Last month, Zenaida Perez, a teacher in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), filed a lawsuit against the district for defamation and retaliation against a whistleblower. Strangely, King & Spalding, the law firm that the district’s superintendent, Michelle Reid, hired to be the “external independent investigator” of Perez’s allegations, is now representing FCPS in its defense.
In May 2022, Perez, who has taught FCPS’s English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) students since 2008, told Centreville High School’s principal, Chad Lehman, that the school’s social worker, Carolina Diaz, facilitated an abortion for a minor student without her guardian’s consent.
In her signed statement (translated from Spanish), the student wrote, “Mrs. Carolina Diaz scheduled the appointment for me at the abortion clinic in Fairfax, paid the costs of that medical procedure, and kept everything quiet without informing my family.”
After Perez told Lehman about the school staff member’s involvement in the minor’s abortion, she says that she faced multiple incidents of retaliation and defamation from school and district administration. For example, her lawsuit states, “On April 8, 2025, an 18-year-old male student… confided to Perez that [Assistant Principal Montell] Brown instructed him to ask Perez for a ride in her personal vehicle to Costco, and that once Perez gave him the ride, he was to report the incident to Brown, so that he could write Perez up.”
Julie Perry, a teacher at Centreville High School who is familiar with the case and knows the student involved, believes that FCPS is retaliating against Perez for being a whistleblower. She said, “It makes me very sad to see my colleague, Zenaida, being heavily retaliated against because she was only doing the right thing by reporting illegal activity.”
Oddly, the district’s leaders didn’t seem concerned with Perez’s claims until the public was made aware of them. Only after the media reported on the abortion allegations did district leadership hire the expensive law firm to investigate. In an email to Centreville High School staff, dated Aug. 7, 2025, Reid wrote, “[T]he division has taken immediate action to engage an external independent investigator to get all the facts.”
Ongoing Investigation
In August and September, Fairfax County Public Schools paid the law firm $980,515.14 in taxpayer funds to investigate Perez’s claims. And while there is still an ongoing Virginia State Police criminal investigation into the matter, on Oct. 16, King & Spalding issued an inconclusive report stating that Perez’s allegations were “likely untrue.”
It seems that FCPS’s leaders are more interested in appearing to try to get to the bottom of things only when there is concern among the public that threatens the district’s image.
Conflict of Interest
Monique Miles, Perez’s attorney, noted that “King & Spalding can’t be both neutral fact finder and defense. There is an inherent conflict of interest in King & Spalding representing FCPS as counsel in both matters.”
Miles further argues that “FCPS has lost all credibility by hiring King & Spalding to do an external independent investigation, where they released a preliminary report to the Senate [Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions] HELP Committee and the U.S. Department of Education Acting General Counsel inferring that Perez was a liar and claiming that the evidence doesn’t support her claims (when it does, especially the audio recordings), and then by hiring King & Spalding’s same attorneys, the very next week, to represent FCPS in defending against Perez’s lawsuit for defamation and retaliation.”
Perez on Administrative Leave
After King & Spalding released its inconclusive report in October, and while Diaz keeps her job as school social worker and Lehman was promoted, FCPS placed Perez on administrative leave. Perez believes that her suspension is permanent because, she said, district leaders insisted that she turn in her laptop, keys, and all district property. They also, according to Perez, terminated her email account and revoked her access to the student information system.
FCPS’s leaders were not interested in getting to the bottom of things until their public image was threatened. Now Perez’s lawsuit should reveal more about how they retaliated against the whistleblower.
Stephanie Lundquist-Arora is a contributor to The Federalist and the Washington Examiner, a mother in Fairfax County, Virginia, an author, and the Fairfax chapter leader of the Independent Women’s Network.
