Skyview High School in Herndon, VA: What FCPS Has Confirmed for 2026-27 and the Years After

Skyview High School opened its doors on August 24, 2026, to ninth and 10th graders who chose to enroll. It sits at 2949 Education Drive, on the former King Abdullah Academy campus in the Floris area, with a Herndon mailing address and Rachel Carson Middle School just to the east. FCPS describes it as its first new high school in more than 20 years.

Skyview runs as an opt-in school in 2026-27, takes a ninth-grade class from its new attendance boundary in 2027-28, and reaches all four grades in 2028-29. Its teams join the Virginia High School League in fall 2027, and its outdoor teams will use off-site fields until FCPS finishes the campus fields in 2028.

The Fairfax County School Board set the boundary, the phasing plan and the bus model at its July 16 meeting.

Skyview opened with ninth and 10th graders who opted in

For 2026-27, FCPS let rising ninth and 10th graders from five high school pyramids choose Skyview: Centreville, Chantilly, Oakton, South Lakes and Westfield. The school set aside room for 500 students in each grade and promised a randomized lottery if interest ran past that number, according to the Skyview FAQ. FFXnow reported in July that more than 700 students had opted in.

FCPS asks families to treat the choice as a commitment through graduation, whether they enrolled at Skyview or stayed at their base school. A later change goes through the standard FCPS transfer process, as the enrollment considerations page spells out.

Principal Dave Jagels came out of retirement to lead the school. In the weeks before opening, staff ran "Come In Unity" events to collect ideas for traditions, and WTOP reported that the marching band, chorus and orchestra programs started with a few dozen students. This class will hold the school's first homecoming and start its first clubs. The Aviators held their grand opening on August 20, with helicopters from the D.C. Army National Guard and Fairfax County Police landing before the ribbon cutting.

FCPS bought a finished campus for $150 million

The Fairfax County School Board bought the King Abdullah Academy property for $150 million in 2025, after the private school closed at the end of the 2024-25 school year. The building dates to 2016, and the sale included its furniture and equipment.

FCPS's amenities page lists a 355,000-square-foot building on 32.7 acres. The campus includes:

• An eight-lane indoor competition pool. FCPS has said it is working to get the pool recertified by the county, and WTOP reported that the school plans an aquatics academy where students can earn lifeguard, water safety instructor and pool operator credentials.
• A 650-seat auditorium with a balcony, plus a black box theater and a dance studio.
• A main gym that seats 1,687, two auxiliary gyms and a weight room.
• Classrooms grouped into 14 "hangar" pods, each with a science classroom and four other classrooms opening onto a shared common area through garage-style doors.
• Two cafeterias, a courtyard and a robotics lab.

Three technology pathways sit alongside a standard course load

Skyview is a comprehensive high school. Students take the usual core courses in English, math, social studies and science, along with electives and world languages. The school adds three pathways, described in the FAQ:

• Aerospace Sciences: drones, pilot training, aerospace engineering and aviation maintenance, including a partnership with Tango Flight, a program in which students build an airplane.
• Artificial Intelligence: machine learning basics, coding and ethics.
• Advanced Technology and Innovation: robotics, digital fabrication and data science.

Aerospace science teacher Amy Goodyear told WTOP the school already has partnerships with NASA and the Virginia Space Grant Consortium. The robotics lab starts students on VEX kits and builds toward the FIRST Robotics Competition.

As at other FCPS high schools, ninth and 10th graders have limited access to Advanced Placement courses. The FAQ says the upper-level AP courses usually taken in 11th and 12th grade should arrive by 2027-28, and that some students may take a course virtually or at another high school in the meantime.

The day runs from 8:00 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. on an A/B block schedule, with a daily seventh period and a 30-minute advisory period to close the day.

Skyview students play for their base schools this year

Skyview does not belong to the Virginia High School League in 2026-27, so it fields no VHSL teams in football, basketball, soccer, golf or any other league sport. Students who want to compete play for their base school, the high school their home address would otherwise assign them to. FCPS provides transportation from Skyview to those schools for practices and games, and the athletics page says the master schedule leaves room for travel time without cutting into class. Non-VHSL clubs and activities meet at Skyview.

Skyview joins the VHSL in fall 2027, according to the phasing presentation Superintendent Michelle Reid gave the board in June. Most outdoor teams will practice and play off campus at first, because FCPS does not expect to finish the school's athletic fields until summer 2028. FCPS plans to work with the Fairfax County Park Authority on sites in the meantime and says some program offerings may be limited.

A family that lives outside Skyview's boundary can sometimes enroll a younger child through a sibling transfer under FCPS Regulation 2230, but a ninth grader who arrives that way cannot play VHSL sports or join VHSL activities that year.

We cover this season's local football schedules, ticket rules and bag policies in our Reston and Herndon high school football guide.

The School Board approved Skyview's boundary on July 16

The board voted unanimously on July 16 to adopt Superintendent Reid's boundary recommendation. The new lines take effect with the 2027-28 school year and affect about 2,544 students, 2,124 of them in high school, according to Northern Virginia Magazine.

Skyview draws its students from three schools:

• 1,062 students currently assigned to Westfield High School
• 384 from South Lakes High School
• 333 from Chantilly High School

The same vote shifted students among other western schools. FFXnow reported that 186 Chantilly students move to Westfield and 77 Centreville students move to Westfield. At the middle school level, the plan redraws the lines for Rachel Carson and Franklin middle schools, and Franklin's students will now feed two different high schools. Some Rocky Run Middle School students move to Stone Middle School, as do a few dozen Liberty Middle School students in the Clifton area.

Oakton High School and Langston Hughes Middle School keep their current boundaries. Oakton families could opt into Skyview this year, but Oakton's high school boundary did not change.

FCPS built a boundary explorer that shows the adopted lines street by street, and the FCPS boundary locator returns the assigned schools for any address.

Enrollment phases in over three school years

The board adopted a phased enrollment plan along with the boundary, so the school fills in one grade at a time:

• 2026-27: Ninth and 10th graders who opted in from the five pyramids. No juniors or seniors.
• 2027-28: The boundary takes effect for incoming ninth graders, and Skyview grows to grades 9 through 11. Ninth graders assigned to Skyview may opt out and attend their former high school instead. Current Skyview students who live outside the boundary may stay or return to their base school. The school will not have a senior class yet, and Reid told the board some courses may not be available until it does.
• 2028-29: Skyview serves all four grades. Ninth graders inside the boundary can no longer opt out, though they can still apply through the standard transfer process.

The new boundary assigns about 1,159 students to Skyview for 2027-28, and FCPS estimates that 1,606 will attend in 2028-29, the first year without an opt-out, according to FFXnow. FCPS lists the building's expected capacity at more than 2,000.

Bus service depends on where a student lives

FCPS adopted a transportation model with the phasing plan. Students who live inside the Skyview boundary ride from neighborhood bus stops, the same way students at other FCPS high schools do. Students who live outside the boundary but inside the Centreville, Chantilly, Oakton, South Lakes or Westfield pyramids use a depot model: students get to one of those five high schools, and a bus carries them between that school and Skyview. The board's motion keeps depot service for those students through the rest of high school, ending before the 2030-31 school year, and recommends regional depot service for students from outside the five pyramids.

Under the phasing plan, a student who lives inside the boundary and uses the transfer policy to attend a different school loses bus eligibility, FFXnow reported.

Westfield gives up the most students, and the board wants a plan for it in October

Westfield loses 1,062 students to Skyview, more than any other school, and Westfield parents told the board at the public hearings that they expect the drop to cost the school funding, teachers and course offerings. Reid said the shift could let Westfield stop using 13 trailers, which will stay on site for now in case housing under construction nearby finishes sooner than expected.

The board directed Reid to present, by October, a plan for a specialized program at Westfield in business, information technology and the skilled trades. It also asked staff for a review of the boundary process by October, with lessons learned and ways to protect programs at schools whose enrollment drops when Skyview fills.

In Reston, the boundary moves 384 South Lakes students to Skyview. Langston Hughes Middle School, which feeds South Lakes, keeps its boundary.

Buyers and sellers should check the address against the new map

A school assignment follows the address, and the July vote changed the assignment for about 2,500 students in the western part of the county. Listing descriptions written before July 16 may name a high school that a buyer's child will not attend starting in 2027-28.

Before relying on the school line in a listing:

• Run the exact address through the boundary explorer, which shows the adopted 2027-28 lines. The FCPS boundary locator still shows 2026-27 assignments. A ZIP code or subdivision name does not settle it.
• Match the year to the grade. A rising ninth grader in 2027-28 can still opt out of Skyview. A rising ninth grader in 2028-29 cannot, short of a transfer. Students who qualify for grandfathering may stay at their current high school through graduation, according to School Board member Seema Dixit's July update.
• Treat the lines as a projection. Reid called the boundary work "our best guess" and said it is "not a pure science." New housing in the western part of the county has not finished, and FCPS sized the boundary around projections for it.

Sellers in the affected neighborhoods can save buyers a phone call by naming the current and future assignment, with the year each takes effect, in the listing remarks. If you are buying or selling near the new boundary, we can pull the assignment for a specific address and walk through what changes and when.

We have written guides to the schools around Skyview, including Westfield, Chantilly, Oakton, Herndon and South Lakes high schools. We also covered the data center approved next to the Skyview campus.

Watch for the October reports, 11th-grade course selection and the athletic fields

The next milestones:

• By October 2026: Reid's Westfield program plan and the staff review of the boundary process are due to the School Board.
• Winter 2027: Course selection for 2027-28, the first year Skyview has juniors. FCPS has not posted Skyview's dates yet.
• Fall 2027: Skyview's first season as a VHSL member, mostly on off-site fields.
• Summer 2028: Completion of Skyview's athletic fields.

See something missing or wrong? Email us at [email protected] and we will check it and update the post.