Police charged a Langley High School math teacher, Matthew Thorsen, this week with three counts of indecent liberties with a child and using a device to solicit a minor. A judge ordered him held without bond.

He was one of three Fairfax County Public Schools employees charged in separate cases in a single week. A Hayfield Secondary finance technician, Stephanie Gale, is accused of embezzling more than $40,000. A FCPS employee, Trevor Papavasiliou, is charged with taking $1,200 in tools.

Start with what this is not. Three arrests do not prove a 25,000-employee school system is rotten. Every large organization employs people who break the law. That is human nature, not a policy failure.

The Worry Isn’t That Three Employees Were Charged. It’s Whether FCPS Can Be Trusted to Handle It.

Give FCPS its due. It placed Thorsen on administrative leave and suspended the other two once the allegations surfaced. On paper, the process worked.

But trust is measured by what an institution does when the investigation threatens the institution itself. On that count, this year has not been reassuring.

When an 18-year-old was convicted of groping girls at a Fairfax high school, FCPS commissioned an outside review of its own handling of the case. The review backed FCPS.

Then Superintendent Michelle Reid’s administration concluded it had “acted promptly and appropriately” — and declined to release the full external report. Parents were asked to accept the verdict without seeing the evidence behind it.

That same case drew a federal investigation into how the school system handled the assault allegations.

It is not the only one. FCPS is being sued over its response to a classroom “kidnapping skit” aimed at a Muslim student, and a U.S. House committee opened an antisemitism probe into the division.

An Institution That Reviews Itself, Clears Itself, and Seals the Report Is Asking for Trust It Hasn’t Earned.

Superintendent Michelle Reid runs the administration that conducts these personnel investigations. School Board Chair Sandy Anderson (Springfield District) and the Democrat-endorsed twelve-member board she leads are responsible for overseeing every one of them.

Two of this week’s cases involve money. One involves a child. The families of Fairfax students are entitled to know that when FCPS says it is “handling” a case, handling means the truth comes out — not that the institution clears itself one more time.

FCPS reviewed itself. FCPS backed itself. FCPS sealed the report. That is the record the community is being asked to set aside.

The three employees will have their day in court. The harder question is for the system that employs them: when the next investigation embarrasses FCPS, will it choose transparency or itself? Every seat on the Fairfax County School Board is on the ballot in November 2027.