Virginia Shouldn’t Bail Out Fairfax County’s Failing Schools

Hungry dogs run faster, but Fairfax County’s leadership is so bloated that it can barely move. Contrary to what these overfed “dogs” would have you believe, the county’s problems are not the rest of Virginia’s responsibility.

On Tuesday, Kyle McDaniel—an at-large member of the Fairfax County School Board currently embroiled in embezzlement allegations—emailed Fairfax families urging them to lobby their elected officials in Richmond for more funding for the county.

“As the General Assembly works to finalize the state budget, I’m asking you to make your voice heard,” McDaniel wrote. “Reach out to your Delegates and Senators and tell them Fairfax County schools deserve a fair return on what we send to Richmond.”

McDaniel cites a flawed study commissioned by district leaders with the Weldon Cooper Center at the University of Virginia. It inaccurately claimed that Virginia’s largest county receives only 50 cents back for every tax dollar it sends to the commonwealth.

Even if the study were completely accurate, it’s surprising that McDaniel and the rest of Fairfax Schools’ equity brigade would take issue with one of the state’s wealthiest counties sharing its resources with the rest of Virginia. After all, that is precisely the type of policy they claim to support from their equity pedestal—when it’s politically expedient.

Another classic example of “equity for thee, but not for me.”

In December, Virginia Senate’s president pro tempore, Louise Lucas, a Democrat, criticized the study in a post on X, articulating why its conclusions were misleading. “This is false and is a number derived by only counting money we send the county directly, not services used by all,” she wrote.

Lucas accused Northern Virginia localities—particularly Fairfax—of misrepresenting their financial relationship with the state. “I’m getting sick and tired of localities in Northern Virginia (especially Fairfax) spreading misinformation about being underfunded by the Commonwealth of Virginia. It’s time to correct the record and stop these lies.”

“We will not be bullied or lied to by the richest community in the Commonwealth that is constantly begging us for more funding,” the liberal state senator concluded.

Fairfax County’s leaders’ push for more money—and an even larger budget—rests on two faulty assumptions: that the district needs the additional funding for its schools and that spending more would improve student outcomes. Neither claim holds up.

In fact, Fairfax County Public Schools has a spending problem, not a funding problem. Between 2019 and 2025, the district’s budget ballooned from $3 billion to $3.9 billion. Yet during that same period, enrollment dropped by more than 10,000 students, while private-school and homeschool enrollment surged. The issue isn’t that Fairfax has fewer children—it’s that more families are losing confidence in the district’s public schools and voting with their feet.

If student performance had risen alongside the district’s rapidly expanding budget, the spending might be easier to defend. Instead, outcomes have declined. Over the same period, average SAT scores for students in Fairfax County Public Schools dropped by 35 points. In 2025, about a quarter of students in the county’s public schools failed their reading, math, and science Standards of Learning exams. In December, the state’s department of education further reported that 20% of the district’s 199 public schools were federally identified as needing support.

Instead of focusing on students, Fairfax County Public Schools has turned into a jobs program for central administrators. While the district eliminated 275 teaching positions in fiscal year 2026, it is spending roughly $272 million on salaries for 2,346 non-school-based administrators.

At least 44 of these administrators earn over $200,000 a year. The most shocking example: Superintendent Michelle Reid makes $445,353 annually—and is accompanied by four publicly funded bodyguards. Her chief of staff, Marty Smith, takes home $306,154.

Fairfax County’s schools are failing not for lack of money, but because leadership has prioritized bureaucracy over students. Ballooning budgets, thousands of overpaid administrators, and declining outcomes show that throwing more state funds at this system will accomplish nothing. Virginia’s taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll a failing, bloated bureaucracy. If anything, the state should stop subsidizing Fairfax’s excess and let the county face the consequences of its own spending choices.

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