On Sept. 24, Fabio Zulu­aga, the Region 2 Assis­tant Super­in­ten­dent announced that “[Fair­fax County Public Schools] will not be using the [Justice] park for park­ing spaces” in an email sent out to all members of the Justice High School community.

The announce­ment to spare a section of Justice Park comes after months of protests and demon­stra­tions from Justice High School’s neigh­bor­ing commu­nity. The FCPS deci­sion is a big win for resi­dents who passion­ately expressed their concerns about a range of issues includ­ing climate and socioe­co­nomic equity and erasure of the racial history of the park.

Resi­dents were primar­ily concerned with access to green space. Accord­ing to the Fair­fax County Park Author­ity (FCPA), the amount of park­land in the Justice district  is less than other areas of the county, despite the popu­la­tion density being greater. 

Lydia Lawrence, an envi­ron­men­tal justice advo­cate and a vocal advo­cate against paving over the park , explained her concern surround­ing the park’s preservation. 

“Once [new endeav­ors are devel­oped over] green­spaces , it is very rare that we get [those green­spaces] back,” said Lawrence. 

The paving of the park would further decrease access to park­land for local resi­dents, forc­ing them to drive outside the plan­ning district for recre­ational purposes, stated a flyer for the “Justice for Justice Park” rally held on Sept 18. 

Many partic­i­pants of the rally were deter­mined to preserve the park for personal reasons as well. The park holds senti­men­tal value to many people within the commu­nity as it has been an inte­gral loca­tion of many fami­lies’ tradi­tions. This is one of the major reasons saving the park is a prior­ity for many members of the Justice community. 

“We come to the park every day. Our kids play here and we don’t want it to change,” said local father Rubén Gómez. 

Demon­stra­tors also voiced concern over what they feel is the over­looked racial history of Justice Park. The park was built on land orig­i­nally owned by African-Amer­i­can fami­lies, who were conse­quently displaced from their homes by the FCPA, accord­ing to a study by Edwin B. Hender­son II, an FCPS school board member and Civil Rights histo­rian at the Hender­son house. It is unclear whether Fair­fax County plans to commem­o­rate this history of the park in any way. 

The initial deci­sion to pave over the park was FCPS’ attempt to combat over­crowd­ing at Justice High School. The plan is to build an expan­sion in the back park­ing lot, adja­cent to the foot­ball field. To compen­sate for the amount of park­ing spots lost by this expan­sion, FCPS planned to use a portion of the Justice Park for a park­ing lot. Two of the 17 acres of the park would have been paved over in order to make this possi­ble. FCPS has not yet announced an alter­nate plan. 

Students are concerned about where the addi­tional park­ing will be after the follow through of the expan­sion. This confu­sion signi­fies a lack of commu­ni­ca­tion between FCPS and the students of Justice High School itself. Justice students have expressed their concern with the over­crowd­ing of Justice and their opin­ions on the consid­er­a­tion of a renovation. 

“I think [no longer paving over the park] was the wrong deci­sion, espe­cially seeing how Justice is already 30% over capac­ity during a pandemic. [FCPS] should use the park because it’s largely unused other than the tennis courts and soft­ball fields,” said senior Daniel Brock.

As a varsity soft­ball player who regu­larly uses the park, junior Anna Smith expressed frus­tra­tion over the FCPS deci­sion and wonders what the county will do to solve the over­crowd­ing at Justice High School. 

“I’ve heard from many members in the surround­ing neigh­bor­hood that they wish to use this plot of land and keep it as a park, yet it is hardly taken care of and, in my opin­ion, does­n’t seem worth the effort. Justice is an extremely over­crowded school. [The over­crowd­ing] is so severe that it’s gotten to the point where we are not given lock­ers anymore,” said Smith.

While there has been some discus­sion of how the park­ing prob­lem will be resolved, at time of publi­ca­tion, FCPS has not offered a clear alter­na­tive solu­tion for the park­ing situ­a­tion. With the school popu­la­tion expected to continue to expo­nen­tially increase, many are worried that the situ­a­tion will only continue to worsen with­out a clear resolution.