Update on 3/9/2018: The high school #13 was chosen to be at the Mission Road during 3/8/2018 board meeting.
Last week, the HCPSS board of education has officially rejected two potential sites ( one is near Rockburn Park and the other is near Mission road (with an active quarry there) for consideration of high school 13. With the current situation, the originally conceived to be opened in 2022 High School 13 seems far from settled. It seems that it will take much longer to find a suitable site for this school. Unless we select the site, we will not be able to get the Maryland state funding for this construction.
Considering the huge impact generated by last year (2017) HCPSS school redistricting, the high school #13 is at least a consensus for many county residents and politicians. In reality, the site selection should start much earlier before this crisis.
This is actually not the only issue of high school 13. We are facing a problem of long term planning for high schools. We need an immediate high school 13 to relieve the overcrowding issue in several high schools. We need high school 14 very soon to accommodate our annual student growth ( by 1000 a year at least).
If I am elected as board member this November of 2018, I will keep new school constructions on the board agenda all the time. We need at least focus on the following issues:
- Looking at different school models, for example, expanding existing old schools, building larger schools or smaller schools depending on the land purchase situation.
- Purchase/reserve future school site(land) now with consideration of population growth. If we only purchase land when needed, the land price will be much higher at the time. With a potential site determined earlier, it will also help guide future county development.
I am looking forward to hearing from you as well.