On July 9, every member of the Fairfax County School Board voted for the same thing: more of your money. Not from the property tax you already pay — a new penny on the sales tax, added to nearly everything you buy in Fairfax County. Now they want it on your ballot.

The reason they give is a $400 million backlog of deferred building maintenance — roofs, HVAC, aging schools the division put off for years.

Mason District member Dr. Ricardy Anderson said schools built to be renovated every 25 years are running 42. “We have not met that by any stretch of the imagination,” she said. Mount Vernon District member Mateo Dunne called for the board to take “extraordinary measures.”

In Fairfax, “extraordinary measures” has a familiar translation: reach further into your wallet.

Here’s how it works. The board can’t levy the tax itself. It voted to ask the Board of Supervisors — nine Democrats and one Republican, Springfield’s Pat Herrity — to place the question on a general-election ballot. The power to add that penny is the same one Richmond Democrats handed Northern Virginia this summer.

And Fairfax has answered this before. The last three times the county asked voters to approve new school funding at the ballot box, all three failed.

Remember what this same board never struggles to fund. On June 25 it voted to extend Superintendent Michelle Reid’s contract into 2030 and raise her pay to $469,936 — more than the President of the United States earns.

The buildings are real. So is the question of whether a board that spends like that has earned a penny more on every dollar you spend.

No election date is set. The Supervisors still have to act. But the twelve people who started this each represent a district — yours included — and every one of them is on your ballot in November 2027. They’re asking you to pay more. You get to decide whether they’ve earned it.