By Asra Q.Nomani and Sravan Gannavarapu – December 9th, 2024
On a chilly Thursday night, the typical gridiron rivalry among high schools gave way to a dramatic showdown at Luther Jackson Middle School, but this time, parents, coaches, and students from competing schools joined forces for one call to action: a demand for accountability, transparency and apologies from Fairfax County Public Schools Superintendent Michelle Reid for the mishandling of a football recruitment scandal that’s being described as the worst high school sports controversy in Virginia history.
With her turn at the lectern almost three hours into the meeting, Reid finally told the board, parents, coaches, and citizens packing the auditorium, “The buck stops with me.”
After almost six months of public controversy and a 12-0 vote last night against her for “non-compliance” in her performance of various leadership duties during the Hayfield scandal, Reid said, “I am sorry….”
In a sharp about-face, nine school board members then joined three others who had supported a resolution in August calling for an “external, independent investigation” by an outside law firm and approved the authorization of the probe last night, 12-0. School board member Mateo Dunne introduced the August resolution, and members Ricardy Anderson and Ryan McElveen were the only ones supporting it at the time. Legal experts estimate the investigation could cost taxpayers at least $200,000 – about the combined salary of four new teachers.
The superintendent’s apology followed a staccato of reprimands during “community participation,” as parents used their allotted two minutes to express their frustration and anger and demanded an external investigation, public apology, and reforms.
During a break, Anderson went over to speak to parents from Fairfax High School and said aloud what many of the parents were thinking: “Well, why did that take her so long to say?”
‘Dereliction of duty,’ ‘betrayal’
Kicking off the “community participation” portion of the agenda at about 7:53 p.m., Daren Krellwitz, a U.S. Army veteran, stepped to the lectern and said bluntly that obfuscation by school district officials represents a “betrayal that destroyed the community’s confidence in FCPS leadership.” He has a son on the Robinson Secondary School football team that was pulled from state playoffs after Hayfield’s parents won a temporary restraining order on a playoffs ban by the Virginia High School League against the school for two years for recruiting violations.
As Reid and the 12 board members looked at him – and all of the speakers – with flat affect, Krellwitz said, “Apologize for irreparably degrading the rites of passage of FCPS athletes of the Class of 2025.”
“This is, at best, a demonstration of indifference and, at worst, a dereliction of duty,” he said.
Inside, speakers continued to address the board, highlighting systemic failures and demanding an apology from Reid for the lack of oversight and delayed response to the allegations of recruitment violations and ineligible players.
Moments later, at 7:58 p.m., Fairfax County mother, Gayle Hanlon, representing a coalition of thousands of community members, scolded the superintendent and school officials for their “completely dismissive” response to the recruiting violations, saying, “We demand consequences for those that have been found to have acted improperly as well as those who have failed to act.”
Hanlon called the district’s response “an exercise in avoidance.”
‘Winning no matter the cost’
At 8:08 p.m., a local resident, Lauren Geraghty said, “The football scandal has highlighted a system that values power and winning no matter the cost. Reid has said that she will build trust with action. But the only actions we have witnessed have been self-protective, dishonest, and defensive.”
She continued, “Instead of avoiding accountability for the current crisis. Now is the time to conduct an external investigation of the events. The headlines have led to this current crisis, with results available to all. We want our children to know how to own their failures and understand the importance of repairing harm when they make mistakes, which we all do.
“A healthy community is a healing one in a punishing world. It is a form of energizing resistance. School communities can be transformative. They can be safe places for teachers and students to think and to learn and to imagine and create. But our leaders are not promoting that kind of community. They are promoting fear and retaliation. We are disappointed, and we will hold you accountable with our votes.”
Minutes later, around 8:11 p.m., Jamie Maltese, the father of a football player at Fairfax High School, stepped forward and said: “Superintendent Reid should issue a public apology to everyone who participated in scholastic football this year, including players, parents, coaches, sports staff, etc., who were forced to endure unfair contests because of her failure to act against a program in clear violation. This fostered a situation in which students became demoralized.”
At about 8:17 p.m., Anna Smith, a mother whose son plays on the football and basketball teams at Fairfax High School, echoed the demand for accountability, telling the board, ”There has been a demonstrable lack of integrity and sportsmanship.”
She added, “This is not just about a game. It’s about sportsmanship, integrity, and trust. And this issue transcends athletics. It’s about upholding the values we want to instill in our students. Fairness, accountability, and respect for the rules. FCPS must reaffirm its commitment to these values.”
‘Buck stops with me…I am sorry,’ ‘public charade’
Just before 10 p.m., Reid took her turn at the lectern and made the unusual move of turning toward the parents of football players at Fairfax High School, sitting in the third, fourth, and fifth rows behind her, and said, “I do appreciate the community showing up tonight and sharing their concerns, being very thoughtful and forthright in the comments. And that’s important.”
“I’m here to serve the community. And, as the leader of this large and complex school division, that buck stops with me. I’m taking–I have to be responsible for what happens in this division,” she said.
She ticked off statistics: the school district has 3,700 high school transfers annually, with 400 athletic transfers among its 15,000 athletes. She said that “to date, we’ve had one employee that monitors residency in this county,” but in this case, the issue that wasn’t investigated was more than about residency but about whether Hayfield officials engaged in “proselytizing” or recruitment,” to build the school’s football team.
“And I want to say, but, while the buck stops with me, and I’m responsible for the situation, and I am sorry to every single athlete that’s been impacted negatively by this situation,” said Reid, looking at the Board members. “Every coach that’s been impacted. Every family member, fan, and community member. And I want to assure you, this is not going to happen again on my watch. It’s simply not going to happen again.”
The apology came after months of Reid denying any wrongdoing in the Hayfield football scandal. At one point, Reid called reporting on the scandal “disinformation” in a Nov. 20 email. Several of the parents raised issues with the messaging in the Nov. 20 email as examples of Reid’s denial and deflection to well-documented problems.
Reid’s position shifted dramatically after the Fairfax County Times published a series of text messages on Nov. 24 between Hayfield’s Athletic Directory Monty Fritts and a local coach that exposed a deliberate plan to transfer students to play football at Hayfield, including by exploiting the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, which allows homeless students automatic transfers.
It turned out the coach had told Reid about the texts six days earlier at a Nov. 19 meeting with Reid at the school district’s headquarters off Gatehouse Road. However, Reid still put out the Nov. 20 statement, defending the Hayfield program and allowing Hayfield to trounce Edison High School 75-7 in the first round of state playoffs on Nov. 21. Critics argued that Reid’s decision to withdraw Hayfield on Nov. 25 only came after the revelations made denial impossible, calling it a response to being caught rather than a genuine effort to take accountability.
In the fifth row, behind the Fairfax High School parents, Stephanie Moumen, a mother of four children, shook her head as she typed her reflections on her laptop in front of her, listening to Reid also talk about progress in hiring teachers from overseas and other data points. “How can anyone believe any data that Supervisor Reid or the Board presents when the majority of the members, not including Dunne, disregarded or ignored the blatant data that has been uncovered since last spring,” in the Hayfield controversy. “The information around what the Hayfield principal, athletic director, and new head football coach was not pleasant, and it was shuttered and suppressed. My impression is that this was a public charade.”
‘Mama bear’ stands her ground
One Hayfield mother, Ruby Beckwith, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, came to the board meeting to see if Reid would take responsibility for the ripple effect of the scandal on young athletes, like her middle son, who left the Hayfield football team as a freshman in the spring after the rush of transfers displaced existing players, leaving them depressed and demoralized. As reported, Beckwith was one of the first whistleblowers who reported concerns about shenanigans with the football team in late February.
When she spoke to local media reporters at the event, her youngest son nearby, a Hayfield football mother, slung slurs at her, she said, “Disgusting,” “nasty,” and “tattle-tale.”
The controversy began in February when Hayfield Principal Darin Thompson and Fritts announced the hiring of a new football coach, Darryl Overton, who led the Freedom High School football team in neighboring Prince William County to two state championships. Rules established by the Virginia High School League, a state sports authority, ban public schools from “proselytizing,” and they don’t allow students to transfer schools for athletic reasons.
Soon after Overton arrived at Hayfield, a rush of new athletes from Freedom and other area schools, including DeMatha Catholic High School, arrived at Hayfield, off Telegraph Road in Alexandria, to play football for Overton.
Beckwith sat in the back and listened to one of the parents from the current Hayfield team, Hayfield middle school English teacher Deanna Dougherty. She said she was speaking on behalf of the parents of current Hayfield football players, many of them the new transfers who came in with Overton.
In her two minutes, Dougherty compared this year’s Hayfield Hawks football team to the iconic football team captured in the movie, “Remember the Titans,” about a winning team at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria.
Dougherty asked, “What side will you be on?”
She alleged that critics of this year’s Hayfield football program were upset that Black families had transferred to Hayfield. In fact, Black teen boys, including Beckwith’s son and the son of another whistleblower, Regina Dorsey, were among the teens demoralized and displaced.
“The facts are these: Thirteen African American families moved into the Hayfield district, and Fairfax County Public Schools validated that all players met residency requirements,” said Dougherty. “The Virginia High School League verified that all but three of these players met eligibility requirements. Those three players never played.”
She alleged that families and players have received “verbal and physical threats both on and off the field,” “racial slurs on social media,” and a playoff ban based on “inaccuracies and lies.”
In a back row, Beckwith listened politely, but then, when they crossed paths outside the auditorium at the school’s entrance by door No. 1, she told Doherty, “What you stated up there is not accurate.”
Doherty responded, pulling out her speech, “These are facts that I found on my own.”
Beckwith answered, “The facts that I’m talking about are facts that happened to my children,” her son among the 19 children, she said, who left the team when Overton arrived.
Doherty answered, “I have deep respect for you as a mother who has to be a mama bear and look out for her kids. I do, too.”
Then, Doherty spoke past Beckwith to talk directly to her young teen son, “She’s being a mom. Don’t be embarrassed.”
Beckwith’s young teen son responded, “I’m embarrassed by you.”
Doherty replied, “Oh, okay,” and turned and left.
An ‘upstander’ lesson for students
In the fourth row, a young student sat at his first school board meeting ever: 15-year-old Malek Rashad, a freshman football player at Fairfax High School. At a practice, as the scandal brewed, his football coach, Trey Taylor, had spoken to his teammates and him about the issues of integrity playing out in this case. His coach now sat down the row from him.
Rashad sat next to his mother, Nancy Moustafa, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Egypt. Her son was the first of their family ancestry to play football, and she was stunned by the school district’s failure to abide by simple elements of the rule of law.
Her son also tried to understand how school district officials landed in this public mess.
“I was confused about how this scandal even happened in Fairfax County,” Rashad said. “That’s just not what Fairfax County represents,” where children most often grow up in neighborhood schools, not transferring between schools for athletics.”
“It’s a problem for a coach to just bring in a bunch of kids to play on a team. It’s not fun to play them, and it’s not even fun for them,” Rashad said.
He said that he learned a real-life lesson about being an “upstander” rather than a bystander when a person sees something awry in society. This lesson is taught to elementary school children in Fairfax County Public Schools.
Listening to her son, Moustafa said, “This is not just about football.”
Reversal by 9 board members who didn’t support investigation in August
For most of the board members, the evening represented an embarrassing reversal from their position in August, when they voted against a motion by Dunne and supported by McElveen and Anderson requiring an external review. School board member Marcia St. John-Cunning, whose district includes Hayfield, was one of the board members to vote against Dunne’s call for an external investigation.
In August, several school board members were quick to downplay the issue. Rather than launching a formal investigation or addressing community concerns head-on, several members dismissed the allegations as overblown or politically motivated.
One board member argued that the situation was isolated and didn’t warrant a larger investigation. For parents and advocates, these excuses only deepened the frustration with the start of football season.
Even when presented with evidence of alleged recruitment violations, the majority of the board refused to listen to the arguments by Dunne, McElveen, and Anderson to take decisive action. For many in the community, the board majority’s excuses and Reid’s green-lighting Hayfield football reinforced the perception that the district leadership was more focused on damage control than addressing the systemic failures that allowed the scandal to happen.
About 10:21 p.m., St. John-Cunning introduced a new resolution, eyes downcast, reading from the document on the dais in front of her, “I move that the school board engage an external law firm to conduct a comprehensive and independent review of all student athletic transfers and eligibility practices for all high school athletics across FCPS schools, starting with a review of Hayfield Secondary School and report its findings to the school board and the superintendent.”
Board member Kyle McDaniel, who also voted against the August resolution, seconded the motion.
Afterward., St. John-Cunning continued to read from a document, saying, “The Hayfield football situation has raised community concerns about the treatment of student-athlete transfers adherents to the VHSL rules, clarity of the VHSL rules, fairness, and sportsmanship. We recognize and apologize for recent events that have eroded public trust with some in our community and have had direct and collateral impacts on students, families, and staff across FCPS, including those at Hayfield. As leaders in the system, we take full responsibility for this and acknowledge that FCPS has a duty to ensure fairness in sports and competition.”
She said that the Hayfield debacle underscores a “systemic” problem.
This time, the motion for the investigation by an outside law firm passed 12-0.
‘Meltdown Melanie’ shaming board members
The night took another contentious turn as Dunne and McElveen attempted to beef up the language surrounding the investigation, for example, by making certain that the final report includes recommendations rather than just findings.
Several board members took the opportunity to redirect the narrative, attempting to shame Dunne and McElveen for their efforts. For example, Melanie Meren, a school board member who has earned the moniker “Meltdown Melanie” for her alleged outbursts behind closed doors and visible irritation in public, rolled her eyes and sighed audibly as Dunne and McElveen introduced language to beef up the Hayfield investigation and improve rights for student journalists. Meren didn’t return a request for comment.
At about 11:29 p.m., Meren attempted to scold McElveen and Dunne over “how expansive these motion makers are being,” their “model of behavior,” and “lack of self-awareness.”
She asked sarcastically, “I mean, should we talk about athletic fields and the quality of athletic fields?”
“It felt like gaslighting,” said a parent. “Instead of addressing the real concerns for months—how the district allowed this to happen—they turned it around and made it about scolding their colleagues who wanted to hold the superintendent accountable and celebrating the superintendent for issuing an apology she would never have had to make if she had done her job effectively from the beginning and not allowed the illegal transfers. That’s not accountability; that’s deflection.”
As the meeting adjourned at about 1:05 a.m., the parents, coaches, and students had long departed on a school night, leaving the 12 school board members, the superintendent, and her staff of about 20 people there in the auditorium to rebuild the trust eroded.
“Good job, team,” one person yelled out as the others gathered up their Coke cans, potato chip bags, and briefcases to shuffle across the auditorium’s stage and take back doors out to their cars in the parking lot.
Watching ‘blatant corruption’ from home
Back at home, Beckwith said she wasn’t convinced by Reid’s apology or the apologies of school board members now reversing course.
“An apology is great, now stand on business and initiate a legit external investigation,” Beckwith said. “Accountability, integrity, and transparency are the cornerstones of success, and what the taxpayers are getting from her is blatant corruption—anything but accountability, integrity, and transparency.”
The school board approved Reid’s contract renewal and salary increase two weeks ago. “She doesn’t deserve the $420,000 salary,” Beckwith continued. “She needs to step down, and impeachment inquiries need to take place for the other board members that passed the buck over and over and over again.”
For Beckwith, the stakes are clear: The district’s failure to take meaningful action not only undermines taxpayers’ trust but also sends a dangerous message to students that accountability is optional. Her comments echoed the growing sentiment among parents and community members that change must come from the top.
This week, amidst losing faith in Hayfield leaders, Beckwith pulled her youngest son from the school to homeschool him. He took notes during the school board meeting, a civics lesson playing out in front of him in real-time.