The Fairfax County School Board is conducting a comprehensive review of school boundaries for the first time since 1986. The review will analyze all boundaries in Fairfax County for potential movement. Last July, the board voted to update FCPS Boundary Policy 8130. A review of this scale has not occurred in almost 40 years.
“New neighborhoods have come, and we’ve had a variety of new facilities either renovated or added in the last 40 years,” Superintendent Michelle Reid said in a Jan. 28 meeting. “It is very important that we take an opportunity to review our patterns and possible efficiencies with [our] resources.”
Every school has a boundary area that determines which students will attend the school. If a boundary is moved, the school a student is assigned to may change. Fairfax County signed a contract with Thru Consulting, a management consulting firm, to provide oversight for the boundary review process.
“This is much more than an exercise in redrawing lines on a map,” Thru Consulting employee Anna Winskill said during a Jan. 16 meeting. “[The review] is an opportunity to make FCPS more efficient, equitable and responsive to students’ needs.”
The review has two separate phases. The first, which began in Fall 2024 and will end in Spring 2025, offers opportunities for engagement with the community, from which data will be collected and analyzed.
“During the community engagement part of this initial phase, we are focused on gathering input from all [meeting viewers] to hear thoughts and priorities,” Thru Consulting employee Namratha Bharadwaj said during a Jan.16 meeting.
The Fairfax County School Board hosted several community engagement meetings to discuss the boundary review. The meetings, which were held in-person and through Zoom, allowed community members to share their opinions and perspectives regarding potential changes.
After data from the first phase is analyzed, the second phase, to be held between Summer 2025 and Spring 2026, will begin. This phase includes approving changes, conducting scenarios and notifying the public of the changes. Feedback from FCPS families and community members will again be collected, and alterations to the boundaries may be made.
“They are asking the community questions and giving [them] the opportunity to respond,” Assistant Principal Jenny York said. “They are looking at different data points to make the best decisions for our students and community moving forward.”
The updated boundary lines will aim to avoid attendance islands and split feeder schools across the FCPS division whenever possible. According to the FCPS website, an attendance island is defined as an area assigned to a school that is not contiguous to the school boundary. A split feeder occurs when a school boundary intersects that of two or more higher-level schools.
“As we look at the entire division, we want to make sure we are using all our facilities as efficiently as possible to improve the educational outcome for our children,” Reid said in a Jan. 27 meeting. “We want to make sure we take a look at transportation and space and make sure that we are being thoughtful about our future enrollment trends.”
Some FCPS parents and caregivers have expressed concerns regarding the upcoming boundary changes.
“What was important for [my breakout] group was the travel distance for the schools, the ratio of the amount of students related to the amount of staff, avoiding unnecessary and frequent changes between the schools students [attend] and taking into consideration the academic trajectory that students are following in their schools,” Sussy Tomer, a breakout group moderator, said in a Jan. 16 meeting.
Administrators maintain the importance of countywide boundary updates going forward.
“Our future is so important,” Reid said in a Jan. 16 meeting. “It’s never been more important to efficiently and thoughtfully utilize the [land] resources available to us.”
