Two office buildings on the Fair Oaks Mall campus have changed hands in a $12.5 million deal that their new owners hope will jumpstart a revitalization.
The commercial real estate firm Silverline Equities announced Tuesday (June 16) that it has acquired Greenwood Plaza and Oakwood Center buildings at 12015 and 11781 Route 50.
Several Fairfax County supervisors this week signaled an interest in expanding the “Beyond the Bell” child care program following a reportedly successful pilot over the previous school year.
County staff proposed at the Board of Supervisors’ Health and Human Services Committee meeting on Tuesday (June 16) transitioning all existing School Age Child Care (SACC) sites to Beyond the Bell over the next few years, starting with an additional 21 schools this fall.
Nearly four in five parents say their child brings home mostly B’s or better. We built a K-8 math program, and when we assess children, about 8 in 10 turn out to be at least a full grade behind in some area of math.
In our first study, about 6 in 10 of the children we assessed were two or more grades behind somewhere, usually in one or two areas.
Is our test simply hard? No. Our results are close to those of the federal NAEP test, which finds only about 1 in 4 US eighth graders proficient in math.
A child who has learned this week’s steps can get the worksheet right without knowing why they work. That is often enough for an A or a B, until a test asks for more.
Homework looks fine too, since it practices the topic just taught. Neither shows the missing earlier skill, so extra practice goes to this week’s topic, not the gap underneath.
Even Virginia’s state test can reassure too easily: a 2026 federal study put its 2022 fourth-grade “proficient” bar in math among the nation’s lowest.
Math builds on itself, so a missing skill does not stay small. Kindergartners we assess are almost never behind, but from third grade on, more than 9 in 10 have a gap somewhere. Research agrees: children who start behind tend to fall further behind, and fifth graders’ grasp of fractions predicts their high-school algebra results.
Our second study looked at more than 10,000 answers from more than 250 children who recently signed up for Level Up, including questions from earlier grades.
The misses were not math in general: basic multiplication and division facts mostly held up. What tripped them up was a few topics from a grade or two earlier, the ones this year’s math is built on: second-grade subtraction at the end of fourth grade, fourth-grade fraction word problems at the end of fifth, and fifth-grade decimal ordering at the end of sixth.
Fractions kept coming back: among children finishing seventh grade, about 8 in 10 of those asked missed fifth-grade fraction word problems.
One child in our study, just out of fifth grade, missed a fourth-grade fraction question and its fifth-grade version. Practice started with the fourth-grade topic. Within two weeks, the child had mastered all nine of its skills, then four from the fifth-grade version.
That is the approach: find the real gaps, start at the deepest one, and practice each skill from three sides:
Identify: recognize the idea, like picking which picture shows three quarters.
Construct: build the answer yourself, like marking three quarters on a number line.
The Fairfax County School Board expects to spend about $2 million on engineering and designs for renovations to remake a private school south of Herndon into the new Skyview High School.
At its meeting on June 11, the board directed Fairfax County Public Schools staff to finalize an approximately $1.99 million contract for architecture and engineering services with Grimm + Parker Architecture.
A pedestrian has died after being struck by two different drivers on Richmond Highway early this morning (Thursday).
Police officers and Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department units were dispatched to Richmond Highway at Fort Hunt Road in Huntington at around 1:43 a.m. after one of the drivers reported to 911 that they “hit a pedestrian and then another car ran them over,” according to the police scanner.
SPEAKERS
Pat Herrity, Springfield District Supervisor
Arthur Purves – FCTA President
Meal: $50, including tip, taxes and salad.
Further reductions in Fairfax County’s office building inventory are needed, but the commercial office sector is not a dinosaur destined for extinction, industry officials say.
“We’re seeing our existing tenants … beginning to need more space,” Barry Bass, a cofounder of the real estate investment firm Silverline Equities, told the Board of Supervisors’ Council for Economic Opportunity on Tuesday (June 16).
Early voting has officially started in Fairfax County for Congressional primary elections that will likely be relatively low on drama after a chaotic spring saw voters narrowly approve new districts that were subsequently nullified by the Virginia Supreme Court.
The county is opening three in-person early voting sites today (Thursday), starting with the Fairfax County Government Center at 8 a.m. and followed at 1 p.m. by the Mount Vernon and North County governmental centers.
Missing Swimmer’s Body Found — “Crews from the Montgomery County fire department recovered the body of 20-year-old Nazir Bell early Tuesday afternoon days after they started their search on Sunday evening.” Bell went missing while swimming in the Potomac River near the Billy Goat Trail during what “was supposed to be a fun outing with friends.” [NBC4]
Home Builder Convicted of Fraud — “A three-week criminal trial in Fairfax County Circuit Court ended Wednesday with a six-count conviction for home contractor Richard Craig Tadlock. The 76-year-old was convicted on five counts of construction fraud and one count of obtaining money by false pretenses.” [WUSA9]
Regional Lego Theft Ring Busted — “Three suspects are accused of conspiring to steal minifigures from numerous Lego sets across the D.C. area, making a tidy profit reselling them online. Collectible minifigures from fandoms such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Zelda were secretly swiped in 29 incidents, supplying a high-volume eBay storefront that netted over $36,000 in 12 months, according to a criminal complaint.” [ARLnow]
Repairs Continue on Potomac Water Pipes — Emergency repairs started on Tuesday (June 16) to fix a different section of the Potomac Interceptor than the one that “famously spewed raw sewage straight into the Potomac River” in January, an indicator of the “precarious state” of D.C.’s only drinking water source. Additional priority spots have been identified in Dulles and “on the DC-Maryland line by Chain Bridge.” [Washingtonian]
Former Kingstowne Library Slated for Retail — The owner of Landsdowne Centre is seeking contractors to divide roughly 20,000 square feet of space previously occupied by the Kingstowne Library and Center for Active Adults into “nine new retail spaces.” The shopping center is otherwise “fully leased” to tenants including CVS, Hangry Joe’s, Dairy Queen and more. [Washington Business Journal]
Local Student Honored for Safety Patrol Work — Inspired by his mother and older sister, William Kinne signed up to become a safety patrol member at Canterbury Woods Elementary School in Wakefield. “On Tuesday night, Kinne was recognized as AAA’s Safety Patroller of the Year. It marks the second consecutive year a student at the school has received the honor.” [WTOP]
New Eateries Coming to Bailey’s Crossroads — “Several new dining options are in the works for Bailey’s Crossroads. The Nile Restaurant is slated to open Monday, June 22, at 5624 Columbia Pike. Gamal Elhadi, the owner, plans to offer kebabs, grilled chicken, fried fish, salads, and Mediterranean specialties.” Multiple cafes, a Chinese restaurant and Bora Bora Smoothie Cafe are also under construction. [Annandale Today]
Metro Reflects on 50 Years of Service — “This year marks 50 years since Metrorail’s first trains began service in D.C. Over the course of the decades, the transit system has expanded significantly, playing a crucial role in the growth and development of the Washington metropolitan area.” Metro General Manager and CEO Randy Clarke “views Metro’s story as intertwined with that of America and the DMV.” [DC News Now]
It’s Thursday — Expect a high of 94°F and partly sunny skies, with a 50% chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2 PM. At night, there is a 20% chance of showers and thunderstorms, mostly before 3 AM, with a low of 69°F. [NWS]
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Good Wednesday evening, Fairfax County. Let’s take a look back at today’s stories and a look forward to tomorrow’s event calendar.
The following articles were published earlier today — Jun 17, 2026.
Here is what’s going on Thursday throughout the county, from our event calendar.
Expect partly sunny skies with a slight chance of showers, turning to showers and thunderstorms after 2 pm, and a high of around 93°F. It will be breezy with west winds at 16 to 22 mph and gusts up to 33 mph, and precipitation has a 50% chance. Thursday night will be mostly cloudy with a low of about 69°F and west winds at 6 to 11 mph, gusting up to 22 mph. On Juneteenth, anticipate mostly sunny weather with a high near 84°F and northwest winds at 7 to 11 mph, with gusts up to 21 mph. See more from Weather.gov.
The MonumentCam screenshot above is used with permission of the Trust for the National Mall and courtesy of EarthCam.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to discuss the day’s happenings in the comments.
A motorcyclist has died following a multi-vehicle crash on Wednesday, June 17 that fully shut down Richmond Highway (Route 1) in the Lorton area.
First responders, including police officers, medics and a helicopter, were dispatched to Richmond Highway at Mims Street at around 3:29 p.m. for a crash involving a motorcycle and a car, according to scanner traffic.
