Fairfax County Public Schools Caught Over-Redacting FOIA Response—Again
FCPS has a history of limiting transparency, to include over-redacting its responses to FOIA requests. The most recent example arrived today, after OCR published its findings for Case No. 11-15-1335
Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) has a history of limiting transparency, to include over-redacting its responses to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The most recent example arrived today, after Office for Civil Rights (OCR) published its letter of findings and resolution agreement for OCR Case No. 11-15-1335 to its site.
Brief History
May 2, 2025, I submitted a FOIA request to FCPS for "all letters of findings issued by Office for Civil Rights to Fairfax County Public Schools and all resolution agreements FCPS has entered into with OCR between January 1, 2025, and May 2, 2025.”
In its FOIA response, FCPS provided a heavily-redacted version of the letter of findings (LOF), citing “personnel” and “scholastic” exemptions to justify its redactions.
Although OCR began publishing LOFs and resolution agreements to its site last month—after months of publishing nothing—it had not included Case No. 11-15-1335 in its updates.
I contacted OCR to obtain the version of Case No. 11-15-1335 that it had issued to FCPS. OCR’s Dan Greenspahn confirmed OCR could provide it. When OCR’s version of the LOF and agreement finally appeared on OCR’s site August 8, 2025, it was clear that FCPS had–again–over-redacted, this time removing not only evidence and findings, but also multiple references to a federal lawsuit over its use of restraint and seclusion.
OCR’s version states that “while OCR was investigating, a lawsuit was filed in federal court against the Division on behalf of six students with disabilities” alleging “students with disabilities, some as young as five years old, experienced discrimination, psychological trauma, and physical harm from the Division’s improper use of physical restraints and seclusion in cell like rooms.” The case ended in a consent decree requiring the division to eliminate seclusion division-wide by the 2022–23 school year.
FCPS classified lawsuit references as “scholastic” or “personnel” information—even though OCR determined they could be lawfully disclosed. In OCR’s LOF, “consent decree” appears ten times (seven on page 12, one on page 15, two on page 16). FCPS redacted it in nine of those ten instances.
One example:
On page 16, FCPS twice removed “consent decree” from a single paragraph, along with other litigation references, and replaced the redactions with “Scholastic Information.” The paragraph below is the one referenced, appearing on page 16. The words in bold are the ones FCPS redacted and replaced with “Scholastic Information”
“The policy also prohibited the use of seclusion in the CSS program beginning in January 2021, and the signed consent decree required the Division to eliminate all use of seclusion by the start of the 2022-2023 school year. Pursuant to the consent decree, the court will be monitoring the elimination of seclusion across the Division, including in the CSS program. OCR remains concerned, however, about the possible denial of FAPE and need for compensatory services for individual students in the [redacted content] program beginning in the [redacted content] school through December 2020. As noted above, the litigation expressly excluded FAPE allegations.”
In OCR’s own release, “CSS” was redacted both times it appears. Since FCPS did not redact it, those mentions are restored here for clarity.
This selective concealment undermines public trust and blocks informed discussion of systemic issues. The words redacted in the example above are most definitely not “scholastic information”, so why did FCPS redact them and claim they were “scholastic information”?