In what local officials are calling the fastest construction project in Fairfax County history, an EF-3 tornado touched down on Davidson Road this Monday afternoon. It completed McLean High School’s much-anticipated renovation in approximately four minutes—a full 24 years ahead of FCPS’s current 2050 schedule.
“We were absolutely stunned by the turnaround time,” county planner Dee Laye said. “Our 2050 plan was very clear. We were going to spend two decades debating what shade of ‘industrial beige’ we were going to use. Then, the tornado came in, blew past the environmental impact studies and just did the work.”
The renovation began at 2:14 p.m., when a dark funnel cloud made the executive decision to surgically remove the school’s aging roof.
“[Removing the roof] was a stroke of brilliant initiative,” Laye said. “Besides empathy and a smidge of critical thinking, this is exactly what’s been missing in FCPS all these years. Thanks to the roof removal, we don’t even need to spend extra money on lights.”
The tornado then turned its attention to the overcrowding issue at 2:16 p.m. By redistributing the school’s second floor across 16 neighborhoods, it successfully reduced student density from 120% to 0.5% in a matter of minutes.
Even more impressive was the tornado’s creation of new modules, known as “mods.” While FCPS already had mods with revolutionary features, such as indoor plumbing, and was experimenting with foreign concepts like electricity, the tornado upgraded the mods to open-air centers of educational excellence.
“I used to be a ‘floater’ teacher, pushing a cart through hallways so crowded that I had to move vertically just to get to my next class,” science teacher Minne Mumwage said. “Now, thanks to the tornado, my new classroom’s a spacious crater in the baseball field. I finally get to teach AP Environmental Science where it actually resonates with students.”
Still, some are not as enthusiastic about the new changes. According to FCPS officials, the tornado disregarded the hard work of tens of tens of FCPS employees who sacrificed their coffee breaks to ruminate on renovation plans.
“This is a major breach of protocol,” school board member Bo RaCracy said. “We had a specific schedule that the tornado ruined. 2028 was for the roof leak inspection. 2035 was for discussing the possibility of creating a committee to debate the legality of the current committee in charge of logistics. And you can’t forget 2048! That’s when we discuss upgrading the renovation schedule by another 50 years. Unfortunately, the tornado skipped all of that. That’s not fair to all the current students who would’ve graduated by then.”
As of this morning, the FCPS School Board unanimously voted to sue the troposphere for unauthorized construction. They have also demanded that the tornado restack the debris into the school’s original shape, effective immediately.
“We don’t want our kids growing up in a spoiled environment filled with this ‘natural light’ and ‘structural integrity’ nonsense,” the board’s official statement said. “If they wanted to go to a nice school, then they should’ve been born in the 2060s.”
