Fairfax School Board Members Vote in Unlawful Secret Meeting to Benefit Themselves

The Fairfax County School Board never ceases to amaze.  A body that’s supposed to be transparent is anything but.  A vivid example occurred earlier this year when the Board held a secret session to authorize expenditures that personally benefitted its members and that would have been very controversial if known to the public.

A May 9 article by Asra Nomani in the Fairfax County Times revealed that the Board had met in a closed session to authorize each member to add to his or her staff by hiring a “staff director” with a salary of $121,500.  In the same meeting, the Board reportedly voted to renovate and expand the Board’s office space at the school system’s headquarters.  The new staff positions were for administrative roles that do not require a college degree or any specialized experience, and yet the authorized salaries exceed those of most teachers in the Fairfax County public school system (FCPS).  The vote came at a time when FCPS was facing difficult budget decisions, which included eliminating some programs and reducing bargained-for pay increases for teachers.  The new positions and the high salaries would almost certainly have been questioned if they were open to public scrutiny.  The Board avoided this by this by failing to disclose its plans and by meeting in secret to authorize the expenditures.

Fairfax Schools Monitor was struck by the report that the Board had conducted this closed session.  The Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requires almost all meetings of government bodies to be open to the public.  None of the narrow exceptions to this requirement could possibly apply to a School Board meeting to authorize new staff positions or to renovate office space.  Thus, if the news report was accurate, the School Board violated the law.  Fairfax Schools Monitor therefore decided to investigate exactly what had occurred and why.

The effort has been met with stonewalling by FCPS.  The school system — caught in a clear-cut violation of Virginia law by conducting an improper secret meeting — is doubling down by refusing to comply with a lawful request for disclosure of relevant documents, thereby forcing the public to initiate litigation to get to the bottom of the matter.

The facts are summarized in an article that’s just been published in the Fairfax County Times.  The article is reprinted here:

Fairfax School Board Benefits Itself in Unlawful Secret Meeting, Fairfax County Times, June 20, 2025, by Mark Spooner

A May 9 article in this paper by Asra Nomani revealed that the Fairfax County School Board had voted in a closed meeting earlier this year to create a new “staff director” position for each Board member at salaries of $121,535, and to renovate the Board’s space at the school system’s headquarters.

I was skeptical about the article in one respect:  Was the matter really considered at a meeting closed to the public?  Virginia law requires almost all sessions of public bodies to be open.  Although there are narrow exceptions, such as for meetings to discuss discipline of an employee or student, there is no arguable justification for holding a secret meeting to consider spending taxpayer dollars for the public body’s benefit.  School Board members are well aware of this.  Whenever they conduct a non-public session, they are required to certify that the only matters discussed were ones the law authorizes to be closed.

So, to investigate further, I sent an email to my Braddock School Board representative and to the three at-large members, asking two simple questions:  Did the Board approve new hirings, and, if so, was this done in an open meeting?  When no response came within ten days, I sent “can you please respond” follow-ups.  Three Board members again ignored the inquiry, and the office of Kyle McDaniel merely said: “Unfortunately, we are unable to comment on personnel matters at FCPS.”

On May 15 I submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for documents relating to this issue, including records reflecting the date(s) when the School Board discussed the staff-director issue; agendas for the meeting(s); the rationale for the proposed hirings and the salary levels; meeting minutes and/or summaries; and how the Board members voted.

The FCPS FOIA office responded on June 3.  It confirmed that the issues were considered at a non-public meeting on February 25, but it refused to provide any of the requested documents other than a vague agenda that didn’t reveal an intent to consider the funding issues.  I was told that all other documents were protected by “attorney-client” privilege or were being withheld because they were prepared for a “closed meeting, as permitted by §3505.1(5) of FOIA.

In a subsequent phone call with an FCPS attorney, I pointed out that most of the requested documents couldn’t possibly be privileged.  The attorney-client privilege applies only to legal advice; it doesn’t apply to records reflecting the administrative or fiscal rationale for proposed expenditures, meeting minutes, etc.

With respect to the “closed meeting” exemption, I reminded the FCPS attorney that the statute only permits records to be withheld if they were “recorded in or compiled exclusively for use in closed meetings lawfully held pursuant to §2.2-3711.”  Section 3711 lists what can be lawfully discussed in closed meetings.  The list does not permit secret meetings for funding new staff positions or for renovation of office space.

The FCPS lawyer was unable to tell me during our phone call which provision of §3711 FCPS was relying on to justify its closed meeting, and I haven’t received an answer since then.  The only conceivable exemption is one that permits closed meetings for “interviews of prospective candidates for employment; assignment, appointment, promotion, performance, demotion, salaries, disciplining, or resignation of specific … employees” and other evaluations that “will necessarily involve discussion of the performance of specific individuals.”  Nothing fitting this exception was involved in the Board’s authorization of new staff positions or the decision to renovate the Board’s office space.

This leads to the key question: Given that the February 25 closed meeting violated the law, why did the Board decide to hold it?  This hasn’t been answered.  But the explanation may well be intertwined with the difficult budget issues that were pending at the time.  The Board needed to convince the county Board of Supervisors, and the public, that it was fiscally disciplined and that there was no fat in the proposed budget.  It would have been inconvenient for the public to focus on the hiring of additional, highly-paid staff assistants for the Board members, and the expense of renovating the Board’s office space, while other expenditures, including a bargained-for increase in teacher salaries, were being pared back.

A secret meeting may have seemed like the solution: the Board members could get what they wanted without the scrutiny that would have attended a transparent and lawful process.

A lawsuit will now be needed to rectify FCPS’s refusal to comply with FOIA.  The suit will ask the court to rule that the closed meeting in February violated the law and that all documents relating to that meeting must be publicly disclosed.