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Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Today is a sad day for Fairfax County Public Schools. Yesterday, Darin Thompson, former Principal of Hayfield Secondary School, was arrested for embezzlement of $8,000. This follows the recent arrest of Stephanie Gale, a finance technician at Hayfield Secondary School, for embezzlement of more than $40,000.
I am issuing an urgent call for a comprehensive overhaul of the financial controls for Fairfax County Public Schools to strengthen our institutional safeguards and oversight mechanisms. I commend the School Board’s Office of Auditor General for their diligent work to expose the unacceptable misuse of taxpayer dollars by FCPS employees. These arrests highlight the need to allocate additional resources to detect and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse and to change FCPS policies to ensure the prompt removal and termination of employees who have engaged in blatant misconduct.
In August 2024, I called for an independent investigation of the Hayfield football scandal to ensure the integrity of the FCPS athletics program. That investigation concluded that Hayfield, under Thompson’s leadership, had violated VHSL rules, and efforts to detect and correct those violations were impeded by gaps in FCPS’ systems and processes and actions taken by FCPS staff. In the wake of the football scandal, FCPS enacted comprehensive reforms to ensure a level playing field for all student-athletes and the consistent enforcement of FCPS and VHSL rules and regulations.
We must be relentless in our fight against corruption. It is a cancer that must be eradicated root and branch. These arrests show that our existing processes and systems are inadequate, so we must institute new financial controls to detect and prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.
You can submit an anonymous report of fraud, waste, or abuse by telephone at 571.423.1333 or online at fcps.edu/auditor. You can also submit reports (though not anonymously) by email at internalaudit@fcps.edu.
Very Respectfully,
 Mateo Dunne
Mount Vernon District Representative
The views contained within this newsletter reflect the views of the individual school board member who is the publisher of this newsletter and may not reflect the views of the Fairfax County School Board.
© Fairfax County Public Schools, Fairfax County, Virginia
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