Combatting Disinformation is Harder than Sharing It
There is so much disinformation floating around these days that it is hard to do much but dismiss the primary sources of disinformation, and move on with your day. However, most people do not know that in the last 20 years much of local media has been purchased and repurposed to spread disinformation and division in our community.
Once venerable papers like the Fairfax Times, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, the Federalist, and others are no longer purveyors of “the truth” or even “truth” from a clear political perspective. Instead, they have been bought, and are run by editors who tow a political line and often repeat stories from other similar media companies regardless of the accuracy of the claims. Many are no longer independent news purveyors, and have moved on to being significant mouthpieces for disinformation.
Last Summer, I ignored one particularly egregious published piece because it contained repetitive, false information, and inaccurate assumptions. Also, I knew that the author, Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, was directly connected to signatories of Project 2025, specifically the radically right wing Independent Women's Forum and America First Legal. These groups are typically described as “dark money” groups as 4 Public Education explains in an earlier blog about “Fake Grassroots, Real Dark Money.”
Unfortunately, very few other people knew that the claims repeated by Lundquist-Arora were deliberate disinformation, so I now feel forced to evaluate her recent piece that I find factually corrupt and filled with bigotry. Understandably, ire may creep in as I evaluate errors in the August 22nd opinion piece in the Washington Examiner that falsely links the 2021 FCPS Trust Policy, immigrants in Fairfax, crime, Biden’s “border policies,” and the FCPS boundary policy.
Facts about Fairfax County’s Immigrant Population
When I first came to Fairfax County in the 1980s, many of my classmates, friends, and neighbors came from Korea, India, and China, and most spoke more than one language. Over a decade ago, when my family chose to move back to Fairfax County, we chose this county because of its diversity so that our children would also know people from different cultures. This diversity makes our school community stronger and also makes school Heritage Night delicious!
Thus, I need to set the facts straight about Fairfax County’s immigrant population.
The graphic above from Fairfax County shows a breakdown of "Our Immigrant Neighbors" which establishes the top 15 countries of birth, only 4 of the 15 are from "south of the border," and none of which are from Mexico. It also demonstrates that 84.2% of immigrants aged 5 and older speak English well, and few local immigrants have been in this country for less than 5 years. It also shows a much higher incidence of poverty and lower income for immigrants who have yet to become citizens.
Pew Research findings show that 77% of the immigrants in the United States are here legally. The other 23% are considered “unauthorized immigrants.” Many may have entered the country without legal permission, but are living and working in the U.S. with temporary legal protections. This distinction is important, since there is a tendency to refer to unauthorized immigrants as “illegal immigrants,” but this term is pejorative and inaccurate because many have temporary legal protections. Many immigrants who came to Fairfax County and the U.S. in 2023 had been driven from their home countries by political unrest in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The Trust Policy was implemented to both increase opportunities and decrease crime in immigrant communities by ensuring that they could send children to school and report crimes, such as domestic violence, without fear of deportation:
“One Fairfax recognizes that the County’s ethnic, racial, and linguistic diversity is a key source of its strength. The County is devoted to protecting the rights of all its residents, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status, and to ensuring they have an equal opportunity to participate in our economic vitality. The Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy (Trust Policy) is being issued to reaffirm current county policy and improve community health, welfare, safety, security, and trust by ensuring that immigrant residents can access county services without fear.” - Fairfax Trust Policy
We all need to arm ourselves with accurate information before letting anyone, much less a paid political writer, denigrate our immigrant friends and family.
At Least Double-Check Your Math before You Print Disinformation
The August 22, 2024 Washington Examiner piece by Lundquist-Arora entitled “Sanctuary policy is largely the reason a quarter of Fairfax County’s high schools are almost failing” is so ridiculously fallacious that it is painful to read.
Anyone who follows education policy and news in Fairfax, Virginia should be appalled by the title and the content of Lundquist-Aurora’s piece. The title uses words like “largely” and “almost” as if these qualifiers can provide cover for Lundquist-Aurora’s opinions; however, “word on the street” is that people are interpreting this ridiculous story concocted by Lundquist-Arora as news, not political opinion. This is particularly harmful in the communities that she targeted, like the Justice High School (HS) community.
The story never demonstrates a causal relationship among “sanctuary cities,” English Learners, FCPS boundary policies, and political rantings about the “Southern Border.” Nevertheless, Lundquist-Arora claims that these disparate subjects are causally linked and part of a nefarious plot by our school superintendent, board, and system to harm our community. Never mind the question: how would they have time to concoct such a “plot” when they are involved in educating 180,000+ students, managing over 200 schools, and supporting 25,000 employees?
Below, I will try to address statements published by the Independent Women's Network’s Chapter Lead, Lundquist-Arora, to show how they lack veracity. Unfortunately, this won’t rectify the damage done to students, schools, and communities by these falsehoods, but at least it will correct the record for the first eight paragraphs of her story.
Click here to read the corrected data and facts.
How is This Linked to Boundary Policy? (Hint: It is Not.)
In the August 22nd piece, Lundquist-Arora somehow tries to causally link her assumptions and allegations regarding “Biden’s Southern border policy,” Fairfax’s Trust Policy, and English Learners to the updated FCPS Boundary Policy (8130). She claimed that the FCSB was “rushing redistricting” because of the high percentage of English Learners at six high schools that was, in her opinion, due to Biden’s border policies, despite clear evidence that:
These six high schools have had a high percentage of English Learners years before Biden took office.
These six high schools have had the highest percentage of FARM students for years before Biden took office.
English Learners come from all over the world. Over 200 languages are spoken at home in Fairfax County.
The FCSB has been trying to update the Boundary Policy since (at least) 2019.
The Boundary Policy does not change boundaries.
In the past two decades, most boundary changes have affected schools with lower numbers of English Learners and FARM students, as shown in 4 Public Education’s blog about the Recent History of Boundary Changes.
No one knows what school boundaries will change, or even if any will change. The Boundary Policy was just accepted. No studies have been performed yet. Community Engagement is just beginning.
The Boundary Policy states that drivers for boundary changes are transportation (e.g., shorter bus rides for students and fewer buses needed in the county), programming access, enrollment/capacity, and proximity (page 3), not country of origin.
There are no causal links among these events and individuals, and to say otherwise is dishonest.
The biggest change to the current Boundary Policy 8130 added 5-year boundary reviews for all of Fairfax County. This enables FCPS to get a better picture of all population projections and school resources every five years. In the past twenty years, boundary studies have been done on a piecemeal basis, often initiated by the outcry of communities in higher income neighborhoods like McLean and Langley High School.
Merely doing a boundary review every five years does not mean that boundaries will be changed. FCPS leadership understands how disruptive changing attendance zones can be. However, boundary reviews enable the FCSB and FCPS to better allocate resources among the schools, including staff and capital funding, while permitting attendance zone changes as needed to ensure that schools are not severely under or over-capacity, particularly in light of long-term population projections.
An Agenda of Exclusion
If it isn’t obvious, there is an agenda in Lundquist-Arora’s August 22nd Washington Examiner piece and it is anti-immigrant and anti-FCPS. Is it hers or her employers’? In addition, the piece reflects ignorance of education policy and data.
Lundquist-Arora’s piece is not student-focused or even family-focused. In fact, it feels hostile to both students and families, particularly those who are lower income, Hispanic, immigrant, English Learners, or are in the Justice HS pyramid. Attacking students for immutable characteristics is not the Fairfax County way.
As with many of Lundquist-Arora’s published stories and advocacy, there is an underlying theme that only some students deserve to be educated, respected, and included in our schools. Whether discussing LGBTQIA+ or immigrant students, she has consistently advocated to exclude (and sometimes bully) students in our public schools that are either unlike her own or do not fit within the agenda of Independent Women’s Forum, a Project 2025 supporter.
For example, in an August 23, 2023 story in The Federalist, she claimed that parents of transgender and non-binary children were “weaponizing kindness” when they advocated for rights and respect for their children in public schools. Her pieces in the Washington Examiner regularly refer to the LGBTQIA+ community, their families, and allies as "the rainbow mafia" and "alphabet people." This sort of language is beyond disrespectful.
In July 2022, she hosted a rally for GOP candidates with special guest Sebastian Gorka (known America First provocateur, podcaster, Trump advisor, and anti-trans activist) where she advocated for the right to bully trans students because she felt that the anti-bullying language in the Students Rights and Responsibilities (SR&R) was “compelled speech.” Lundquist-Arora is currently involved in the America First legal lawsuit against FCPS on that subject and the issue of excluding transgender and non-binary students from FCPS rest rooms.
In 2022, she, Harry Jackson, and others openly mocked a talented autistic musician at a School Board meeting. She dropped out of the 2023 FCSB race, but proceeded to regularly campaign with/for Harry Jackson even after astonishing revelations about him in local media (e.g., history of spousal abuse, known association with Christian Nationalist Groypers, vicious attacks on local parents, sending controversial mailers to homes depicting sex acts, etc.).
Who Decides which Students Deserve to be Educated?
If it is her opinion that students who pose "significant costs to our education system" should not be a part of our public schools, then she wildly misunderstands the purpose and mission of public schools, which are to educate everyone--a point which is foundational to our nation and supported by numerous laws and regulations. That includes English Learners (21% of students), students who receive special education services (16%), military families (7% of students), and tens of thousands of students receiving advanced academic services across FCPS.
Additionally, it is well-known that disabled students pose "significant costs to our education system" sometimes as much as twice the average student. Does Lundquist-Arora advocate for removing them from our schools, as well? What about advanced academic placement and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science for Technology students, who also pose “significant costs” above general education costs?
Which students are worthwhile to be educated in Lundquist-Arora’s opinion? Does she think that your student does not deserve educational opportunities? Does she believe that autistic students deserve respect and education in public schools?
Her opinion matters about as much as any parent’s opinion, which means that it does matter, but only as much as one voice in an entire community of hundreds of thousands of voices. However, if someone is advocating to violate the education rights of other students and families, we should all be concerned, particularly when she has been handed a large platform by her employers.
Ultimately, Fairfax County elected a School Board to create policies and follow federal and state regulations ensuring that all students have access to a public education. Quality public education is enshrined in the Virginia Constitution. One Fairfax and related equity policies are intended to ensure that students who require additional support to succeed in school have access to those supports, whether those students require team taught classes, English language support, or access to advanced math.
Picking and choosing which students “deserve” to be educated or eliminating education opportunities due to expense or rigor remains in the purview of charter and private schools, because “Public schools are for everyone.”
Author’s note: You may notice that I do not use the word “article” to describe the pieces written by Lundquist-Arora. That is because news articles should display journalistic ethics, including truth and accuracy, independence, efforts to minimize harm, and accountability and transparency. Her pieces lack these fundamental building blocks of journalistic ethics; therefore, I refer to her writings as “pieces” or “stories.”
Similarly, this written piece is a blog, not an article. Thus, it contains a collection of facts and personal comments. Nevertheless, it does comply with journalistic ethics, has been well-researched, and edited. 4 Public Education is dedicated to disseminating truthful reports about public education while correcting disinformation.
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