Samir Ali Nomani | March 13, 2025
(Fairfax County Times) — Amid concerns that the Fairfax County School Board (FCPS) boundary review committee selection process has been allegedly rigged by school district officials, FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid went into damage control mode this past week, acknowledging to one parent that the process has “not been as smooth as we had hoped” and meeting with parents on a Saturday morning in a private, closed-door meeting at the Great Falls Library to appease concerns.
Still, data-crunching on the selection process by parents has raised new questions about the process.
For months, questions about transparency have swirled around Reid’s effort to redraw the boundary lines for where children go to elementary, middle, and high school. Recently, the controversy hit a crescendo as a video emerged showing FCPS officials allegedly removing a boundary-project critic—known only as parent No. 35—from a list of possible candidates for its boundary review committee.
As a result, Reid agreed to an 8 a.m. meeting on March 8 in a meeting room at the Great Falls Library, not far from books with titles like The Three Musketeers and The Party Crasher. First, Donna Nelson-Schneider, an FCPS staffer in the superintendent’s office, arrived, and Reid arrived at 8:09 a.m., carrying a blue folder and settling into a seat in a circle of folding chairs, with about 10 parents around her, near to-go carafes of Starbucks coffee.