By Brian Trompeter
Fairfax County supervisors on Feb. 6 passed, with much applause, a resolution congratulating the S. John Davis Career Center (DCC) on four decades of serving students and the community.
The center, which marked its 40th anniversary in 2023, is located at George C. Marshall High School. It is one of two Fairfax County career centers (the other is the Earl L. Pulley Career Center in the Alexandria area) that offer a modified curriculum focusing on life, social and vocational skills to students with disabilities, ages 18 to 22.
“For four decades, DCC’s staff and administrators have created classrooms and community environments that prepare and empower students through self-advocacy, problem-solving and productive communications skills,” the supervisors’ resolution read.
The center builds strong connections between school, home and community and succeeds by using multiple methods, including small-group classrooms, school- and community-based job-resource sites, and both supervised and unsupervised settings, according to the resolution.
The school, which has about 135 students, lists DAVIS as an acronym on its Web page and breaks it out thusly: “Driven to Achieve success in Vocation, Independence and Self-Determination. (The school’s namesake, S. John Davis, was superintendent of Fairfax schools from 1970 to 1979 and Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction from 1979-90. He died in 2009.)
Students at the center have received many work placements, including at the U.S. Postal Service and Fairfax County Public Schools, said Supervisor Dalia Palchik (D-Providence).
DCC has “trained and transitioned hundreds of disabled young adults to welcoming employers and work sites across Fairfax County,” said Supervisor Rodney Lusk (D-Franconia). “It is a remarkable achievement that comes as a result of dedicated partnerships between home, school and community.”
Lusk credited parents of the center’s students for their steadfast support over the decades, and thanked local employers for providing on-site job shadowing and training opportunities, as well as training materials and equipment to the Davis Career Center.
Chad Clayton, the center’s principal, noted that DCC’s first principal, David Temple Jr., now serves as Lusk’s educational and workforce-development aide.
“Our community is indebted to [Temple] for his vision and dedication 40 years ago to begin what continues to be a thriving community of eager, talented, insightful and inspiring learners,” Clayton said.
Clayton recognized DCC students who attended the Board of Supervisors meeting and, like the principal, were wearing gray T-shirts emblazoned with “DCC 1983” above a shooting star, in honor of the center’s founding year.
DCC’s students “show up each day to take on the challenges of growing, learning, working and adulting,” he said. “And as we all know, adulting is hard.”
Clayton also thanked the local business community for its continued support and credited the center’s teachers and staff for modeling and leading the way for students who are “learning to voice a vision for living their own self-determined lives.”
