In 1958, the Fairfax County School Board voted to reorganize the public school system and establish the county’s first intermediate schools. Traditionally, students in grades 1-7 attended elementary schools, and students in grades 8-12 attended high schools. Intermediate schools were created to ease the transition from elementary school to high school, and provide students with a specialized program of study. In the summer of 1958, the School Board decided to use the newly constructed Parklawn Elementary School building as the pilot site for the first intermediate school. When schools opened in the fall of 1958, the student body at Parklawn was comprised of only 7th and 8th graders. The curriculum included English, history, geography, health, physical education, mathematics, science, foreign languages, music, art, home economics, band, and industrial arts. The pilot program proved so successful that Fairfax County Public Schools administrators embarked on an ambitious plan to open eight more intermediate schools during the 1960-61 school year. Glasgow Intermediate School was organized before all the others, during the 1959-60 school year, and operated out of the pilot Parklawn School site. Our first principal was Herman B. Lloyd. In the fall of 1960, when the other intermediate schools opened, Glasgow Intermediate School's building was still under construction. Classes were held at Parklawn and Falls Church High School until the spring of 1961 when the building was ready for occupancy. Early in the intermediate school planning process, it was decided that each school would be named for a famous author or poet. Our school was officially named Ellen Glasgow Intermediate School by the School Board in May 1959. In the 1990s, all intermediate schools in Fairfax County were renamed as middle schools.

Our Namesake

How did the Women’s Suffrage Movement influence the works of Ellen Glasgow?