After Democratic candidates swept both state and down-ballot races in Virginia this month, many political strategists are wondering how Amy Riccardi, a conservative candidate for school board in the traditionally Democratic Sterling District of Loudoun County, beat her Democrat-endorsed opponent, Arben Istrefi. The answer? She had a strong message and a clear campaign strategy.

Amy Riccardi has always had a passion for education. She told IW Features that as a young girl growing up in Houston, Texas, she spent countless hours “playing school.” After her father’s professional obligations with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) moved her family east, she graduated from a public high school in Maryland.

Riccardi’s love of volleyball and Texas steered her back to the Lone Star State for college, where she competed at the Division 1 level for the University of North Texas. Still harboring her childhood passion for education, she went on to earn a Master’s degree in education from George Mason University.

There appears to be a stark contrast between Riccardi and Istrefi’s commitment to public education policy. Riccardi told IW Features that she is wholeheartedly committed to Loudoun County’s school board—and that she has no intention of simply using it as a platform. On the other hand, many school board members such as Istrefi, who ran and lost in the 2024 District 26 Democratic primary for the House of Delegates, use the local office as a political stepping stone to build their reputation and seek higher office. 

Riccardi told IW Features that during his two-year tenure on the board, Istrefi “missed more than 80 votes. After 80,” she continued, “I stopped counting.” Istrefi, Riccardi said, also notoriously showed up late to several school board meetings or missed them entirely.

In contrast, after experiencing the public education system in neighboring Fairfax County through her children’s eyes, Riccardi said her only goal is to improve Loudoun County’s schools. She told IW Features that on the school board, she will “advocate for innovation in our thinking about what will actually solve the problem, and not just to keep doing what we’ve always done.”

Riccardi’s district is unique to the rest of the notably affluent Loudoun County—ranked the wealthiest county in the United States—where the median household income in 2025 is $178,707. Seven of the 10 public schools in the Sterling District are designated Title I, in which at least 40% of students are from low-income families. In those seven Title 1 schools in the Sterling District, 54% of the students are English language learners (ELLs), and 61.6% of them are economically disadvantaged. Meanwhile, across all of Loudoun County’s public schools, 20% of the students are ELLs, and 24.7% are economically disadvantaged..

Riccardi well understands that ELLs have specific needs and challenges. They often have gaps in learning, sometimes missing years of school before coming to the United States and enrolling in the grade that corresponds to their age. They also tend to lag in reading proficiency, even in their native languages. 

Riccardi told IW Features, “We haven’t had an advocate for these kids, only politicians.” She added that while serving on the school board, “I intend to call out political decisions over practical ones.”

When IW Features asked Riccardi what school board members should do to help the children who struggle academically, she referred to an article detailing policy lessons from Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee—states where students’ math and reading proficiency have significantly improved. One of the key components of these states’ success, according to the article, is preventing elementary school grade promotion before struggling students are reading proficiently, referred to as “maintaining the third-grade promotion gate.” Other recommendations in the article include increased investment in teacher training, setting rigorous academic standards, and implementing early screeners and targeted interventions.  

Riccardi pointed out that these findings aren’t necessarily a blueprint for all districts, and that LCPS needs to consider best practices. 

Similar to public school districts across the nation, in Loudoun County, ELLs have a much higher failure rate of the state’s primary standardized tests than their English proficient counterparts. The table below reflects the performance of LCPS students on the Standards of Learning (SOLs) in the 2024-2025 academic year.

Failure Rate of LCPS SOLs 2024-2025

Source: https://schoolquality.virginia.gov/divisions/loudoun-county-public-schools#desktopTabs-2

There is an obvious need to focus on the academic lag of ELLs, particularly in Riccardi’s district—home to the most significant percentage of ELLs in the county—but most of her colleagues on the school board have been spending copious amounts of time instead advocating bathroom and locker room use based on proclaimed “gender identity” rather than sex. And while there are about 16,315 ELL students (20%) in LCPS, the majority of whom are struggling academically and financially, in the 2025-2026 academic year, there are about 51 students (0.1%) who identify as “non-binary” in the district.

Riccardi insisted that the school board needs to be more focused on the large number of children who are struggling academically, while still maintaining support for high achievers. She told IW Features, “Many of these kids aren’t reading at grade level, and the school board is focused on non-priority issues.”

In fact, it seems that Loudoun County’s school board members have been disproportionately focused on the perceived needs of the 51 “non-binary” students above all others. In August 2021, for example, the progressive activists on the school board passed Policy 8040 in a 7-2 vote. The policy states, “Students should be allowed to use the facility that corresponds to their consistently asserted gender identity.”

In opposition to Policy 8040, Riccardi told IW Features, “8040 is a failed experiment. There are so many repercussions from this policy.”

In 2021, for example, a male student, who was reportedly wearing a skirt and identified as “non-binary,” raped a freshman girl in the girls’ bathroom at Loudoun County’s Stone Bridge High School.

Four years later, in the same high school, a female student who claimed to be transgender but presented as a girl, entered the boys’ locker room and recorded male students on her phone. In the video recording, three boys questioned her presence in the boys’ locker room. One of them said, “Why is there a girl? I’m so uncomfortable, there is a girl. A female bro. Get out of here.”

Rather than filing criminal charges against the female student for recording the boys in a private space, LCPS’s Title IX Office found two of the boys guilty of Title IX violations for questioning the girl’s presence in their locker room. 

Referring to the mostly female progressives on the school board, Riccardi told IW Features, “They’re adult women playing mean girl games.”

Sadly, highly competent local candidates face a tricky hurdle to jump in promoting their messages and standing out to voters. Most school board races across the nation, even when listed as independent on the official ballot, are partisan-endorsed on the sample ballots. Given that the majority of the voting public has no idea who their school board members are, voters tend to use partisan sample ballots as an information shortcut for local races. Such heuristics put more qualified, conservative candidates in traditionally Democratic areas, such as Riccardi, at a significant disadvantage.

In 2023, for example, Riccardi ran as the Republican-endorsed school board candidate against the Democratic-endorsed Istrefi, with independent candidate Sarath Kolla also running. In that race, Istrefi received 47.34% of the vote, compared to Riccardi’s 40.26% and Kolla’s 11.39%.

Riccardi told IW Features that she learned a great deal from that campaign and adjusted her strategy accordingly. For her 2025 campaign, to keep the focus on education policy and avoid distracting voters with partisan tribalism, she made the intentional decision to run as an independent rather than the Republican-endorsed candidate.

In Democratic-leaning districts, school board candidates who run with the Republican endorsement risk being inaccurately painted as “right-wing extremists.” This time around, Riccardi said that she put a lot of thought and time into crafting her own personal narrative, including sharing her successes as an entrepreneur and founder of a consulting company. 

Also, she said that her campaign allocated more funds and emphasized digital advertising across all platforms—in contrast to its more aggressive door-knocking efforts in 2023, which she told IW Features were less effective because “people in Sterling weren’t opening doors.”

On election day, high school students donning “Amy for Sterling” hooded sweatshirts distributed campaign literature (in English and Spanish) and sample ballots on her behalf. Many of them were girls from the high school volleyball team that Riccardi volunteers to coach in the off-season. She has also helped that team raise money to sponsor jerseys and support the athletes who hope to participate in club volleyball.

With Riccardi’s campaign victory, Loudoun County’s Sterling District voters seem to have elected a school board member who actually represents the needs and interests of the children, rather than one who advocates highly politicized, experimental policies and simply aspires to higher office.

Riccardi told IW Features that she is ready to hit the ground running when she begins her term in January. She said, “Every year that we delay the implementation [of programs to improve student outcomes] is another year of students graduating below grade-level.”