Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) was founded in 1870, after the ratification of a new state constitution and the passage of the Public Free School Law. Organizationally, FCPS operated as one school system overseen by a single superintendent, but there were separate school boards for each magisterial district (and, later, some towns). Each district board was composed of three school trustees who were empowered to purchase land for schools, build schoolhouses, and assign teachers and pay their salaries. Each district board kept its own minutes and financial records. Only fragments of these records have survived the passage of time.

The historic magisterial districts were, namely: Centreville, Dranesville, Falls Church, Lee, Mount Vernon, and Providence. After the incorporation of the towns of Fairfax, Falls Church, Herndon, and Vienna, these localities formed separate school trustee boards. In 1922, the magisterial district school boards were abolished and the consolidated Fairfax County School Board was formed. All school properties owned by the magisterial districts were transferred to the Fairfax County School Board by blanket deed in August 1922.

From 1870 to the mid-1960s, Fairfax County Public Schools operated as one school system with two sets of schools segregated by race. When you study the school system’s earliest records, one of the first differences you’ll notice from modern records is that the school trustees named schools alphanumerically. Schools for white children were given numbers, and schools for African-American children were given letters, e.g., Providence District School #1, #2, #3, #A, #B, #C. In some districts these numbers and letters were consistently applied to the same school from year to year, in others they were not. Names given to the schools by the community can also be found in school trustee records, but these names were not always consistent either. The Crouch School was originally known as the Buckley School, the Johnson School later became known as the Powell School, and so forth.

On lists of teacher assignments recorded in the minute books, you might see entries such as “School 7a and 7b,” or “School 1a, 1b, and 1c.” This is what is referred to as a "graded" school—a schoolhouse with more than one classroom and one teacher. These larger schools made it possible for the pupils to be separated by grade level. In a two-room graded school, for example, a typical arrangement would be grades 1-3 in one room, and grades 4-7 in the other.

Because Fairfax County was a rural farming community, the school year commenced after harvest was complete, and ended before the start of planting. Attendance at public school wasn’t compulsory like it is today, and many boys stopped their schooling once they were old enough to work full-time on the family farm. Prior to 1907, public school education in Fairfax County consisted of grades 1-7, and all children ages 6 to 21 were eligible for a free public education. The first high schools for white children were introduced in Fairfax County in 1907. The first and only high school for African-American children in Fairfax County, Luther Jackson High School in Merrifield, opened in 1954.

When you research the history of Fairfax County Public Schools during the period of 1870 to 1922, you will invariably encounter racially-charged language that is archaic and often problematic by modern standards. In particular, the primary source documents from the period use the terms “Colored” and “Negro” to commonly describe students and schools. Where the following records quote directly from the primary source material, the terminology used in the document has been retained.

Fairfax County Public Schools did not have a central administrative office building until the late 1950s. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the clerks of each district school board kept meeting minute books and account ledgers in their homes. In 1922, when the combined Fairfax County School Board was formed, many of the district clerks’ records books were turned over to the new School Board. School Board meetings were frequently held in the Board of Supervisors’ meeting room, then located on the second floor of the Fairfax County Circuit Court Clerk’s Office building in Fairfax City.

When FCPS administrative staff and the School Board moved into the School Administration Building (Burkholder Center) many of the school system’s pre-1922 records were left behind in the Circuit Court Clerk’s Office. These records have since become part of the holdings of the Fairfax County Circuit Court’s Historic Records Center.

During the late 1960s or early 1970s, John K. Gott, a historian, educator, and librarian with Fairfax County Public Schools, donated a large collection of FCPS historic records and photographs to the Fairfax County Public Library. These documents are now part of the library’s local history repository known as the Virginia Room.

Due to the decentralization of FCPS administrative offices in the 1960s, historic records still held by the school system have been scattered between the School Board office and various administrative departments. Most of the original record books in the school system’s collection are located at the Gatehouse Administration Center, and many have been microfilmed and/or scanned by the school system’s Department of Information Technology.

The following records pages are an attempt by FCPS staff and volunteers to recombine Fairfax County Public Schools’ earliest records, digitally, under one “roof.”