Poe Middle School is getting closer to having an Advanced Academic Program (AAP) center of its own, and other middle schools could soon follow suit.
The Fairfax County School Board voted unanimously last Thursday (Sept. 25) to begin engaging with the community on a plan to open a new AAP center at Poe (7000 Cindy Lane), which would be the first middle school in the Annandale High School pyramid to offer full-time advanced academic services.
Annandale is in Region 6, along with the Hayfield and Lewis pyramids. It is the only region in the district without a middle school AAP center, according to Fairfax County Public Schools staff.
Because the Mason District is unique in having elementary schools end with fifth grade, students must transfer to Canterbury Woods Elementary School for sixth grade and then move a year later to Frost Middle School — both in the Woodson High School pyramid — to continue receiving full advanced courses.
Students can also attend their neighborhood middle school, but their options for advanced academics would be limited to four available honors-level courses.
Ricardy Anderson, who represents Mason District on the school board, had advocated for an AAP center at Poe Middle School to address that “gap in service continuity.”
“It may not impact thousands of students, but it will impact hundreds of students,” she said before the vote last week. “… All students deserve the best effort and commitment, so there has to be no minimum to justify advocacy. The staff and principals at Poe and Annandale High School are excited by the possibility to serve students who reside in the Annandale pyramid in the pyramid’s schools.”
Under the proposal put forward by FCPS staff, the Poe AAP Center would launch at the start of the 2026-2027 school year. It would require a boundary change that will shift students from Canterbury Woods and Holmes, Glasgow and Frost middle schools to Poe, whose enrollment would increase by an estimated 31%, or 273 students.
The new center would be implemented in phases over three years. By the end, in the 2028-2029 school year, Poe could be utilizing 109% of its program capacity — a notable increase from its current utilization of 72%.
Community engagement meetings on the proposal will be held on Oct. 22 and 28, Anderson announced in a recent newsletter. The school board anticipates receiving Superintendent Michelle Reid’s final recommendation in November ahead of a Dec. 18 vote on whether to establish the AAP center.
If the center is approved, FCPS staff say they will spend January through June 2026 preparing for the new center. That timeline, Anderson said, will sync up with the one for implementing the countywide boundary overhaul that the school board hopes to approve early next year.
The scope of that vote is part of why Hunter Mill District School Board Representative Melanie Meren deviated from her colleagues in voting against a follow-up motion directing Reid to develop a “comprehensive plan” by March 2026 for expanding AAP centers to all middle schools in the county.
As Anderson noted, the school board had agreed in October 2020 to explore establishing AAP centers in all middle schools in response to a recommendation from a consultant’s report on equity issues in FCPS’ advanced academic programs.
However, Meren argued that moving forward with that recommendation “as if that was just yesterday is imprudent.”
“I know Dr. Reid wants to commit to doing everything,” Meren said. “But I don’t think that … when we’ve already got the boundaries and western high school to be decided by January that we’re also going to throw in adding a bunch of AAP centers when, again, the board has not had a public deliberation with current data and best practices about what is best to provide advanced academic instruction to children.”
Other school board members emphasized that the vote was only to have Reid and her staff craft a plan for expanding AAP centers, not a commitment to adopting any changes.
With March as the deadline for presenting a plan, Reid estimated that the earliest FCPS could actually start to implement it, if approved, would be the fall of 2027.
“It likely will take several years because we have to build the capacity of our staff to provide the programming in all middle schools,” Reid told the school board.
In addition to expanding access to advanced classes, having AAP centers in all middle schools would have the benefit of reducing transportation demands, since students won’t need to be bused out of their neighborhood in order to attend a center, several school board members noted.
According to Dranesville District Representative Robyn Lady, the ongoing boundary review has revealed that AAP centers are the primary contributor to split feeders where students who attend the same elementary school graduate to two or, in some cases, even three different middle schools.
“This work is of great importance because I’m tired of busing kids to programs instead of sending kids to their neighborhood school where they have the programs that they need for every single student,” she said. “So, I strongly stand behind this.”
