The Anti-Public Reality About FLECAC’s “Reform” Is Revealed

The Fairfax County School Board, at its March 13, 2025 meeting, surprised the community by terminating the controversial Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee (FLECAC) as a School Board advisory group.  The move seemingly came out of nowhere.  There was no prior public notice of it and hardly any discussion of it at the meeting.  Its purpose was only briefly described, in innocuous terms.  According to the motion’s sponsor, FLECAC has been an anomaly because other curriculum-related advisory committees (concerning math and social studies) are under the aegis of the FCPS Superintendent rather than the Board.  The purpose of the pending motion, it was explained, was simply to align FLECAC with the other curriculum-related committees.

Fairfax Schools Monitor, and some others, initially applauded the move, with reservations.  See “FLECAC Is No More!!!!”  In recent years, FLECAC has proposed far-left, ideological changes to the sex-education curriculum, which have generally been rubber-stamped by the Board.  This year, the committee was preparing to advocate new, controversial, anti-scientific “gender identity” instruction for young children as early as grade 3.  Thus, termination of the committee’s activity in March meant the proposals wouldn’t go forward in the current school year, which was an obvious plus.  We also felt that if the Superintendent created a new advisory committee in the future, it couldn’t possibly be more ideologically one-sided than FLECAC has been.

It turns out that the Board’s action was a calculated deception.  The real purpose was to allow FLECAC (or its successor advisory group) to avoid public scrutiny by conducting its proceedings in private, without public attendance at meetings.  The truth was discovered by a Fairfax County citizen, Laura Bryant Hanford, who did some digging.  She found that the proposal to realign FLECAC was developed by the Board’s Public Engagement Committee, whose members had disclosed their intent at a meeting on February 11.  See L.B. Hanford, “Fairfax County Doubles Down on Keeping Secrets from Parents,” Daily Signal, April 29, 2025.

The Public Engagement Committee is one of several committees of the School Board.  (Its current Board members are Marcia St. John-Cumming, Sandy Anderson, Melanie Meren, Ilryong Moon, and Ryan McElveen.)  Their meetings are open but are usually held during working hours, and are rarely attended by members of the public. But the meetings are videotaped, and Ms. Hanford found the video of the Public Engagement Committee’s February 11 meeting on YouTube (HERE).  At the meeting, the Board members candidly disclosed why they were proposing to realign the formality as to whom FLECAC (or its successor) would be advising.  The reason: Meetings of citizen advisory committees to the School Board must be open to the public, but advisory groups to the Superintendent can bar citizen attendance.  Fairfax Schools Monitor had been attending and reporting on this year’s FLECAC meetings.  (On most occasions, we were the only attendee.)  The scrutiny was deemed undesirable.  A desire for secrecy is why the Public Engagement Committee made its proposal.

The relevant portion of the February 11 meeting begins at 1:00:00 on the YouTube video.  Board member Sandy Anderson moved to convert FLECAC from an advisory committee to the Board to a curriculum review committee under the Superintendent.  Ms. Anderson stated that the purpose was to:

“give [FLECAC] the space to have conversations about what should be in the curriculum without the intense public scrutiny (particularly for this topic that is going on).  And I will renew my concern that we have students that are on this committee, and I would like to make sure that they are protected as they are moving forward.  Just the nature of having it be an advisory committee [to the Board] forces it in a very public way, rather than giving the space. …, Then the Board will discuss the curriculum recommendations without the focus on our appointees and the students.”

Board member Melanie Meren supported the rationale: “I agree it gets outsized attention and it gets pretty ugly, and that’s not fair for anyone who is volunteering their time.”

Ms. Anderson emphasized that the proposal was a form-over-substance measure.  She assured her fellow committee members that nothing would really change, other than hiding the proceedings from the public.  The Board, not the Superintendent, would still appoint the members of the new advisory committee.  The functionality of the committee would not change in any way.  And the Board, not the Superintendent, would still vote on the committee’s recommendations.  “Everything is going to act the same way,” Ms. Anderson stated.

The ostensible charge of the Family Engagement Committee is “to plan strategies, topics, timelines, and other matters related to Board/community dialogue and to coordinate physical logistics related to the Board’s outreach to stakeholders.”  Here, however, the panel was acting as a Public Dis-Engagement Committee, not as a body attempting to enhance such engagement.

When the full School Board took up the measure at its meeting on March 13, its members deliberately continued  the deception.  Ms. Anderson described the proposal as a simple, no-brainer, pro forma change … nothing of substance, just an innocuous amendment to the formality of who the committee would operate under.  She didn’t repeat what she had emphasized at the Public Engagement Committee meeting: that the over-riding purpose was to allow the committee to operate in secrecy.  The other Board members didn’t admit the truth either.  The discussion was brief and seemingly well orchestrated.  No one questioned why it was necessary to take time at a Board meeting to consider a proposal that allegedly had no substance behind it.  After a few minutes of supportive discussion, the proposal was approved by a 11-1 vote.  The one dissenter, Mateo Dunne, didn’t explain why he objected.  In a cynical conclusion to the charade, Board member Ricardy Anderson said:  “The work we do has to be transparent and clear to the public.  … And I’m glad we were able to do that with this measure tonight.”

Discussion

Transparency and clarity to the public were the furthest thing from the Board’s mind when it voted on March 13.  Deception was the foremost consideration.

Public officials often prefer to operate in secrecy.  That may be in their interest, but it usually isn’t in the public interest.  That’s why we have laws mandating open meetings of public bodies.

The School Board’s “engagement” committee, and the full School Board, apparently believe they can end-run legal requirements by designating FLECAC (or its successor) as a curriculum review committee reporting to the Superintendent rather than as an advisory committee to the Board.  Whether this is correct as a matter of law is beyond the scope of this article.  Litigation may be needed to settle the matter.  But two things are abundantly clear:  First, the Board would prefer to keep the public in the dark about sex-ed deliberations until they have become a fait accompli.  Second, the Board has no compunctions about deceiving the public about its intentions when it fears the ramifications of being truthful.

Why do so many distrust their government institutions?  The recent actions of the Fairfax County School Board are a case study in why.

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