McLean Citizens Association (MCA) board members on April 3 approved a resolution urging the Fairfax County School Board to provide adequate data justifying its planned construction of Dunn Loring Elementary School.
School Board members desire to spent nearly $85 million to construct the school, although none of the surrounding elementary schools is over-enrolled.
“There’s no need for it now and there’s no need for it in the future,” said Louise Epstein, who chairs the MCA’s Budget and Taxation Committee. “We have so many competing needs for bond money and bond proceeds, including within the school system.”
Citing 2023 county demographic figures, the MCA board noted the number of residents under age 5 had declined from 72,960 in 2010 to 66,316 in 2020. Officials also estimate the number of county residents between ages 5 and 14 will drop from the 151,456 recorded in 2023 to 138,740 in 2030.
The number of births per year in Fairfax County declined 24 percent between 2008 and 2022, according to Virginia Department of Health statistics, the resolution noted. FCPS enrollment likely will keep decreasing during the next five years – with the biggest differences showing up in the elementary-school-age bracket – owing to societal trends such as deferring marriage and having smaller families, the MCA concluded.
Because FCPS has seen a 4-percent enrollment decrease since fiscal 2018, MCA’s resolution called on the school system to examine rising expenditures for administrators, which have risen far higher than both inflation and costs for teacher positions.
The resolution also takes issue with the school system’s proposed 6-percent compensation increase for all employees in fiscal 2025. Instead, FCPS should use methods employed by the county government to set appropriate compensation increases for different county positions, based on the number of vacancies, difficulty in filling them and other employers competing to fill those posts, it read.
FCPS also should institute merit-based pay for employees who are not paid on the salary scales used for teachers, instructional assistants and specialized assistants, the resolution read.
MCA board member Kelly Green Kahn disagreed, saying schools could not be run without auxiliary staff, who sometimes have received smaller pay increases than teachers.
“I’m not sure that we want to exclude them from the proposed increase, because over the years, they have not enjoyed the same [raises] as teachers,” she said. “All of these employees are an important part of our students’ education.”
MCA’s resolution also called for some tweaks in the school system’s retirement plans, especially with regard to employees participating in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan (DROP).
“There is nothing more important to the financial position of the school system than its pension plans,” said board member Dale Stein. “It is a large problem . . . Industry has moved away from the pension plans for a very good reason.”
The resolution also suggested the School Board study whether legal requirements for special education are implemented consistently in all school districts and use those data in their future legislative advocacy.
