By James Jarvis | Published here first in FFXNow.

After Fairfax County Public Schools got much less funding than it wanted for teacher pay raises and other investments, new budget chair Kyle McDaniel suggests it’s time for a change in strategy.

McDaniel, who was elected to the school board as an at-large member last year, worries growing divisions in the budget process between the school board and Fairfax County Board of Supervisors could strain relationships as the county tackles its own financial challenges.

“If we see the storm clouds building in the sky, let us get ahead of it…not wait until the storm is…starting to sprinkle and say, ‘Oh, we should do something,’” McDaniel told FFXnow in an exclusive interview.

He argues the school system’s traditional approach — where the superintendent submits budget requests and the county responds, leading to prolonged back-and-forth negotiations — isn’t an effective method for fostering collaboration or aligning their priorities.

Instead, McDaniel is pushing for stronger “people-to-people” relationships with his counterparts on the county board, advocating for less dependence on administrative staff for coordination. He’s also calling for enhanced transparency and public engagement, proposing that FCPS host its own dedicated budget town halls to better involve the community in its financial decisions.

“One of my goals is to really try to build that process with the supervisors and maintain a good working relationship around the budget, because the community…frankly doesn’t care about supervisor versus school board, how that budget process works, who spends what, who taxes whom,” he said. “Ultimately, our success and our failure are both intertwined.”

A Fairfax County resident for over two decades and graduate of George Mason University, McDaniel started his career in 2011 as a policy director in Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity’s office before moving into the private sector in 2015 to launch multiple startups, including a flight training company.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as debates over mask mandates and book bans escalated in Virginia schools, McDaniel’s passion for public service was reignited, motivating him to run for the school board.

“Where I saw the politics of the day going, and where I kind of saw the economics of things going, it was the storm clouds on the horizon,” he said. “…So, I decided to run.”

Tight budgets likely to continue

A little over a month into his first term, McDaniel encountered his first major test.

In February, Superintendent Michelle Reid unveiled a $3.8 billion budget proposal that sought an additional $254 million from the county to pay for a 6% salary boost for all employees, a 2% compensation supplement adopted by the state, and retirement and health insurance costs.

The county, however, was limiting spending in response to a projected revenue shortfall driven in part by a sluggish commercial market. Though the county ultimately increased the FCPS budget, it fell nearly $100 million short of what the superintendent had requested, forcing planned pay raises to be scaled back to 3%.

School and county board members often argue the state needs to step up its funding for public schools, regularly referencing a state-sponsored study that estimated the state is underfunding FCPS by more than $500 million annually.

Based on his discussions with lawmakers in the General Assembly, McDaniel says Democrats generally support increased funding for schools, but he argues Republicans have blocked greater commitments.

Gov. Glenn Youngkin, responding to demands from Democrats, signed a two-year spending plan in May that raised teacher pay and expanded support for disadvantaged students and English language learners.

“I don’t see this governor doing anything above and beyond what he’s already done with state funding of education,” McDaniel said. “He did take a step in the right direction, but I credit the General Assembly for that.”

McDaniel acknowledged the state needs to prioritize localities with struggling tax bases, whose school systems may lack money for necessities like facility repairs or counselors. But without greater taxing authority, Fairfax County likely won’t see any substantial revenue growth in the foreseeable future, he warned, predicting four to six budget years “very similar to what we just went through.”

“I think that’s driven heavily by…the tax structure of counties, and it’s not a Fairfax-unique thing. It’s across Virginia,” McDaniel said. “We’re heavily, heavily, heavily reliant upon residential property owners to pay property taxes, and as long as that is the case, and as long as commercial lags, the county is going to be kind of limping along for a few years.”

What a meals tax would do

After adopting the fiscal year 2025 budget, the Board of Supervisors directed County Executive Bryan Hill to develop strategies for diversifying the county’s tax base to broaden revenue, ease homeowner tax burdens, and support school funding.

Among the options is a meals tax of up to 6%, which McDaniel estimates could generate around $200 million in revenue for the county. Voters rejected a 4% tax proposed in 2016, but the General Assembly subsequently passed a law allowing counties to impose meals taxes without a referendum.

If county and school board officials agree to split the additional revenue from a new meals tax equally, as they did in 2016, McDaniel says the school board could fund priorities like maintenance, capital projects and teacher salaries.

However, he cautions that a meals tax alone is not a ‘silver bullet.’

“When we look at the increases of the types of students with higher needs that we serve, when we look at the fact that we have a $350 million maintenance backlog in our buildings from capital needs, an extra $90-$100 million a year — I have a hard time telling the public that, ‘Oh, we got this, it’s okay now,’” he said.

McDaniel’s vision for the future

As a new school year approaches, McDaniel underscored his role is less about number-crunching and more about steering elected officials and the community through the budget process to achieve a better result.

McDaniel indicates that his main priorities will be to maintain regular communication with county board members and organize joint budget town halls involving both school and county board members to address school-related issues.

“It’s really just building that people-to-people relationship that I think is going to be a key component to this, because it’s very easy for the school board to sit here at Gatehouse [FCPS’ administrative center], the supervisors that over at the [Fairfax County] Government Center, and fall into this kind of negotiation cycle,” McDaniel said. “One of my priorities is to make sure that we don’t fall into that trap.”

McDaniel can’t predict how his new strategy will unfold, but he remains hopeful that, at this time in 2025, he’ll be able to reflect on a year of progress.

“Maybe I’m idealistic, but its my first time on this board,” he said. “So, we’ll see how it goes.”