Falls Church election officials are once again planning to try to persuade school leaders to close one or more of the city’s schools during major future elections.
They’re particularly focused on Oak Street Elementary School, which serves as a polling place for one of the city’s three voting wards. (The Falls Church Community Center is the polling location for Wards 2 and 3.)
In recent years, school leaders have rebuffed efforts to close either Oak Street or all schools in the district on Election Day. But city elections director David Bjerke said his office’s view has not changed.
“We have requested that they close schools” at least for presidential elections, Bjerke said at a Jan. 5 meeting of the Falls Church Electoral Board.
Bjerke noted that then-Superintendent Peter Noonan and the School Board denied his request in 2024, but “we don’t know the underlying issue” with the rejection. He noted that Falls Church is an outlier on the subject.
“I have yet to find a jurisdiction [in Virginia] that keeps schools open” when in use as polling places during major elections, he said.
Noonan departed at the end of the 2024-25 school year. He was succeeded by Terry Dade, who previously served as superintendent of Cornwall Central School District in New York.
Although Falls Church election officials are not advocating for a closure until the next presidential election — Nov. 6, 2028 — the request is being made now because the city school system adopts calendars well in advance, Bjerke said.
City school officials had no direct response to the request from election officials. But John Wesley Brett, director of communications for Falls Church City Public Schools, told ARLnow that calendars are developed by the superintendent based on School Board policy parameters.
“Under this timeline, the 2027-28 school calendar will be developed and adopted in fall/winter 2026,” Brett said.
While many Falls Church voters have embraced alternate voting methods, including early voting and mail-in ballots, Election Day still brings a significant in-person turnout.
In the 2024 election, 914 of those living in Falls Church’s Ward 1 (voting at Oak Street Elementary) cast ballots for president at the school on Election Day, according to the Virginia Department of Elections.
A total of 1,496 ballots were cast in person during the early-voting period, and another 432 were cast by mail by First Ward voters.
In the 2025 election, while the total number of voters for governor in Ward 1 was lower than for president in 2024, more voters — 1,074 — cast ballots in person at the school compared to the presidential race a year before.
