On Tuesday (Mar. 2), about 25,000 middle and high school students in Fairfax County entered school buildings to learn for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic closed them last March.

The latest cluster of students to start in-person learning under Fairfax County Public School’s Return to School plan included children in eighth, ninth, and 12th grades. For most freshmen, it was their first time setting foot inside their new school.

FCPS first restarted in-person classes on Feb. 16 for some special education and career and technical education students before phasing in kindergarten, preschool, and more students with disabilities on Feb. 23. Except for special education students, everyone who opted for hybrid in-person learning is still getting two days of virtual instruction on top of two days of in-person instruction.

At James Madison High School in Vienna, students arrived to the sight of an inflatable air dancer, while McLean High School students were greeted by clapping, cheering, and mask-wearing administrators who handed out gift bags to seniors.

TODAY IS THE DAY! We are safe, ready and steady as we welcome students back into the building today. A huge thank you to our admin and staff for all the work they put in towards making today possible. ❤️🖤 WE BELIEVE ❤️🖤 pic.twitter.com/J5WSA8rNzh

— MadisonHS (@JamesMadisonHS) March 2, 2021

Returning students at McLean High encountered some jarring changes, from teachers’ desks outfitted with plexiglas shields to a cafeteria transformed into a giant, socially distanced classroom. Other parts of the building seemed to have “frozen in time,” as McLean High School Principal Ellen Reilly put it.

For instance, a board listing upcoming events had not been changed since Mar. 12, 2020 — the day before schools closed.

“We know it’s not going to be perfect,” Reilly said of resuming in-person classes. “We know that we’re going to have some problems this week as we learn another new way of teaching. We’re doing concurrent [instruction] now, but we’ve prepared as best we can, and we’re going to get it right.”

Reilly isn’t sure how many faculty members have received the COVID-19 vaccine. FCPS worked with the Fairfax County Health Department and Inova Health Systems to get staff vaccinated as they prepared to restart in-person classes.

“That’s their personal business. They can opt to have it or not to have it, and it’s not for me to know if they have or not,” she told Tysons Reporter.

As of Mar. 2, FCPS has reported 1,027 COVID-19 cases, including 617 among staff and 276 among students.

McLean High School senior Nathan Legg says he “hung out with friends” throughout the year, but he still missed the experience of being in school from a social perspective as well as an academic one.

While the past 12 months have been far from how he pictured concluding his high school tenure, he is determined to make the best out of his remaining time as a Highlander.

“It’s really exciting,” Legg said. “I’m glad to finally get in and try and make something of my senior year.”

Jay Westcott contributed to this report.

Businesses in the Town of Vienna will now have more leniency for outdoor dining and other commercial activities until at least Sept. 1, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to constrain indoor activities.

The Vienna Town Council unanimously voted last night (Monday) to extend an emergency ordinance temporarily waiving zoning regulations on outdoor commercial operations that was scheduled to expire on Mar. 31.

This is the fourth time that the council has adopted the ordinance, which enables the town manager to grant temporary permits to businesses so they can operate outside without necessarily meeting all of the town’s usual requirements.

Vienna first adopted the measure for a 60-day period on June 1, 2020 in recognition that “COVID-19 constitutes a real and substantial threat to public health and safety,” as stated in the ordinance, which was extended on June 15 to Sept. 30, 2020 and again on Aug. 31 to Mar. 31, 2021.

With scientific evidence suggesting that the novel coronavirus spreads more easily in enclosed, indoor settings, many restaurants and retailers pivoted to offering outdoor activities last summer so they could keep operating under capacity limits imposed by state guidelines. While Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam loosened some restrictions starting this month, dining establishments are still limited to 10 indoor patrons, and capacity for all businesses is limited by the need for at least six feet of social distancing.

Under the emergency ordinance, Vienna is waiving requirements in the Town Code related to business activities that occur “outside of a wholly enclosed building, use of onsite sidewalks, and required parking areas for outdoor commercial activity.” Town Manager Mercury Payton

Town of Vienna Director of Planning and Zoning Cindy Petkac told the town council on Monday that the town has issued temporary permits to 32 businesses so far.

While the extension was approved quickly, Councilmember Chuck Anderson noted that, with the weather about to warm up and public health restrictions easing as COVID-19 cases decline, town officials should start considering what to do once more people start spending time outside of their homes.

“As more and more people get the vaccine and people start going out, the demand for those parking spaces, which has been pretty low, is going to increase,” Anderson said. “I don’t have any good ideas myself right now. It’s just something I thought we should keep on the radar screen over the next several months.”

Mayor Linda Colbert agreed that the town will need to prepare for potential conflicts between businesses that want to maintain outdoor operations and drivers looking for parking, which tends to be a challenge to find along Maple Avenue.

“We’d all be happy to have that problem, I think,” Colbert said. “We want those restaurants to just be booming, but I agree. We should be looking forward and thinking about that.”

Photo via Vienna Business Association/Facebook

(Updated at 12:10 p.m.) The Fairfax County Health Department has completed sending out vaccine appointment invitations to 42,000 eligible residents who signed up on Jan. 18 and is now hopeful it will be able set up appointments at a faster clip.

“Now that we have got thru [Jan. 18 registrations], we anticipate that we will move more quickly through the other dates,” Fairfax County Health Department spokesperson Tina Dale told Reston Now, Tysons Reporter’s affiliate site. “In addition, we are working with more vaccination partners, so this, too, will assist us in moving through our registration list faster.”

If residents registered on Jan. 18 or before and have not received an invite, Dale says they should check their spam folder. If there’s no email with the subject line “Schedule Appointment,” residents should call the COVID-19 vaccine hotline at 703-324-7404, and a call taker should be able to assist.

The county’s dashboard now says they are currently making appointments for those who registered on Jan. 19.

Jan. 18 was the first day that the county allowed residents who qualified for Phase 1b to register for COVID-19 vaccine appointments. Phase 1b includes residents 65 years old and over and those 16 to 64 with underlying medical conditions.

When vaccine appointments opened to those in Phase 1b that day, more than 42,000 eligible signed up and registered — far exceeding any other day.

In fact, the county’s vaccine dashboard shows that the 42,000 registrations on Jan. 18 alone matched the number of registrations over the next four days combined.

The county acknowledged when the dashboard launched in mid-February that sending invitations for scheduling a vaccine appointment to everyone who signed up on Jan. 18 would take “several weeks.”

As of noon today, more than 95,000 residents remain on the waitlist, which means they are awaiting an invitation to schedule an appointment.

The county says it doesn’t have an estimated timeline for when those remaining people will receive an invitation to sign up for a vaccine appointment or when the county will open appointments sign up those in Phase 1c for appointments.

However, the Virginia Department of Health expects the vaccine supply to increase over the next two months, Dale says, and the Commonwealth has said they expect to get through all of those who are eligible and want the vaccine in Phase 1b by mid to late April.

Essentially, demand still far outweighs supply — a continued issue since the vaccine first started being distributed in December.

Overall, about 176,700 residents have been vaccinated in Fairfax County, which represents just over 15% of the county’s total population.

That rate is comparable to Virginia and the country as a whole, which have, respectively, vaccinated about 16% and 15% of the population, according to The Washington Post.

Additionally, on Friday (Feb. 26), the county acknowledged that there were issues with about 2,800 registrations “not being correctly captured in the system due to technical errors.”

Dale says that these registrations have been corrected and were a result of a combination of issues, including both “user error and system error.”

Since then, the county has added new features to the registration to reduce the possibility of user error, like providing two fields for email addresses and limiting the number of characters for phone number and zip code.

The county is also asking people to review the spelling of their names and email addresses and to ensure their date of birth is accurate to make sure there are no errors.

Photo via Fairfax County Health Department

The rate of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the Fairfax Health District remained steady over the past week, as Virginia announced over the weekend that a third vaccine will be available for distribution starting this week.

With an additional 132 cases reported today (Monday), there have now been a total of 67,547 COVID-19 cases recorded in Fairfax County and the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church. The novel coronavirus has put 3,564 people in the hospital and killed 969 people since the district identified its first presumptive positive case roughly one year ago.

Fairfax County has averaged 198 new cases over the past seven days, maintaining a weekly average has hovered around 200 cases since Feb. 20. While that represents a significant decline from the winter peak of 697 cases on Jan. 17, the COVID-19 case rate has not yet returned to the relatively low levels seen last summer and into the fall before cold weather set in.

With new cases and testing positivity rates falling across Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam has eased some of the public health restrictions that had been put in place to limit the spread of COVID-19.

Starting today, the 10 p.m. curfew on alcohol sales at bars and restaurants has been lifted, and the caps on outdoor social gatherings has increased from 10 to 25 people. After previously being limited to 250 people, outdoor entertainment and amusement venues can also now have up to 1,000 people or 30% capacity.

The most notable development in the U.S.’s efforts to control the pandemic came on Saturday (Feb. 27), when the Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency use authorization to a new COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson that only requires one dose, instead of the two needed for the already authorized Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna vaccines.

The Virginia Department of Health said that the state expects to receive 69,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine this week that will be prioritized for mass vaccination clinics. An additional allotment will go to pharmacies that are participating in a federal partnership that focuses on vaccinating people 65 and older.

“VDH encourages all providers who schedule vaccine appointments to advise individuals which vaccine they will receive,” the state health department said. “…All three vaccines have been proven to be effective at preventing COVID-19-related hospitalization and death.”

According to the VDH data dashboard, Fairfax County has now administered 224,329 vaccine doses to 140,803 people. 83,526 people in the county have been fully vaccinated.

The Fairfax County Health Department is still working through the 44,036 people who signed up for a vaccine appointment on Jan. 18, which saw more registrations than any other day so far. As of 10 a.m. today, the county had registered 267,170 people for an appointment, 95,457 of whom were still on the waitlist.

❓ FAQ: How Much Progress Has Been Made on Scheduling Appointments for People Who Registered on Jan. 18?
👉 As of Feb. 26, approximately 63% of the people who registered on Jan. 18 have either been vaccinated or offered an appointment. https://t.co/RjxBNrvkl5 pic.twitter.com/TwQyl78KJB

— FairfaxCounty Health (@fairfaxhealth) February 27, 2021

Images via CDC on Unsplash, Virginia Department of Health

Virginia to Get Newly Authorized Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine — Virginia will receive a first shipment of 69,000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine this week. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization for the one-dose vaccine on Saturday (Feb. 27). [Virginia Department of Health]

State Eases Some COVID-19 Restrictions — With new COVID-19 cases trending downward, Gov. Ralph Northam announced on Feb. 24 that, starting today, there will no longer be a 10 p.m. curfew on bar and restaurant alcohol sales. The size limit on outdoor social gatherings has also been raised to 25 people, and outdoor entertainment and amusement parks can operate at a capacity of 30% or 1,000 people. [WTOP]

Galleria Florist Relocates in Falls Church — “Galleria Florist is moving to 248 W. Broad Street in Falls Church on March 1. Galleria will continue to provide online and delivery service but will not open in the new space for walk-in business until April 1.” [Falls Church News-Press]

Vienna Summer Camp Registration Opens — “The Town of Vienna’s Parks and Recreation will open summer camp registration on March 1 to Town of Vienna residents and a week later to non-Town residents. Camps will follow COVID-19 guidelines set in the governor’s Forward Virginia plan.” [Patch]

Reminder: Metro Lost and Found Policy Changes Today — “Beginning March 1, Metro’s lost and found department will work to reunite customers with lost wallets and electronics (such as phones, tablets, and laptops) only. All other items lost in the system will be disposed of, donated to charity, destroyed, or auctioned.” [WMATA]

Staff Photo by Jay Westcott

On Tuesday morning (Feb. 23), 12 kindergarteners stepped into their classroom at Graham Road Elementary School in Falls Church for the first time.

Their teacher, Claire Kelley, and Principal Lauren Badini had distributed individually bagged breakfasts on the distanced desks. The classroom looked like the quintessential kindergarten classroom, decorated with bright colors and posters.

However, some of the posters bore messages instructing students to keep their distance from each other, wash their hands, and wear masks, a reminder that this was anything but a typical school day in a typical school year.

“It’s a pandemic classroom,” Badini said. “[Kelley’s] done an amazing job making it fun and exciting.”

Kelley will welcome another 12 kindergarteners to her classroom today (Wednesday).

“I’m really excited,” she said. “I’m super hopeful things are getting better.”

Nearly one year since schools closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Fairfax County Public Schools is reopening its doors for families who opt for in-person instruction in stages over the next month.

After delaying plans to resume in-person classes in January, the Fairfax County School Board approved a new Return to School timeline earlier this month that started bringing students back on Feb. 16. Its schedule lines up with Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s mandate that all school divisions provide an option for in-person instruction by Mar. 15.

This week, 7,000 kindergarteners across the division returned, along with preschoolers, Early Head Start students, and other students receiving specialized instruction. Kids who are not receiving special education services are following a hybrid model that provides two days of in-person classes per week, with groups coming in on alternating days.

Graham Road will add 60 first and second graders on Mar. 9 and 80 students in grades 3-6 on Mar. 16. The phasing was designed so kindergarteners would have time to adjust to mitigation behaviors before being overwhelmed by older students, according to Badini.

“We’ve been prepping since July,” Badini said. “We’ve had to rethink every aspect of school. Elementary school turns on collaboration, talking, being close, holding hands.”

Kelley started preparing her students over Zoom by having them greet each other with fist bumps and air hugs. They practiced wearing their masks and watched videos of handwashing. The teacher developed songs and verbal cues, like pantomiming a zombie, to make sure kids stay apart.

“These are the rules they have to follow to stay in school,” she said. “I’m taking a step back to make sure they understand what they need to do to stay safe.”

For Badini, Mar. 12, 2020 was the last day things felt normal. When schools closed, the principal sprang into action to make sure her students — most of whom qualify for free- or reduced-price lunches — have internet access, piloting a program with FCPS and internet provider Cox.

Badini says the school tries to “do everything we can” to make up for the sacrifices parents are making, by providing free meals and snacks because “there has had to be a give and take somewhere.”

While Graham Road has some distinct challenges, all school principals are grappling with engagement, connectivity, and attendance, she said.

“We have wanted this and have been waiting for this for a year,” Badini said. “We know parents are frustrated. We’re working parents, too.”

(Updated at 2:35 p.m.) Following statewide trends, the number of daily COVID-19 cases continues to dip in Fairfax County.

As of today (Monday), the number of new cases stood at 113 with a rolling weekly average of 193 cases — the second-lowest number of daily reported cases this year. Only 89 new cases were reported in Fairfax County on Feb. 8.

The number of new cases has continued to fall since cases peaked with an all-time high of 1,485 on Jan. 17, according to data released by the Virginia Department of Health.

So far, 134,359 people have been vaccinated by Fairfax County, a number that includes first and second doses, according to the county’s data dashboard.

The county’s health department is currently scheduling appointments for people who registered on Monday, Jan. 18. A little over 96,900 people remain on the county’s waitlist.

While county officials have touted progress with the vaccination system, the jurisdiction’s decision to opt-out of the state’s new COVID-19 vaccine pre-registration caused confusion late last week.

Since then, the county’s health department has addressed common concerns and questions in a recent blog post. The county is still encouraging residents to use the county’s online form to register for vaccines.

Across the state, 1.1 million have received at least one dose and 481,297 people have been fully vaccinated.

Virginia launched a statewide vaccine registration system that Fairfax County is not participating in at this time. We've received several questions about this and have posted some answers to these and other FAQS. Please see: https://t.co/dRvmdqAlPY#FFXCOVID pic.twitter.com/P2z07NoEnz

— FairfaxCounty Health (@fairfaxhealth) February 21, 2021

Image via Virginia Department of Health

Fairfax County opted out of Virginia’s new statewide COVID-19 vaccine pre-registration system to reduce confusion, but the decision seems to have had the opposite effect for some county residents.

The Virginia Department of Health told Reston Now, Tysons Reporter’s affiliate site, that on Wednesday (Feb. 17), the day after the launch, the statewide COVID information line received 542 calls from Fairfax County zip codes asking questions about vaccines that were rerouted back to the county’s call center.

When asked about this, the Fairfax County Health Department acknowledged the potential for confusion.

“We understand that it could still be confusing that there are two systems,” wrote Jeremy Lasich, spokesperson for the Fairfax County Health Department. “We are happy that we have a strong partnership with VDH and that their call center is appropriately routing questions about Fairfax County back to our local call center.”

Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay told Tysons Reporter last week that the county had decided to forgo the Virginia appointment system in favor of its own existing system to “cut down on confusion.”

Reston Now reached out to the Chairman’s office with the information from VDH but has yet to hear back as of publication.

Fairfax County is the only jurisdiction in Virginia to opt-out of the state COVID-19 vaccine pre- registration system.

The county maintains that they are “consistently” communicating the need to register through their system through their website, blog, social media, and other avenues.

This includes translating COVID-related materials into Spanish and sharing information via text messages from the Health Department’s outreach team.

VDH has also added language to their website directing Fairfax County residents back to the appropriate portal.

If Fairfax County residents do end up registering through the state system, the information will end up eventually going back to the county, but those residents will be added to the end of the waitlist, the county explains in a newly published blog post.

If residents register in both the state and county systems, the first registration will be honored and the second one will be removed.

Over the last several weeks, the vaccine rollout across Fairfax County, Virginia, and the D.C. region has continued to be plagued with technical issues, equity concerns, and logistical challenges.

The county is currently in “Phase 1b”, meaning they are offering vaccine registration for all residents 65 years or older as well as those between 16 and 64 years old with underlying medical conditions.

Some essential workers are also in the process of getting vaccinated, including health care personnel, childcare workers, and K-12 teachers or staff members living or working in the county.

Fairfax County now has a registration status checker for people to see their eligibility, and residents can sign up for an appointment through the county’s vaccine registration page. Fairfax County residents can also call 703-324-7404 for more information.

According to the county’s new data dashboard, those who registered on January 18 — the first day it was open to those in Phase 1b — are now being scheduled for appointments.

More than 42,000 people signed up that day, nearly four times as many people as Jan. 11, the next busiest day for registrations, the county health department says.

The county expects it will take “several weeks” for all those that registered on Jan. 18 to get a scheduled appointment.

It may appear as if progress isn’t being made when the appointment date on the dashboard isn’t changing, but the health department is moving through registrations, Lasich told Reston Now.

“We continue to ask for your patience,” he said. “We promise you will get an appointment if you are on our list.”

Photo via Fairfax County Health Department

(Updated at 11 a.m.) In the past eight months, the students in Vanessa Edwards’s nursing class have become well-versed in adapting to change.

After starting the school year in a virtual setting in July, they were among the roughly 8,000 students that attended in-person classes in the fall, only to revert to online classes when Fairfax County Public Schools paused plans for in-person instruction after winter break.

So, no one was fazed when a fire alarm blared through the halls of Fairfax County Adult High School in Springfield half an hour into Edwards’s first in-person class of 2021 on Wednesday (Feb. 17).

For faculty and students alike, the short-lived, familiar inconvenience of a fire drill paled in comparison to the relief of getting to interact with people face-to-face instead of through screens.

“Teaching nursing, there are certain skills and things you cannot teach virtual, so it makes it a lot more challenging to try and come up with ways to teach them,” Edwards said. “…We’re very excited to be back now in person, and hopefully, we’ll be able to stay in person through the remainder of the year.”

The School of Practical Nursing is among a handful of specialized career and technical education (CTE) programs that restarted in-person classes this past week, along with many young students with disabilities.

With local and regional COVID-19 transmission rates on the decline, FCPS is attempting to bring students back into buildings in phases, with in-person classes expanding to all grade levels by Mar. 16.

A licensed and registered nurse who worked at local hospitals and doctors’ offices for 21 years before being hired as a teacher by FCPS, Edwards says she feels “well-prepared” to resume in-person classes after seeing consistent compliance with mask requirements and other procedures in the fall.

It helps that her class only has 10 students this year and uses a spacious room that allows for plenty of distance between desks, luxuries that will not be available to all classes.

While the small class size means she hasn’t had to try it herself, Edwards thinks the hybrid, concurrent learning model that FCPS is implementing will help by reducing the number of students in a room at any given time.

“I think it is safe, coming back,” Edwards said. “I think having the less amount of people in one classroom is a good idea, and [it’s important] to just maintain the protocols.”

As of Feb. 18, FCPS has recorded 972 COVID-19 cases among staff, students, and visitors since Sept. 8, but there do not appear to be any in Fairfax County Adult High School, which houses the School of Practical Nursing and other CTE programs in the Plum Center for Lifelong Learning. Read More