Fairfax County Public Schools
The Fairfax County Public Schools system is a school division in the U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. It is a branch of the Fairfax County government, which administers public schools in Fairfax County and the City of Fairfax. FCPS's headquarters is located near Falls Church.
With 188,887 students enrolled as of 2019, FCPS is the largest public school system in Virginia and the 11th-largest school district in the nation. The school division has been led by Division Superintendent Michelle Reid since July 2022.
History
19th century
The public school system in Fairfax County, Virginia, was created following the end of the Civil War with the adoption by Virginia of the Reconstruction-era state constitution in 1870, which provided for the first time that free public education was a constitutional right. The first superintendent of schools for Fairfax County was Thomas M. Moore, who was sworn in on September 26, 1870. At the time of its creation, the Fairfax County Public Schools system consisted of 41 schools, 28 white, and 13 colored schools.In 1886, Milton D. Hall was appointed superintendent, and he served for 44 years until his retirement in 1929.
20th century
Fairfax County Schools, like most school systems in the south, schools practiced de jure segregation. There were local elementary schools for black students but no high schools. Although Fairfax was a densely populated area, there were proportionately few black high school students. Fairfax, Prince William, Loudoun, Arlington, and Fauquier Counties shared the high school for black students. The school was centrally located between the counties in Manassas. Others attended high schools in Washington, D.C., where many had relatives. Those schools were Armstrong High School, Cardozo High School, Dunbar High School, and Phelps Vocational Center in Washington, D.C. In 1951, Fairfax County, at the request of residents for a black high school, began construction of the Luther Jackson School.The opening coincided with the Brown decision passed in 1954.
In 1954, FCPS had 42 elementary schools and six high schools. That year, the Luther Jackson High School, the first high school for black students, opened in Falls Church.
In 1954, the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education ordered an end to racial segregation. In response, the Commonwealth of Virginia immediately enacted legislation to stop the desegregation process, took control of all the schools in Virginia, and resorted to closing school systems attempting to desegregate. When Arlington County announced an early attempt at a desegregation plan, its school board was fired by the State Board of Education.
In 1955, the Fairfax County School Board renamed a "Committee on Desegregation" as the "Committee on Segregation" after a petition and threat of litigation from a civic group called "Virginia Citizens' Committee for Better Schools".
After the Brown v. Board of Education decision, Daniel Duke, author of Education Empire, wrote: "Whether local school systems such as Fairfax County, left to their own, would have moved forward to implement desegregation in the late fifties will never be known. Richmond removed any possibility of local option..."
It was recognized in court cases that it was the state who was running the show, not the county. The ruling in a 1964 decision stated, "Prior to the Brown decision Fairfax County maintained a dual school system: one for Negro students; one for all other races. Shortly thereafter the placement of all children in the Fairfax County schools was taken from the local School Board and vested in the state Pupil Placement Board. The assignment of students remained with the state Board until the 1961–62 school year, at which time placement responsibilities were reinvested in the local School Board." Fairfax County began their desegregation efforts shortly thereafter.
As early as 1955, it was noted that in the Virginia General Assembly: Delegates from Northern Virginia openly opposed the Stanley Plans and called for even more radical legislation. Virginia's 10th district was the only congressional district to vote against the Gray Plan. Delegate Boatwright also introduced another bill aimed at correcting the unorthodox views of the northern Virginians. Boatwright's legislation would have prohibited certain federal employees from serving on school boards or holding other local offices. The point of this bill, called the "Boatwright Bill", was without a doubt aimed at Northern Virginia and the School Boards. Boatwright said his bill affected all Virginia communities but admitted Northern Virginia was most affected. The reason for the bill was that they felt that Federal Employees were in support of the Federal government's position on integration. The seven-member Fairfax County School Board included four Federal employees.
In Blackwell v. Fairfax County School Board in 1960, black plaintiffs charged that the Fairfax grade-a-year plan was discriminatory and dilatory. Fifteen black children had been refused admission to white schools because they did not fall within the prescribed grades of the School Board's assignment plan. The plaintiffs contended successfully that the speed of desegregation was too slow under the school board's plan. District Judge Albert V. Bryan did not categorically rule out such plans in accepting the plaintiff's argument. Instead, he emphasized that they must be judged according to the community's character. Since the black school population of Fairfax County was less than four percent, Bryan considered the fear of racial friction an unacceptable justification for such a cautious desegregation plan.
The Civil Rights Commission report of 1962 found that "Every sign indicates that the communities in northern Virginia will be the first in the State to reach compliance with the mandate in the School Segregation Cases." Ultimately, Fairfax County was one of the first school systems in the country to be awarded funds to aid with desegregation because of their efforts to implement a desegregated system.
The Fairfax County School Board voted to switch from a 7–5 to a 6–2–4 grade level configuration in 1958, necessitating the creation of what were then called intermediate schools for students in grades 7 and 8. By the time the first eight intermediate schools opened in the Fall of 1960, they were already over their 1000 student capacities.
In the fall of 1960, the first black students were admitted to newly desegregated public schools. Jerald R. Betz and Raynard Wheeler were enrolled at the Belvedere Elementary School in Falls Church, and Gwendolyn Brooks was enrolled at Cedar Lane Elementary School in Vienna.
The changeover to the 6–2–4 plan was the last major initiative of Superintendent W. T. Woodson, who retired in 1961, having served 32 years, the second-longest tenure as head of the Fairfax County Public Schools system.
In April 1961, Wilmington, North Carolina Superintendent Earl C. Funderburk was appointed superintendent to replace Woodson.
In 1961, FCPS also began administering the schools in the City of Fairfax.
As early as 1965, Superintendent Funderburk was discussing plans to decentralize FCPS. By 1967, Funderburk had put together a plan for five area offices, each serving a portion of the county and had appointed Woodson High School Principal Robert E. Phipps and West Springfield High School Principal S. John Davis as his first two administrators that December.
Although the school board had endorsed Funderburk's plan, they also hired the consulting firm of Cresap, McCormick & Paget to conduct an audit of the system's management organization and operations. In 1968, based on their consultant's recommendations, the school board put a significantly modified version of the decentralization plan into effect, dividing FCPS into four areas which were, in effect, miniature school systems.
In January of the following year, Funderburk resigned, telling the school board he did not want a third term as superintendent. The school board selected Lawrence M. Watts from the Greece School District in Greece, New York to take the reins of the Fairfax County Public Schools system, which had grown during Funderburk's tenure from 65,000 to 122,000 students, in May 1969.
In May 1970, Watts appointed Taylor M. Williams as the first black high school principal since FCPS had desegregated, placing him in charge of James Madison High School in Vienna.
Watts' appointment of Williams would be one of his final official acts. After less than a year as superintendent, Watts died, aged 44, of a heart attack at his home in Oakton in June 1970. Assistant Superintendent S. Barry Morris was named interim superintendent while the school board sought a replacement to lead the 130,000 student school system.
The board did not have to look far for its new superintendent. In September 1970, Area Superintendent S. John Davis was chosen following a nationwide search to serve the remaining 33 months of Watts' four-year term.
During the mid-1970s, Davis had difficulties dealing with the start of a demographic crash and a population shift. The student population dropped from a high of 145,385 in the 1974–75 school year to an eventual low of 122,646 in 1982–83. Additionally, families migrated from established eastern and central parts of the county to newer developments in the west and south, leading to the unenviable task of Davis having to request the closings of some schools while needing to build entirely new ones elsewhere.
In a 6–5 vote, the school board voted in May 1976 to re-institute textbook rental fees, hoping to raise an additional $1.3 million to close a projected budget shortfall. The plan was scrapped two months later, in July, when the board was able to find a $1.4 million surplus.
In 1978, Fairfax County began countywide enforcement of its 15-year-old standardized six-point letter grading scale, with a ten-point spread at the bottom of the grading range. The grading scale, initially set in 1963, provided that a score of 100–94% was an A, 93–87% a B, 86–80% a C, and 70–79% a D, with any score below 70% an F.
The county school board adopted a $279 million budget in February 1979, which included a 5.15% cost of living raise for the system's teachers and other employees. However, this increase was only slightly more than half of the inflation rate, which was at an annual rate of 9.9% that month, and far short of the 9.4% increase FCPS employees had sought. In April 1979, the Fairfax Education Association, the professional association representing teachers in the county, adopted a work-to-the-rule action, which meant that teachers would not do any work outside of the 7.5 hours per day they were contracted for. Additionally, the FEA gave a vote of no confidence to Superintendent Davis.
The vote of no confidence was considered the main factor in Davis' decision to resign from Fairfax County Public Schools on May 18, 1979, and accept an appointment as Virginia Superintendent of Public Education from Governor John N. Dalton, despite having to take a $5,000 per year pay cut.
After Davis resigned, the Fairfax County School Board appointed Associate School Superintendent William J. Burkholder interim superintendent.
In November 1979, the school board named Orange County, Florida superintendent Lucius Linton Deck, Junior as superintendent following a four-month search. Deck had been a divisive figure during his years in Orange County, with some residents glad to see him go, while others praised him as a strong and professional leader.
Deck inherited the problem of needing to close underused schools that had first plagued Superintendent Davis. 29 elementary schools, mostly in the eastern part of the county, were studied for possible closure, but Deck's recommendation in April 1980 was for eight schools to be closed, five more than the review panel had suggested. The following month, the school board voted to close seven of the eight schools at its May 22, 1980 meeting, a move which was met with angry hisses and boos from parents in attendance.
Fairfax County teachers' work to the rule action, which had begun in April 1979, was finally ended in May 1980.
Superintendent Linton Deck accepted a new four-year contract as Superintendent of Fairfax County Public Schools in January 1981. Shortly before accepting his new contract, Deck proposed making up a $2.75 million portion of his proposed $395 million 1982 school budget by instituting textbook rental fees for students. Although permitted by Virginia law, the plan, which included charging textbook fees from $22 for elementary school students up to $30 per year for high school students, was scrapped in the face of strong criticism.
Controversy over Deck's handling of an investigation of recruiting violations by the Mount Vernon High School athletic department, his censure by the Fairfax Education Association for a mishandled school closing, unhappiness with his leadership style, which was characterized as "aggressive" and "abrasive", and pressure from the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors angry at Deck's proposed budget led to the school board forcing Deck to resign on June 24, 1982, only years into his four-year contract. The board appointed William J. Burkholder as acting superintendent.
At its April 25, 1991 meeting, the school board approved a plan where several intermediate schools in areas of the county with declining enrollments that had for the previous 31 years only served seventh and eighth grades would add sixth graders and become middle schools. Three intermediate schools, Glasgow, Holmes, and Poe, added sixth-grade classes.
In 1993, the four-year-old teacher merit pay was suspended due to budget cuts, and the school board voted to phase the program out completely over the next four years at its March 11 meeting.