Move Comes as FY2026 Budget Is Under More Scrutiny

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora | June 6, 2025

In Fairfax County, the FY2026 budget is under more scrutiny than in previous years. The county’s leaders are known for irresponsible spending, which is even more problematic when tax revenue decreases.

While the Board of Supervisors generally allocates the majority of the county’s budget for all of the public school district’s whims and wishes, this year’s $300 million shortfall forced them to make some choices. While the school district’s leaders asked for an additional $268 million from FY2025 to FY2026, the county granted them an increase of $125 million. Keep in mind that the student population will remain the same, around 183,000, and might actually decline.

There was a lot of crying and finger-pointing when the local governing body didn’t allocate Fairfax County Public Schools’ leaders full budgetary request for FY2026. School board members and Superintendent Michelle Reid are accustomed to getting what they want, not unlike spoiled children with unrestrained access to their parents’ credit cards. They blamed the Board of Supervisors, prompting the supervisors to pass the buck to state government.

Amidst the finger-pointing, there was little discussion about the dire need to cut spending and conduct a holistic review of the county’s and school district’s expenditures. In reality, Fairfax County has leadership and spending problems, not a revenue problem.

During the budget fallout, in which Reid reduced central funding for teacher positions, Fairfax County Public Schools’ leaders quietly removed the Schools’ Carry Forward Balances Summary Report from its website – a document that certainly should be publicly available. According to the report from June 2, 2025, the district’s schools have a total of $13.3 million of unspent funds from FY2025. See table below for a few examples from the report.

Schools Carry Forward Balances (Unspent Funds) from FY2025

As class sizes are projected to increase for the 2025-2026 academic year, let’s set aside our questions about these unspent funds by a district melting down and crying poverty. The most critical question, really, is how many additional teachers would $13 million support? And why are the district’s leaders trying to hide this money from public view? In past years, under Reid’s leadership, central administrators in Gatehouse have collected unused school funds for central office’s personal discretion. Do they intend to quietly do the same in FY2026?

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for The Federalist and the Washington Examiner; a mother in Fairfax County, Va.; an author; and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network. Her articles have also appeared in Fox News Digital, National Review, WMAL.com, The Washington Times, The Daily Signal, and Townhall.

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