Issue: Schools

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.

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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.

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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.