Our Mission
The Falls Church Education Foundation’s mission is to ensure that our students are prepared to effectively meet the challenges of the 21st century. The Foundation provides all friends of the Falls Church City Public Schools with a means to contribute a legacy of support for the system’s educational excellence. Our commitment to educational excellence will guarantee that the unique identity and values of our community will be sustained.
The Challenge We Face...
Across the nation, school budgets are not keeping up with increasing costs of providing public education. Local education foundations such as ours have been established to offset the problems of decreasing tax revenues, budget cuts, worries about students switching to private schools and the rising expectations of what constitutes a good education.
A commitment to quality education has been and will continue to be the bond that creates a strong partnership between citizens, teachers, elected officials, and businesses in Falls Church City. This tradition of involvement in the schools has now inspired the creation of the expanded Falls Church Education Foundation (FCEF), to provide supplemental financial support for the school system to continue providing the highest standards of excellence in education in the 21st century.
What We Support
The Falls Church Education Foundation focuses on three key areas of support for the Falls Church City Public Schools – Maintaining High Standards, Supporting Innovation, and Encouraging Creativity.
Maintaining High Standards
The FCEF supports programs that maintain the academic standards reflected in the successes of our schools, students and staff. George Mason High School continues to be recognized as one of the top schools in the nation as ranked in Newsweek’s Challenge Index. George Mason Middle School and Thomas Jefferson Elementary are among the few schools nationally named Blue Ribbon Schools by the U.S. Department of Education. FCCPS students achieve some of the highest scores on the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) tests, SAT scores, other standardized tests, college admissions, and the International Baccalaureate Program. FCCPS teachers, administrators and staff have received national and local awards for excellence in education.
Our high educational standards are due to the talent of our teachers and administrators, people who love teaching. As faculty members who have been key to the success of our educational system retire and our enrollment grows, the Falls Church Public School system has needed to hire a significant number of new faculty members. This trend is likely to continue for the next few years. In order to recruit and retain high quality faculty, it is critical for the school system to be able to offer competitive salaries, benefits and professional development opportunities for teachers to expand their professional skills.
Supporting Innovation
Falls Church City Public Schools are leaders in developing curriculum that serves as models for other school systems and will continue to lead the way. In order to insure our high standards of excellence, the Foundation believes it is important to support innovative approaches which include the development of new learning models, creating “classroom” settings in non-traditional environments such as outdoor classrooms, effective intergration of new advancements in technology, and developing opportunities for multigenerational learning.
Encouraging Creativity
The Falls Church community values and actively nurtures the rich creative talent of our students. Students are provided many opportunities to demonstrate and enhance their talent in areas such as high school theatre productions, art shows, and concerts. Many more opportunities in other areas would be possible for our students if only funding were available for space, entry fees, materials, productions costs, equipment, travel, etc. The Foundation will support funding for programs outside the normal curriculum that would enable our diverse student population to enhance their skills and educational experiences.
