FLECAC Meeting Abruptly Canceled; Notice to the Public Withheld
FCPS’s Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee (FLECAC) was scheduled to meet this Wednesday evening, March 12, to discuss a controversial proposal to teach elementary-grade students about “gender identity” issues as early as the 3d or 5th grade. The committee’s January and February meetings had both been canceled due to snowy roads, so public attendance at this March meeting was expected to be particularly high. FCPS was aware that advocates and opponents of the gender identity proposal had both urged their supporters to attend the meeting.
As of Monday morning, the FCPS website indicated that Wednesday’s meeting was going forward as planned. But in the mid-afternoon, a Fairfax citizen asked Fairfax Schools Monitor whether it was being postponed yet again. We then learned that the website had been quietly updated sometime in the late morning or early afternoon to state that the next FLECAC meeting would now occur on March 19. No reason was given for the decision. Fairfax Schools Monitor then phoned the FLECAC chairperson to ask why, and was simply told the meeting was being rescheduled for “personal reasons.”
Given that there is no apparent need, such as bad weather, to expect a last-minute postponement, few citizens are likely to recheck the FCPS website to see that the next meeting date is now listed as March 19. Many will travel to FCPS headquarters on Wednesday evening only to find the doors locked and no one present to conduct a meeting.
And here’s what makes the decision outrageous: We have learned that FCPS decided last Thursday to reschedule the meeting but waited until today to quietly change the website notice. The transgender advocates on FLECAC have known for several days, but the general public has been deliberately kept in the dark.
FLECAC has grown accustomed to doing its business out of the limelight, and many on the committee undoubtedly resent the scrutiny its work is receiving this year. But the citizens of Fairfax County should expect more transparency from FCPS. Distrust and suspicions about ulterior motives are understandably fostered when the public is treated shabbily like this.
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