Burke Alternative Middle School

Here follows a history of the school as published on the Fairfax County Public Schools website:

What's in a Name?
Learn about the origin of our school's name in this video produced for Fairfax County Public Schools’ cable television channel Red Apple 21:

Burke School, a middle school where children receive special education services, was named for the community of Burke. The community takes its name from Silas Burke, a 19th century farmer, slaveholder, railroad company director, sheriff, and chief justice of the Fairfax County court. Silas Burke was born in 1796 in Prince William County, Virginia. In the mid-1820s, he married Hannah Coffer and built a home which he named Woodbury near Pohick Creek. In the late 1840s, Silas Burke gave land north of Woodbury to the Orange and Alexandria Railroad Company for a right-of-way. After his death in 1854, a train station was constructed along Burke’s portion of the right-of-way. Over the years, Burke’s Station, as it was known, became the center of a thriving rural village. After the founding of Fairfax County Public Schools in 1870, area children attended one-room schoolhouses in the outlying communities of Ashford and Belle Aire, until population growth necessitated the opening of a school in the village. In the early 1900s, the former train depot was repurposed for use as a school. It was replaced by a two-room school in 1912, which still stands today. During the Great Depression, Fairfax County Public Schools obtained grant funding from the Federal Government’s Public Works Administration, or P.W.A., to construct a new school in Burke. Burke Elementary School opened during the 1939-1940 school year and closed in 1983, at which point the students were transferred to Cherry Run Elementary School. Shortly thereafter, the building was repurposed as the school we know today.