Photo courtesy of Fairfax County Public Schools.
Dranesville Elementary School opened on Powells Tavern Place in north Herndon in 1988, and this winter Fairfax County Public Schools expects to finish its first renovation, a $52 million project that adds 43,000 square feet and gives the building a design capacity of 1,000 students, against a current program capacity of 748. About 580 children attended last fall, from preschool through sixth grade. Virginia rated the school Distinguished this fall, the top of its four categories, with 89.76 of 100 points.
The attendance area runs from Leesburg Pike south along Dranesville Road to Herndon Parkway and holds about 2,600 detached houses and townhouses, which sold this year for $400,000 to $1.65 million. Dranesville students continue to Herndon Middle School and Herndon High School, and the Skyview High School boundary study left that path in place.
Dranesville serves about 580 students, from preschool through sixth grade
- Address: 1515 Powells Tavern Place, Herndon, VA 20170
- Grades: preschool, and kindergarten through sixth grade
- Principal: Jamie Gadley, since 2020, with assistant principal Jillian Palacios
- Enrollment: 577 students in September 2025, according to the FCPS Capital Improvement Program
- Mascot: the Dragons
- District: Fairfax County Public Schools, Herndon pyramid
- Feeder path: Herndon Middle School, then Herndon High School
- School day: 9:20 a.m. to 4:05 p.m.
- State accreditation: Fully Accredited, according to its Virginia School Quality Profile
- State rating, fall 2026: Distinguished, with 89.76 of 100 points
- Main office: 703-326-5200
- Website: Dranesville Elementary School
Dranesville’s pass rates rose in all three tested subjects over two years, to 72 percent in reading and 73 percent in math
On the Standards of Learning tests, Virginia’s annual exams in reading, math and science, 72 percent of Dranesville students passed reading in 2025-26, 73 percent passed math and 71 percent passed science, according to the school’s Virginia School Quality Profile. Two years earlier the rate was 67 percent in each subject. 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.
Economically disadvantaged students at Dranesville passed reading at 53 percent and math at 57 percent, and English learners passed reading at 30 percent and math at 38 percent. Both groups improved on their 2023-24 rates in reading and math.
Virginia rated Dranesville Distinguished this fall, with 89.76 of 100 points
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 gives each student points for a state test result, with extra credit for advanced scores, partial credit for students who fall short and points for English learners’ progress in the language; growth, which measures how much each student improves 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.
Dranesville scored 89.76 points in the results Virginia released on Oct. 7, according to its 2026 school summary report: 56.76 of 65 points for mastery, 23.51 of 25 for growth and 9.49 of 10 for readiness. The school earned 94 percent of the available growth points and 95 percent of the readiness points, against 87 percent for mastery, and about three quarters of its students met or beat the year’s expected growth in reading and in math. Across FCPS, 56 percent of schools earned Distinguished this fall, according to an FCPS release. Virginia did not identify Dranesville for any federal support and improvement designation.
In 2025-26, 5.08 percent of Dranesville students missed 10 percent or more of the school year, the state’s definition of chronic absence. The count of chronically absent students fell from 63 in 2024-25 to 29 last year, and the school’s weekly family newsletter reported the running attendance rate by school day through the spring.
More than a third of Dranesville students are English learners, and 43 percent are economically disadvantaged
Of Dranesville’s 580 students in fall 2025, 205 were English learners, 252 were economically disadvantaged and 155 had disabilities, according to the Virginia School Quality Profile. The FCPS school profile reports the student body as 45 percent Hispanic, 40 percent white, 7 percent Asian and 3 percent Black.
Dranesville does not receive Title I funding, the federal grant FCPS directs to its highest-poverty schools. FCPS caps kindergarten through third grade classes at 24 students there, and the school lists a family liaison among its staff.
Dranesville runs a local Level IV program, and its full-time AAP center is Clearview Elementary
Advanced Academic Programs. FCPS serves students who need more challenge than the standard curriculum through Advanced Academic Programs, in four levels. Dranesville runs a local Level IV program, the most intensive level, inside the school. In June 2026 it served 48 students at Level IV and 121 at Levels II and III, according to the FCPS profile. A student found eligible for full-time Level IV can instead attend the center that serves Dranesville’s attendance area, at Clearview Elementary on Builders Road, and the middle school center for the same area is Langston Hughes Middle School in Reston.
Language. Every student takes Spanish through FLES, the FCPS program that teaches a world language to elementary students during the school day, and Dranesville’s version teaches the language through science and STEAM lessons, according to the school’s FLES page.
Preschool and special education. Dranesville houses an early childhood class-based preschool for children with disabilities, a preschool autism class and an autism class for older students.
Activities. The school lists a running club, Dragon Runners, and a student journalism club that a group of fifth graders started. Band, strings and chorus each perform at a spring concert.
Dranesville’s school day runs from 9:20 a.m. to 4:05 p.m.
On a two-hour early dismissal day, students leave at 2:05 p.m., according to the school’s bell schedule. Morning preschool runs until 12:40 p.m. and afternoon preschool starts at 12:45 p.m.
Fairfax County’s School Age Child Care program, known as SACC, runs before- and after-school care in two dedicated classrooms at Dranesville. Ask SACC about space as soon as you have a closing date. A child must turn 5 on or before September 30 to start kindergarten that fall.
Dranesville opened in 1988 as a school planners called Hiddenbrook, then took the name of a lost Fairfax County town
FCPS began planning the school in March 1986 on a site in the Hiddenbrook neighborhood, and it carried the name Hiddenbrook Elementary School through design and construction, according to the school’s history pages. The design adapted plans FCPS had already drawn for Newington Forest and Oak Hill elementary schools, and Alekna Construction built it for $6,016,000.
On May 16, 1988, the School Board named the school Dranesville. Sally Ride Elementary School, for the first American woman in space, was also among the names considered. The same meeting named Crossfield Elementary on Fox Mill Road. Dranesville opened on Sept. 6, 1988, with about 600 students and relieved crowding at Clearview, Forestville and Herndon elementary schools. Gioia Caiola Forman served as the first principal, and the orchestra, band, chorus and a student news team called WDES all started that first year.
The name comes from a settlement at the junction of Leesburg Pike and Georgetown Pike, a few miles east of the school. In 1810 Washington Drane opened a tavern there, at the halfway point of the two-day wagon trip between Leesburg and Alexandria, and Virginia recognized Dranesville as a town in 1840, according to the school’s account. On Dec. 20, 1861, Union troops under Gen. Edward Ord drove off Confederate forces under J.E.B. Stuart at the Battle of Dranesville. The town lost traffic to the railroad in the 1850s and later to the automobile, and the widening of Route 7 in the late 1960s led to the demolition of many of its older buildings. The Dranesville Tavern, built around 1823, survived because crews moved it 130 feet to make room for the road.
A $52 million renovation adds 43,000 square feet and a two-story classroom wing
The 2021 school bond paid for the design and the 2023 bond paid for construction, which began in June 2024 with Shockey as the contractor and MTFA as the architect, according to the FCPS capital project page. The FY 2027-31 Capital Improvement Program puts the current estimate at $52.1 million. The project removes about 14,000 square feet of the original building and adds 43,318, and FCPS puts the finished school at 117,361 square feet on its 13-acre site. It includes:
- A relocated main office with a security vestibule
- A two-story classroom addition, a new library and an outdoor classroom
- An expanded cafeteria and kitchen and an enlarged gym
- New mechanical, plumbing and electrical systems, windows and doors
- A reconfigured bus loop and Kiss and Ride lane, with parking growing from 80 spaces to 135
In its Oct. 29 update, FCPS said crews were working on finishes and final items inside, had removed the temporary classroom trailers, and planned to restore the play fields before the end of winter. FCPS estimates completion this winter.
The renovated building will hold 1,000 students, and FCPS projects about 550
FCPS rates Dranesville’s current program capacity, the number of students the building can serve with its current mix of classes and programs, at 748. With 577 students in September 2025, the school ran at 77 percent of that figure. Once the renovation is complete, FCPS measures the school against a design capacity of 1,000, and it projects enrollment of 564 in 2027-28 and 544 by 2030-31, or about 54 percent.
When the county Planning Commission reviewed the project in October 2023, Commissioner John Ulfelder asked whether FCPS expected an influx of students, given enrollment of about 588 at the time, and a lawyer representing FCPS answered that the added space would serve long-term enrollment, according to FFXnow. The commission approved the project unanimously.
The Dranesville boundary holds 2,605 detached houses and townhouses, most built in the 1970s and 1980s
Dranesville’s attendance area covers about 1.7 square miles. Dranesville Road runs through the middle of it from Leesburg Pike at the northern tip, the Loudoun County line forms the northwest edge, and the southern edge follows Herndon Parkway before a small lobe crosses into the Town of Herndon around Park Avenue. Fairfax County property records put 2,605 for-sale homes inside the boundary: 2,093 detached houses and 512 townhouses, with no condominiums. One rental apartment property also sits inside the line. Every for-sale home carries a Herndon 20170 address. The median home was built in 1986, and 85 percent were built between 1970 and 1989.
The boundary includes:
- Crestbrook, 462 detached houses built from 1978 to 1993
- Kingstream, 410 detached houses, most built in the 1980s
- Hiddenbrook, 392 detached houses around the school, most built in the mid-1970s
- Hastings Hunt, 367 detached houses, nearly all built in 1987 and 1988
- Dranesville Estates, 165 detached houses built from 1985 to 1987
- Ridgegate Woods, 109 detached houses built from 1994 to 1999, where the houses are the largest in the boundary at a median of about 3,300 finished square feet above grade
- Jenkins Ridge, Colvin Hunt and McMillen Farm, smaller enclaves, the last of them 13 houses built in 2022 and 2023
- Three townhouse communities inside the Town of Herndon: Potomac Fairways (190 homes), Cavalier Park (175) and Park Avenue Square (147)
Those three townhouse communities and 42 detached houses, 554 homes in all, sit inside Herndon’s town limits, where owners pay the town’s real estate tax on top of the county’s. The rest of the boundary is unincorporated Fairfax County. Of the detached houses, the county classifies 1,574 as two-story, 184 as one-story, 141 as split levels, 105 as split foyers and 85 as one-and-a-half-story, a count that reflects the assessor’s building code rather than an inspection of each house.
Detached homes in the Dranesville boundary sold for a median of $837,000 in 2026
Bright MLS records show 75 homes in the Dranesville boundary closed from January through early November 2026:
| Home type | Sales | Median price | Price range | Median days on market |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detached | 65 | $837,000 | $419,379 to $1,650,000 | 6 |
| Townhouse | 10 | $530,000 | $400,000 to $650,000 | 7 |
The median detached house sold at its original list price. Nine detached houses sold for $1 million or more, five of them in Ridgegate Woods. Among the larger neighborhoods, Hiddenbrook sold for a median of $740,000 across 15 sales, Crestbrook $807,000 across 11, Kingstream $858,250 across 10 and Hastings Hunt $905,000 across 12. Six of the 10 townhouse sales were in Potomac Fairways, at $530,000 to $650,000.
If you want the sales on the streets you are considering, reach out to us and we will pull them for you.
Dranesville students continue to Herndon Middle and Herndon High, and the Skyview boundary study left that path in place
Fairfax County’s 2026-27 attendance maps place the entire Dranesville area in the Herndon Middle School and Herndon High School boundaries. In July 2026 the School Board approved new boundaries for Skyview High School, effective in 2027-28, and FCPS’s boundary explorer shows the Dranesville area outside the study area, with no change to either school.
Herndon Middle ran at 90 percent of capacity in September 2025, with six temporary classrooms, and FCPS projects 77 percent by 2030-31. Herndon High ran at 77 percent, and FCPS projects 71 percent.
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. Kingstream, for one, includes streets on both sides of the Dranesville line. Before you write an offer on a home in north Herndon:
- Enter the exact address in the FCPS boundary locator. It returns the assigned elementary, middle and high school for the current year.
- Treat the school fields on a listing as a starting point. Listing agents fill them in by hand.
- Call the main office at 703-326-5200 with specific questions about class sizes, SACC space and whether your street falls in a walk zone or a bus zone.
Dranesville pairs a Distinguished rating with a new building sized well beyond its enrollment
Virginia rated Dranesville Distinguished this fall, with high marks on all three measures and its strongest results in growth and attendance, even though its pass rates trail the FCPS averages. The school is finishing a $52 million renovation that will leave it with room for about 450 more students than FCPS projects. Its boundary holds about 2,600 detached houses and townhouses from Leesburg Pike to Herndon Parkway, where detached houses sold for a median of $837,000 this year and townhouses for $530,000.
If you are weighing homes along Dranesville Road and want to know which addresses land at Dranesville, reach out to us. We can confirm the boundary and the feeder path for any listing you are considering before you make an offer.
See something missing or wrong? Email us at [email protected] and we will check it and update the post.
