(The Lion) — A job posting for a high-paid bodyguard to protect a Virginia school superintendent amid a $121 million budget deficit has the community questioning the district’s priorities.

“According to the job posting on Glassdoor and other employment websites, the salary range, based on the school district’s pay scale, is between $84,000 and $143,000,” explains the local ABC affiliate. “The full-time position involves signing a 260-day contract.”

The job posting for Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), a district ranked as the ninth largest nationwide, closed Aug. 5 and does not appear to have been filled.

“It’s not common for a school superintendent to have a bodyguard that’s dedicated specifically for that function,” said Ken Trump, president of the School Safety and Security Services consulting firm.

Drivers or personal assistants sometimes accompany superintendents – not dedicated bodyguards, said Trump, who has been involved in school security for more than four decades.

When queried about the job posting, the district responded by releasing a statement but did not address specific media questions.

“The highly publicized tragic events around the country over the last several months illustrate the need to intensify and enhance security protocols at all organizations,” the statement read. It also added the employee would also assist in implementing a new emergency response system and help the district in “identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks of targeted violence against students, staff, and schools.”

Stephanie Lundquist-Arora, a parent with three children attending Fairfax County public schools, made the job posting for Superintendent Michelle Reid public in an opinion piece for radio station WMAL.

“What’s next for Reid – a cook and a driver?” she asked, referring to the superintendent as “Queen Reid.” She also mentioned the substantial raise Reid received last November, increasing her salary to more than $424,000 from $380,000.

“To deal with this budget shortfall, they’re actually cutting teachers,” Lundquist-Arora said. “So, I thought, ‘How insane is this that student outcomes have actually declined precipitously since (the COVID-19 pandemic) and they’re putting their money into things like a personal bodyguard for the Superintendent?’”

District’s ‘quasi-savior complex’

In another controversial hiring move, the district contracted in 2023 with a law firm charging $2,225 per hour to defend against charges of civil rights violations.

“Unfortunately, FCPS has been required to retain legal counsel to counter recent baseless claims made by the Attorney General,” an FCPS spokesperson said at the time.

However, the AG’s office rejected such reasoning.

“There are thousands of practicing attorneys in the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Miyares Spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said. “Fairfax is free to select any attorney or firm it wishes, subject to Virginia’s well-established ethics and conflict of interest rules.

“Fairfax’s claim that the OAG somehow blocked the county from retaining any Virginia-based firm is false and a distraction. It is also not the Attorney General’s fault that Fairfax County chose to implement policies that may violate the Virginia Human Rights Act.”

The district has also drawn criticism for its policies regarding sex education and mental health.

“Recent votes to continue secret gender ‘transitions’ in schools and to remove public access to the Fairfax County, Virginia, sex education committee cap years of deceit by Fairfax elected officials,” wrote Laura Bryant Hanford in an opinion piece for the Daily Signal. “For a decade now they have inserted themselves between parents and children where they should most defer: in sensitive areas of mental health and sexuality.”

Hanford served on the school’s Family Life Education Curriculum Advisory Committee from 2015 to 2018, observing “Fairfax schools’ quasi-savior complex to sexually ‘enlighten’ our children,” she noted.

“A decade ago, as a mother new to Fairfax schools, I was shocked that my school board would lie to me. Now I know its devotion to radical ideology consistently leads to deceiving parents and harming children.”