Neil A. Armstrong Elementary School opened on Lake Newport Road on September 2, 1986, in a pod-style building that housed three schools that first year. Forty years later FCPS is renovating and expanding that building in phases scheduled to run through the summer of 2027, with temporary walls separating classrooms from construction while about 310 students in kindergarten through sixth grade attend school there.
Armstrong is the smallest elementary school in the Herndon pyramid by enrollment. Its attendance area covers North Point in Reston and a string of neighborhoods with Herndon mailing addresses, none of them inside the Town of Herndon. Every address in the boundary continues to Herndon Middle School and Herndon High School.
Armstrong serves about 310 students in kindergarten through sixth grade
- Address: 11900 Lake Newport Road, Reston, VA 20194
- Grades: kindergarten through sixth grade
- Principal: James Quinn, since 2013, with assistant principals Andrea DePiro and Dean Cicciarelli
- Enrollment: 311 students in September 2026, according to the FCPS school profile
- Mascot: the Eagles
- District: Fairfax County Public Schools, Region 1, Herndon pyramid
- Feeder path: Herndon Middle School, then Herndon High School
- School day: 8:55 a.m. to 3:40 p.m.
- State accreditation: Fully Accredited, according to its Virginia School Quality Profile
- Main office: 703-375-4800
- Website: Armstrong Elementary School
Armstrong earned Meets Expectations this fall after a federal designation lowered it one category
Virginia grades its public schools through the School Performance and Support Framework, the state’s accountability system, which scores each elementary school on how many students pass state tests, how much they grow from one year to the next, and how ready they are for the next grade. Schools land in one of four categories: Distinguished, Meets Expectations, Approaching Expectations or Needs Intensive Support. The state released this year’s results on October 7.
Armstrong scored 92.99 of 100 points, combining 59.77 of 65 for mastery, 23.90 of 25 for growth and 9.30 of 10 for readiness, according to the state’s 2026 school summary report. The state then lowered its category by one level, to Meets Expectations, because Virginia had identified the school for Targeted Support and Improvement for 2025-26. That federal designation, required under the Every Student Succeeds Act, applies when one or more groups of students fall short of state benchmarks. The state’s public report does not say which group triggered it at Armstrong. Accreditation is a separate measure, and the state rated every FCPS school fully accredited this fall.
On the Standards of Learning tests, Virginia’s annual exams in reading, math and science, Armstrong students posted pass rates of 78 percent in reading, 80 percent in math and 76 percent in science in 2025-26. All three rose from the year before, when the rates were 77, 74 and 65 percent. Among English learners, 62.5 percent made progress on the state’s English proficiency test, according to the summary report.
The school’s posted improvement plan is still the 2025-26 version, which aimed to lift the math pass rate in grades 3 through 6 from 76 percent to 85 percent and English learner progress from 51.6 percent to 65 percent.
Niche gives Armstrong an overall grade of A minus and ranks it 205th of 1,121 public elementary schools in Virginia, though third-party rankings shift whenever their formulas change.
Two FCPS special education programs shape Armstrong’s enrollment
FCPS counted 331 students at Armstrong in June 2026, according to the FCPS school profile. That count included 128 students receiving special education services, 28 receiving English learner services and 37 in Level IV advanced academics. Another 37 students, or 11 percent, qualified for free or reduced-price meals. Armstrong is not a Title I school.
The special education share, 39 percent, reflects two programs housed at Armstrong. It hosts an Enhanced Autism Class and a Comprehensive Services Site, which FCPS describes as a program in a regular school building serving special education students with a range of eligibilities, such as autism, emotional disabilities and other health impairments. Both programs accept students from inside and outside Armstrong’s boundary, according to the FCPS capital plan’s program tables.
Armstrong offers Level IV services on site, with the full-time center at Forest Edge
Advanced Academic Programs. Armstrong is a Local Level IV school for Advanced Academic Programs, the FCPS services for students who need more challenge than the standard curriculum provides. Level IV is the highest tier, and a Local Level IV school delivers that service in its own building. FCPS assigns families who want the full-time Level IV center instead to Forest Edge Elementary in Reston, and the middle school center for the area is Langston Hughes Middle School, according to FCPS’s 2026-27 center boundary maps. The school has an advanced academic resource teacher who coordinates the program.
Clubs. After-school and in-school options include Girls on the Run, FIRST LEGO League Jr., Science Olympiad, yoga, a makerspace, the Eagles Nest News Crew, library assistants, safety patrols and the Student Council Association, according to the school’s activities page. The school also takes part in Get2Green, the FCPS environmental program.
World language. Armstrong does not run the FCPS elementary Spanish program or a language immersion program, according to the capital plan’s program tables.
Sixth graders at Armstrong and Aldrin, its north Reston neighbor in the same pyramid, met for a basketball game in March 2025, and the school wrote it up on its features page.
Armstrong’s school day runs from 8:55 a.m. to 3:40 p.m.
Kindergarten through sixth grade starts at 8:55 a.m. and dismisses at 3:40 p.m., the same hours as last year, according to the bell schedule. A two-hour delay moves the start to 10:55 a.m. Herndon-pyramid elementary schools release three hours early on four Wednesdays in 2026-27, on Sept. 30, Nov. 18, Jan. 13 and April 7, according to the FCPS early release calendar.
Fairfax County’s School Age Child Care program, known as SACC, runs two classrooms at Armstrong, with care from 7 a.m. before school and until 6:15 p.m. after. Ask SACC about space as soon as you have a closing date. For kindergarten in 2026-27, a child must have turned 5 on or before September 30, 2026.
FCPS opened Armstrong in 1986 and is renovating it for the first time
The school took its name from the land: the parcel was already known as “the Armstrong site” when the first principal, O. Stuart Chaplain Jr., convened parents in the spring of 1986, and the group put forward Neil A. Armstrong, according to the school’s history. Architect G. T. Ward designed a pod layout, and V. F. Pavone Construction, the same firm that built Clearview Elementary in 1979, put it up for $5 million.
The building opened on September 2, 1986, with 705 students, but only 346 of them belonged to Armstrong Elementary. It shared the space that first year with the Armstrong Center and with Lees Corner Elementary, whose own building was still under construction. The school was dedicated on May 17, 1987, and FCPS added space in 1990.
Seven principals, counting one interim, have led Armstrong. James Quinn, the current principal, has held the job since 2013, longer than any of his predecessors.
The current renovation is the building’s first full one. The 2021 school bond paid for design and the 2023 bond for construction, which began in the spring of 2025. The project grows the school from 79,819 to 107,069 square feet and sets its future capacity at 800 students, according to the FCPS project page, and it adds two prekindergarten classrooms, according to FCPS’s April 2025 community presentation. Hord Coplan Macht designed it and San Jose Construction is building it, with completion expected in the summer of 2027. The FCPS capital plan puts the current cost estimate at $48.7 million. FCPS planned the work in eight phases, and the project manager overseeing it, Jordan Short, is an Armstrong alumnus.
Armstrong runs at the lowest utilization in the Herndon pyramid
FCPS rated Armstrong’s program capacity, the number of students the building can hold given the programs it runs, at 482 seats in 2025-26. With 317 students in September 2025, the school ran at 66 percent of that figure. After the renovation, the adopted FY 2027-31 Capital Improvement Program counts 800 seats against a projected 313 students in 2030-31, or 39 percent.
Aldrin, Clearview, Dranesville and Herndon Elementary all sat between 77 and 79 percent in 2025-26, with Herndon Elementary’s figure counting 10 modular classrooms, and Hutchison ran at 98 percent with 12 temporary classrooms.
About three in five Armstrong addresses are in Reston, and none are in the Town of Herndon
Armstrong’s attendance area covers about 1.7 square miles of unincorporated Fairfax County. Leesburg Pike and part of Reston Parkway run along its edges, and the Fairfax County Parkway, Wiehle Avenue, Lake Newport Road and Stuart Road cross it. Of roughly 2,190 addresses in the boundary, about 1,350 carry a Reston 20194 mailing address and about 840 carry Herndon 20170, according to Fairfax County’s address and FCPS boundary map data. Because none of the boundary lies inside the Town of Herndon, no home in it pays the town’s real estate tax.
- The Reston side is North Point, including streets off North Point Drive, Lake Newport Road, Golden Eagle Drive, Great Owl Circle, Quail Ridge Drive and Fawn Ridge Lane. The Summer Ridge and North Point Villas condominium communities sit here, and so does North Point Village Center.
- The Herndon-address side includes Shaker Woods, Stuart Ridge, Union Mill, Cedar Chase, Kingstream, Caris Glenne, Summerhouse Landing, North Point Glen, Stuart Hills, Oak Crest Estates, Shaker Grove and Stuart Estates.
Prices inside the boundary vary from condominiums to detached homes. If you want the last 12 months of sales on the streets you are considering, reach out to us and we will pull them for you.
Every Armstrong address continues to Herndon Middle and Herndon High
The FCPS school profile places Armstrong in Region 1 and the Herndon High pyramid, and the whole attendance area sits inside the Herndon Middle School and Herndon High School boundaries. None of it goes to South Lakes. The pyramid’s other elementary schools are Aldrin, Clearview, Dranesville, Herndon and Hutchison, and our guides to Aldrin Elementary and Clearview Elementary cover two of them.
The Skyview High School boundary study, which the School Board settled on July 16, 2026, covered the Centreville, Chantilly, Oakton, South Lakes and Westfield pyramids and left the Herndon pyramid alone. Proposed changes for other schools appear on the FCPS school boundary adjustments page.
Sixth grade stays at Armstrong, so a child who starts kindergarten here spends seven years in the building before moving to Herndon Middle for seventh grade.
Check the boundary locator before you write an offer
FCPS assigns students by street address, and attendance lines do not always follow ZIP codes or neighborhood names. A Reston 20194 address and a Herndon 20170 address can share Armstrong. Before you make an offer on a home you want partly for Armstrong:
- Enter the exact address in the FCPS Boundary Locator. It returns the assigned elementary, middle and high school.
- Treat the school fields on a listing as a starting point. Listing agents fill them in, and they can lag a boundary change.
- Separate the base school from the AAP center. A child found eligible for Level IV can stay at Armstrong for its on-site services or choose the full-time center at Forest Edge in Reston, which leads to Hughes Middle rather than Herndon Middle.
- Ask how the renovation affects your child’s grade this year. Call the main office at 703-375-4800 with questions about construction phasing, class sizes by grade, SACC availability and whether your street falls in a walk zone or a bus zone.
Armstrong pairs rising scores and on-site Level IV services with a building under renovation
Armstrong is a 1986 school in the middle of its first full renovation, with about 310 students, two special education programs that draw students from beyond its boundary, on-site Level IV services and pass rates that rose in every tested subject last year. Its boundary runs from North Point across a band of Herndon-address neighborhoods, and every address in it leads to Herndon Middle and Herndon High.
If you are weighing homes in North Point or the neighborhoods around Stuart Road and want to know which addresses land at Armstrong, reach out to us. We can pull the boundary for any listing you are considering and walk you through the feeder path before you make an offer.
See something missing or wrong? Email us at [email protected] and we will check it and update the post.
