Fairfax County Public Schools has officially adopted a boundary map for attendance at the new Skyview High School, which will draw in students from Westfield, Chantilly, and South Lakes high schools to alleviate overcrowding at several schools on the western side of the county.
The new school assignments — unanimously approved by the school board during its July 16 regular meeting — are expected to impact 2,544 students, including 1,159 who will be assigned next year to attend Skyview’s campus at 2949 Education Drive, in the Floris area south of Herndon.
The boundary will be implemented in the 2027-2028 school year, with an opportunity for ninth-grade students to opt out in favor of their former high school pathway. By the following year, the first in which students can no longer opt out, FCPS estimates that 1,606 students will attend Skyview.
The new map will pull in:
- 333 students currently assigned to Chantilly
- 384 from South Lakes
- 1,062 students from Westfield
The school board also approved boundary adjustments that will affect some students outside of Skyview, including 186 Chantilly students who will be moved to Westfield. Another 77 students will be reassigned from Centreville High School to Westfield, helping ease some of the strain on a long-overcrowded building.
The boundary changes have implications for lower grades too, with new lines drawn for Carson and Franklin middle schools. Franklin’s students will feed into two different high schools. Additionally, a few dozen students at Liberty Middle School in the Clifton area will be reassigned to Centreville’s Stone Middle School.
While students from Oakton High School were allowed to opt into attendance at Skyview for the upcoming 2026-2027 school year, Oakton’s boundary lines remain unchanged following the Thursday vote.
‘Not a pure science’
“It’s not easy to do something like this and to open a school in a year and go through the whole boundary process,” said Seema Dixit, who represents the Sully District on the school board. “But the school was much needed, and significant residential development had been happening in the western side of the county.”
The school board purchased the former King Abdullah Academy campus for $150 million in June 2025, just after the private school shut down. The newly public facility was officially renamed Skyview High School earlier this year.
Over 700 students heading into the 2026-2027 school year volunteered to attend the new school while the campus awaits the completion of additional renovations and membership in the Virginia High School League for athletic teams. Last month, the school board awarded a nearly $2 million contract to design more extensive improvements.
Under FCPS’ new policy, by the 2028-2029 school year, ninth graders within Skyview’s boundaries will no longer be able to opt out of enrollment. Some students may be able to use FCPS’ transfer policy, but if they do, they will no longer be eligible for bus transportation under a phasing plan also approved last week by the school board.
While the purchase of a fully built campus has been repeatedly described by school leaders as a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity that would ultimately save taxpayers money, some residential construction expected to impact the schools included in the boundary study hasn’t been completed yet.
That meant FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid had to factor in those student projections over the next few years, while trying to avoid strain on Westfield High School in particular.
With 1,062 students rerouted from Westfield, many parents expressed concern in testimony before board meetings that the school would receive significantly less funding — and, as a result, lose teachers and programs to other campuses.
Reid acknowledged that the concerns are fair, but she said rerouting students might also allow the school to discontinue use of 13 trailers. For now, those will stay on-site in case some housing developments in the area finish earlier than expected, since it would cost money to move them back and forth.
“I think that a lot of a lot of this boundary work is our best guess, right?” she told board members. “It’s not a pure science, and it’s not going to be perfect in our recommendations.”
The trailers also impact enrollment and the budget, because they have a different funding source than the modular classroomss used at other schools, Reid told the board.
To help address some of the concerns, the board directed Reid present a comprehensive plan by October for establishing a specialized programming pathway at Westfield High School in the areas of business, information technology and skilled trades.
“Even with the reduced membership to 2,000 students, that is still a very large high school population that can sustain robust programming,” said Melanie Meren, who represents the Hunter Mill District.
But minimizing the impact on Westfield at times appeared to conflict with a desire to minimize impacts on residents of some smaller neighborhoods, who argued that Chantilly was a more natural fit for their kids.
Following impassioned testimony from residents of the Stonebrook at Westfields community, at-large member Ilryong Moon proposed keeping the neighborhood in Chantilly High School’s boundaries. The motion failed to pass on a 7-4 vote.
In what seemed to be a reference to Walney Village — whose boundaries remained the same after a preliminary recommendation generated backlash — Moon noted that other neighborhoods’ concerns were addressed. He asked why the superintendent had not done the same for Stonebrook.
“I find that to be troubling when number is so small,” said Moon. “If it is 100, that may be a different story. We are talking about perhaps, again, maybe 15 high school kids.”
Following a motion from Meren, the school board unanimously voted to ask Reid to deliver a report in October about FCPS’ boundary work “with lessons learned and suggested future improvements; and information about how to mitigate possible detriments to instructional programming at schools impacted by declines in student membership that result from the establishment of the Skyview High School boundary.”
This story was updated to clarify that the approximately $2 million allocated to Skyview High School renovations is for design work, not construction.
