Sanctuary policy is largely the reason a quarter of Fairfax County’s high schools are almost failing

Fairfax County ’s Board of Supervisors has put its local schools in an impossible position. In January 2021, nine of the board’s 10 members voted to adopt a sanctuary policy titled, “The Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy ( Trust Policy ).” The policy allows anyone, regardless of immigration status, to “access county services without fear that the information they share will be disclosed to federal immigration officials.”

As waves of illegal immigrants have crossed our southern border, such local sanctuary policies have drawn significant numbers of unvetted illegal immigrants. Not only are violent criminals being released onto our streets when Fairfax County officials ignore Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers, but the rise in the newly arrived “multilanguage learners,” formerly “English language learners,” in our public schools has significant costs to our public education system.

In fact, six of 24 high schools in Fairfax County are on the verge of losing accreditation . This is particularly surprising given that, for decades, the region has attracted many families due to its thriving public education system. While some high schools are performing well in comparison to other high schools in Virginia, Justice High School, for example, has been accredited with conditions for the past two years and is on the path to losing its accreditation next year.

Much of the variation in school performance across the county is due to the disproportionate numbers of the newly arrived “multilanguage learners” who are concentrated in the six low-performing schools. In Justice High School for example, according to information obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request, the number of multilanguage learners who require English for Speakers of Other Languages, or ESOL, assistance increased precipitously, from 725 students in 2020 to 1,907 students in 2024. That means that in the academic year 2023-2024, 1,907 of Justice High School’s 2,406 students were labeled “multilanguage learner (level 1-5).”

Mt. Vernon has fewer newly arrived students, but in 2023-2024, 927 students of the total 2,369 students at Mt. Vernon High School required ESOL services.

Fairfax County’s leadership has tried to throw taxpayers’ money at the problem, to little avail. The fiscal 2024 expenditure on ESOLs in the district’s schools, for example, was $141.7 million , up from $118.7 million in fiscal 2023 and $93.9 million in fiscal 2019.

The language barrier, though significant, is not the only problem for Fairfax County’s public schools. The disruption in life and environment is undoubtedly difficult for children crossing the border and comes with a set of problems for educators. Those students who have just arrived from a different country and had been enrolled in school in their origin country are labeled “E1Q” in the district’s Student Information System. Though not all E1Qs are migrants who crossed the southern border, the trend in the numbers shows a significant increase from 2020 to 2024.

Sum of E1Qs in Fairfax County’s Low-Performing Schools

The students in the district’s Student Information System labeled “E1R” are newly arrived children who have had a disruption in learning. In many cases, children crossing the border from Central America have completed little education, often only through fifth grade. This means that if they arrive in Fairfax County at age 15, they will be enrolled as freshmen in high school after five years of not attending school. In 2023-2024, in addition to Justice High School’s 197 E1Qs, it also had 115 E1Rs.

With the rise of illegal immigration, many of the district’s school principals are evaluated on, and possibly fired for, school performance they have no control over. How could Justice High School, for example, ever perform as well as a school with lower numbers of multilanguage learners and new arrivals from foreign countries?

And now, the reason that Fairfax County Public Schools’ leadership is rushing redistricting in Policy 8130 is crystal clear. Superintendent Michelle Reid and school board members do not want these six schools with high numbers of multilanguage learners, E1Qs, and E1Rs to fail.

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If the school district’s leaders do not want to call out the injustice of the sanctuary policy imposed on us by their fellow Democrats on the Board of Supervisors, they don’t really have any other choice than a school boundary overhaul that would shuffle high-performing children to low-performing schools and spread out the newcomers across the district’s schools.

Fairfax County’s school district is essentially a case study of the local consequences of sanctuary policy in the time of President Joe Biden’s open border.

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor for the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network.