About
Introduction
Melanie Kadlic Meren has a lifelong passion for promoting strong schools to make strong communities.
Melanie’s work to improve education spans decades. As a middle school student growing up on Long Island, NY, she gathered hundreds of peer signatures to oppose school district budget cuts – her first foray into education advocacy. Near the same time, during a family trip to Washington, DC, Melanie envisioned returning to that city one day to promote education policies that help all children.
Melanie achieved that goal when she began her career at the US Department of Education in 2002, Master’s degree in hand from the Sanford Institute of Public Policy at Duke University. Employed in the Elementary and Secondary Education Office, she worked as a civil servant in the heart of the sweeping change ushered in by the No Child Left Behind Act. Traveling to states and meeting with educators showed Melanie the power that education policy has on educators, students, systems, and communities. Seeking a more holistic and effective approach to education became the core tenet to all her future work.
Advocate and Connector, Doing the Work
Now in her second elected term of four years on the Fairfax County School Board, Melanie helps oversee the 9th largest school division in America. She is responsible for $13 billion in public assets, the education of 181,000 children, and the employment of 40,000 adults. FCPS is the third largest employer in Virginia.
Melanie’s education policy and program experience spans early childhood, K-12, and higher education. She works to empower the public to be stewards, proponents, and protectors of children and public education. Melanie aims to bring joy and build collaboration with her public service.
Joined by her husband, Drew Meren, the two are active in Fairfax’s civic life and public schools. With two children in FCPS, they are PTA member in both the kids’ schools. With a strong passion for outdoor learning experiences, Melanie has served as a school PTA Green Team Chair, been a member of the Virginia Association for Environmental Education, and until 2019, was a Leadership Team member for eight years of NoVA Outside, the alliance for outdoor educators in Northern Virginia.
Melanie completed the prestigious Sorensen Institute Political Leaders Program at UVA in 2018, after exploring public policy issues across Virginia throughout the prior year.
“Not On My Watch”
In 2015, Melanie’s daughter began Kindergarten in Fairfax County Public Schools. Just two months into the school year, a budget cut to FCPS of up to $75 million was proposed. Melanie’s response: “Not on my watch.”
Melanie began co-leading the #IamFCPS grassroots campaign to fully fund the budget.
That effort was a significant part of reducing what began as a $67.8 million funding shortfall, to just over $15 million (source: Washington Post).
After this advocacy effort, Melanie saw how her experiences as a policy and program professional, parent, and grassroots advocate uniquely prepared her to serve the community on the School Board. Service on the Fairfax County School Board was a natural step for her to promote the strongest education in our community.
Melanie has since won two Democratic endorsement elections and two general elections (2019 and 2023) to serve on the School Board as the representative of the Fairfax County Hunter Mill District.
