June 5 - 11, 2025
Falls Church, Virginia • w w w . fc n p . c o m • Free
Founded 1991 • Vol. XXXV N o . 17
The City of Falls Church’s Independent, Locally-Owned Newspaper of Record, Serving N. Virginia
Economy’s Major Dip Already Underway
A WHOLE NEW WORLD
Trump Layoffs’ Impact Only Starting to Be Felt by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
This Tuesday’s meeting of the Falls Church Economic Development Authority ended on a downer note when the region’s overriding issue of the year was verbalized. It had to do with the impact so far on the local economy and businesses of the federal job layoffs imposed by the Trump administration since the inauguration of Trump to a second term just over four months ago. No one at the meeting chaired by former City Council member Ross Litkenhous had any solid data to report, but some anecdotal evidence was not good. One board member said that she’d heard from a couple of local restaurant owners that their business is way down, especially their lunch business. While some of that may be due to the return to their business offices of folks who live here, it was conceded that most of it is undoubtedly due to penny pinching owing to the Trump layoffs, and the worst of it has hardly yet arrived. “The couple of restaurateurs I’ve talked to say their lunch business is off a cliff,” said Litkenhous. While Falls Church has the highest percentage in the region of its adult population working (or working until a couple months ago) for the federal government (though only 2,016 souls, constituting 16.4 percent of the total in the workforce
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RUNNING THROUGH June 15 at the Creative Cauldron’s impressive new digs on Broad Street is an energetic and colorful production of Disney’s Aladdin DLE (as in ‘dual language edition,’ meaning the epic storyline can be followed in both English and Spanish.) See the NewsPress review of the musical on Page 8 of this edition. (Photo: Falls Church News-Press)
Dr. Noonan Reflects on 8 Years at F.C. Schools’ Helm
by Nicholas F. Benton
Falls Church News-Press
Few people in the storied history of the City of Falls Church have made such an important impact on the Little City in the course of only an eight year history as retiring Falls Church City Pubic Schools Superintendent Dr. Peter Noonan. Noonan will be departing his post here on the last day of this month, but don’t think you’ve seen or heard the last of him. At only 57, the rooted City resident (with a daughter still
in the school system here that he’s contributed so much to) now parked in the Tollgate part of town, will be seeking a lot of challenges ahead and after a vacation and hiatus will be going after them. He does not rule out a run at public office at some point, he told the News-Press in an exclusive interview this week. Noonan came to Falls Church at a point when talk of a new high school was seen mostly as “pie in the sky,” when the existing school sported a different name, before any of the
tough decisions associated with the Covid-19 epidemic were thought about at all, before collective bargaining was ever seriously contemplated, and before the City’s schools, while always touted as excellent, advanced to become one of only three school divisions in the entire nation to be certified with a full pre-school through 12th grade International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum. Though educators are notorious for avoiding comparisons with their professional colleagues, it is cannot go with-
out noting that Meridian High School has been ranked No. 1 in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia for seven years running by Niche.com, a website set up to help students and their families find and apply to the best schools they can. In his departing essay published in this week’s edition of the News-Press, Noonan credits the commitment of the entire community for the successes of its schools. “All of these achievements were made pos-
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