OPINION:
Public education is meant to serve the needs of students, not act as an employment program for overpaid bureaucrats.
Despite year-over-year budget increases and a steady decline in student enrollment, leaders of Virginia’s largest public school district can never seem to get enough money. In response, they tend to cut services for students first. Fiscal year 2028 does not appear to be an exception.
On Sept. 8, Fairfax County Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Leigh Burden, whose annual salary is $289,565, informed the district’s budget committee that fiscal year 2028 will be a “difficult budget year.”
Ms. Burden’s presentation suggested that required reduction levels will be closer to the fiscal year 2026 amount, $154 million, than the $118 million required in fiscal year 2027.
Among the possible cost reductions, Ms. Burden said, is increasing class sizes by one student. The move, she said, would provide the district with savings of $35 million.
Similarly, reducing needs-based staffing by 1%, thereby reducing flexibility in schools, would save the district another $1 million.
Board members at the meeting also discussed middle school sports and after-school programs, implying that those might also be on the chopping block.
In fairness, alongside these proposed solutions that do a massive injustice to children, Ms. Burden’s presentation also recommended that central offices propose a 5% reduction option.
There it is. Let us explore that a little more.
I bet the district’s leadership can easily do better than 5% across the entirety of central office spending. A conscientious school board could eliminate so much waste in central office spending that it would not need to reduce student services.
In fiscal year 2026, the district employed 2,346 non-school-based central administrators with salaries that totaled $272 million annually, not including benefits.
The employees at the top of this fiefdom get privileges about which teachers can only dream. For example, Superintendent Michelle Reid’s chief of staff, Marty Smith, is compensated with an annual salary of $306,154.
Dozens of other top administrators receive annual salaries of more than $200,000, overly generous non-local travel budgets and district-funded Ph.D.s.
Meanwhile, in fiscal year 2026, “Queen” Reid had an annual salary of $445,353 — and a car allowance. The district also employs four full-time personal security guards to see to her safety around the clock.
It is too bad that district leaders did not have the same concern for children’s safety at the beginning of this year, when they eliminated crossing guards at high schools.
Amid the central office bloat, FCPS leadership has also expanded its green initiatives into a sprawling administrative apparatus spanning multiple departments and layers of staffing. Last year, salaries for staff in these green initiatives alone totaled $2.2 million.
While all these administrative perks were fully funded, the school board delayed purchasing new hard-copy social studies textbooks for fourth-graders this year.
With the superintendent’s salary and perks, it is abundantly clear that Ms. Reid’s love of “equity” — the central theme of the district’s strategic plan — is meant to be applied only to others. Equity for thee, but not for me.
In fact, about 2 in 5 of the district’s economically disadvantaged students failed their reading, math and science Standards of Learning tests last year. Increasing class sizes would be particularly disadvantageous to them and certainly not an equitable solution.
In the last seven years, FCPS has also spent $58.4 million on white-shoe law firms, mostly because of controversies of its own making. In fiscal year 2026, the district set a record, spending $14.4 million on lawyers.
Aside from waste on bureaucrats and lawyers, last year the district’s leaders also bought a school they did not need — for $150 million. Although they have touted the former King Abdullah Academy (now Skyview High School) as a great facility, they are having a tremendously difficult time enticing students and filling it to capacity.
Meanwhile, other high schools in the district, such as John R. Lewis High School, are also not filled to capacity.
FCPS leaders blame the Trump administration, the state of Virginia, the board of supervisors and inflation for its budget problems. In reality, the main contribution to the district’s so-called shortfall for multiple years is irresponsible leadership and poor decision-making.
Fairfax County’s taxpayers must demand an independent external audit of the budget so children are not forced to pay the price for the district’s terrible leadership.
• 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.
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