Fairfax County Public Schools officials are starting to close in on a name for the new high school expected to open in the Floris area south of Herndon next year.
The Fairfax County School Board will hold a public hearing at its meeting tonight (Thursday) to accept community feedback on potential names recommended earlier this month by FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid.
Culled from more than 6,000 suggestions submitted during an initial public comment period in the fall, Reid’s 10 recommended names mix tributes to notable figures and geographic references, including nods to the school’s proximity to Dulles International Airport and the National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center:
- Western High School — suggested by 473 people during the public comment period, more than any other name
- Innovation High School — while not in the immediate vicinity, the school is in the general area of the Innovation Center Metro station
- Discovery High School — possibly a nod to the Space Shuttle Discovery, a centerpiece of the Udvar-Hazy Center, at least for now
- Skyview High School
- Endeavour High School
- Bessie Coleman High School — Coleman was a stunt pilot who became the first American woman to receive an international pilot’s license and hoped to establish a flight school for African Americans.
- Kalpana Chawla High School — An astronaut for NASA, Chawla died in 2003 when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry, taking the lives of all crew members.
- Sally Ride High School — A NASA astronaut and physicist, Ride was the first American woman to fly in space.
- Ronald McNair High School — McNair, also a NASA astronaut and physicist, died with the rest of the Space Shuttle Challenger’s crew when it exploded upon launch on Jan. 28, 1986.
- David Brown High School — Also part of the Space Shuttle Columbia crew, Brown was a native of Arlington, whose public school system has a planetarium dedicated to him.
FCPS already has a McNair Elementary School that opened in 2001 for the McNair Farms neighborhood, which emerged in 1983 after the McNair family — no relation to Ronald McNair — sold the dairy farm it had operated since the early 1900s.
In addition to holding the public hearing tonight, the school board and FCPS administrators are accepting public comments on the recommended school names through Jan. 4, 2026. Reid will then present her final recommendation to the school board, which is scheduled to vote on the new name at its Feb. 12 meeting.
Intended to ease crowding in the western half of Fairfax County, the new high school will be established on the former campus of King Abdullah Academy, a Saudi Arabia-funded private school that shuttered unexpectedly this summer.
The Fairfax County School Board voted to purchase the approximately 30-acre campus on Education Drive in June for $150 million, contending that acquiring and converting an existing property would cost less than the $430 million that FCPS estimated would be needed to start a new school from scratch.
Under a plan approved by the school board in November, the facility will function as a traditional high school serving students who are currently in the boundaries for Centreville, Chantilly, Westfield, Oakton and South Lakes high schools.
FCPS officials have proposed also providing some “specialized” programming, though the form that will take has yet to be determined. Reid has suggested a focus on science and technology, with possible courses on aerospace sciences, artificial intelligence and advanced robotics.
FCPS has been hosting optional information sessions for rising 9th and 10th-grade students in those five pyramids since Dec. 8. Starting on Dec. 19, families will receive a form allowing them to officially opt their students into the new school for the 2026-2027 academic year, according to a timeline on FCPS’ website.
After reviewing the initially submitted forms, FCPS staff say they will conduct an enrollment analysis around mid-January to determine how close they are to a target of 1,000 students for the school.
Screenshot via FCPS/YouTube
