FAIRFAX SCANDAL ARTICLE #3
: BY WALTER CURT
Fairfax County Public Schools didn’t stumble into this one; they got caught. After years of silence, the district issued a statement claiming it had only “recently” learned of allegations that a school social worker arranged and funded abortions for students without notifying parents. Trouble is, the timeline doesn’t add up: reporting shows FCPS was told years ago, when teacher-whistleblower Zenaida Perez relayed the allegations in detail to an FCPS officials—not just once—SEVEN times. In other words, the district wasn’t racing to protect children; it was racing the clock on accountability.
And then, as if on cue, FCPS hired a familiar kind of “outside counsel”—the kind you bring in when you need to gather evidence, impose hush rules, and slap a “confidential investigation” label on everything that might embarrass the bureaucracy. Enter Mary McGowan. If you’ve watched Virginia school systems handle scandal over the last few decades, you’ve seen her work. This is not the profile of a transparency lawyer. It’s the résumé of a fixer.
