FCPS’s Advisory Committee “Reforms” Avoided Real Reform

Earlier this year, the Fairfax County School Board made several changes to its policies and procedures relating to its Community Advisory Committees, but the Board didn’t address the most important problem with these bodies:  They tend to echo the preexisting views of Board members rather than being a source of independent advice.

Background

Over the years the School Board created ten standing Community Advisory Committees “to offer input, support, and recommendations to the School Board on policies and issues impacting the successful operation of the school division.”  The committees provide input on various subjects including, among others, sex education, students with disabilities, human resources, facilities planning, and minority student achievement.  Some of the committees focus on relatively mundane subjects, but others provide input on topics that generate considerable controversy.

Earlier this year, the Board amended its official policies relating to the committees.  It also updated the portion of its Strategic Governance Manual relating to them and, for the first time, it published an Operating Manual to govern the committees’ duties, meetings, and interactions with the Board.  Much time and effort was spent in drafting, editing and publishing these documents.  The main purposes of the changes were to provide more specificity about the mission and role of each advisory group, to require the committees to provide annual reports to the Board, and to provide for FCPS response and follow-up to the committee recommendations.

The revised policy (FCPS Policy 1710.19) declares that “community involvement is the backbone of our school system. … These advisory committees are meant to represent the various perspectives of the community.”  Sounds good.  Advisory committees aren’t worthwhile if they only represent a particular point of view, particularly on issues that tend to be controversial.  But despite the high-sounding verbiage of Policy 1710.19, the Board didn’t create a mechanism to ensure that diverse voices will be represented.

As before, the new policies and procedures provide that all or most of the voting members of the committees will be hand-picked by the Board members, or selected by those hand-picked individuals.  The Board members almost invariably appoint people whose views align with their own.  Thus, when the membership of the School Board consists of twelve individuals whose perspectives are non-diverse, the result is advisory committees that are similarly non-diverse.

The most notable illustration of this phenomenon is the Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee (FLECAC).

FLECAC Was, and Still Is, Unrepresentative

FLECAC was created to provide community input on “family life education” in Fairfax County schools.  Family life education should  include instruction on subjects such as the value of marriage and family relationships; sexual development and human reproduction; the value of postponing sexual activity; prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, sexual assault, dating violence, abusive relationships and human trafficking; and the value of adoption as a positive choice in the event of an unwanted pregnancy.  Va. Code sec. 22.1-207.1.

Family life education is fraught with potentially controversial issues.  Some believe the timing and content of sex education should be controlled by parents rather than the school system.  Divergent views also exist regarding what, how and when such instruction should occur in the school system.  That’s why it’s particularly important that any advisory committee concerning family life education “represent the various perspectives of the community.”

Unfortunately, FLECAC has been, and remains, the antithesis of a representative body.  All or almost all its members have been proponents of “progressive” sex-education measures.  Conservative voices have been practically nonexistent.

To illustrate: In 2022 the committee voted 14-0 to combine boys and girls in the same sex-ed classes from Grade 4 onward.  When a community survey was conducted, 85% of the respondents opposed the proposal, and only 11% supported it.  The School Board deferred action to the next year.  Undeterred, the committee recommended in 2023 that gender-combined classes commence in Grade 5.  This time, the committee vote was little changed: 14-3.  When 85% of the community feels one way, and the FLECAC members overwhelming feel otherwise, and have no compunction about pressing the Board to adopt their position despite public opinion, it is obvious that the committee is not representative of the community.

Interestingly, the School Board avoided taking a vote on FLECAC’s gender-combined sex-ed proposal.  They apparently didn’t have the courage to openly defy overwhelming public opinion.  So, instead, plans were quietly made to sneak in the proposal through a “pilot” program in the 2024-25 school year.  See “Unisex Sex-Ed Classes Are Being Implemented in FCPS Elementary and Middle Schools,” June 24, 2024.  When I asked a knowledgeable FCPS administrator why this was being done despite public opposition and the lack of a vote by the Board, the answer was, “because FLECAC recommended it.”  That’s like trying to justify an unpopular measure by saying “because Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (or David Duke) recommended it.”

We’ve all heard the phrase “garbage in, garbage out.”  Adapted to the School Board’s advisory committee structure, the maxim should be “bias in, bias out.”

This year’s FLECAC promises to come up with similarly controversial proposals.  Its principal agenda item is whether to add explicit instruction about transgenderism in elementary grades, and there seems little doubt about where this is heading.  Fairfax Schools Monitor is attending the committee meetings.  Subsequent posts on this site will report on developments.

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