Stephanie Lundquist-Arora | May 13, 2025
Earlier this year, as Fairfax County was facing a $300 million budget shortfall, its school board members added high-paying personal staff positions amounting in total to an additional $1.5 million.
Fairfax County Times has reported that in a closed session, county school board members voted to offer their friends with bachelor’s degrees, who work only about eight months of the year, $121,535 salaries for each non-school based position. Some of the members, including Chairman Karl Frisch and Robyn Lady, promoted existing staff who had previously made $72,323.
Kyle McDaniel, the school board member who allegedly embezzled more than $1.5 million from Blue Label Aviation and now faces a civil lawsuit, hired a Democratic campaign strategist and donor, Laura Stokes, for the newly created “office personnel/clerical” position. Perhaps Stokes, in addition to her clerical duties, will help McDaniel in his desperation to make news of his embezzlement scandal disappear – all on the taxpayers’ dime.
Rachna Sizemore Heizer also hired a Democratic insider for the overpaid position. Sizemore Heizer’s new assistant, Stephanie Sedgwick was the vice chair of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee and former chief of staff to Delegate Dan Helmer (D).
The closed-door process by which school board members created these overpaid clerical positions represents their incompetence and deception, which is why the public has no trust in them. The unreasonably high salaries and types of people hired and promoted to these jobs are emblematic of our so-called “non-partisan” school board members’ corruption and nepotism.
Elected officials in charge of a $4 billion public budget should not behave like young children loose in a candy store with their parents’ credit card. Fairfax County needs an external budget audit and new, competent leaders.
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for 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 Fox News Digital, National Review, Daily Signal, WMAL.com and Townhall.
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