Fairfax County Hires New School Superintendent

The Fairfax County School Board selected a new Superintendent at a marathon session on April 14.  Michelle Reid, who has been the superintendent of a school district in the State of Washington, was hired to replace Scott Braband, who has been Superintendent since 2017.  The selection of Reid was not without controversy.

Rationale for Selecting Michele Reid

Michele Reid has been the superintendent of a school district in the State of Washington since 2016.  She was educated at the University of Washington, receiving masters and doctoral degrees in educational leadership.  She had been a school principal before being selected as the district’s superintendent.  Last year she was selected as superintendent of the year by the national School Supervisors Association.

At last night’s meeting, her supporters described her as “brilliant,” “analytical,” “intellectually curious,” and as an “innovator” and “thought leader” who “thinks big.”  They were very impressed with how she handled herself in interviews.

The thing that struck me most about the Board members’ comments, however, was their focus on “equity/social justice” issues as key criteria in the hiring decision.  Speaker after speaker emphasized this.  For example, Laura Jane Cohen was impressed by how Reid wove equity into her answer to every interview question.  Karl Frisch stressed Reid’s commitment to equity.  Abrar Omeish focused on her “holistic equity” outlook and her desire to establish a “racial justice education department” in the school system.

School Board Controversy and Deliberations

In the recent past, virtually all decisions by the School Board have been unanimous.  In other governing bodies, divergent views, lively debate and divided votes are the norm.  Not so in the Fairfax County school system.  The twelve Board members are all members of the same wing of the same political party, and they almost always sing from the same hymnal when setting policy, even when their decisions are controversial in the general community.

Last night’s meeting was a major departure from the norm.  The vote in favor of Reid was 9-3, following lengthy pro and con speeches by all the Board members.  The main opposition came from the two African-American members, Ricardy Anderson and Karen Keys-Gamarra, who favored an African-American candidate from Nebraska.  They moved to delay the final vote and to reopen the process.  That tactic failed on a vote of two in favor, nine opposed, and one abstention.  In the final vote, Anderson and Keys-Gamarra were joined in their opposition by one other Board member, Karen Corbett Sanders.

The Board’s choice of Reid had been leaked ahead of time by someone opposed to her election.  This led to a flood of protests in the days before the vote.  Keys-Gamarra said she had heard from the NAACP, from black educators, from a gay pride group, and from about fifty others who favored the other finalist for the position.  There had been a student walk-out at several schools.  An LGBT group of students staged a protest outside the meeting.

Bitterness was barely below the surface in the speeches of Anderson and Keys-Gamarra.    Keys-Gamarra complained that the Board hadn’t sufficiently established an “equity link” for choosing the next superintendent.  She referred to research showing how people make decisions and how history affects those decisions, suggesting vaguely that some of her colleagues were motivated in part by racial prejudice.  She referred to hurtful things that had been said in the Board’s deliberations, and she said community members were feeling disenfranchised.  Anderson said that by proceeding with the vote, the Board was discounting the people whom the Board had been elected to represent.

Other Board members defended the Board’s process and decision but supported the feelings of Anderson and Keys-Gamarra.  Laura Jane Cohen said she understood that minorities don’t think the system works for them.  Abrar Omeish acknowledged the “righteous anger” of community members who didn’t get the candidate they preferred.

Aside from the race-related aspect of the opposition to Reid, there were other grounds for concern as well.  Reid’s school district in Washington has only 22,000 students compared to Fairfax County’s 180,000, and its budget is $400 million compared to Fairfax County’s $3.4 billion.  For this reason, some Board members, as well as outside groups, believed that Reid’s experience has not adequately prepared her for her new job.  Another source of concern was the fact that Fairfax County’s students are far more diverse than those in Reid’s current district.  Others were upset that Reid’s district was one of the first in the nation to close, and one of the last to reopen, due to Covid.  Opponents also cited the facts that public school enrollment declined and that test scores declined during Reid’s tenure.

Comments

I was struck during last night’s Board meeting with the hand-wringing about “marginalized voices.”  Anyone can feel marginalized when decisions are made over which he or she has little control.  But it is definitely not true that the current School Board marginalizes the voices of minority groups.  Indeed, the opposite is often the case.  This Board has lists of who it regards as “stakeholders” for establishing school policy, and the “stakeholders” are mainly persons and organizations who advocate for racial/ethnic minorities, for the LGBTQIA community and other minorities, as well as school insiders such as teachers’ unions.  For example, in rewriting social studies curricula to embody concepts such as institutional racism, privilege, identity, power and equity, the groups supporting these controversial ideas have been key players in the process.  It is the non-minority majority who have been excluded from the Board’s ear and deference.

I don’t have an adequate basis to either support or oppose Michelle Reid’s selection as the next Superintendent.  I don’t know the qualifications of the other candidates, and, in particular, I don’t know anything about the other finalist — the candidate from Nebraska — other than that she is an African American woman.

I would prefer a person with a strong track record elsewhere whose chief qualification is his or her emphasis on the basics of education, a person who doesn’t emphasize “social justice” over quality like Scott Braband has.  But that wasn’t a realistic expectation with our current School Board.  Anyone who follows the Fairfax County school system knew in advance that the Board would choose someone who shares its commitment to “equity.”  We can only hope that Michelle Reid’s concepts of true equity won’t be at the expense of meritocracy and won’t involve indoctrination of our children with left-wing beliefs.