“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

Anthropologist Margaret Mead would appreciate the FCCPS Secret Sauce project. In fact, her famous quote could have come from a longitudinal study of the people and institutions in the City of Falls Church.

This quote provided a theme for the 2023-24 school year, when we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the City and the school division. It was featured on the back of the division-wide T-shirt. The front said, “FCCPS Changing Lives Since 1949.” This is the most popular shirt in the history of FCCPS T-shirts.

Is it because of the great color? Maybe.

Is it because of the comfortable fabric? Possibly.

Is it because the universal message resonates with everyone? Definitely.

All schools and the people who work in them change lives. But in Falls Church, it is different.  This commitment to changing lives and changing the world is our secret sauce.

Generations of Falls Church residents and employees have been proud to be part of groups of thoughtful, committed citizens. People in this community have a long history of turning out to advocate for and improve the City and schools in numerous ways.

There are many examples of this phenomenon — and these are common elements that connect them.

• Most important are visionary people willing to raise a hand and do the work.
• Great ideas drawn from local, national, and international experience
• Persistence over numerous years, despite naysayers, funding challenges, and laws that need to be overturned
• Coalition-building because big work requires many hands
• Communication that includes newsletters, bus stop chatter, public hearings, and neighborhood meetings
• Dedication to being on the right side of history, even if it makes some uncomfortable
• Commitment to making this City and school division better

Most Falls Church activists get involved because of something that matters — improving and funding schools, the environment, parks, and sidewalks. They may not realize at first that they are part of a long line of committed citizens, but they discover the mechanisms and traditions that allow them to change the world. A lone voice grows into a common bond with fellow residents or employees and the formation of a group. It becomes a movement and a reason to keep moving forward. Before long, it has become the way we do things in Falls Church. Thanks to those small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens, we have changed the world.

The veteran organizers pass that expertise to the next generation, empowering them to be part of the change. And it keeps happening. All of the programs listed below started with a small group of thoughtful committed citizens and remain essential to this thriving school division.

During and after World War II, as people moved from across the country to the Washington, D.C. area, the town of Falls Church experienced a population boom. In 1948, the City of Falls Church was founded, and in 1949, the independent school division was authorized. The village and town of Falls Church had been part of Fairfax County since 1699. Citizens wanted to become a City to improve the local schools. It was a bold step that took several years of grassroots work.

The following year, Falls Church became the first in Virginia to add the 8th-grade curriculum. Prior to 1949, only 11 years of school were mandated in Virginia—seven years of elementary and four years of high school. This was a model that the rest of the state followed. 

In the 1940s, all schools in Virginia were segregated, and because of statewide politics, there was no path to integration. Even after Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Virginia schools resisted integration. Yet in 1961 tiny Falls Church was the first school division in Virginia to voluntarily integrate. The story of how this happened is a testament to persistence and vision. There were naysayers, and in the end, right won out and three African-American students were admitted in 1961.

Half-day kindergarten was started in 1964, before state funding was available, and was extended to full-day kindergarten in 1973.

In 1975, the Citizens Advisory Committee on Quality Child Day Care changed the world by starting the FCCPS Extended Day Care program, the first in Northern Virginia to operate as part of a school division. 

In 1980, the Citizen Advisory Committee for the Education of Gifted and Talented students brought the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme to our high school, making FCCPS the first Virginia school division to offer IB diplomas. The committed members of this committee traveled the country looking for programs that would improve the education offerings for all students. As an early adopter of IB, teachers from George Mason mentored many other schools on that journey.  It has taken years of work to start and bring the program to all students. The IB program has continued to thrive, with the addition of the Primary Years Programme for grades K-5 in 2012, the Middle Year Programme for grades 6-10 in 2016, the Career-related Programme, and the addition of preschool to the Primary Years Programme in 2023.  FCCPS is the only school division in Virginia and one of 9 in the USA that is fully authorized for the IB Continuum, and staff continue to serve as a beacon to other school divisions.

In the 1980s, the student population decreased to half of what it had been, putting the whole division at risk of not having enough students to operate. A committed group of citizens went door-to-door in neighboring jurisdictions, recruiting large families to move to Falls Church to keep the schools flourishing.

Inclusive Special Education started with six students at Thomas Jefferson Elementary in 1992. A  group of special education parents, staff, and School Board led the way to having inclusive classrooms at all grades, a key part of the amazing Special Education program we have today.

In the 1990s, the English as a Second Language (ESOL)  program took off because immigrants from Latin America began to call Falls Church home.  That program has continued to change the lives of immigrant students from around the globe who call Falls Church home.

The Falls Church Education Foundation (FCEF) was a wisp of an idea in 2004, dreamed up by committed citizens. 20 years later it is a powerful force that augments funding through SuperGrants and Training Grants, and helps to support students and families in need through the Family Assistance Fund. FCEF also brings community events like Run for the Schools and the annual Gala and Auction, and the Home & Garden Tour.

In 2005, FCCPS opened its first new school since 1952. It required thoughtful, committed citizens to envision it, fund it, and name it Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School in honor of a pioneering Black educator. This marked the start of a building boom and planning for the city’s future.

Speaking of Mary Ellen Henderson, her influence in Falls Church preceded the founding of the City. As a teacher and principal at the segregated school, she advocated for 20 years for the Fairfax County School Board to build a better building for her students. After 20 years, the state-of-the-art James Lee School opened in 1946.

Committed citizens spent almost 15 years preparing for a new high school. In 2013, the first of two referendums that led to the building of Meridian High School passed.  This referendum approved a bold plan to sell the Falls Church Water System to Fairfax Water in exchange for adding the secondary campus land to the City boundaries.  Following four years of work, in 2017 another referendum – this one for the $120M bond to build a new high school passed at a high rate because of the work of many committed citizens. It hinged on another bold plan to fund the expensive new high school by leasing the former high school land to a developer for 99 years. A June 2019 groundbreaking, construction through a pandemic, and staggered reopening led to a ribbon-cutting ceremony in October 2021.

In 2020, when the world shut down, FCCPS staff could quickly pivot to online learning and get computers and Internet to every family because of the 1-to-1 computer program launched in 2014.

In 2022, another group of committed citizens convinced the School Board to change two school names. Although they had been named for prominent founding fathers, both of the namesakes had owned enslaved people, and those names weren’t appropriate for the welcoming community the Falls Church strove to be. The school division is also committed as a community to learning and teaching the City’s history more fully. A unique K-12 Local History program is one way that FCCPS teachers teach the City’s full history. 

The School Board approved the state’s first Collective Bargaining Agreement for certified and non-certified staff after intense negotiations in 2023. Other school divisions in the state are paying attention to how this process worked in Falls Church to replicate some successes.

A sustainability curriculum is gaining momentum, symbolized by the addition of electric school buses and the largest Solar Array in the City of Falls Church, which sits atop Meridian High School.

This long list of successes is impressive, and even more impressive is that each initiative was the work of many, many committed citizens – lobbying, funding, and putting best practices in place. Nothing came easily. Each person shared their time and talent for the good of the community. 

We are all stewards of this legacy. No single person owns any of it, and we all owe it to the next generation to welcome them into the culture and share the secret sauce so that they can keep changing lives and changing the world.

About Marybeth Connelly: As a school employee and a Falls Church City Council member, Marybeth Connelly is steeped in FCCPS history and culture. She makes it a point to stay connected to people in all areas of the community: schools, families, businesses, non-profit community organizations, churches, arts organizations, and government.

She and her husband, Michael, moved to Falls Church in 1995, and their three children are FCCPS lifers. When her children started kindergarten at Mt. Daniel, Marybeth began volunteering in classrooms and for the PTA. This turned into a lifetime of FCCPS participation. She was hired as a part-time Community Outreach Coordinator in 2005 and is now the Director of Strategic Planning and Community Engagement. Marybeth was elected to the City Council in 2013 and has served during years of extraordinary growth and occasional turmoil for the City and School Division. She always seeks to build community and welcome new people into the City. She is continually impressed with the energy and expertise that the people of Falls Church bring to the community they call home.

Marybeth holds a B.A. from Villanova University and an M.Ed. from the University of Virginia.