I think Fairfax High School is what FCPS wants every high school to "look like".

Anonymous wrote:Bumping this thread. We are moving and Fairfax HS is one of several we are considering. Is it a good school for kids who are into math, science and art?

How is Johnson MS?

Honestly, if you have a choice, this is not your best option.
With that said it is still a very good option.

Anonymous wrote:It's too diverse which hurts it's scores and rankings. The minimum threshold on DCUM is 75% total Asian/White to be a "good" school.

Meh.
Still 23% asian vs 26% asian at woodson next door.
The honors programs are going to be remarkably similar to any other school.
You're basically swapping out whites for hispanics.
Tomato/Tomahto
Your soccer team gets better and your tennis team gets worse.

Bumping this thread. We are moving and Fairfax HS is one of several we are considering. Is it a good school for kids who are into math, science and art?

How is Johnson MS?

Anonymous wrote:It's too diverse which hurts it's scores and rankings. The minimum threshold on DCUM is 75% total Asian/White to be a "good" school.

This is true.

Anonymous wrote:

FPYCparent wrote:Does any HS gym in this area fill up regularly for sporting events? I cannot pretend that FHS has successful sports teams beyond field hockey ... and maybe football recently. For better or worse, I haven't gone to many "away" contests at other schools.

As far as graffiti in a bathroom, I'm trusting that the poster reported it to someone.

I don’t think any gym or stadium fills up except for rivalry games and Fairfax is kind of an odd man out now with respect to rivals. Does Woodson still consider Fairfax its main rival? Oakton doesn’t, nor does Centreville.

The city likely built a very large gym and stadium to support large scale civic events in addition to sports. I don’t see how just a rivalry game could fill it up. Maybe if the high school grew to 3,500 students it would fill up, but the city’s school board can block FCPS from growing the school any larger.

The City of Fairfax builds its own schools (not FCPS), and the current high school was built back in the 70s or 80s. It replaced the small and very old red brick Fairfax High School on Route 50 (built in the 1920s).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The students who go there really get a lot of options with the academy programs that anyone else has to bus to.

Other schools offer courses that replicate a lot of what the Fairfax Academy offers. The only classes there that really stand out are the Dance and Fashion classes.

Really? They offer PreProfessional Musical Theatre training with someone who has been in the industry. They offer American Sign Language. Korean. Arabic. None of those are offered at my base school. My kid takes Theatre at the base school and an Academy Theatre class at Fairfax. There is no comparison.

All those foreign languages are offered at other schools besides Fairfax, and not many kids would be taking multiple theatre classes. For a small number of students, the academy is a decided plus.

However, for a typical kid taking a course load geared towards attending a four-year college, access to an academy program isn't going to make much difference, one way or the other. A large percentage of academy courses are primarily intended to serve kids going directly into the workforce.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The students who go there really get a lot of options with the academy programs that anyone else has to bus to.

Other schools offer courses that replicate a lot of what the Fairfax Academy offers. The only classes there that really stand out are the Dance and Fashion classes.

Really? They offer PreProfessional Musical Theatre training with someone who has been in the industry. They offer American Sign Language. Korean. Arabic. None of those are offered at my base school. My kid takes Theatre at the base school and an Academy Theatre class at Fairfax. There is no comparison.

There are worse things than not having a few thousand kids from another school who hate your kid merely because they attend Fairfax. And football at Fairfax is good enough now that they aren’t everyone’s Homecoming game any longer.

https://www.district4va.org/

There are eight schools in the Patriot district, including Fairfax, Woodson, Robinson, Lake Braddock, West Springfield, South County, Alexandria City, and West Potomac. The last three on that list seem a bit out-of-place from a distance perspective.

As far as actual rivalries, it seems that most contests have been lopsided recently ... for those involving FHS. Maybe if both schools were decent in the same sport at the same time, you could fill a gym ... but just for that contest.

FPYCparent wrote:Does any HS gym in this area fill up regularly for sporting events? I cannot pretend that FHS has successful sports teams beyond field hockey ... and maybe football recently. For better or worse, I haven't gone to many "away" contests at other schools.

As far as graffiti in a bathroom, I'm trusting that the poster reported it to someone.

I don’t think any gym or stadium fills up except for rivalry games and Fairfax is kind of an odd man out now with respect to rivals. Does Woodson still consider Fairfax its main rival? Oakton doesn’t, nor does Centreville.

Does any HS gym in this area fill up regularly for sporting events? I cannot pretend that FHS has successful sports teams beyond field hockey ... and maybe football recently. For better or worse, I haven't gone to many "away" contests at other schools.

As far as graffiti in a bathroom, I'm trusting that the poster reported it to someone.

Honest question, does that gym EVER fill for a sporting event? Friday night basketball games just don't seem to be a thing in FCPS'. Seems like they built it, but no one came. Are they the regular host of their division playoffs?

We went for a sporting event and there was pro-terrorist graffiti in the bathroom.

City resident with a 10th grade student-athlete at FHS. I don't have much of a basis for comparison with other FCPS high schools. I'm not going to claim that its academics rival TJHSST, but I have no reason to believe that the schools sits somewhere near the bottom of the scale. I don't know how much the school leverages its proximity to GMU (I'm an engineering alum), but I'd love to see more. My kid has started a club there, so that demonstrates (to me, at least) that students with the desire can chart their own path that aligns with their interests.

If I had a complaint for this year, it's that the bus route for my kid could use some extra capacity. We're the last stop and there has been no open seat in the mornings, especially for a student with extra backpacks/stuff for after-school practices. I've been driving to the school all year. Afternoons haven't been an issue. This particular bus stops at one or more multi-family developments where tons of kids get on/off, so we're just unlucky this year to be at the end of the route.