The Fairfax County school system is beginning its first review of school boundaries in four decades, and the process will start with community input.
“There has not been a comprehensive, countywide reassessment of school boundaries in 40 years,” says says Mateo Dunne, who is the Mount Vernon representative on the Fairfax County School Board. “Our research has shown that there’s basically no other place in the United States that has gone this long — 40 years — without a comprehensive boundary review,” Dunne says. “There have been piecemeal changes, but generally, those piecemeal changes have adversely affected and impacted our school staff and students.”
The board has been working on the ideas for a reassessment of boundaries since 2019, interrupted by the pandemic, Dunne says, and in July authorized the hiring of a consultant to start to put together a plan.
The process will begin with up to 24 community meetings starting next month and running through March of next year. “That will enable people, well before any changes are proposed, to come out hear a presentation by the superintendent or her designee on why we’re doing this, the background and what the process looks like,” Dunne says. “They’ll be absolutely critical to guiding and informing the school boundary revision process from March through May 2025.”
After that comes a draft plan, more community meetings, more feedback and revisions. The goal is to vote on a package of boundary changes in January 2026 and to begin putting them into effect the next September, although they could roll out in stages.
The Goals
Dunne identifies six key objectives key objectives for the reassessment:
The elimination of “attendance islands,” or schools that are detached from the areas they serve. “There are neighborhoods where kids live within walking distance or biking distance of a particular [elementary] school,” Dunne says, “but instead, they’re bused past three or four schools to get to their assigned school.”
He gave Fort Hunt Elementary and Whitman Middle School in Alexandria as prime examples: “The school building for Whitman Middle School is located outside of the boundaries. … No one who lives close to Whitman Middle School actually attends Whitman Middle School. Every single student is bused in every day, often over long distances,” Dunne says.
Busing students to school makes it harder for students to participate in extracurricular activities, he adds, and often students who miss the bus miss an entire day of school rather than just being a few minutes late.
The changes also seek to eliminate split feeders — schools in which some classmates who finish elementary or middle school move on to one school for the next level, and some to another. “It’s hugely disruptive in terms of social connections to students,” Dunne says, “and … families will end up having students at different high schools depending on how their kid gets assigned.” It also creates “a crazy bus network” that costs the school system a lot of money, Dunne added.
Boundary changes are also intended to relieve overcrowding, Dunne says: Fifteen elementary school are currently “significantly” overcrowded, with more than 115 percent capacity, up from six in 2019. Dozens of schools at all levels are also under-enrolled, Dunne says.
The lack of a comprehensive plan means school renovations are done on a piecemeal basis, and that leads to lots of trailers and modular classrooms. Dunne says that’s unacceptable: “The general objective is that all trailers and modulars should be eliminated,” if for no other reason than student safety.
The fifth objective is fiscal responsibility: Dunne claims the Fairfax County school system is underfunded by the state by up to a half-billion dollars a year, and until that changes, “We have to be very thoughtful about the way we invest in our school buildings and facilities and infrastructure.” The current boundary system means more additions to crowded school buildings, and “diverting money in a limited pool to additions to school buildings has resulted in less money for necessary investments in our school buildings and infrastructure,” Dunne says. “The industry standard is that schools should be renovated every 20 to 25 years. Our current rate is almost double that — we’re at 42 years, and that’s increasing.”
The last category Dunne identified was proximity and travel time to and from school. “All students should be allowed to attend their local schools,” Dunne says. “School boundaries should not divide communities. School boundaries should minimize travel times and transportation costs, and school boundaries should enable more students to bike and walk to school. That touches on fiscal responsibility as well. “We spend $200 million a year on school buses … we spend tens of millions of dollars on diesel every year, which is not environmentally friendly, right?”
About a quarter of Fairfax County students travel more than a half-hour each way to and from school every day, Dunne says. “Almost half of kids in the ‘60s and ‘70s used to bike or walk to school,” Dunne adds. “It gets you some physical activity first thing in the morning, and research shows it makes kids more alert, ready to learn, makes them physically healthier, and also contributes to improved mental and behavioral health. But we’ve gotten away from that.”
‘Maintain the Stability’
Dunne credits FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid, whom he calls “an incredible leader,” with being on the ground floor of the process, and adds that he and the board intend to “make sure that we are engaging early and often with the community, and doing so in public,” throughout the process of reviewing boundaries.
He adds that residents shouldn’t get too nervous about huge changes: “We’re not, like, starting with the whiteboard and saying, ‘How should it be?’ That’s not realistic. It would be way too disruptive. What we’re looking to do is to maintain the stability of the current boundaries, but make changes to improve them.”
Feature image, Helistockter/stock.adobe.com
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