GAINSWave Therapy in Lincolnia, VA

Students who join any other activity that requires a physical — a category that includes step team and dance team, as well as out-of-season workouts and practices — will also have to provide proof of vaccination, Fairfax officials said.

In a news release, Superintendent Scott Brabrand called vaccination of students a key step to ensuring that children can learn in-person without disruption this year.

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“The majority of pauses to instruction for our high school students come as a result of exposure during athletic activities,” Brabrand said in a statement. “These pauses impact participation in activities and in-person learning while the Fairfax County Health Department investigates and determines close contacts and next steps.”

What to know about school masks, staff vaccines and quarantines in the D.C. area

The vaccine mandate will affect students participating in basketball, gymnastics, cheerleading, indoor and outdoor track and field, swim and dive, wrestling, rifle, baseball, lacrosse, soccer, softball, tennis and crew, according to Fairfax spokeswoman Julie Moult.

Student athletes participating in fall sports will not face a vaccine requirement, Moult said, nor will they be asked to engage in coronavirus testing.

As of late August, according to Fairfax officials, roughly 75 percent of all 16- to 18-year-olds in the county are fully vaccinated, and about 85 percent have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

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Fairfax reopened for face-to-face instruction for the vast majority of its roughly 180,000 students last week. Since the first day of school, Aug. 23, the school system has reported at least 116 student cases of the coronavirus and 19 confirmed cases among staff members, according to a Fairfax tracking website.

A spokeswoman did not immediately answer a question Monday asking how many Fairfax students and staffers had entered quarantine.

Over the past month, most Washington-area school systems — including Fairfax — adopted policies requiring vaccination or regular testing for school employees. But only one other has issued a vaccine mandate for students: Charles County Public Schools, which educates roughly 27,000 students in southern Maryland.

In late July, the district announced that, starting this fall, all high school students participating in sports must either provide proof of full vaccination or submit to weekly coronavirus testing.

If students fail to comply, they will “not be allowed to participate with the team, at practice or games,” Charles County officials wrote in a news release.

No two houses in Fairfax County’s Lincolnia Park neighborhood are alike.

Architectural styles range from the traditional to the well, offbeat, such as Nikki Santos’s home.

Santos lives in a distinctive house that children call “the castle.” Built in the 1970s from what she calls “spare parts,” it has stained-glass windows harvested from an old church, a kitchen counter made from a bowling-alley floor and a refrigerator from a Navy ship’s galley. It also has a front door with a rounded top that gives it a fairy-tale look.

“I feel like it’s my little ‘Hansel and Gretel’ home,” she says.

Easily accessible from thoroughfares including Route 395 and Edsall Road, Lincolnia Park is a quiet surprise for drivers turning off Little River Turnpike, which bustles with activity from car dealerships, fast-food restaurants and Landmark Mall. Visitors will find wide streets and approximately 675 houses on large lots — often around a half-acre — shaded by tall trees.

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The neighborhood was established in the 1950s, according to the Lincolnia Park Civic Association, but the housing stock includes modest, low-slung moderns from the 1970s, ramblers, Colonials and grander recent homes. Homes also demonstrate various levels of upkeep. Some appear recently renovated or well kept, while others reveal significant disrepair.

Loretta Prencipe said the wide variety of housing styles is what drew her to the neighborhood more than a decade ago.

“We moved over from Ravensworth Farm, and we lived there for nearly 13 years. It was very cookie-cutter, and we would drive around and we would find ourselves in Lincolnia Park,” said Prencipe, president of the civic association.

“It is not a cookie-cutter neighborhood. And there are roads in this neighborhood that make you feel like you’re in the country inside the Beltway,” she added. “And we really liked that it was different than other neighborhoods.”

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James Nellis II, a real estate agent with Re/Max Allegiance who specializes in Northern Virginia markets, says Lincolnia Park appeals to buyers because it has a “mature setting,” yet is near interstates 395 and 495.

Buyers, he adds, like the open floor plans and the idea of living on large lots inside the Beltway. The wide range of houses means a wide range of prices, too. In the past year, Nellis says, homes sold for between $299,900 and $649,900. However, turnover is low; those numbers for the past year represents only nine homes.

Prencipe says that the Lincolnia Park Recreation Club pool, situated in the middle of the neighborhood, anchors the community every summer with such traditions as a multi-age swim team and cookouts. She said she started the “ankle breaker triathalon,” an annual Labor Day event in which children and adults swim six lengths in the pool, ride bikes twice around the block and then run through the neighborhood.

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Tatjana Fernandez serves on the civic association’s environmental committee. The neighborhood, Fernandez says, is concerned about “the universal headache: increased amount of litter in the streets and streams,” so residents are consistently searching for solutions, which so far have included a neighborhood clean-up day and a beautification day.

Another headache for Lincolnia Park is the traffic. Nearby highways mean that houses on the neighborhood’s fringes deal with plenty of vehicle noise. And the volume of cars causes delays that hinder residents. “Sometimes Saturday mornings you can see traffic backed up” on Route 236 (Little River Turnpike), says Prencipe.

Weekday traffic can also be a problem. Before the Defense Department’s Base Realignment and Closure office moved to Alexandria, many of its workers sped through the neighborhood, using it as a cut-through.

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To combat that problem, the community began a traffic calming project that included surveys and counting cars that drove down certain streets. Local government responded: In Santos’s portion of the neighborhood, stop signs now slow cars. “I have noticed a difference,” she says. In another section, speed bumps force drivers to limit their speed.

Lincolnia Park residents have confronted obstacles together before. In 2010, a company wanted to place a 110-foot-tall cell tower on land at Holmes Middle School. Residents were concerned about health implications for students and neighbors because the tower would have been within 150 feet of some homes. “We fought it tooth and nail, and they left running,” says Anne Wuhrer, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1999.

Wuhrer says 21 children live in eight houses on her cul-de-sac, where the back yards feature woods and play equipment.

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“The kids just go out there and just play nonstop,” Wuhrer says.

“We have no TV issues, no computer issues. Everyone can see everyone’s kids, and all doors are open at all times,” Wuhrer says. “My husband works in Georgia and travels there every week, and we could turn around and buy a house that is twice the size and half the price, and I look at our kids playing outside and just say no.”

Eliza McGraw is a freelance writer.

Few Lincolnia residents know what their community was like when it was still a rural enclave, before it became choked with strip malls, subdivisions, and traffic.

Third-generation Lincolnia resident Jill Gerald, 79, remembers. At a presentation on Lincolnia in the Olden Days at the Mason Government Center in August, Gerald spoke about the old farms, country stores, and her family’s roots long before Shirley Highway was built.

Her father was born in Lincolnia in 1885. Her mother moved across the road in 1900 when she was 2 years old.

They went to a one-room schoolhouse near what is now the intersection of Interstate 395 and Route 236. The school only covered five years, and the older kids taught the younger ones.

Gerald and her twin brother were the youngest of nine children – the four oldest ones were born at home.

Her parents bought their house in 1924, and Jill lived on that property for 77 years and now lives nearby.

Gerald’s mother’s cousin worked at a chicken hatchery where Landmark Plaza is now. “The women’s job there was de-beaking the baby chicks so they wouldn’t hurt each other,” she says.

She remembers going to Howard’s Store on Columbia Pike, across from the Discount Zone gas station, where local farmers bought feed and straw. The building had a lunch counter, tables and chairs, gas pumps out front, and the owners’ living quarters in the rear. The store was owned by Jill’s uncle Harry. He had one of the first TVs in the area, and a crowd gathered there to watch boxing and wrestling matches.

Gerald attended Lincolnia Elementary School on N. Chambliss Street. Part of that building was preserved when Lincolnia Senior Center was built on that site.

Each student was given a vitamin at lunch, she recalls. As a clinic aid in the seventh grade, she was responsible for making sure the cot had clean sheets and cleaning up the blood after accidents, such as the time a globe fell on a girl’s head.

Schools and churches had a close relationship back in the day, she says. The church didn’t have running water so it held dinners at the school and church softball teams used the school field.

A little white church on Lincolnia Road near the post office was torn down when Shirley Highway was built in the early 1950s, and Gerald remembers that when the congregation moved to a new building, church members carried everything – the pews, Bible, cross, communion items – as they walked to their new home.

The area between Columbia Pike and Braddock Road was originally settled by former slaves and had stayed a predominantly black community for decades, as “everything was segregated back then,” Gerald notes.

That community had its own school and small white church, which had been expanded over the years and is now the large, brick Mount Pleasant Baptist Church on the corner of Lincolnia Road and Columbia Pike. A historic marker was installed there a year ago.

When Gerald was in school, black students were bused to a segregated high school in Manassas, and later were sent to the all-black Luther Jackson High School, which is now a middle school.

“Segregation ended in 1962 but everybody didn’t comply with it right away,” she says.

Gerald remembers the Dowden family, who lived in an old house on Fairfax Parkway where what is now the Parklawn community. Sarah Foster Dowden attended the one-room school and helped teach the younger children. Later, they built a brick house across from the dam on Columbia Pike. Mr. Dowden was a justice of the peace in Groveton and also gave dogs rabies shots.

The Clark House, which is now owned by the Fairfax County Park Authority and was rotated to its current position overlooking Barcroft Plaza, used to be Clark family’s farmhouse. The Clarks owned a large dairy farm where Parklawn is now.

There was no trash pickup when Gerald was a child. People burned their trash and kids played in the garbage dump in a small area in the future Parklawn community. The rest of that area was a field with cows.

There used to be a chapel and social hall on the site of the cemetery near the senior center, and students from the Episcopal seminary used to walk there to preach. Gerald’s parents, grandparents, husband, and son are buried there.

Several years ago, there was a plan for townhouses on that property, but Fairfax County purchased the land in 2012 for use as a burial ground for indigents.

Lincolnia was originally known as Lebanon, Gerald says. The residents wanted to rename it for President Lincoln, but there already was a town in Virginia called Lincoln, so they settled on Lincolnia.

Gerald went to Fairfax High School for the eighth and ninth grades, then transferred to Annandale High School when it opened in 1955. An older sister graduated from Mount Vernon High School; two others went to Fairfax High School. One of her older brothers worked at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria when it produced torpedoes for World War II.

Gerald recalls shopping at Landmark Plaza when there was a Grand Union grocery store (where Total Wine is now), an S. Klein department store, Sterling Hardware, and a greeting-card store called Magellan’s.

Landmark Plaza will be evolving again soon, when Giant opens in the space formerly occupied by Shopper’s. The new Giant is expected to open before Thanksgiving. Hobby Lobby is expected to open in the upper level in spring 2019.

More comprehensive changes are coming to Lincolnia. A task force is drafting recommendations for amending the comprehensive plan to allow for more density, more coordinated development, and transportation improvements.

Traffic might be a little slower around Lincolnia and Landmark this week due to lane closures on Duke Street.

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) said in a release that there will be daytime closures on Duke Street between Oasis Drive and South Walker Street starting today (Tuesday) through Thursday.

“Single-lane closures along eastbound and westbound Duke Street will take place Tuesday between noon and 3:30 p.m.,” VDOT said in the release, “and Wednesday and Thursday between 9:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. each day.”

The shift will allow the deck to be replaced on the eastbound side of the bridge over I-395, part of the rehabilitation of the Duke Street bridge. The improvements aim to extend the life of the bridge and boost safety for drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians.

The project’s website said improvements for the bridge include:

The project is scheduled for completion this winter.

According to the release:

Once the shift is complete, the eastbound Duke Street lanes over I-395 will be temporarily routed over the westbound side of the bridge alongside the westbound lanes. This shift will allow the deck to be replaced on the eastbound side of the bridge. In addition, as part of the shift, drivers along the northbound I-395 ramp to westbound Duke Street will temporarily encounter a stop sign instead of a yield at the end of the ramp. These traffic patterns are scheduled to be in place until mid-summer.

Alexandria: On Tue 4/11 from noon-3:30PM, and Wed 4/12-Thu 4/13 from 9:30AM-3:30PM each day, Duke St (Rt 236) will have single-lane closures at I-395 to implement a traffic shift as part of the bridge rehab project. More info: https://t.co/MHunSHokhi pic.twitter.com/ZNnT6ks3Kj

— VDOT Northern VA (@VaDOTNOVA) April 10, 2023

Image via Google Maps

Darren Thornton worked as a middle school counselor in Fairfax County despite a conviction for sex crimes against children.

LINCOLNIA, Va. — Tuesday, former Fairfax County Public Schools counselor Darren Thornton was in a Chesterfield County, Virginia courtroom on charges of soliciting prostitution, the allegations that got him fired this past summer from his job at Glasgow Middle School.

By law he should have been fired nearly two years ago when he was first charged and eventually convicted of sex crimes against children.

For that, Thornton was placed on probation. He had already passed a background check to get hired with Fairfax County Public Schools and kept working despite his conviction.

"We need to understand what happened here and why it happened," said Kathleen Brown, a FCPS parent at a Tuesday night meeting at Glasgow Middle.

At the meeting, the FCPS superintendent Dr. Michelle Reid shared with parents the results of an independent investigation into Thornton's employment.

The report found the district was never notified of Thornton's original arrest or conviction.

And also found "several systemic gaps" in the FCPS hiring process "including on reference checks, verification of the appropriate license, and information sharing between jurisdictions" among other issues the superintendent says FCPS is addressing as quickly as possible.

"One of the things that we have to do first is name that we have a concern, acknowledge that, look into it, and then follow recommendations that we know to be best practice moving forward," Dr. Reid told WUSA9. "I don't believe it's going to happen again here in Fairfax County Public Schools. And, I believe our families can trust us."

"I really think Dr. Reid is on the right path here. But I think we have to persist," said Brown echoing the concerns of some other parents at the meeting.

"To blithely say, 'No, this is not happening, it's not going to happen again here,' is very naïve," said Brown. "We have got to realize we've got all sorts of concerns about our kids and I think they're valid concerns."

One change Dr. Reid said she wants is regular background checks of current staff, after they are hired. But, she says she needs the commonwealth's help to make that feasible by enrolling in a FBI program called Rap Back.

The superintendent also says she has already taken disciplinary action on school employees and more could be coming but she won't say who or what it was.