As the Fairfax County School Board considers a new boundary adjustment policy, a prominent citizens’ group has raised concerns about its potential impact on local families.
The Great Falls Citizens Association’s (GFCA) executive board took an official stance on the proposed policy changes on June 17, urging Fairfax County Public Schools and elected officials to hit the pause button until they solicit more community input.
Citing concerns “expressed by a significant number of members of the current Great Falls school district,” the board advocated for a data-based, transparent approach to school boundary changes, arguing that facility renovation, construction and maintenance should be prioritized and “breaking up communities” should be avoided.
School board members, meanwhile, say adopting the policy will provide clear guidelines for the superintendent, and gathering feedback now could cause confusion without these rules in place.
“Almost all the questions I’ve gotten have been [are] around how this is going to be implemented because that’s what people are really very nervous about, like ‘what does this mean for my kid in my school and my community?'” Braddock District Representative Rachna Sizemore-Heizer told FFXnow. “The policy isn’t going to answer those questions because a policy is the guiding document…It isn’t the implementation process in and of itself.”
The school board’s governance committee, led by Sizemore-Heizer, began updating the boundary adjustment policy earlier this year following several heated discussions about the need to address overcrowding in schools countywide.
In April, the committee unveiled an initial draft of the revised policy, which requires the superintendent to follow specific criteria for drawing school boundaries and mandates a county-wide review every five years.
Unlike the current policy, the new one prioritizes school capacity, minimizes neighborhood splits, reduces travel times, and ensures equal access to programming for boundary changes.
It also lets the superintendent make emergency adjustments under extreme circumstances, such as a school becoming non-operational due to a natural disaster, and introduces phased implementation for future changes.
But the GFCA says its members are concerned the new policy language is too vague, making it susceptible to abuse by the superintendent or school board members.
“Now, I am not an attorney. We are not…offering a legal opinion about this, but when we talk about language like ‘may’ and ‘shall’ and ‘can’ etcetera, the language allows for discretion and is unclear,” GFCA secretary and board member Jennifer Falcone told FFXnow. “This leads to the community saying this appears to give the school board the ability to merely consider only enrollment and capacity without access to programming or minimizing disruption of students, etcetera.”
In recent years, the school board has approved two boundary adjustments in the McLean area — one at the high school level in 2021 and one that will affect elementary schools, starting with the coming academic year — as well as one for elementary schools in the Justice High School pyramid.
However, proposed adjustments for Glasgow Middle School were put on hold in the spring, as the school board voted to pause any further changes until a new policy is in place.
With McLean High School still projected to be at 104% capacity in the 2028-2029 school year, Falcone speculated about whether students could again be shifted to Langley High School just a few miles away. She says it’s unclear whether that would be supported by the new policy based on its current language.
“Does this give the superintendent of schools the authority to say, ‘We have ‘x’ amount of seats in a particular school. There’s overcrowding over here. I can merely use the…transportation [criteria], etcetera, in order to adjust this boundary,’ because the policy gives her the authority to do that? And is that in the best interest of the school population?” Falcone said.
Last week, the governance committee submitted a newly revised draft that the school board plans to review during a work session today (June 25).
Sizemore-Heizer says her committee included explicit language about using methods such as meetings, surveys, and outreach to solicit public feedback before making any boundary adjustments.
Under current version of the new policy, the superintendent can’t unilaterally make boundary changes, and any proposed permanent changes — excluding temporary emergencies — would require board approval, she emphasized.
“What I can guarantee is that nothing will be changed without significant community input and thoughtful work around the data [provided] by the superintendent,” Sizemore-Heizer said.
Falcone, though, questioned the accuracy of FCPS’ student population data and future school capacity forecasts. She noted that Herndon projects significant growth over the next 10-15 years, yet FCPS’ most recent capital improvement plan (CIP) suggests that nearly all schools in the area will remain under capacity.
“If FCPS is saying that there’s no growth in the Town of Herndon, why is the Town of Herndon publishing documents and forecasting of growth in Herndon?” Falcone said.
An FCPS spokesperson says the school system considers factors like birth rates, migration, enrollment, transfers and new housing developments when calculating projections.
The Town of Herndon also factors in new housing when estimating its population. But a spokesperson from the town’s Department of Community Development says they anticipate most growth will consist of older residents with smaller households, as the developments are predominantly apartments, rather than single-family homes or townhouses.
At-Large School Board Representative Kyle McDaniel acknowledged hearing similar concerns from residents but reiterated that, if the policy be adopted, which he believes is likely, it explicitly provides opportunities for affected individuals to provide input to both the superintendent and the school board.
“There was a long history of administrative changes being abused, sometimes for the better of a particular community, sometimes for the worse of a particular community, but you can’t have one school board member or one superintendent going rogue and changing lines just because they want to,” McDaniel said. “We’re a board, and you’ve got to have a board majority behind you to do things like that. So, I recognize that sensitivity. I agree with that, and we’ve gone through, I think, great measures in this new draft to virtually eliminate that possibility as much as we reasonably can.”
A vote on the new policy could come as early as next month if the school board decides at today’s work session to take up the issue at its next meeting.
