A Northern Virginia elementary school that hasn’t been used in over a decade is now closer to being demolished.
Clifton Elementary School, which sits on both Fairfax County and Town of Clifton property, hasn’t been open in 15 years. It was deemed uninhabitable when it closed, but “no one did anything with it,” Fairfax County School Board member Kyle McDaniel said.
On Thursday, the board voted to amend an existing policy, so anytime the school board determines a building is uninhabitable, it has three years to bring it down.
There’s an election sheet from 2011 still posted on the front door of the building, and there’s a playground and community garden that McDaniel said are still sometimes used. However, when he toured the inside in January, he said it’s been vandalized, there’s broken glass all over and the air quality is poor.
The policy shift gives Superintendent Michelle Reid time to determine what to do with the property. McDaniel said he, and likely his school board colleagues, won’t support selling the land.
“My hope is that we can bring this kind of attractive nuisance down, get it cleaned up, perhaps expand some parking,” McDaniel said. “I know the town has a lot of events that I’m sure they would appreciate more parking for.”
Clifton Elementary first opened in 1953, and by 2010, it had just 370 students, the smallest enrollment of any Fairfax County elementary school, according to a county description of its history.
There were water quality issues, though, and the board voted to close it in 2010. Local residents filed a lawsuit to keep the school open, but Virginia’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the school district and the campus officially closed in June 2011.
The closing, parent Lisa Sherfey said, was upsetting to the community because “everybody felt like that school was really special.” When it closed, she said, students attended one of several other schools that had bigger populations.
“It was a really special place, and we felt like it was ripped away from us,” Sherfey said. “People are still bitter about it.”
But because the property sat empty, Sherfey said she taught her son to drive in the parking lot in front of the school. McDaniel said it’s almost exclusively been used as a parking lot since closing.
Clifton Mayor Tom Peterson, who, along with city council members, sent a memo supporting the policy change to the school board, said there was once a proposed land swap with Fairfax County’s Park Authority, but then “the park authority backed out of the deal, and everybody now is very apprehensive of what is going to become of this property after the tear down.”
Ideally, Peterson said the land would “become a park again.”
Next steps, though, could be complicated. In addition to the water quality issues, McDaniel said there are gas challenges. A 2021 report recommended the space no longer be used as a school. An estimate for the utility work was $15 million to $25 million, McDaniel said.
“Putting a heavy use, like another elementary school, on this site right now is just not financially viable,” McDaniel said.
Regardless of what comes next, Peterson is eager for the possible demolition. Teenagers climb on the roof and there have been several break-ins, he said, “so that’s a safety aspect. We didn’t want this to be too inviting of a target for some people in the area.”
Since February 2022, according to Fairfax County police data, there have been three calls for trespassing, one for burglary, two for a suspicious person and one for destruction of property.
Calling the policy change a “giant step,” McDaniel said the board “put in place the direction, and the only way to undo that is with documented justification and an affirmative vote of the school board to say, ‘Because of these reasons, we’re not going to do it.’”
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