Last week, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors sent a letter to Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) begging the state for more money, particularly for K-12 public education. If he does consider this request, Youngkin should introduce a condition requiring an external audit of the county’s “critical services.”
Alternatively, Fairfax County’s supervisors, could, if they actually care about local costs, reconsider their sanctuary policy passed in January 2021, which is not only substantially increasing expenses for the county but also sinking our public schools.
The problem with Fairfax County’s request for more money is that the county’s elected leadership admittedly has relinquished any power to ensure that local public school funds are spent in a responsible manner with a clear focus on student outcomes. On Aug. 12, 2024, Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay sent me an email acknowledging that “the Board of Supervisors is the largest funder of FCPS but does not have authority over operations.”
So who is monitoring the school district’s budget that has ballooned from $3 billion in fiscal 2020 to $3.7 billion in fiscal 2025, even as the student population decreased from 188,355 to 181,701?
Esther Ko, the district’s auditor general, does not seem to be looking for fraud, waste, and abuse. Instead, it appears she is in lock-step with the district’s other leaders to boost imaging. In fact, former school board member Karen Keys-Gamarra told Ko at a school board meeting in April 2023, “I personally wanted to thank you for being a partner … and for making us look good.”
The truth of the matter is that the district’s budget, which accounts for more than half of the county’s spending, is on a runaway freight train with irresponsible leaders as the conductors. Specifically, Superintendent Michelle Reid, who has an annual salary of more than $400,000, bloats the school district’s bureaucracy with overpaid, non-school-based administrators who are not from the area and have little to no local knowledge of the district.
Meanwhile, student test scores have plummeted, and the performance of multiple schools has declined. Reid’s priorities are bringing in her buddies and politicizing public education with equal outcomes at all costs, not improving student achievement and genuine education. Our elected school board members should address such gross negligence and waste, but they do not seem to understand that they are in charge of Reid, not the other way around.
Here are just a few examples of Reid’s questionable decision-making with regard to the budget and the district’s imported senior leadership.
In July 2022, Reid announced a new senior position and entire bureaucratic department for her friend and former colleague from Washington’s Northshore Schools. Lisa Youngblood Hall, the district’s new chief experience and engagement officer, will earn an annual salary of $239,468 in fiscal 2025. Though it remains unclear what she or her office does, Hall’s budget is more than $8.2 million and includes 70 non-school-based, full-time employees.
Hall is not the only interstate import. In March 2023, the Texas Education Agency announced that the state was removing Houston Independent School District’s leadership and taking charge of the state’s largest school district due to its poor performance over multiple years. A few short months later, Reid announced Fairfax County’s new chief of schools, Geovanny Ponce, who was formerly a district administrator in Houston’s failing public school system.
Geovanny Ponce has held the position of Fairfax County’s chief of schools since July 2023, during which time his annual salary increased from $186,000 in Houston to $253,665 in Fairfax County. The fiscal 2025 budget shows that under Reid’s and Ponce’s leadership, the Office of the Chief of Schools more than doubled its expenses from fiscal 2024 to fiscal 2025, increasing from $16 million to $40 million.
Also joining us from Houston’s failing school district is William Solomon, the district’s chief human resources officer since June 2024. Under Reid’s tenure, the non-school-based human resources expenditures have increased from approximately $12 million in fiscal 2022 to $16.7 million in fiscal 2025.
Fairfax County’s school district’s senior leadership is unimpressive, and their budget management is an embarrassment. The answer to our school district’s problems is not more money from skyrocketing local taxes or from the state. Rather, the district’s budget needs an external audit.
Reid and her friends clearly are lemons. Fairfax County residents would be better served to find competent leaders who have a genuine vested interest and stake in our local public schools.
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.