Reid Lectures Kids About Her Budgetary Desires
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora | April 14, 2025
On April 9, Fairfax County Public Schools’ superintendent, Michelle Reid, summoned two dozen students from 24 high schools to the district’s headquarters to lecture them about her budget preferences.
Reid has a history of promoting a political agenda to manipulate students. Last month, for example, she supported a Women’s History Month display hanging in West Springfield High School beginning with “A is for abortion,” accompanied by the image of a coat hanger. She refused to acknowledge that it was divisive, inappropriate and controversial, but instead suggested the exhibit represented “critical thinking.”
And when Reid sat with the student journalists around a conference table in Gatehouse Administration Center last week, she played on their emotions by implying programs important to them would be cut if the school district did not get the full amount requested from the county. “I have to believe we’re going to get fully funded…I have to believe the Board of Supervisors is going to fully fund them,” Reid said.
Clearly, the superintendent invited those students into her lair so they would repeat her talking points in their articles. The one-sidedness of Reid’s approach is glaring. If she genuinely wanted to educate students about the budgetary process and resource constraints, she would have invited the Board of Supervisors and a representative from an organization such as Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance.
Reid, who joined Fairfax County Public Schools from Washington state and enjoys an annual salary of $424,000 at our expense, might not care about the overall economic health of Fairfax County. She should, however, at least consider it. The local economic consequences of federal workers losing their jobs remains unclear, but it undoubtedly will impact the county’s resources moving forward.
Stephen Tarditi, director of market intelligence at Fairfax County’s Economic Development Authority, briefed the Board of Supervisors last week. He said that if 20% of government workers and contractors were to lose their jobs, which seems not an unlikely scenario, that would include over 82,000 potential workers in Fairfax County. In this case, the county would lose almost $220 million in tax revenue.
With this in mind, competent leaders should be making preparations for deep cuts in spending. Instead, the Board of Supervisors is cutting too little and considering all the ways it can levy more taxes on its already squeezed residents, many who are in the process of losing their jobs. In the proposed fiscal 2026 budget, these taxes include an increase of 1.5 cents to the real estate tax rate, bringing the rate to $1.14 per $100 of the assessed value, and a new 3% meals tax that would begin in January 2026. Meanwhile, Fairfax County’s superintendent offers her biased perspective in order to manipulate children to beg for money, without any mention of a much-needed external audit of her $4 billion budget.
Just in case Reid is unable to persuade any of the student journalists who attended her one-sided discussion last week, teachers and administrators continue to enjoy editing privileges over students who might disagree with her, otherwise known as engaging in “wrongthink.” In December 2024, Fairfax County’s at-large school board member, Ryan McElveen, moved “that the school board direct the governance committee to ensure that all FCPS policies and regulations, including but not limited to the [Students’ Rights and Responsibilities], uphold the rights of student journalists to make good decisions regarding content without prior review or approval.” Not surprisingly, nine of the 12 board members voted against it.
In other words, the students do not actually have freedom of the press rights. Teachers and administrators, who almost certainly favor a large district budget, filter and shape students’ voices before they are made public.
Fairfax County Public Schools’ administration and elected board members have repeatedly stacked the deck on policies and procedures before decisions were made, particularly with regard to the district’s resources. Open discussions, townhalls, and community forums do little, if anything at all, to alter the preselected conclusions of the school district’s leadership. Using student journalists as part of this three-ring circus is particularly repugnant, even for Fairfax County.
Ms. Lundquist-Arora is a Fairfax parent and leads the county’s Independent Women’s Network chapter. She is a contributor for The Federalist as well as the Washington Examiner. Her writings have additionally appeared in Fox News Digital, National Review, The Daily Signal, The Washington Times, and Townhall.
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