3.1B	$360,000	(Brabrand)	1201
2022	$16,674	$3.3B	$365,000	(Brabrand)	1185
2023	$18,772	$3.5B	$385,000	(Reid)	1181
2024	$19,795	$3.7B	$400,000	(Reid)	1178
2025	$20,940	$3.9B	$424,146	(Reid)	1183
2026	$22,644	$4.0B	$445,353	(Reid)	N/A
2027 (Proposed)	$23,722	$4.1B	$463,167*	(Reid)	N/A

*Estimated 4% increase

While the table shows a 55% rise in per-pupil spending since 2019, that growth has not been matched by measurable improvements in student academic outcomes. Overall, spending trends are increasingly out of step with performance outcomes. 

As the school board considers another multi-billion-dollar budget today, the central issue is not whether FCPS is receiving more funding, but whether those resources are being deployed in a way that directly supports classrooms and student achievement. Without an alignment between spending decisions and measurable academic outcomes, continued budget growth is becoming an exercise in scale rather than effectiveness—where more money is spent, but not in ways that improve results for students. 

The district urgently needs a comprehensive, independent, external audit of its budget.

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.

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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.

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 EdNews Virginia.

On March 23, Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Superintendent Michelle Reid announced that she is enlisting the services of yet another law firm, McGuireWoods, to “investigate” the district’s latest scandal — allegations that an 18-year-old illegal immigrant fondled the genitals of several female students in Fairfax High School. The district’s legal bills are mounting.

In her announcement, Reid said she retained “an independent outside law firm to conduct a comprehensive review of this matter.” The district’s contract with McGuireWoods, however — authorizing attorneys’ fees of up to $1,850 per hour — suggests a role less “independent” than described.

“McGuireWoods was retained by Client on March 19, 2026, to conduct a confidential, attorney-client privileged investigation concerning allegations of sexual harassment and/or assault of students at Fairfax High School,” the contract states. “The investigation has been undertaken for the purpose of providing legal advice to Client.”

READ THE CONTRACT (OBTAINED THROUGH FOIA):

Newly released figures reveal that even before FCPS’s contract for McGuireWoods to provide legal advice, not “conduct an independent investigation,” on the matter of alleged sexual assault in Fairfax High School took effect, February 2026 became the district’s costliest legal month on record at $3.8 million — driving total legal spending for fiscal year 2026 to more than $12 million.

One firm in particular, King & Spalding, accounted for $3.1 million of the district’s legal expenses in February alone, and $7.5 million so far this fiscal year. The district’s division counsel, John Foster, signed a contract with the firm agreeing to pay attorneys up to $1,850 per hour to investigate allegations related to an abortions-related scandal at Centreville High School.

Before that “independent” investigation was completed, the district retained the same firm to represent it in a lawsuit filed by a whistleblower.

Reid’s contract to run Virginia’s largest school district began on the first day of fiscal year 2023. Since then, the district’s legal expenses have risen substantially — totaling roughly 50% more from fiscal years 2023 through 2025 than during the previous three years under her predecessor. In a district marred with scandal, and fighting the federal government for boys’ “rights” to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms at school, fiscal year 2026 is on track to set a new record for the highest legal expenses in the district’s history.

At a time when Fairfax County Public Schools is confronting repeated controversies, its reliance on costly outside legal firms has pushed spending to unprecedented levels. With fiscal year 2026 on pace to set a new record, taxpayers are left to weigh whether these escalating legal bills reflect necessary accountability — or a pattern of reactive governance, poor leadership, and efforts to obscure internal failures.

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.

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The love of everything trans couldn’t be more visible among Fairfax County’s Democratic leadership. The district’s school board members are set to pass another transgender proclamation at their meeting this week.

In 2024, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted to observe Trans Visibility Day when it coincided with Easter — likely to insult Christians on their holiest of days. The alphabet people demand it every day, even Easter, apparently.

The transgender cult is arguably the most narcissistic group and certainly doesn’t need more proclamations for “visibility.” Entire months are dedicated to its pride and history. There’s a week for transgender awareness and health and days dedicated to transgender remembrance and pronouns.

Adding insult to injury, men pretending to be women have taken women’s sports, beauty pageants and awards ceremonies by storm. It’s not enough to be free to make personal choices; they demand that the public honor and applaud them for it, even when it comes at the expense of others.

Indeed, on pretty much all these “holidays,” Fairfax County’s leaders spend hours delivering soapbox speeches at public meetings about their commitment to this small, very visible group of people. The hour or two preceding community participation at the board’s upcoming meeting will be just another rerun.

In 2024, 1.9% of Fairfax students who took the Fairfax County Youth Survey identified as transgender. That was a decrease from the 2.3% the year prior, when it was trendier to be transgender. In neighboring Loudoun County’s school district this year, about 51 students (0.1%) identified as “nonbinary” (which, by the way, sounds like a body piercing from the 1990s).

While a small number of students are experimenting with claiming a transgender identity, a large number of students in both districts, particularly those from low-income families, are having an actual problem: They are failing their Standards of Learning tests.

According to data from the Virginia Department of Education, 41% of students enrolled in Fairfax County Public Schools — about 74,200 students — are labeled economically disadvantaged in the 2024-2025 academic year. Of those, 42% failed their English reading Standards of Learning tests, 95% failed English writing, 41% failed math, 46% failed science and 70% failed history.

In other words, the county’s equity warriors are focusing large amounts of resources — especially considering their expensive legal fight with the Department of Education to allow boys in girls’ bathrooms — for a few transgender-identifying students, most of whom are likely affluent.

The county’s leadership is making a clear choice, and it’s not for academics. While thousands of students, particularly those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, struggle to meet basic standards in reading, writing, math and science, the school board continues to devote time and attention to symbolic proclamations that have no measurable impact on student success.

Public schools exist to educate, not serve as platforms for political signaling. When nearly half of vulnerable students are failing core subjects, every hour spent on ceremonial resolutions is an hour not spent confronting the district’s real and growing academic challenges.

Parents are right to ask why leadership appears more focused on statements than solutions.

Until Fairfax County’s leaders refocus on improving classroom outcomes — raising test scores and supporting struggling students — their proclamations will ring hollow. Students don’t need more symbolism; they need results.