With Fairfax County facing another major budget shortfall for the upcoming fiscal year, local public school leaders are once again confronting difficult decisions regarding teacher pay raises.
This time, though, there’s a twist: Fairfax County Public Schools has a tentative agreement with the Fairfax Education Unions representing teachers and other employees that includes a roughly $150 million request for a 7% across-the-board pay hike for educators and support staff.
The contract, which was hammered out in October, still needs school board approval. But it’s unclear whether the county will provide the funding that FCPS would need to deliver on the pay increases.
“The Board of Supervisors has always been very supportive of our school system, so I’m confident that we can work together over the coming months to strike the right balance between fiscal reality and supporting our educators,” At-Large School Board Representative Kyle McDaniel told FFXnow.
What’s in the tentative agreement?
In addition to modest salary bumps, the three-year contract includes step increases in the second and third years to provide more equitable pay raises, particularly for lower-paid staff.
It would also strengthen protections against unfair discipline or firing, offer additional pay for special education teachers to reflect their workload, guarantee elementary teachers at least 30 minutes of uninterrupted planning time and give the union a say in selecting employee healthcare plans.
The Oct. 29 tentative agreement emerged out of a historic round of negotiations between FCPS and its employees in decades. Virginia had barred public workers from collective bargaining for decades until a 2020 law allowed local governments to negotiate with unions.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors adopted an ordinance permitting county government workers to bargain collectively in 2021, and the school board extended those rights to FCPS employees in March 2023.
FCPS workers elected the Fairfax Education Unions (FEU) to represent them in contract negotiations in June. Representing over 27,000 teachers and staff, FEU is a partnership between the county’s two largest education unions: the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers (FCFT) and the Fairfax Education Association (FEA).
“We think that this is going to be something that really improves morale,” FCFT President David Walrod told FFXnow. “We think that it’s going to be something that improves educational outcomes for students because, ultimately, teacher work conditions are the conditions that our students learn in. When we make it a better place for teachers to work, we make it a better place for students to learn.”
The school board has yet to schedule a discussion or vote on ratifying the agreement. Still, the largest challenge facing the union and FCPS leaders remains securing sufficient funding to implement its conditions.
Fairfax County sees déjà vu
Similar to last year’s budget cycle, the county is projecting a roughly $300 million revenue gap that needs to be closed for the Board of Supervisors to adopt a balanced budget, as required by state law, for fiscal year 2026, which begins July 1, 2025.
Last spring, FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid had to scale back her proposed 6% pay increase for all school employees to 3% after the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors approved just $165 million of her original request for an additional $254 million.
While Reid won’t release her budget proposal until Jan. 23, Walrod estimates that funding the 7% pay raises will cost about another $150 million from the county’s coffers.
Walrod expects Reid to propose a parallel pay raise for administrators and supervisors, such as principals and program directors, who have a separate bargaining unit represented by the Fairfax County Federation of Principals, Supervisors, and Administrators (FCFPSA). That could potentially increase the total new funding request to between $240 and $270 million.
FCPS certified FCFPSA as the exclusive representative of administrators and supervisors in October, but the union won’t be able to begin collective bargaining until next year, as they missed the Sept. 1 deadline to submit their economic proposals, according to Walrod.
Though sympathetic, Walrod emphasized that the school system should prioritize his union’s pay raise request.
“[FCFPSA is] going to be at the bargaining table next year. So, that’s always a conversation that could be had next year,” he said. “But, I think, the district really needs to look at their first priority of making sure that they fund the tentative agreement that they came to with staff.”
County board debates scope of school pay raises
Walrod’s argument echoes concerns raised at a Nov. 26 joint work session between the school board and the Board of Supervisors.
At the meeting, Dranesville District Supervisor Jimmy Bierman pointed to the growing budget gap and suggested focusing on targeted raises, rather than across-the-board increases to help manage costs.
“I just only ask that you engage in that process to try and figure out whether or not there’s savings to be had there, because that may be a way to have more savings than simply doing it across-the-board 7% or simply doing like we did last year across-the-board percent,” he told FCPS Chief Financial Officer Leigh Burden. “We may actually have real opportunities there.”
Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity has similar concerns about across-the-board pay raises, arguing that the county should prioritize its resources for teachers over administrators.
“I’ve always said, from my first day in office, that in order to have the best school system, you got to have the best teachers, and in order to have the best teachers, you need to have the best paid teachers,” he told FFXnow.
During last year’s budget negotiations, Mount Vernon District School Board Representative Mateo Dunne proposed replacing the across-the-board pay raises with either a flat 5% increase or a two-step increase specifically for teachers and “school-based personnel,” including custodians and bus drivers.
That was quickly shut down by other school board members, who expressed concerns that it could further divide staff and alienate FCPS leadership.
It’s unclear if school board members would entertain a proposal that excludes administrators this time. An across-the-board raise, however, is likely to face an uphill battle.
“I don’t believe 7% for teachers is outside the realm of reasonable, provided we look at other things in the budget — but certainly not for Gatehouse administrators,” Herrity said.
Richmond’s role in local funding challenges
At the joint work session, Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay sought to temper concerns from his colleagues by highlighting the state’s reported $1.2 billion revenue surplus, which could help localities like Fairfax fund higher staff raises.
Insufficient state funding for education has been a recurring frustration for local elected officials — one now backed up by the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Commission of Virginia, which published a study last year that found the state has been underfunding Fairfax County by more than half a billion dollars.
“My budget problems have to do with Richmond,” McKay told FFXnow. “The challenge facing this year, and [one] we face every year, 100% starts in Richmond. When you underfund public education as egregiously as the Commonwealth of Virginia has done for a lot of years, and you push those expenses down to local government, there’s very limited choices local government have left.”
McKay said it would be “reckless” to speculate on how much funding the county might be able to allocate for pay raises. Instead, he pointed to the county’s last budget cycle as a potential indicator of what might be feasible this year.
“My goal at this stage of the game always is to do the best we can within reason to fund the needs that we have in this county, while still being cognizant of the fact that our taxpayers can’t bear this burden entirely on their own, and so there’s going to be trade offs,” he said.
Under Virginia law, government employees are prohibited from striking, even if they’re unionized. So, if the county chooses not to fund FEU’s request in full, the union will need to renegotiate its contract with FCPS, Walrod says.
A 7% pay raise for teachers and support staff would be “life-changing” for many FCPS employees, according to Leslie Houston, president of the Fairfax Education Association.
“These benefits can impact change and change the lives of educators and staff, and when their lives change, it will impact directly impact their students,” she told FFXnow.
