Fairfax County Public Schools plans to set new school boundaries for students every five years; will potentially force students to change schools on five-year intervals

The School Board of Fairfax County Public Schools is considering to draw new school boundary lines that will determine where existing students could potentially go to school. On July 18, 2024, the School Board updated its boundary policy to mandate the superintendent to “conduct a comprehensive review of division wide boundaries every five years, in part, to minimize the need for future adjustments.” This partially appears to be an effort to push equity: “Ensure equitable access to programs and facilities across the school division and consider the impact on school programs and populations.”

Redrawing school boundaries every five years could potentially force students to be redrawn into new districts multiple times growing up while attending FCPS schools. The district had a policy review that was published on June 25, 2024, where the district explained its plan.

This has caused greater controversy among the community due to the district previously floating the idea of removing “economically challenged students” from some schools. FCPS published a report in July 2019 titled “Impact of Socio-Economic Factors at FCPS Elementary Schools.” A recommendation of this report was to “strive to maintain school levels of economically challenged students at less than 40 percent, whenever possible.” The new policy from FCPS appears to build from this report five years prior.

The district argues that spreading out these specific students would boost scores: “The original study was undertaken in response to guidance from Joseph Murray, a nationally recognized expert on educational improvement, that one way to close achievement gaps in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) might be for economically challenged students to attend schools with lower numbers of economically challenged students.”

The 2019 report appeared to be an extension of a 2013 FCPS report titled “Socio-Economic Tipping Point Study of Elementary Schools” that covered the same topic. This report stated: “His suggestion stemmed from studies that found students living in poverty do better when attending low-poverty schools than schools with high concentrations of poverty. That is, the impact of a student’s individual poverty can be ameliorated to some extent by enrollment in schools with low concentrations of poverty.”

An organization called FairFACTS Matters Foundation is pushing back against the new FCPS boundary policy and started a fundraiser for their efforts. The fundraiser has raised over $39,000 so far.