January 15 - 21, 2026
Falls Church, Virginia • w w w . fc n p . c o m • Free
Founded 1991 • Vol. XXXV N o . 49
The City of Falls Church’s Independent, Locally-Owned Newspaper of Record, Serving N. Virginia
Restaurant Owners Meet With F.C. Council
GALA RIBBON CUTTING
Sound Alarms, Look for Ways to Boost Revenues by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
As the second annual Falls Church Restaurant Week approaches, running from Jan. 23 to Feb. 1 with over 60 local participating establishments, restaurant-related issues, namely, what it will take to adequately support them all, are coming front and center in the Little City. An historic meeting of representatives of a dozen restaurants and the entire Falls Church City Council and key City Hall staffers was squeezed into The Swamp room at Clare and Don’s Beach Shack last month to share thoughts and concerns, and a follow up meeting is set for sometime next month. One of the issues that drove the meeting was the poorly-notified fact that after two dozen years, the annual New Year’s Eve Watch Night celebration was called off, an annual event that helped fill a number of downtown restaurants to overflowing as thousands of folks from all around the region piled into the closed streets at the intersection of Routes 7 and 29 to hail the drop of the City’s old
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Meridian High’s Lasso Student Newspaper Pages 18-19.
A LARGE CONTINGENT of Falls Church City community leaders and employees of the newly-opened Stratford Garden restaurant on the repurposed site of an old motor inn gathered in front for a ribbon-cutting ceremony and to pose for this historic photograph. The Stratford joins the growing list of outstanding eateries assembling in the Little City. (Photo: Gary Mester)
F.C. Schools Need Base 5.04% Increase, Dade Says
by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
At Tuesday night’s yearbeginning organizational meeting of the Falls Church City Public Schools’ elected School Board, vice chair Kathleen was elected its new chair, and Anne Sherwood its new vice chair, both by unanimous 7-0 votes. The elections followed by a week the election by the Falls Church City Council of Letty Hardi as mayor (for a second term) and Laura Downs and vice mayor. And, as Ms. Downs pointed out in a note to the News-Press yesterday, it may well mark for the first time ever
that women have held all four key positions in the 78-year history of Little City, certainly the case since the school board became an elected office in 1994. The important business in Tuesday’s School Board focused on the upcoming budget cycle, for which challenges exist due to the impact of federal layoffs and cutbacks in the Northern Virginia region. “Uncertainty” is the watchword for this period in the process, and it takes from the guidance provided to the board by the City staff in last month’s joint meeting, where the City’s new chief finance officer David
So presented the prospects for the new year as a range from a 0.6 percent increase in overall revenue to a 4 percent increase, depending on what revenue numbers show from real estate assessments due in February and what other revenue options show in the coming period. Alicia Prince, the FCCPS’ chief operations officer, told the board Tuesday that the recent years’ pattern has been that 81 percent of its operating revenues come from the City, 15.6 percent from the state and less than 1 percent from the federal government. The recent years’ revenue sharing agreement with the City
of Falls Church is that 50 percent of the revenues from taxes are shared with the schools, an agreement which began in Fiscal Year 2019 and has led to a period of unprecedented concord in the City compared to heated competitions for funds before. But this year, new FCCPS Superintendent Terry Dade told the School Board Tuesday, a “maintenance effort” for the budget for the coming year would require a 5.02 percent increase in funds from the City. That is a budget without any new enhancements, but which
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NE WS BR I E FS
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Falls Church News Briefs
MLK Day Monday: March, Forum, Day of Service
Decry FBI Raid of Post Reporter’s Home
This coming Monday, Jan. 19, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, has been named a “Day of Service” by the Falls Church City Council. The F.C. Tinner Hill Foundation is sponsoring its annual march up S. Washington St. from the Foundation’s NAACP Rural Chapter Arch at Tinner Hill Road at S. Washington to the historic Falls Church Episcopal at 11:15 a.m., followed by a social justice workshop, music and lunch at the church. Participants are invited to show up at the monument at 10 a.m. to rally in advance of the short march. In proclaiming the holiday as a Day of Service, the Falls Church City Council stated this week, “Dr. King reminded us that ‘Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ and each ear, on the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday, Americans across the country answer that question by coming together to serve their neighbors and communities.”
On Wednesday morning, the FBI executed a search warrant on a Washington Post reporter’s home as part of a probe into a government worker accused of illegally retaining classified information. The reporter, Hannah Natanson, has been key to the Post’s coverage of the Trump administration’s federal workforce overhaul. She was present when federal agents searched her home, seizing her personal laptops, phone, and Garmin watch. The Post also received a subpoena Wednesday morning “seeking information related to the same government contractor,” the Post’s Perry Stein and Jeremy Roebuck reported. Press freedom groups decried the search of Natanson’s home. Bruce Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, called it “a tremendous escalation in the administration’s intrusions into the independence of the press.” The NewsGuild also condemned the raid. “The extraordinary decision to execute a search warrant at a journalist’s home should shock and dismay everyone who cares about a free and independent press,” stated The Washington Post Guild, of which Natanson is a member. – Nieman Lab, Boston
Falls Church Police Chief: No Personnel Loss to Neighbors Falls Church Police Chief Shahram Fard, beginning his third year in his current post, told the Falls Church City Council Monday his department has not suffered from neighboring jurisdictions hiring personnel away from his department, as erroneously in some media reports. He said that that 16 personnel separations in the department have been all due to retirements or relocations, and none lost to other regional departments. He added that the separations have been matched by 16 new hires over the recent period. He added that five new positions have been added to the department, and there are now a net of six vacancies. Of five new hires, four are entering the police academy for six-month training this week. The department has also added a school resource officer to Meridian High School.
15-Year Vet Wins Library Award for Service Lucilda Hernandez de Posada, a 15 year primary custodian at the Mary Riley Styles, has been named the recipient of the library foundation’s 2025 Chet DeLong Award for Outstanding Services to the library, an award that includes a $1,000 cash prize. “Thanks to Lucilda, the library has received numerous compliments from patrons and staff alike regarding the cleanliness and welcoming atmosphere in the building, a staff report says.
Warner Hails New Immigration Audit Policy This week, Virginia U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner issued a statement below after the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General announced a new audit to evaluate the processes that DHS law enforcement personnel follow to prevent the arrest of U.S. citizens during immigration enforcement operations. “As immigration enforcement officers continue to flood American neighborhoods, I’m cautiously optimistic to see DHS’s Inspector General take a hard look at how U.S. citizens are treated during the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations. Too often, bystander videos show U.S. citizens and non-citizens swept up in the increasingly aggressive and dangerous enforcement actions of immigration officers who, in some cases, have denied individuals the opportunity to prove their citizenship or legal immigration status. These instances infringe on the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens and non-citizens alike, and increasingly result in damage to property, injuries, trauma, and death.”
Sweet Leaf Cafe Opening By Summer A cafe selling sandwiches, salads and smoothies will open in Falls Church for its newest location and its first drive-thru. The Sweet Leaf Cafe will come by this summer to 603 W. Broad Street, the former location of a Smoothie King.
F.C. Forward Hosting Events In Coming Weeks Falls Church Forward is hosting a January Happy Hour Thursday, Jan. 15 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at Ireland’s Four Provinces. Happy hours will be monthly every third Thursday, rotating at local restaurants. They are billed as having no agenda. “Just a come-as-you-are, great way to meet fellow members and friends,” organizers report. An all-member meeting will be held Sunday, Jan. 25 from 2 to 4 p.m. at 105 W. Broad St, 5th Floor to learn about how parking shapes our world, reforms happening across the US, and why it matters for Falls Church. Organizers putting their names to the event notices include Mayor Letty Hardi, Council member Justine Underhill and EDA chair Ross Litkenhous.
Beyer Announces His Annual Women’s Conference Today Virginia’s U.S. Rep. Don Beyer announced this week he is hosting his Annual Women’s Conference: The Ripple Effects of Resilience, this Thursday, Jan. 15 at George Mason University’s new Fuse building at Mason Square in Arlington. The event is free to the public. This year’s event will bring together women leaders to share stories of perseverance, strength, and resilience in the face of the challenges confronting our country and community in these unprecedented times. The discussion will feature Brooke Sydnor Curran, founder of Move2Learn; Lisa Jacobs, Executive Director of the Alexandria Tutoring Consortium; Elizabeth Jones Valderrama, Executive Director of Offender Aid and Restoration (OAR); and Zuraya Tapia-Hadley, Executive Director of the Dream Project and Arlington County School Board Member. The discussion will be moderated by Neneh Diallo, a former Senior Biden Administration Official at USAID and Public Affairs Executive. Beyer will also present this year’s Clara Mortenson Beyer Women and Children First Award to Nancy Eslick, a former career USAID civil servant and fitting example of the profound difference American leadership can make in the world.
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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
F.C. Restaurant Owners Meet With City Council, Talk Sustainability
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lighted star in the countdown to a new year. The City decided in finalizing its current fiscal year budget late last spring not to fund the event for this year, but local business owners were not made aware of the decision, one which puzzled most of them, until only a few weeks before it was supposed to happen. This year, according to accounts shared with the News-Press, downtown F.C. on New Year’s Eve was completely dead, notwithstanding some events held at nearby churches. “In all the years we had it, no matter how cold or wet it got on New Year’s Eve, the crowds were here,” Colm Dillon, owner of the popular Ireland’s Four Provinces restaurant, told the News-Press. He said he was completely flummoxed learning only weeks before that this year the Watch Night was not doing to happen. But there were more issues than just Watch Night that made up the issues discussed at last month’s meeting, according to Harvey’s Restaurant owner Thomas Harvey. “The overriding issue is how
can we bring outside people into Falls Church not only to dine, but to partake of all the great things this remarkable community has to offer,” he told the News-Press. At the meeting last month were owners and representatives of Thompson’s Italian, Borek G, the Stratford Garden and Dominion Wine and Beer, Harvey’s, Clare and Don’s and Lazy Mike’s, the Ireland’s Four P’s, Cafe Kindred, The Falls and Northside Social, and Dogwood Tavern. All are locally owned and run establishments. They’d been talking among themselves before the meeting was called, and Harvey said it was indicative of the caring Falls Church community that all members of the Falls Church City Council showed up when it was called. The meeting went on for two hours. Indicative of the concerns that the local owners expressed was the fact that the latest tenant in the small restaurant space at S. Washington and Annandale Road, The Rice Guys, had called it quits after only a few months there. The site is notorious for its lack of easy access from the standpoint of either walking or parking, and a long succession of hopeful
restaurant owners have taken turns moving in there, lured by its visibility, to find out what a killer for their business chances the lack of easy access has been. But the most successful of the locally-based restaurants have been those, like Ireland’s Four P’s, Clare and Don’s and Harvey’s, which have given back most to the community, namely, arrangements for free meals for laid off government employees during the fall’s record-length government shutdown. Clare and Don’s co-owner David Tax told the News-Press this week that he proposed an event like a Mardi Gras Parade, something he initiated in Arlington when he and his sister ran a restaurant there, and which grew into a major annual celebration that brought in a lot of folks and business. He said he was unable to get a commitment from City leaders at last month’s meeting to allow such an event here, even though he stressed to the News-Press that he would take complete charge of running it. At this Monday’s Falls Church City Council meeting, Council member Justine Underhill asked City Manager Wyatt Shields what
someone had to do, and what would be involved in having a street closed off for such an event as a Mardi Gras party. Shields said that while neighborhoods around town have residential blocks closed off on a routine basis for local gatherings, when it involves major corridor streets, it is a different story. He said he could not offer an estimate of the cost of doing such a thing since it would have to be evaluated on a case by case basis. Shields had conceded to the News-Press earlier that City Hall had probably to be faulted for not notifying the community better that Watch Night would not happen in the same way this past New Year’s Eve, but he said that among the City’s concerns were the cost in overtime for City staff to work the event, and the fact that not many City staff personnel were enthusiastic about having to work on New Year’s Eve, which played into the decision by the City to not co-sponsor or fund the event this time. No decision has yet been made about next New Year’s Eve, and it may take the ability of the restaurant owners to solidify their efforts by formation of a Restaurant Guild to
get it to happen. But Harvey stressed to the NewsPress, we would not be acting solely as restaurant owners, but as business owners who want to do what we can to make the entire community prosper. Sold on Falls Church in a big way, Thomas said ways need to be found to let the wider region know about what a special place the Little City is from the standpoint of all it has to offer, from dining to shopping to entertainment and more.
Colm Dillon
David Tax
Thomas Harvey
You are invited to the Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day March for Unity and Freedom, and Celebration
Monday, January 19, 2026 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM Falls Church, Virginia 22046 Tinner Hill Civil Rights Monument
South Washington Street & Tinner Hill Road
10:00 AM: Assembly and sign making 11:00 AM: Welcome and invocation. March begins The Falls Church, 115 East Fairfax Street 12:00 Noon: Complementary luncheon 12:30 PM: Program with guest speaker: Rev. James Henry, Dulin United Methodist Church, Falls Church, VA 2:30 PM: Feedback on workshop. Closing remarks Registration requested • Walk-ins welcome https://2026THHFKingDay.eventbrite.com Information: Tinnerhill.org Presented by Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation (THHF) and the Social Justice Committee of Falls Church and Vicinity (an initiative of THHF) in partnership with the City of Falls Church, The Falls Church, and Chi Beta Omega Chapter of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority (AKA)
FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
Reflection and Choice, Or Accident and Force Nicholas F. Benton FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS
A comment of mine that drew a sudden, spontaneous applause from the three dozen people attending a forum at the prestigious Women’s National Democratic Club mansion in Washington D.C. last week had to do with the role of civility in the political process. I commented about how in my newspaper’s online edition a few years back, I had stopped allowing people to anonymously post comments on the site. The comments were being posted hot and heavy and mostly were foul mouthed egregious insults of one kind or another. I shifted to a policy that required anyone wishing to comment on the site to identify who they were. The number of comments we received dropped dramatically the minute I did that, including all the foul mouthed ones. I noted how the Founding Fathers, as elucidated by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison, authors of the Federalist Papers, asserted that a commitment to virtue and civility was a precondition for a democracy. I said that enemies of democracy undoubtedly understand this, and that is why so much of their discourse aims at the lowest possible range of human speech, not the least being the systematic filth that has been spewed out of countless Russian bot postings. Calling for a return to civility in the face of what’s being done to it on the Internet is what drew the spontaneous and loud applause. Obviously, others feel this way, too. Recently, Hal Lippman, a former Falls Church, Virginia, vice mayor and head of a local civic organization, the Citizens for a Better City, recalled to me a project that he headed during the bicentennial celebration of the U.S. 50 years ago, run through the League of Women Voters Educational Fund called “The Federalist Papers Reexamined.” It was an exhaustive project that involved the publication of six study guides, each about 36 pages in length, that offered Q and A and debate points to help educate the public about the main issues the
Founding Fathers grappled with in forging the young nation and its Constitution. The world of 1976 was much different than this one, as the nation now celebrates its 250th birthday, and especially as it pertains to matters of respect and civility. It was in the midst of a transition that was occurring at the time from a national identity associated with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s aspirational assertions in his “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 to one associated with the Wall Street movie’s “Greed is good” speech in 1987. That gradual paradigm shift has brought us to these terrible days of debased Trumpian thuggery. If we are to recover from this, a very concerted effort to go back to the values that our Founding Fathers shared is critical. Let me add that with regard to anything associated with this period, including whether there will even be midterm elections this year, be advised that efforts are going to have to be remarkably strident, determined and forceful to be effective. Notably, toward the beginning of the first of the study guides, entitled “Past as Prologue: Present Perspectives,” it is pointed out plainly that “a republic could not exist without a virtuous people.” John Adams is quoted, “Virtue is the sine qua non of the republic. If its people give way to luxury, to any form of corruption, to lassitude, apathy or complacency, to riot and rebellion…then the republic couldn’t survive.” “There are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend,” Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Paper No. 31. That is a fundamental standpoint at odds with the kind of moral relativism that was being advanced in the 1970s in the world where greed and what evolved into today’s Trumpism as primary values, or the lack thereof, were being cultivated, as the study guide recognizes. The question, Hamilton wrote in an introduction to the first of the Federalist Papers, is “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.” How prescient. This is our choice today.
CO MME NT A Penny for Your Thoughts
JANUARY 15 - 21, 2026 | PAGE 5
By Penny Gross Former Fairfax County Supervisor
There are many words that can describe the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents involved in the deadly shooting in Minneapolis last week – goons, hooligans, thugs, hotshots – but certainly not outstanding public servants! It will be weeks or months before the investigation of the incident, solely under the direction of the FBI, is made public, if it ever is. The rush to judgement by Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem, blaming victim Renee Good for her own demise, flies in the face of how investigations of fatal incidents should be handled. In most cases until recently, local law enforcement experts would be asked, indeed encouraged, to participate in investigations with federal officials to ensure that community standards are understood and upheld. Local police departments work diligently to establish and nurture community trust to ensure safety of the population, eliminating language and cultural barriers for all of the residents and visitors in a jurisdiction. In Fairfax County, that effort includes monthly community meetings with police leadership that have been conducted for decades. Newer popular activities include “Coffee with a Cop,” quarterly scheduled discussions with faith leaders and business owners, and holiday gift drives. More than 1200 wrapped gifts and toys were distributed by
Mason Station officers and volunteers in December, and a pajama and slipper give-away is planned for later this month by the same station. “Stuff the Cruiser” drives at local supermarkets collect thousands of pounds of food for food pantries and local food distribution sites. These and other activities are replicated in each of the county’s nine police districts and underscore Fairfax County’s “Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy,” adopted by the Board of Supervisors five years ago this month. Late last year, the Trump Administration announced plans to spend $100 million to hire thousands of new ICE and Customs and Border Protection agents. The effort is part of the administration’s actions to secure the borders and enforce immigration laws by deporting more than one million immigrants per year from the United States, as demanded by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Many federal officers are dedicated professionals, but the new recruitment plan focuses on people who attend Ultimate Fighting Championship events, are interested in weapons, and listen to conservative radio shows and country music. Geo-fencing may be used to send ICE recruiting messages to attendees’ cell phones and track their movements within an identified area. A previous hiring spree revealed that vetting was poor, with
many applicants unable to meet simple educational and physical requirements; some candidates had criminal records. The Minneapolis shooting has called into question the effectiveness of training, especially when agents are assigned to urban areas far from U.S. borders. In a recent published letter to The Washington Post, retired police chief J. Thomas Manger, who headed large police departments in Fairfax County (VA), Montgomery County (MD), and at the U.S. Capital, wrote that police recruitment must target the “best candidates who have an interest in serving their community as a police officer.” Chief Manger added that “Every law enforcement agency should be seeking candidates with traits and talents that make a good cop, including integrity and the ability to communicate with anyone in any circumstance. Courage, intelligence, compassion and cooperation are other important traits to determine suitability for law enforcement work.” His letter concluded that “political leanings, music preferences, and enjoying a good fight are irrelevant.” Law enforcement is a public service, always a difficult and dangerous one. Most residents see law enforcement as first responders, speeding to incidents with lights and siren, ready to render aid whatever the situation. Public safety officers care, they counsel, they treat, they mourn, with humanity and empathy. Homeland Security and ICE would be wise to heed Chief Manger’s advice, and recruit only those who will make public service their North Star, not a shooting star.
City of Falls Church Crime Report Week of Jan 5 - 11, 2026 Driving Under the Influence, W Broad St, Jan 5, 8:31 p.m. — A male, 50, of Falls Church, VA, was arrested for driving under the influence.
Drunk in Public, Irving St, Jan 8, 3:01 a.m. — A male, 25, and a white male, 26, both of Falls Church, were arrested for drunk in public. Drunk in Public, Wilson Blvd, Jan 9, 12:57 a.m. — A female, 28, of Arlington, VA, was arrested for drunk in public.
2026 Issues Coming Soon: 1/22-Winter Real Estate 1/29-Winter Arts & Entertainment Contact Sue : sjohnson@fcnp.com
Trespass, N Washington St, Jan 11, 3:11 p.m. — A female, 48, of no fixed address, was issued a summons for trespass.
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Since 1991, an award-winning LGBT-owned general Interest community newspaper. Vol. XXXV, No. 49 JANUARY 15 - 21, 2026 • City of Falls Church ‘Business of the Year’ 1991 & 2001 • • Member, Virginia Press Association •
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Editorial
E D I TO R I A L
Reaching Customers Around Falls Church
It’s true, as this newspaper has been exhorting for years, that for the City of Falls Church’s noble efforts at economic development to be sustained, a concerted effort to draw in revenue from populations beyond its borders is required. There is no evidence that anybody at City Hall has gotten this message, beyond lip service. The move by the City’s leading restaurant owners to call a meeting last month to sound an alarm about the consequences of a failure by the City to seriously market what the City now has needs to be taken very seriously. It is not surprising that City Hall doesn’t understand or appreciate marketing. Over this newspaper’s three dozen years, we’ve found that few people, even business people, do. It gets treated as an afterthought. Small businesses, in particular, say they can’t afford to advertise, but they don’t appreciate how important it is to draw customers. If you opened a business, you wouldn’t fail to put a sign up on your door to identify your business, would you? Well, advertising is just a way of doing just that, but a bigger sign for a wider audience. These days, businesses are thinking they can achieve that result from social media on the Internet. But unless a great deal is spent to hire professionals who know how to saturate that medium, its effect is limited. We hate to repeat our own mantra, about how fortunate Falls Church is to have a respected community weekly that offers affordable rates for its advertisers to reach a targeted local market. We have made the pitch repeatedly, including in a meeting with the mayor and vice-mayor, that this newspaper is ideally situated to expand its distribution to saturate the five zip codes that constitute “Greater Falls Church” where, according to the George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, some $5 billion in annual disposable income sits. The area is populated by people who have Falls Church postal addresses, even if they don’t live right in the City of Falls Church. And they don’t know what’s here. Between restoring free home delivery of the News-Press to all households in the City, and widening the distribution reach of the paper to cover the five Falls Church postal zones, we think the latter would actually serve the community more, because it would enlighten a wider audience to the benefits of all that Falls Church has to offer visitors. A good, engaging print newspaper made readily available to a wider population needs nothing more than someone to pick it up, and to read it over time. Not controlled by online algorithms, they are of primary value to its advertisers. As one of the only remaining newspapers in this entire region that still prints each week, the News-Press remains an accessible vehicle for widening Falls Church’s range of influence beyond her borders on a regular and sustainable basis.
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School Board Told It Needs 5.02% More in Funding to Maintain
Continued from Page 1
new enhancements, but which would honor the collective bargaining agreement with the Falls Church Education Association reached in March 2024 that calls for annual salary step and 2 percent cost-ofliving adjustments for all certified and non-certified staff, as well as sick and parental leave conditions. The 5.02 percent increase to achieve the “minimal effort” the
schools require would represent considerably less than the recent years’ asks by the schools from the City, which have ranged from 6.2 to 10 percent, including an 8.8 percent increase in funding last year. Superintendent Dade outlined priorities for the schools in the coming deliberations, ranging from AI implementation to a new budget coordinator, early childhood specialist, elementary math specialist
custodial supervisor, a secondary schools’ reading specialist, a student activities finance assistant, and recruitment and signing bonuses of $1,000 to $2,000 to attract and retain talent. Overall, the new priorities list is down from $1.4 million last year to $531.9 this year. Dade said the 5.02 percent increase represents a “floor” for what the schools will need to receive during the coming budget
process, which formally begins with his introduction of a proposed overall budget on February 10 and leads to the School Board’s budget ask to the City Council on March 10, ahead of the Council’s final budget adoption in early May. Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the principals of the Falls Church system’s five schools were singled out for recognition, including Allison Klink at the Jesse Thackrey Preschool to Tim Kasik and Mt.
Daniel Elementary, Karin Dougherty at the Oak Street Elementary, Steve Pickering at Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School, and Peter Laub at Meridian High School. In nominating Tysse for chair of the board, fellow School Board member Bethany Henderson hailed her “thoughtfulness and intentionality who listens to all voices in the community,” and who pursues “what’s best for the community and the board.”
At Historic D.C. Site, Local News & LGBTQ+ Activism Discussed by David Hoffman
Carol Comito, spirited D.C.-area political activist and public policy director of the historic Woman’s National Democratic Club (WNDC), sounded the tocsin bell of alarm at an event last week in Washington D.C. sponsored by the DuPont Circle-based club concerning growing grave threats to the LGBTQ community nationwide. “We simply can’t afford to stand back. Or stand by. We have to stand up. And fight back,” declared Carol Comito, a plucky Philadelphia native who recently settled in Washington DC after 20 years of political organizing around both women’s issues and LGBTQ equity issues in Arizona. “We can’t retreat one inch from our just demands for diversity, or for inclusion or for equity!” she told this observer. “If we retreat, we don’t survive, we certainly don’t thrive, in fact we ‘die’!” Comito was speaking at a program event of the WNDC, founded in 1922 by the suffragist women who had fought for the right of women to vote. After decades of struggle, they finally prevailed (at last) when the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Con-
stitution was ratified and went into effect in 1920. In 1927, the Club purchased its home base, still housed today in the iconic 1890s Arts-and-Crafts-style brick mansion, The Whittemore House --- where Comito had gathered with roughly 40 Club members and a dozen or so others including members from across the country able to participate through a Zoom telecast of the event. The event, dubbed “Working the Press as LGBTQ+,” was billed as an important opportunity to hear from, and honor, two longtime journalists in the Metro DC area --- Lou Chibbaro Jr., lively local observer and senior reporter from the storied local (and national) weekly LGBTQ newspaper, the Washington Blade, and Nick Benton, prolific author and owner and editor-in-chief of the weekly Northern Virginia weekly newspaper he launched in 1991, the Falls Church News-Press. Benton spoke out with clear-eyed passion that the nation is in “clear and present and growing danger.” He commented, “This forum highlighted the critical importance of an independent media for the LGBTQ community, and the public at large, at this critical time in our
nation’s history when the development of a mass movement to protect our democratic freedoms is incredibly vital.” He added, “As major media have been taken over by agents of the Trumpian assault on our freedoms, my paper, the Falls Church News-Press, and Lou Chibbaro’s Washington Blade are two important cases of how honest, pro-democracy community newspapers work to inform and engage folks at the grassroots level to stand strong for the values they rely on to live their lives with integrity and good will. It is in the affirmation of these values where true, sustainable resistance to the thuggery of any would-be tyrant can be found.” “It’s a constitutional crisis entirely due to the Trump Administration’s assaults and their almost daily outrages against the entire community of progressives,” Benton continued. “It’s a brutal attack against not only immigrants --but also women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, and furthermore academic freedom, the universities, and health care, public schools, and organized labor, and environmentalists and civil liberties advocates.”
“It’s a national crime scene” Benton continued --- as he spoke of the urgent need for a “mass movement to arise and organize to protect our democratic freedoms including hard-won rights.” “This includes same-sex marriage and trans rights to fair treatment,” he added, referring the area’s LGBTQ community where Benton has long been outspoken. The D.C. area, he said, is actually the nation’s leading urban area for the percentage of residents who identify as non-cis-gender. Lou Chibarro Jr. of the Wash-
ington Blade joined actively in the discussion at many points, calling for a continued resistance to Trump and his fascistic rightwing brutal assailing of the independent news media, as what Trump has lambasted as “enemies of the people.” Chibbaro pledged that the Blade will continue in print, importantly, as well as be online. (David Hoffman is a longtime active member, as well as former vice president for programs, of the WNDC where men have been members since the 1980s.)
THE IMPORTANCE OF a local press and of LGBTQ+ activism were the subjects of a forum held in D.C.’s historic Women’s National Democratic Club last Thursday. Left to right: David Hoffman, Lou Chibbaro and Nicholas Benton. (Courtesy Photo)
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The Annandale community is seeing a dream come to fruition as top-rated Westminster School adds a state-of-the-art turf field and playground complex to its Gallows Road campus, with planned completion in early February 2026. Westminster School, an independent, private preschool through 8th grade educational fixture since 1962, is raising its profile and that of the Falls Church-Annandale neighborhood by investing in modern outdoor facilities. The project includes a regulation-sized middle school field with a digital scoreboard, which can accommodate soccer, softball, and lacrosse. Fans can observe and cheer from a new raised terrace that overlooks the field. The expansion also contains two new playgrounds. One is a space for preschool and kindergarteners, featuring equipment suited to exploration and imaginative play, while the other is suited to older elementary school students, providing structures that offer more challenging physical activities, such as a flexible climbing wall. Children will also enjoy the new full basketball court with one adjustable basket and one fixed. These play spaces are surrounded with welcom-
Northern VA Family Services, Martha’s Table, Adopt-a-Highway and others. Westminster looks forward to continuing to amplify awareness of the school and the neighborhood of which it is a part. This campus development is more than a decade in the making. First, a visionary plan of Westminster’s last head of school, Ellis Glover, the current construction was the result of his groundwork in purchas-
FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
Westminster School Breaks Ground on State-of-the-Art Field and Playground ing stone walkways, a fountain and sculptures, and a picnic area. These stunning, modern facilities not only benefit the school, but augment Fairfax County as well. They offer new opportunities for Westminster’s award-winning camps program, which serves students throughout Fairfax County. Westminster’s Camp Griffin will now offer an extensive selection of athletic camps, as well as new outdoor play spaces that will brighten its already vibrant program. The project has sparked excitement in the Annandale neighborhood, with Mason-District Supervisor Andres Jimenez attending Westminster’s June 2025 groundbreaking ceremony where he delivered remarks on the school’s impressive program in academics, arts, and athletics, beautifully maintained facilities, and student body diversity. Westminster School is a vital member of the surrounding community, evidenced by its membership in local chambers of commerce and sponsorship of the Taste of Annandale. The school also provides community service through an active K-Kids Club and Builders Club, which each support various charitable organizations such as
ing the land adjacent to the school’s campus and overseeing the project’s planning phases. This combined with the recent efforts of current head of school Nancy Schuler, who led a dedicated team to obtain county licensing, consult with the school’s neighbors, and secure financing for the project through John Marshall Bank. Westminster School is carrying out an ongoing capital campaign to fund the construction and success-
fully reached the one-million-dollar mark at the close of 2025. Westminster’s investment in its campus is an investment in the Falls Church-Annandale community, and the school’s growth reflects the expansion and modernization of the area at large. If you would like to know more about the project or tour Westminster’s campus, please visit the school’s website at www.westminsterschool.com.
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Schools and Camps Offer Families Many Paths to Learning by Nick Gatz
Falls Church News-Press
Families across Northern Virginia are increasingly looking for options that combine education with enrichment—programs that support academic growth while also building confidence, creativity, and practical skills. A range of local institutions, from early-childhood schools to performing-arts organizations and athletic training centers, are meeting that demand through school-year programming and seasonal camps. At the early-learning level, programs such as Grasshopper Green School and Westminster School represent a continued emphasis on developmentally focused education, particularly in the preschool and elementary years. These schools generally center learning around social-emotional development, early literacy and numeracy, and structured play—areas many educators consider essential for long-term success. In addition to classroom instruction, earlychildhood programs often appeal to families seeking consistent routines, close teacher-student re-
lationships, and learning environments designed around the needs of younger children. For families who prefer a faithbased structure, St. Anthony of Padua School offers an academic program shaped by Catholic education, typically blending core subjects with values-based learning and community service. Schools in this tradition often emphasize character formation alongside classroom achievement, aiming to provide a structured setting where students are encouraged to develop responsibility, leadership, and a sense of service. Beyond traditional academics, performing-arts organizations are continuing to play a larger role in youth education—particularly through camps and conservatorystyle training. Creative Cauldron has built a reputation in the region for youth theater programming that introduces students to acting, singing, and ensemble work. These programs often function as both arts instruction and confidencebuilding experiences, pushing students to practice public speaking, collaboration, and creative risktaking.
Signature Theatre, known for its professional productions, also offers training opportunities that give students exposure to highlevel instruction in musical theater and performance. Programs tied to major theater institutions tend to attract students who want more focused training, whether they are trying theater for the first time or considering it more seriously. For many families, arts camps fill a gap during the summer months while also providing a structured, skillsbased environment. Athletic and movement-based programs remain another major part of the local camp landscape. Kips Family Gym offers youthfocused fitness and movement instruction, often geared toward building strength, coordination, and healthy habits. Gym-based camps typically appeal to families looking for high-energy environments that keep children active while teaching age-appropriate physical skills. In recent years, demand has grown for camps that balance fun with measurable skill development, especially for younger kids who benefit from structured physical play. Specialty sports programs add
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another layer of options. NoVa Fencing & Archery provides instruction in two disciplines that emphasize focus, technique, and selfcontrol as much as physical ability. Fencing and archery programs often draw students interested in individual sports, where progress is tied closely to repetition, precision, and goal-setting. These camps can also serve as an entry point into competitive training, though many participants attend simply to try something new in a supportive environment. Meanwhile, educational programming for older students and adults continues to expand through institutions such as the University of Virginia – NoVa Center, which serves as a regional resource for continuing education, professional development, and community learning. While not a youth camp in the traditional sense, the center reflects a broader trend: education as a continuum, with pathways for skill-building and advancement at every stage of life. For families, the presence of a major university’s regional hub reinforces the idea that learning opportunities do not end with graduation—and that local ac-
cess to higher education resources can shape long-term goals. Taken together, these programs illustrate how “school” and “camp” have become broader categories than they once were. Families are no longer choosing only between academics and recreation; increasingly, they are selecting from a mix of academic schools, arts instruction, fitness training, and specialized skill programs that reflect children’s individual interests. In many cases, camps serve as testing grounds—places where students discover new strengths that can later develop into hobbies, long-term pursuits, or even career ambitions As the region continues to grow, the common thread among these institutions is a focus on building capable young people through structured experiences— whether that structure comes from a classroom, a stage, a gym floor, or a training strip. For families planning the school year or mapping out summer schedules, the local landscape offers one clear message: learning happens in many forms, and there are more ways than ever for students to find the right fit.
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Camp & Education Guide
LEARNING • Small Class Sizes K-6th Grade • Reading, writing, phonics, science, social studies, spelling & math • Extracurricular classes in computers, art, music & gym
Play
• Spacious Playground • Daily indoor/outdoor free play • On-site gym for indoor exercise
EXTRAS
• Open Daily 7 a.m - 6 p.m. • Before and after school care • Hot catered lunch & snacks provided daily • Variety of educational field trips • Spring, Summer & Winter Camps
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AI Is Reshaping Classrooms Faster Than We’re Willing to Admit by Nick Gatz
Falls Church News-Press
Artificial intelligence did not enter America’s classrooms with a permission slip. It slid in through homework tabs open at midnight, group chats trading “better prompts,” and students discovering that a machine can produce something that looks like thinking. The speed of this shift is not normal, and the scale is hard for the public to grasp. Consider one widely repeated but still mind-bending marker. A UBS analysis, reported by Reuters, estimated ChatGPT reached 100 million monthly active users in about two months after launch. That is not a slow adoption curve that schools can “pilot.” That is a flood. Now layer that flood onto student behavior. The College Board, drawing on surveys conducted June 2024 through June 2025, reported the share of high school students who say they use generative AI for schoolwork rose from 79% to 84% between January and May 2025. Pew Research Center, looking specifically at U.S. teens ages 13 to 17, found 26% have used ChatGPT for schoolwork, double the share
from 2023. The numbers do not perfectly match because they measure different things, but together they tell the same story. AI is not occasional anymore. It is part of the academic ecosystem. Most people still frame this as a cheating problem. It is that, but it is also a deeper power problem. The part most people miss: AI is a plausibility engine! ChatGPT does not “know” in the way a teacher knows. It generates language by predicting what comes next based on patterns in data. That means it can sound authoritative while being wrong, and sometimes the wrongness is subtle enough to pass unnoticed. Stanford researchers reported something that should make every educator uneasy. In experiments, people could distinguish between human and AI text with about 50% to 52% accuracy, basically coin-flip performance. In practice, that means a polished AI-written paragraph can sail through, especially when the assignment rewards smoothness, structure, and confidence. And it is not just writing style. A peer-reviewed 2025 study in JMIR Mental Health tested GPT-4o’s abil-
ity to generate literature reviews with citations and found nearly two-thirds of citations were fabricated or inaccurate. Let that sink in. A system can produce academic-looking references that feel real and are not. Students and even adults can mistake bibliography formatting for truth. AI can help a struggling student get unstuck. It can re-explain a concept five different ways without embarrassment. It can support English learners, generate practice questions, or help a student with ADHD break an assignment into steps. For teachers drowning in workload, it can draft rubrics, create differentiated materials, and generate feedback templates quickly. Those are meaningful advantages. But the very usefulness of AI is what makes it dangerous as a default. The hidden cost: outsourcing the hard part of learning. Education is not the production of answers. It is the development of mental muscles: argument, synthesis, judgment. AI is strongest at producing the appearance of those outcomes. So the risk is not only that students turn in machine-written work. The risk is that they stop practicing the cognitive steps that make
them capable adults. If a student uses AI to brainstorm, outline, draft, revise, and polish, what is left for the student to do besides hit submit. The classroom can end up measuring compliance and formatting rather than thinking. This is the new arms race. Students learn how to prompt. Teachers learn how to redesign. Administrators try to write rules that cannot keep up with the technology. Educators are shifting fast and what many teachers report is a move away from naive bans toward smarter friction. Process-based grading, with more emphasis on outlines, drafts, revision notes, and in-class checkpoints. Oral defense, where students explain their reasoning aloud and shortcutting is harder to hide. Local, lived assignments tied to classroom discussion, local data, interviews, or personal reflection, things AI can imitate but not truly originate. AI literacy, teaching students what AI is good at, what it is bad at, and how to verify outputs. This is not about punishing students. It is about preserving the purpose of school: building independent
judgment. Why I am wary: power concentrates quietly The public tends to treat AI as a neutral tool, like spellcheck. But AI is not passive. It shapes language, and language shapes thinking. When a generation gets used to receiving fluent answers instantly, patience for ambiguity and slow reasoning can erode. That has consequences far beyond GPA. UNESCO has warned that generative AI in education needs immediate safeguards, including human-centered policy, transparency, and protections around privacy and equity. The biggest danger is not the obvious cheating case. It is the subtle cultural shift. We start accepting fluency as intelligence. We start trusting confident-sounding output. We start letting systems that can fabricate at scale seep into the habits of young minds. A “crazy” predictions that no longer sounds like science fiction Prediction: Every student gets a near-constant AI tutor, approved or not. This is not a distant possibility. It is the direction major education platforms are openly building toward.
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Raising Builders, Not Just Screen Users, in Northern Virginia by Nick Gatz
Falls Church News-Press
Kids have always been the ones to come up with the new stuff first. The shortcuts. The hacks. The next language. The next way of making something cool out of nothing. What’s different now is not the imagination. It’s the equipment. In Northern Virginia, the kid with a half-charged phone and a halfformed idea is standing on a launchpad. Nearly all teens, 95%, have access to a smartphone now. Pew also found that almost half of teens say they’re online “almost constantly.” That is not a side note. That is the environment. When I was growing up, dialup was a door you had to knock on and wait for. Today, it’s a door that’s already open. The world is not just available, it’s rushing at them. Some estimates put global data creation at roughly 402 million terabytes per day, about 0.4 zettabytes daily. So here’s the parenting question in NOVA in 2026. Not “How do we keep them off screens?” That’s a losing argument and honestly it’s the wrong argument. The right question is: What do we
surround them with so the screens turn into tools instead of traps? I’ve got a 13-year-old daughter, and she is the reason I believe the answer is a three-part blend: sports, hands-on art, and apps. Not three separate lanes. One braid. Because I’ve watched what happens when all three are present in a kid’s week, not as a perfect schedule, but as a real life rhythm. Sports is the anchor. A practice, a game, a team, a coach, a clock. That stuff still matters. It matters even more now because sports is one of the last places where you cannot edit your way out of reality. You cannot filter conditioning. You cannot swipe away a loss. You learn, fast, that the work shows up in your lungs and in the scoreboard. You learn how to sit next to a teammate after they mess up and keep them in it. You learn how to be accountable without making it about you. And in Northern Virginia, we see it every weekend like a rolling parade. Minivans at sunrise. Mud on cleats. Gym floors that smell like popcorn and effort. This region is loaded with opportunity, but it’s also loaded with pressure, and sports
teaches kids to handle pressure with their feet on the ground. The hard part is that youth sports is also getting expensive, and families feel it. A Harris Poll survey commissioned by Good Sports found that three out of four parents have considered pulling their kids out of sports because of rising costs, and it reported average annual spending of $883 per child. That matters in NOVA because costs stack up fast, and when kids lose access, they lose a community. That is why the second strand matters just as much. Hands-on art is the counterweight. Not “arts” as in a fancy framed thing that hangs on the wall. I’m talking tactile, messy, real-world making. Drawing. Building. Sewing. Painting. Wood. Clay. A cheap tool kit. A pile of cardboard. The kinds of projects where your hands learn patience and your brain learns that mistakes are not failure, they are information. This is the part that has surprised me most as a parent. My daughter is good on apps, sure. But I’m equally amazed by what she can do with her hands. She likes sports, and she likes making. That combination creates
confidence you can see in how she walks into a room. It’s not performative. It’s earned. There’s research behind that too. The National Endowment for the Arts has highlighted findings that, among high schoolers, arts participation is positively correlated with social-emotional attributes, and arts course completion is linked with greater academic achievement, graduation, and post-graduation outcomes. That’s the stuff everyone says they want for kids: resilience, confidence, motivation, follow-through. Art is not a side quest. It’s training. Apps are the amplifier. This is where adults either panic or tune out. But I’m watching a generation that can storyboard an idea, build it, test it, publish it, and get feedback before we have finished debating whether their “screen time” is too high. The key is whether the phone is used for consumption or production. In NOVA, we have a quiet advantage that we should talk about more. Schools and community spaces are leaning into hands-on tech in ways that fit this blend. Fairfax County Public Schools talks about middle
school Technology and Engineering Education as “active learning” where students explore engineering and related careers. FCPS CTE materials also point to scale: over 160 courses offered at middle and high school levels, plus thousands of work-based learning experiences and industry credentials earned. Falls Church has been doing it too, just without the big-county megaphone. Meridian High’s robotics program is the kind of real, sustained maker culture that doesn’t happen by accident. Their FIRST Robotics team, Vae Victis (Team 1418), has been around since 2004 and has made multiple trips to the FIRST World Championships. That’s students building, coding, troubleshooting, and learning leadership under real deadlines. At the middle school level, Falls Church has put tangible tools in kids’ hands. The Falls Church Education Foundation has funded makerspace and STEAM equipment at Mary Ellen Henderson, including items like Arduinos, Ozobots, Bloxels, KEVA planks, and even a Glowforge laser cutter. That’s not “screen time.” That’s making, prototyping, and learning how ideas become objects.
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JANUARY 15 - 21, 2026 | PAGE 17
‘Women Artists of the DMV’at Falls Church Arts Open Now by Mark Dreisonstok
Falls Church Arts is currently presenting an exhibition of “Women Artists of the DMV.” Other than this overriding theme, the show contains a wide variety of works in different media, in different styles, and of different subjects. We begin our look at the exhibition with Laura Drain’s eye-catching acrylic portrait of Frida Khala, the famous Mexican painter many see as an icon for women in the arts. A rite of passage for many girls is approached in a unique way as artist Pamela Huffman shows us a photo of herself as a child in a white communion dress in the mixed media “Saint Pammy.” We move on to local color paintings such as Xianling Liu’s sweeping acrylic “Great Falls,” Marietjie Chamerlain’s placid oil panel “Shallow Shores” of the Potomac River, and Renée Nicole Ruggle’s atmospheric “Moon River” photograph at Fairfax County’s Ellanor C. Lawrence Park. We find ourselves now in the depths of winter, but other seasons are preferred in the exhibition, as in Kristin Thomas’ acrylic “Cherry Blossoms in DC,” with the U.S. Capitol Building prominently displayed not only with cherry blossoms but the flowers of spring. Childhood summer is captured in the wonderful oil “Celebration Glow,” as fireworks erupt ahead of two children far in the distance. We do not see the children’s faces, but we can determine their expressions must be of awe due to their attentiveness as the night sky and fireworks are reflected dramatically on the water of a lake. Leading lines draw the viewer’s
eye to the fireworks in the middle of the oil painting instantly. We imagine Deborah Conn’s wonderful “A Change in the Weather” (watercolor and gouache) takes place in spring, for here a man in casual spring wear, as if going for a walk, must change his mind as he sees in disappointment raindrops on a windowpane. He gazes far off into the distance. The realism of the watercolor piece is done impressively as the artist captures a very human moment. A “fluid art approach” (thus the description of the painter) is captured in Yelena Skripchenko’s acrylic canvas “Mountain View” espied in a flight over mountains in Indonesia. This painting introduces us to a travel theme we also meet in Merete Evans’ watercolor as she steps “Into the Light” of “the narrow walkways in Venice.” We then visit Provence in Cheryl Bearss’ oil “The Bridge,” introducing us to a 400-year old bridge she pained during her June travels. We end our whirlwind tour of “Women Artists of the DMV” with two paintings which arrest the audi-
ence’s attention due to challenging stylistics which succeed admirably. Sharapat Kessler’s paper collage work depicts a Salvador Dali-like image of a woman seated before a table of colorful billiard balls. Her expression in this Surrealist-inspired work is hidden, as her face is covered by 16th notes, 8th notes, and implied music lines. Although the woman is depicted in black-andwhite, her inner world with a symphony of notes is in color as she—to use an analogy from the game of pool—”racks up” her thoughts. Also notable for style: Kathleen Zeifang’s “Stained Glass” in oil uses geomet ric shapes in a work reminiscent of Cubism to represent the mark of the “Fibonacci sequence” upon the world. In this instance, in the words of the painter, she lays out “a dynamic pattern where colors and shapes dance with each other.” This fascinating exhibition representing the diversity of styles and subjects by women artists of the DMV runs through February 22. For further information, please visit: fallschurcharts.org
(Mountain View by Yelena Skripchenko_)
Movie Review: Marty Supreme by Lisa Sinrod
“Marty Supreme” is worthy of its buzz, particularly given the dearth of quality movies this season. It was released on December 25 and is rated R. The film is a period drama set in 1952 New York, starring Timothee Chalamet as table tennis (ping pong) player Marty Mauser. Marty chases the American dream with hyperbolic energy, seeking to rise from his working-class circumstances to attain stardom and wealth as a table tennis champion. He schemes his way toward the top, making complicated wagers and using his energetic power of persuasion, in order to compete in high stakes games nationally and internationally. Chalamet at
age 30 is a rising Hollywood star known for his role in “Call Me By Your Name”, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 2017. He fully inhabits the role of Marty Mauser to great effect in this film, with an intensity that feels somehow irresistible. The film is directed by Josh Safdie, the filmmaker behind 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” which he co-directed with his brother. The character of Marty is inspired by a real table tennis champ named Marty Reisman. The 1950s milieu seems authentic, even if a bit exaggerated for dramatic effect. No detail is overlooked in bringing this era to life as the plot unfolds. At the film’s start, Marty is working in a shoe store in Manhat-
tan’s Lower East Side and dreaming of ventures that will capitalize on his table tennis talent. He feels certain that this sport will be the next big thing, and seeks to convince anyone who will listen to help bankroll him into tournaments. Marty would make a gifted con man, but for the fact that he really is a highly skilled player. His goals are no less than a world championship. He makes it to a competition in London, where he romances a married and much older former movie star named Kay. The part is played with skill and irony by Gwyneth Paltrow. Marty’s association with Kay emphasizes the contrast between his working class Jewish upbringing and the notably hostile non-Jewish world in which he is now trying to make his
(Cherry Blossoms In DC by Kristin Thomas)
(Untitled by Sharapat Kessler)
mark. Each time he seems to climb a rung up the ladder of his dreams, Marty experiences setbacks. Many of the setbacks are due to his exuberance and recklessness as he chases his goals. Emboldened by the twists of fate, Marty’s spirit is indomitable. Chalamet’s acting, combined with the atmospherics of the 1950s, make the movie. The film is a commentary on many aspects of modern American culture, including class struggles and assimilation. The contrast between the unreconstructed tenements where Marty lives with multiple nearby family members and the luxurious hotels he stays in while garnering attention in table tennis competitions is stark. “Marty Supreme” is adrenaline infused, much like “Uncut Gems” was, with a kinetic pace that suits the plot. Scenes of the tournament games are well enacted and exciting,
but merely provide the back drop to a deeper trajectory. Side plots include Marty’s on and off again relationship with his married girlfriend, Rachel, who is a part of his Lower East Side community. Rachel, who holds out hope for their relationship throughout Marty’s attempts at table tennis stardom, is played sympathetically by Odessa A’zion. Other quality supporting actors include Kay’s business tycoon husband (Kevin O’Leary as Milton) and a criminal figure who gets caught up in Marty’s schemes (Ezra Mishkin as Abel). Tyler Okonma is excellent as Wally, a New York City cabdriver and loyal friend to Marty who helps him with his side hustles. Even Fran Drescher shows up in a small role as Marty’s mother. Expect to see some acting award nominations for Timothee Chalamet.
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Special
LASSO
Winter
Meridian High School, Falls Church, Virginia
SRO Shortage at Secondary Campus by Margaret Ashbrook
At the end of the 2024-25 school year, former School Resource Officers (SROs) Sergeant Chuquillangui and Officer Reyes were promoted, leaving the secondary campus without police protection. This change has raised questions and concerns from the community about school safety. Since this change, The Falls Church Police Department (FCPD) has been working to hire replacement SROs. The goal was to find a replacement for the positions before the 2025-26 school year started. “[The FCPD] is currently processing several other candidates,” Superintendent Dr. Terry Dade explained. “I do believe that at least
having one officer split between Henderson and Meridian would be helpful while everything gets sorted out.” While the community was aware of promotions of the former SROs, there was not notificationthat they would not be replaced, or that the secondary campus would be left without a regular officer. “The community was not officially notified because we believed we were close to hiring a new SRO,” Dade commented. The problem is not only hiring SROs, but also regular officers for the FCPD. There are currently 11 open positions, five of which are police officer positions. A major factor contributing to the difficulty of filling these positions is the pay gap
between the officers in Falls Church compared to those in Arlington. According to the Police Officer Pay Plan on fallschurchva.gov, Step One for an entry level officer is $51,707/yr. In Arlington, according to joinarlingtoncountypd.com the pay for an entry level officer is $72,013.50/yr and automatically increases to $90,012 on July 1, 2026. The department is working tirelessly to hire and refill their vacant positions but there is no official timeline or date for when SROs expected back on campus. As of now, it is anticipated that there will be officers at arrival, dismissal, and certified SROs around the secondary campus at least once or twice aweek. “It is difficult as Arlington County
Edition
pays their police officers more than we are able to pay,” City Councilwoman Laura Downs explained. “The City Council and the general government staff are looking at trying to put more of the budget towards compensation in the future.” The Falls Church City Council has also issued a statement on the lack of SROs. “The city council has made it clear to our city manager that filling the police officer vacancies is extremely important to ensure public safety, traffic control, and community outreach. The SRO position is one that the city council feels very strongly about. We support the SROs and we want to see those positions filled as soon as we can.” As of Mon. Jan. 5, 2026, the FCPD has transferred Officer Lance Fischili and his K9 partner, Faro, to be an SRO for the remain-
2026
der of the school year. Ofc. Fischili joined the FCPD in 2021 and became the K9 officer two years ago. He will be working at the secondary campus during the day ensuring a safe learning environment for students.
New temporary FCCPS SRO: Officer Fichili and his K9 companion, Faro. (Photo: via FCCPS morning announcments)
West Falls Church Metro Construction Sparks Community Backlash; Highlights Secondary Campus Parking Issues by Alba Selle
Student and staff parking at the secondary campus have undergone significant changes over the past several years, beginning with the construction of the new high school in 2021. The most recent issue to interfere with student parking is the ongoing construction on the West Falls Church Metro parking lot. When the new school building was built, construction on the previous parking lot had not yet been completed. Once construction began in 2022, seniors were moved to the trapezoid lot across from Mary Ellen Henderson and to the current senior lot in front of Meridian. Following these new installments, students organized a walkout in protest that the school lacked sufficient student parking. In response, the school granted a larger percentage of unused parking spaces to both juniors and seniors. The 202324 school year brought even more changes and the student parking privilege was given only to seniors. However, juniors could park at the adjacent Virginia Tech parking lot. However, in the 2024-25 school year, the Virginia Tech campus was acquired by HITT Construction,
which brought about the demolition of its parking lot. This change reallocated students to the West Falls Church Metro parking lot, an option many chose, especially athletes with practices both before and after school. Most recently, EYA developers and Rushmark Properties have begun construction at the West Falls Church Metro, which is aimed at expanding the current lot to a 1 million square feet of a mixed-use space. The construction will occur in four phases, occurring over the span of roughly three years. This development has created challenges for many students, as juniors and seniors relied on the neighboring parking lot. “The construction made parking at the metro lot a lot more complicated because we had to park in the garage which was more crowded and a much longer walk,” senior Annika Wolf explained. In response, Meridian partnered with nearby West Falls development in December to provide a monthly student parking rate until the end of the school year. 100 spots on floors 4 and 5 were made available to students per an announcement made by Principal Peter Laub.
“When we were given the option to park at the West Falls Church garage behind the senior lot, it made the situation a lot better because it’s closer and no one else really parks there so it takes a lot of the parking stress away,” Wolf said. While the secondary campus has faced parking challenges, it originally underwent significant planning, and stakeholders considered potential future issues with nearby developments. In 2017, a Perkins Eastman feasibility study recommended 320 parking spaces, based on the size of the school and the size of other schools nearby. “To the best of my knowledge, unless things change, there are currently 400 spaces on the campus site,” Falls Church City Council member Marybeth Connelly noted. However, the study compared Meridian to schools in areas significantly different from Falls Church. It included Dunbar High School,located in DC, which benefits from a much more efficient public transportation system than Virginia. Additionally, Montgomery County Youth Cruiser Cards, iRide for Arlington Students, and Fairfax
County Student Bus Pass are initiatives in partnership with regional transit operators.Falls Church City does not have such programs in place to incentivize public transportation. “You should go to places like DC or Philadelphia or New York and look at urban schools, because that’s essentially where we are right now…and so it’s just like a mindset,” Principal Laub noted. “It helped me think, this is an urban campus not a suburban campus. We don’t have big open fields and large parking lots and long drives to get to our school. We’re right here in the thick of it all.” However, for those who are unable to park or take the school bus, the option for public transportation like urban campuses have access to is not an efficient option for students at Meridian. “I know that Dr Noonan had made statements publicly that were essentially like, it’s a small town. Kids can walk, kids can bike, and there are buses,” Principal Laub highlighted. Students cannot rely solely on school buses, because a large number of students participate in athletics. According to the Meridian Ath-
letics Department, 57% of students participated in fall and winter sports this year alone. Last year’s number was around 79% which included 8th graders. “As someone who relied on parking because of sports, I had no choice but to keep driving after the construction began. The change to the metro garage meant a more crowded lot, a longer walk to school, climbing a wall and jumping a couple fences,” junior Aldyn Friesen said. “As a result, I often found myself rushing or being late because of unexpected circumstances I couldn’t change. The new parking garage provided a great solution and I feel like the school really heard the students when we said we needed change.” Parking challenges will continue to affect students as businesses urbanize the city, traffic impedes on the productive flow of cars, and the school division continues to expand, as pointed out by Principal Laub. “The school division made a very conscious decision to have the parking lots they have…but we’ve grown, yeah. We’ve added students, staff. Like we’ve grown a lot since then, and that’s the challenge, and we’re expected to grow more.”
FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
Mustang Winter Sports Update by The Lasso Sports Section
Boys Basketball: The Meridian boys basketball team has enjoyed a strong start to their season, especially considering they lost a handful of seniors last year. As of Jan 8, the Meridian squad boasts a 6-1 record. Head coach Jim Smith credits the success so far this season to the team’s drive and motivation. “We have the potential to be a special group,” Coach Smith said. The Mustangs hope to make a playoff run with just over a month of basketball left in their season.
Girls Basketball: The Meridian girls basketball team has remained undefeated throughout the season so far, with a perfect 9-0 record. After significant wins against rivals James Madison, whom they finally beat after 3 unsuccessful years, and Brentsville High School, with a 37-27 Mustang victory. This win was significant in order for the Mustangs to compete for regional and state titles. Those future tournaments are looking very promising for the Girls Basketball team, who hope to advance as far as pos-
Junior Charlotte Lieu (#4) shoots a 3-pointer against Faquier in the 3rd quarter. (Photo by Nathaniel Landers)
sible this season. Wrestling: So far this year, Meridian Wrestling has had a tumultuous experience. Of the six varsity weight classes that the Mustangs compete with, every wrestler has a winning record so far this year. Despite this, the Mustangs lose most tournaments and competitions due to the fact that they only compete in 6 out of the 14 possible weightclasses. Overcoming this challenge is a tall task, but Coach Wade and his team are committed to improvement. Despite a seemingly discouraging situation, Wade’s wrestlers are optimistic and determined. “[The practices] teach us that the process and the commitment matter until the end, and make you realize that your hard work led to your achievements,” senior Paul Stankevich commented. Practices often consist of intense conditioning and cardio with sprints and burpees, as well as half an hour of live wrestling. Winter Track: As of Jan 8, the Meridian winter track team has had a total of five meets. Both the boys’ and girls’ teams have placed well so far, as much of their success has come from strong practice
JANUARY 15 - 21, 2026 | PAGE 19
Both the girl’s and boy’s teams put on dominant performances during their tri-meet with James Wood and Faquier. (Photo: via @ meridianswimanddive)
regimes and standout individual performances, as noted by freshman Devon Mirza. “The team has really improved as a collective, and I think that’s due to the coaches and the great jobs they’ve done with the drills,” Mirza commented. Gymnastics: Gymnastics notched the highest score in the team’s history at the first meet of the season, and have so far placed 2nd at the district competition. As of their last meet, they have bagged several podium finishes; Rebecca Degnan placed third on the uneven bars, Petra Oleson placed second on the vault, Sienna Dawson placed third on the floor and third overall. This meant the team scored 126.25 points and
placed third. The team looks forward to more success to match these early wins as the season progresses. Swim and Dive: As of Jan. 8, Meridian’s swim and dive team has had three meets. The boys team is 4-1, with a close win over Wakefield at a dual meet, a dominant win over James Wood and Fauquier at a tri-meet, and splitting Millbrook and Manassas Park at another tri-meet while the girls team is undefeated with a perfect 5-0. “Despite losing many seniors, the team is still well-suited for both swimming and diving,” said senior Ty Schmittel. The team will continue to work and improve to make states for yet another season.
Meridian’s State Champ Is D1 Committed by Ryan Degnan
Despite its small size, Meridian still produces elite athletic talent. Senior Ryan Southern is a prime example as showcased by his commitment to The University of Delaware for Division I NCAA Swimming. Southern is a three-year varsity swimmer, who set the state record and captured a state championship in the 100 meter butterfly at 49.1 seconds. The University of Delaware is a large, Division I school located in Newark, which makes up a small college town. They have recruited 11 incoming freshmen for Fall 2026, two of which are from Virginia. Falls Church’s Southern joins an impressive class of All Americans, State Champs, and international talents. “I committed to the University of Delaware because of its
strong swimming program and the exceptional resources available to the team,” Southern said. “The coaches were supportive and welcoming, and the athletes I met were clearly dedicated, which made Delaware feel like the right fit. Going D1 is no small feat, and it’s one that takes sacrifice to be able to achieve. Driven by his work ethic, Southern has trained 20 hours per week for the last five years, often early in the morning before school. “Swimming in high school often required me to sacrifice my own happiness. The countless hours in the pool were draining but my effort didn’t go unrewarded,” Southern stated. “Over time I realized how important it was to me to compete.” The sacrifice paid off, as Southern is now one of the elite
swimmers in the nation. “Swimming offered me an opportunity to show myself that I was capable of doing something valuable with myself,” Southern said. “If I were to go back in time and get the choice between swimming and doing something else, I would make the same decision.” That decision was clearly a good one, and he will now face the next challenges that come with college. “My goal at Delaware is to qualify for and compete at the NCAA Division I Championships in the 100 and 200 meter butterfly.” Southern will have the opportunity to achieve these goals over the next four years, due to a combination of work ethic, talent, and the resources that the University of Delaware will provide for him.
Ryan Southern poses surrounded by University of Delaware merchandise. (Photo: Ryan South)
PAGE 20 | JANUARY 15 - 21, 2026
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LEGAL NOTICE Public Notice Falls Church City Public School Board FY27 Budget Public Hearings Tuesday, January 13, 2026, at 7:00 PM Falls Church City Hall Council Chambers 300 Park Ave., Falls Church, VA 22046, and Tuesday, February 24, 2026, at 7:00 PM FCCPS Central Office Conference Room 150 S Washington St, Suite 400, Falls Church, VA 22046 Written comments may be submitted to The Falls Church School Board at schoolboard@fccps.org
NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING CITY COUNCIL CITY OF FALLS CHURCH, VIRGINIA The following was given first reading at the November 24, 2025 City Council meeting. Public hearings, second readings, and possible City Council actions are scheduled for Monday, January 26, 2026 at 7:30 p.m., or as soon thereafter as the matter may be heard.
CELESTE HEATH, CITY CLERK
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(TO25-21) ORDINANCE TO AMEND THE CITY CODE OF THE CITY OF FALLS OF CHURCH CHAPTER 48 “ZONING,” ARTICLE I “IN GENERAL,” AMENDING THE HALF STORY DEFINITION AND ARTICLE V “SUPPLEMENTARY REGULATIONS” DIVISION 6 “HEIGHT, LOT AND YARD REGULATIONS,” DELETING SECTION 48-1104 “CONDITIONAL USES PERMITTED BY SPECIAL USE PERMIT” AS AN OBSOLETE SECTION, AND AMENDING DIVISION 9 “ANTENNAS” CLARIFYING REGULATIONS APPLYING TO ALL ANTENNA TYPES” All public hearings will be held in the Council Chambers, 300 Park Avenue, Falls Church, Virginia. All persons desiring to present their views on the items will be heard. Comments may also be sent to cityclerk@fallschurchva.gov. Remote participation information at www.fallschurchva.gov/publiccomment. For copies of legislation and other information, contact the City Clerk’s office at 703-248-5014 or cityclerk@fallschurchva.gov or visit www.fallschurchva.gov/councilmeetings. The City of Falls Church is committed to the letter and spirit of the Americans with Disabilities Act. To request a reasonable accommodation for any type of disability, call 703-248-5014 (TTY 711) or e-mail cityclerk@fallschurchva.gov.
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FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
JANUARY 15 - 21, 2026 | PAGE 21
This Week Around Falls Church
Thursday, Jan. 15
Maria & Marco
Tuesday, Jan. 20
Arts and Humanities Council of Falls Church Meeting
Clare & Don’s Beach Shack (130 N. Washington St.)
We the Readers: FC250 Reading Group
Life Line Screening
Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Main Level Conference Room (120 N. Virginia Ave.)
9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Dogwood Room A and B, City Hall (300 Park Ave.) Regular meeting of the Arts and Humanities Council.
Board of Equalization Hearing 6 5:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Laurel Room, City Hall (300 Park Ave., Center, Lower Level)
The Board of Equalization will consider taxpayers’ petitions regarding real estate assessments made by the City Assessor.
Thursday Night District Trivia
5:30 p.m. Live music.
8:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.
Sleepy Hollow United Methodist Church, 3435 Sleepy Hollow Road, Falls Church
How to book: (1) Call 800-324-9458 (Promo code: HABC001). (2) Visit LLSA.SOCIAL/HABC. (3) Text the word “circle” to 216-279-1607.
Sunday, Jan. 18 Listening Room Show: Valeria Stewart & Kevin Dudley (Doors Open) 6:00 p.m.
Clare & Don’s Beach Shack (130 N. Washington St.)
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Listening Room show in “The Swamp” with stories and music (ticket link posted on the event listing).
Bring your team and test your trivia chops—trivia runs every Thursday.
Monday, Jan. 19
Environmental Sustainability Council & Energy Transition Subcommittee Meeting
Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day March for Unity and Freedom and Celebration
Clare & Don’s Beach Shack (130 N. Washington St.)
7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Council Chambers/Court Room, City Hall (300 Park Ave., Main Level)
Regular Environmental Sustainability Council meeting (virtual option listed on the event page).
Friday, Jan. 16 Dan & Chuck 5:30 p.m.
Clare & Don’s Beach Shack (130 N. Washington St.) Live music.
Saturday, Jan. 17 Falls Church Farmers Market
8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
City Hall Parking Lot (300 Park Ave.) Shop the award-winning market every Saturday, year-round.
10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Tinner Hill Civil Rights Monument, South Washington Street & Tinner Hill Road, Falls Church, VA 22046
You are invited to the Annual Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day March for Unity and Freedom and Celebration. Schedule: 10:00 a.m. Assembly and sign making; 11:00 a.m. Welcome and invocation, march begins from The Falls Church (115 E. Fairfax St.); 12:00 noon complimentary luncheon; 12:30 p.m. program with guest speaker Rev. James Henry (Dulin United Methodist Church, Falls Church); 2:30 p.m. feedback on workshop and closing remarks. Registration requested; walk-ins welcome. Register at https://2026THHFKingDay.eventbrite. com. Information: tinnerhill.org.
Visit Us at Fcnp.com
7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Adults (Ages 18+). Explore the ideas behind America’s founding by reading what the Founders read, including preRevolutionary pamphlets and influential political writings.
Cancelled: City Council Work Session 7:30 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
Dogwood Room A and B, City Hall (300 Park Ave.)
City Council Work Sessions are held the first and third Monday of the month, with the exception of August and December when only one meeting is held. These meetings are open to the public and are conducted to allow Council Members to discuss upcoming legislation and policy issues; the public is not generally invited to speak. Watch the meeting at www.fallschurchva.gov/CouncilMeetings or FCCTV (Cox 11, RCN 2, Verizon 35). Video will be available after the meeting both online and on FCCTV.
Wednesday, Jan. 21 Library Board of Trustees Meeting
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Mary Riley Styles Public Library, Main Level Conference Room (120 N. Virginia Ave.)
You good?
Regular Library Board meeting.
Urban Forestry Commission Meeting 7:30 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
City Hall, Dogwood Room A and B (300 Park Ave.) Regular monthly Urban Forestry Commission meeting.
Visit us at fcnp.com Send us your events to Calendar@fcnp.com
Reach out to a friend about their mental health. Find more ways to help at SeizeTheAwkward.org
PAGE 22 | JANUARY 15 - 21, 2026
Our Man In Arlington Bill Fogarty
Did you know that...Arlington County is in a No Drone Zone? I came across this little-known fact when receiving a Facebook post from the Arlington County Police Department. This post was essentially a Public Service Announcement to remind folks that if they received a drone for Christmas, they cannot use it in Arlington. I have to say, it is kind of nice to know that we may be spared from the rising national trend of drone home deliveries from Amazon and Walmart. In last week’s column about local news options in Arlington, I started by exploring the newsletters of civic associations. This week I thought I would shift to the Arlington County government as an important option for local news sources. As I started to check out the possibilities, it turns out that the County government options are so voluminous that I have to ask this question: are there too many communication sources to choose from? If you want to keep it simple, start with the basics, with the County’s Newsletters page on its website. It can be found at www.arlingtonva.us/About-Arlington/Newsroom/Subscribe. As an aside, I know I am violating my “keep it simple” mantra by giving you such a long string of words to input. You likely can also get to their Newsletter page with a word search of “arlington county government newsletters”. Once you get to the Newsletters page, start surfing the many links. I would recommend signing up for the weekly newsletter, Inside Arlington. You may also want to sign up for Arlington Alerts (warning: this part is not very user-friendly...at least not to this user). Then there is a section leading you to a “Main County News Channel”, which opens up to an overwhelming five page list of Subscription Topics. You will find 15 categories, with more than 200 specific topics, ranging from A to
Mustang Girl’s Grappler’s Gauntlet 121 Mustang Alley Falls Church, Virginia 22043 When: Saturday, January 24th, 2026 • What: High school girl’s wrestling tournament. • Who: This is a girl’s event for wrestlers in grades 9 through 12. No 8t graders permitted. • Host School: Meridian High School 121 Mustang Alley, Falls Church 22043 Weigh-ins: Doors open at 8:00 AM. Weigh-ins begin at 9 AM with the 100# weight class. VHSL women’s weight classes of 100, 107, 114, 120, 126, 132, 138, 145, 152, 165, 185 and 235 to determine brackets. Coaches must bring the OPC weighin form. Wrestling: will begin at 10:15ish AM • Format: CHANGE IN FORMAT = This will be a bracketed tournament, double elimination. The championship rounds will be 2 min - 2 min - 2 min format. Consolation rounds will be 1-2-2. We plan to have 6 mats. Because of strong registration
FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
C ritter C orner
Z (Airport Noise Updates to Zoning Ordinances). There is even a box to check for information about pickleball possibilities in Arlington. Good luck figuring out whether you want to subscribe to any of these topics. I am realizing that I need to be more judicious in selecting my topics, as I keep getting emails from the County that I do not bother to open. It has been information overload! There is a separate section of news from the police department (which includes a lot of social media possibilities – that is how I found out about the No Drone Zone.) The Commonwealth Attorney’s office has a monthly newsletter called Justice Matters; the Sheriff’s Office has a quarterly newsletter that does not have a fancy name, but it has a number of interesting features. My basic advice is that all of this web surfing will require a good deal of trial and error (and patience). You may just get tired of going through all the clicking possibilities. If so, then you need to answer this question: Who can you depend upon to curate the news for you? This is where your Local Media resources can come to the rescue. Arlington County’s website does list some of these sources, breaking them down into four categories: Newspaper; Television; Radio; and Online Media. I will break down these categories, and the various offerings, in a future column. Meanwhile, let me end with the topic I was most interested in: traffic improvement projects. These projects affect much of our daily life in the County, with numerous projects that range from the minor (changing speed limits) to the major headaches (e.g., the Columbia Pike project). All politics is local; my concern is with the Military Road Safety Improvements. There are differing opinions about the roundabout being built at the intersection with Nellie Custis Drive. I will withhold my opinion (for now), but I do appreciate that there is information to be found on the County website about the project. Now I can only hope the project can be built on time.
numbers we will not be ab e to run a round robin tournament. Awards: Individual medals to top 3 finishers Registration & Cost: If your school intents to participate please send the letter of intent, digitally or by mail, to DSA Joanne Quirine (quirinej@ fccps.org) & Coach Jason Perkins (perkinsj.coach@fccps.org) Notice of intent due no later than Thursday January 6th, this includes the email/ physical copy of notice of intent and $50 payment in the form of a check. In early January 2026 please register your wrestlers using this track wrestling LINK no later than Saturday, January 17th, 2026. Link will be
active ASAP. Final roster adjustments should be made no later than Tuesday, January 20th, 11;59 PM.Cost: $50 per wrestler, max fee = $300 for 6 or more wrestlers per school. Fairfax County Public School wrestlers participate at no cost Concessions: The concession stand will be open throughout the tournament. A hospitality room: Will be available from 8 AM until 3 PM for coaches, officials and tournament workers only. Spectator Tickets: $10 all day ticket. Questions? Contact: Jason Perkins - assistant wrestling coach at perkinsj.coach@fccps.org
LEFT NORMA & RIGHT NOVA, pups from The Kensington Falls Church! Just because you’re not famous doesn’t mean your pet can’t be! Please send in your Critter Corner submissions to crittercorner@fcnp.com.
Engagement Announcement
The engagement is announced between Hamad Siddique, son of Jasmine and Farouk Siddique of Annandale, and Donia Hakim, daughter of Ahmad and Wasima Hakim of Falls Church. The couple will be wed in September 2026.
FALLS CHURCH NEWS-PRESS | FCNP.COM
Fa l l s C h u r c h
Business News & Notes
Grocery Outlet Bargain Market Opening Soon
A new low-priced grocer out of California, Grocery Outlet, will open its first Virginia location next month in Falls Church. It will fill the space of the former small Target at 500 S. Washington Street, and the second location in Virigina will be in Manassas. The company typically selects locations that are food deserts and have opened more than 560 stores thus far. Their products are 40%-70% less, often as overstock or closeout products. The Falls Church Chamber of Commerce will host the ribbon cutting on February 12th.
NEA Big Read Grants: Honoring the 250 of America
Applications are now open for the 2026-27 cycle of the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read, in partnership with Arts Midwest! This national program offers organizations grants of up to $20,000 to run community-wide reading programs. As our nation moves into its 250th year, the goal of this program is to honor America’s rich artistic and cultural heritage, inspire meaningful conversations, celebrate local creativity, elevate a wide variety of voices and perspectives, and build stronger connections in each community. Applications for the 2026-2027 cycle are now open and the deadline to submit an Intent to Apply is January 15, 2026. Full applications are due January 29, 2026.
Feast & Fettle Launching in Northern Virginia
A Rhode Island meal delivery service, Feast & Fettle, plans to enter the Falls Church and Arlington market this month. The company is working out the details for a distribution center in Elkridge with the state of Maryland. This is part of a planned expansion in the Mid-Atlantic region to bring chef-prepared meals to the homes of busy families. Feast & Fettle was founded by a former nanny and chef, Maggie Mulvena in 2016. It has been listed in Inc. magazine as one of 5,000 fastest-growing private companies for several years.
Favorite Dishes of 2025
Washingtonian Magazine released its list of favorite dishes, and two local restaurants were included. Bánh Mì Oi in Eden Center has been heralded as a new restaurant with some of the best Bánh Mì, but in this case, it’s a new version that gained attention. The Nashville Hot Chicken Bánh Mì made this list of favorites. Ellie Bird also made the list for the Thai Papaya Salad Steak Tartare. It was described as “one of the most original and deliciously complex versions encountered.” Read the full article at https://washingtonian.com/2025/12/30/favorite-dishes-of-the-yearin-the-dc-area-2025/?vgo_ee=1G%2Fi7i0hhWcN0uSaOyRa2BM6ZCMW6Wxl0xAtVpROMO maFvE8P7DNxRjvTbY%3D%3AvHMuG9V6TIqCl%2Bp6Kr66deZjN06KkXZ4
In Other Restaurant Coverage…..
Arlington Magazine carried an article, “15 New Restaurants to Try” and of those, 4 are in Falls Church. Fish Taco and Stratford Garden both opened in December while Honeygrow and Tatte Bakery and Café opened in October. The magazine previously ran an article, “10 Spots for a Soul-Satisfying Bowl of Ramen”, and two Falls Church restaurants were highlighted. Kyuramen on West Broad Street offers ramen that’s affordable for workers and students in a relaxed environment. Maneki Neko, which means “beckoning cat”, stands out for offering several unique versions of ramen that include lobster and one with tom yum seafood in addition to the traditional options. https://www.arlingtonmagazine.com/new-restaurants-arlington-va/?utm_ source=Arlington+Magazine&utm_campaign=0ba710ba71-AM_Weekly_1_5_2026&utm_ medium=email&utm_term=0_1ba2ab098a-0ba710ba71-150574406&ct=t(AM_ Weekly_1_5_2026)&mc_cid=0ba710ba71&mc_eid=2c285825b6 Food critic Alice Levitt gave her top picks at the end of the year in Northern Virginia Magazine, three of which are in the Little City. After citing a couple of favorites at Seoul Prime, she rested on the Crispy Bossam, a braised pork belly with pear and butternut squash. She praised Little Falls Café as one of the cutest cafes and favors the figs, prosciutto and Brie crêpe. Rounding out the field, she gave credit to Harvey’s for a wood-fired duck breast that gets it right and offers favorable seasonal sauces. Read more here: https://northernvirginiamag.com/food-and-drink/2025/12/23/northern-virginias-10-best-restaurant-dishes-of-2025/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_ medium=email&utm_content=Try%20our%20critic%20s%2010%20favorite%20dishes%20 of%202025&utm_campaign=122325Food&vgo_ee=y6MV7hD36WK6Rfadfjv%2B%2FWAn X1vhznQrFyTsPal%2BTjQNrWwbaLZ64aJjCso%3D%3AuiUWSR9x4W7axcvrI7%2Fchl7Z Vlru7AIF
Compass Coffee files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy
Compass Coffee filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Tuesday with the goal of restructuring its debts for long-term viability. Local Marines Michael Haft and Harrison Suarez founded the coffee chain upon return to DC from Afghanistan. Increasing debt, falling revenue, and growing lawsuits has resulted in the filing for bankruptcy with hope of restructuring. They have asked permission to terminate the leases of 10 of the locations which are underperforming. This includes the Lee Highway site in Falls Church.
Business News & Notes is compiled by Elise Neil Bengtson, Executive Director of the Greater Falls Church Chamber of Commerce. She may be emailed at elise@fallschurchchamber.org.
Delegate Marcus Simon’s
JANUARY 15 - 21, 2026 | PAGE 23
Richmond Report Housing affordability remains one of the most pressing challenges facing Virginians today. Whether it is first-time homebuyers struggling to enter the market, renters facing rising costs, or longtime homeowners navigating increasingly complex real estate and land-record systems, housing costs affect family stability, economic mobility, and community growth across the Commonwealth. These pressures make it especially important that Virginia’s laws governing housing, land use, and real estate transactions are fair, transparent, and responsive to modern realities. Against that backdrop, on January 14th the Virginia General Assembly gaveled into session, beginning a constitutionally limited 60-day period in which legislators introduce, debate, and vote on thousands of bills that will shape the Commonwealth for years to come. The pace is fast, the schedule demanding, and the stakes high. In just two months, the House of Delegates and Senate must address issues ranging from public safety and education to consumer protection, transparency in government, and the everyday legal frameworks Virginians rely on but rarely think about until something goes wrong. During session, we are also responding to constituent concerns, reviewing the proposed state budget, crafting budget amendments, and meeting with the advocacy and constituent groups that travel to Richmond during session. Despite the hectic schedule, the General Assembly Session offers an opportunity to make meaningful, practical improvements to Virginia law. This year, I have introduced legislation across several broad areas with a consistent goal in mind: protecting Virginians, modernizing outdated laws, and ensuring fairness and transparency. Several of my bills focus on housing, land records, and real estate transactions. One proposal requires settlement agents to notify homebuyers of their right to remove unlawful restrictive covenants discovered during a title search, helping address the lingering effects of discriminatory language in property records. Other bills strengthen protections against real estate fraud by improving identity verification for notarizations, requiring training for notaries on fraud and financial exploitation, and establishing property alert notification systems so homeowners are notified when documents affecting their property are recorded. I have also introduced measures to clarify recording and indexing fees for complex deeds and to protect property owners correcting fraudulent filings from unnecessary taxes. Consumer protection and access to justice are another major focus. I am carrying legislation to establish the Uniform Consumer Debt Default Judgments Act, which would ensure that default judgments in consumer debt cases are entered only after clear notice and specific disclosures to the consumer. Additional bills protect wages by clarifying garnishment exemptions in bankruptcy and modernize Virginia’s class action procedures to allow
consumers harmed by unlawful practices to seek relief collectively. Together, these bills aim to level the playing field between individuals and large institutions. Transparency and accountability in government are essential to public trust. I have introduced multiple bills to improve the enforcement of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act by clarifying court procedures and ensuring that penalties for violations are applied fairly and with appropriate consideration of good faith reliance on legal guidance. I am also working on legislation to strengthen election administration by establishing clear standards and procedures for the removal of electoral board members and registrars when serious failures of duty occur. I’ve reintroduced a bill to authorize localities to adopt systems of public campaign financing for local offices, giving communities another tool to encourage participation and encourage campaign finance reform. In the same accountability vein, I have legislation to establish better oversight for recovery residences to protect residents and improve transparency. It requires the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) to create minimum certification standards and regulate credentialing agencies. It also prevents conflicts of interest in credentialing while expanding data reporting and public transparency. Public safety legislation this session includes updates to Virginia law addressing unserialized firearms and plastic firearms that evade standard detection methods. This “ghost gun” bill closes gaps in existing law while providing delayed effective dates to allow for education and compliance. On education, I have a bill requiring public colleges and universities to provide reasonable accommodation for students’ religious beliefs and practices. Other proposals modernize graduation requirements by ensuring students completing International Baccalaureate programs are not subjected to redundant requirements and by allowing appropriate waivers for students with disabilities. I have also introduced a bill to abolish the common law crime of suicide in Virginia. Although suicide is not punished under current law, its continued classification as a crime adds stigma and can compound the pain experienced by individuals and families during moments of profound crisis. While some of these bills may sound familiar because I have introduced them before, some are new ideas. The next several weeks will move quickly as we work to review all the bills introduced before the crossover deadline in February. In the meantime, I will continue listening to constituents, working with colleagues, and focusing on practical solutions that improve the lives of Virginians. This week marks the beginning of that work. You can view my full legislative agenda online at lis.virginia.gov.
PAGE 24 | JANUARY 15 - 21, 2026
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