Dogwood Elementary School has stood on Glade Drive in south Reston since 1974, though the building its students walk into dates to 2002; the original burned in November 2000. About 725 children attend, from preschool through sixth grade. The attendance area around them covers 1.8 square miles between the Dulles Toll Road and Fox Mill Road and holds about 2,240 homes, from garden condominiums near Colts Neck Road that sold for about $200,000 to houses in Polo Fields that sold for more than $1 million this year.
Dogwood is a Title I school, an International Baccalaureate Primary Years school and one of three FCPS schools with Early Head Start classrooms. Its students continue to Langston Hughes Middle School and South Lakes High School, and FCPS’s Skyview High School boundary changes for 2027-28 do not alter that path.
Dogwood serves about 725 students, from preschool through sixth grade
- Address: 12300 Glade Drive, Reston, VA 20191
- Grades: preschool, and kindergarten through sixth grade
- Principal: Kate Beckner, with assistant principals Jillian Bell and Jennifer Skerker
- Enrollment: 725 students in September 2025, according to the FCPS Capital Improvement Program, with 738 projected for this school year
- Mascot: the Dragons
- District: Fairfax County Public Schools, South Lakes pyramid
- Feeder path: Langston Hughes Middle School, then South Lakes High School
- School day: 8:50 a.m. to 3:35 p.m.
- State accreditation: Fully Accredited, according to its Virginia School Quality Profile
- State rating, fall 2026: Needs Intensive Support, with 77.30 of 100 points
- Main office: 703-262-3100
- Website: Dogwood Elementary School
Dogwood’s math pass rate rose eight points in two years, to 52 percent
On the Standards of Learning tests, Virginia’s annual exams in reading, math and science, 42 percent of Dogwood students passed reading in 2025-26, 52 percent passed math and 49 percent passed science, according to the school’s Virginia School Quality Profile. Two years earlier the rates were 40, 44 and 40. Across FCPS the 2025-26 pass rates were 80 percent in reading, 80 in math and 76 in science, according to an FCPS release. Statewide they were 74, 73 and 71.
English learners at Dogwood made progress at a higher rate than the state requires. Of the 299 English learners Virginia measured, 62 percent made the progress the state expects in a year, against a target of 58 percent.
Virginia rated Dogwood Needs Intensive Support this fall, one category below its score, because of a federal designation
Virginia rates every school through the School Performance and Support Framework, the state’s accountability system. For an elementary school it adds up three measures: mastery, which counts how many students pass state tests and how far English learners advance; growth, which measures how much students improve from one year to the next; and readiness, which for elementary schools is the share of students who are not chronically absent. Schools land in one of four categories: Distinguished, Meets Expectations, Approaching Expectations or Needs Intensive Support.
Dogwood scored 77.30 of 100 points in the results Virginia released on Oct. 7, according to its 2026 school summary report: 49.33 of 65 points for mastery, 18.97 of 25 for growth and 8.98 of 10 for readiness.
Dogwood also carries a federal designation called Targeted Support and Improvement, which the Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to assign to schools where one or more groups of students fall short of state targets. Virginia lowers the category of every school with that designation by one level, and under that rule it moved Dogwood from Approaching Expectations to Needs Intensive Support. Across FCPS, 56 percent of schools earned Distinguished this fall.
In 2025-26, 10.15 percent of Dogwood students missed more than a tenth of the school year, the state’s definition of chronic absence. The rate has held near that level for three years, after the school reported that more than a quarter of its students were chronically absent in 2022-23.
More than half of Dogwood’s students are English learners, and 59 percent are economically disadvantaged
Of Dogwood’s 727 students in fall 2025, 412 were English learners, 428 were economically disadvantaged and 153 had disabilities, according to the Virginia School Quality Profile. Students speak more than 20 languages, according to the school. FCPS reports the student body as 58 percent Hispanic, 13 percent Black, 12 percent Asian and 12 percent white.
Dogwood is one of the county’s Title I schools, which receive federal money based on the share of students from low-income families. FCPS caps kindergarten through third grade classes at 21 students at Dogwood. FCPS lists a parent center at the school, Dogwood Connections, staffed by bilingual liaisons.
Dogwood teaches the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme and runs Early Head Start classrooms
The International Baccalaureate Organization authorized Dogwood as a Primary Years Programme school on May 28, 2021. The program organizes lessons around six themes that cross subject lines, and sixth graders finish with an exhibition, a research project they choose and present each June.
The FCPS school profile also lists:
- Advanced Academic Programs: local Level IV services for Dogwood students; it is not an AAP center
- Spanish through FLES, the FCPS program that teaches a foreign language to elementary students during the school day
- Young Scholars, the FCPS program that identifies and supports children with advanced potential from groups underrepresented in advanced academics
- STEAM, strings and band, and before- and after-school sports clubs
Dogwood houses FCPS PreK classes, Early Head Start for infants and toddlers, early childhood special education classes, a preschool autism class and an inclusion classroom that pairs children with and without disabilities. FCPS runs Early Head Start at only three elementary schools: Clearview, Crestwood and Dogwood.
Dogwood’s school day runs from 8:50 a.m. to 3:35 p.m.
Doors open at 8:35 a.m., and the school dismisses at 12:35 p.m. on early-release days. Fairfax County’s School-Age Child Care program runs before- and after-school care on site.
Dogwood opened in 1974, burned in 2000 and reopened in a new building in 2002
Dogwood opened on Sept. 3, 1974, as Reston’s fourth elementary school, according to the school’s history. The original building followed the open-classroom plan of its era, with four large instructional bays of about 250 students each and a gym that doubled as the cafeteria.
On Nov. 27, 2000, a fire destroyed the building. The U.S. Fire Administration traced it to an electrical short in the space above the ceiling of the single-story, 90,000-square-foot school, which had neither sprinklers nor smoke detectors, and put the loss at $12 million. FCPS opened the new Dogwood in January 2002, and the building has had no major renovation since.
Dogwood runs at 91 percent of capacity, with enrollment projected to fall
The FCPS Capital Improvement Program lists Dogwood with a program capacity of 798 students, meaning the number the building can serve with its current mix of classes and programs. September 2025 enrollment of 725 put the school at 91 percent. Eight temporary classrooms sit on the 14-acre site.
FCPS projects enrollment of 738 this year, then a decline each year to 611 by 2030-31, which would bring the school to 77 percent of capacity. The capital program includes no renovation or addition for Dogwood.
Four out of five homes in the Dogwood boundary were built in the 1970s
Fairfax County’s records put 2,236 for-sale homes inside the Dogwood attendance area: 1,077 detached houses, 644 townhouses, 503 condominiums and 12 duplex units. About 81 percent were built between 1970 and 1979.
The boundary includes:
- Polo Fields, about 400 detached houses built from 1981 to 1996, with a median of about 2,400 finished square feet above grade, on streets such as Thunder Chase Drive, Tournament Drive and Colts Brook Drive
- Stratton Woods, 269 detached houses built mostly in the mid-1970s, on streets such as Kings Lake Drive, Coleraine Court and Bedfordshire Circle
- Reston cluster neighborhoods of detached houses on streets named for seashells, including Sanibel Drive, Marginella Drive, Cocquina Drive and Angel Wing Court, plus Freetown Drive and Andorra Place
- Townhouse clusters along Southgate Square, White Cornus Lane, Emerald Heights Court and Escalante Court
- Two garden condominium communities: Southgate, on Royal Fern Court and Colts Neck Road, and Glenvale, on Freetown Court
Among detached houses, the county classifies 700 as two-story, 216 as two-level split levels, 91 as split foyers and 65 as one-story, a count that describes the assessor’s building code rather than an inspection of each house.
Detached homes in the Dogwood boundary sold for a median of $890,000 in 2026
Bright MLS records show 73 homes in the Dogwood boundary closed from January through early November 2026:
| Home type | Sales | Median price | Price range | Median days on market |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detached | 37 | $890,000 | $520,000 to $1,140,000 | 6 |
| Townhouse | 16 | $500,000 | $319,000 to $675,000 | 7 |
| Condominium | 20 | $291,250 | $200,000 to $356,000 | 18 |
The median detached house sold at its original list price. Condominiums sold for a median of 98 percent of their original list price and took longer to sell. Seven of the 11 sales above $950,000 were in Polo Fields.
For property tax figures on a home in the boundary, see our guide to property taxes on a Reston home.
Dogwood students continue to Hughes Middle and South Lakes High, and the Skyview boundary change leaves that path in place
Dogwood feeds Langston Hughes Middle School and South Lakes High School. In July 2026 the School Board approved new boundaries for Skyview High School, which opened this fall; the boundaries take effect in 2027-28 and move about 384 South Lakes students to Skyview. FCPS’s boundary explorer shows the entire Dogwood attendance area staying at South Lakes, and FCPS proposed no change to the Hughes boundary.
South Lakes ran at 99 percent of capacity in 2025-26. FCPS’s boundary explorer projects the change will bring it to 83 percent. For more on the high school, see our South Lakes High School guide and our South Lakes athletics guide.
Confirm a home’s school assignment with the FCPS boundary locator before you write an offer
FCPS draws attendance lines along streets and lot lines, not ZIP codes or subdivision names, and it adjusts them. Two houses in the same neighborhood can sit on opposite sides of a line. Before you write an offer on a home in south Reston, check the address in the FCPS boundary locator and confirm it with the school’s front office if the address sits near the edge of the map.
Dogwood’s pass rates rose while a federal designation lowered its state rating a category
Virginia placed Dogwood in Needs Intensive Support this fall because of its federal designation; its score of 77.30 would otherwise have put it a category higher. Its math pass rate rose eight points and its science pass rate nine points over two years, chronic absence has held near 10 percent for three years, and the school offers the IB Primary Years Programme and Early Head Start. Condominiums in the boundary sold for a median of $291,250 this year and detached houses for a median of $890,000, all within a short drive of Hunters Woods Village Center and the Reston Town Center Metro station.
If you are weighing a move to south Reston and want to talk through the schools and neighborhoods, reach out. We are glad to help.
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