On a chilly, rainy Wednesday morning, sleepy-eyed teenagers hopping off school buses at Poolesville High School were greeted with Krispy Kreme donuts, cheers and claps from local elected officials, parents, PTSA members and Principal Mark Carothers as they entered their newly expanded school for the first time.
“It’s a great day for our students. It’s a great day for our staff,” Carothers said as he welcomed students back from spring break while standing under an archway of balloons in the school’s colors of gold, black and white outside the school’s entrance.
In March the first phase of a $64.2 million construction project to modernize and renovate the high school was completed, adding more than 140,000 square feet of new space as well as a new school bus loop and walkways that connect the campus’s buildings.
The second phase, which is now underway, involves a 68,000-square-foot renovation of the existing school, including the construction of a new cafeteria and gymnasium. Construction is expected to be completed by the 2025-2026 school year, according to school officials. Once completed, the school will have a core capacity of 1,800 students.
During the construction of the first phase, which began in June 2022, students attended classes in the existing school and portables. On Tuesday, teachers and staff packed up their belongings and headed to new classrooms and gathering spaces. A day later, students were welcomed back to a new facility.
Originally built in 1953, the school at 17501 W. Willard Road is home to four magnet programs– Global Ecology, Humanities, Independent Studies Program and Science, Math and Computer Science–and is regularly a top-ranked high school in the state. Recently the high school boasted a 99.4% graduation rate for the 2022-2023 school year.
The original school was expanded over multiple phases up to 2009, which resulted in “a complex with buildings ill-suited for the school’s progressive hybrid magnet programs,” according to the Montgomery County Public Schools project website.
“It’s a very old school and it has taken a very long time,” County Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe told MoCo360 at the welcome celebration, noting that the community has advocated for many years for updating the school.
Macy Carman-Goeke, an architect at VMDO Architects who helped design the new school, said the design group focused on creating a sustainable, high-performing building. She said classrooms have access to large windows and the building has a system that allows fresh air to sweep into the school and high-efficiency HVAC systems.
The new space also boasts several common areas for students to meet, collaborative learning spaces and four central gathering hubs for each of the school’s magnet houses.
The hubs are “intended to be [students’] home within this very large school,” Carman-Goeke said. “It has a space where students can sit, they can eat their lunch, there’s workstations and that helps break down a big school into smaller pieces.”
There’s also a new college and career center as well as a fine arts wing, which are two of Carother’s favorite additions. “They feel top-notch,” he said. “And a lot of it is because they’re fantastic on their own, but they’re just such a far cry from what we have been working in … the gap is tremendous.”
According to Carothers, the school was using 14 portables during the construction. With all students back in the school building, five portables will remain to be used for storage and additional office space, he said.
During the construction, parents and students were concerned about “overpowering odors” from roof tarring fumes that made students feel nauseous, light-headed and dizzy. In February 2023, classes even ended early one day school day due to the strong tarring fumes
Andrea Stokes, president of the Poolesville High School PTSA, noted at Wednesday’s ceremony that “the kids have been really patient, and the staff as well.”
Stokes said her son, an 11th grader in Poolesville’s Independent Studies Program, was excited to explore the new building. For her part, she’s looking forward to the completion of the second phase of the construction.
“The old cafeteria could not hold all the kids. Kids were eating in the hallways, it was just sort of chaos,” Stokes said. “But the new cafeteria will have not only a huge indoor space but also an outdoor patio which I’m excited about.”
Carothers said he was excited for the students to experience the new school building, especially for seniors who spent their freshman year learning virtually and their sophomore and junior years in the “middle of construction.”
“I’ve said for years that as soon as this process started that it is going to be awesome to have a physical environment that matches the amazingly high level of teaching and learning going on in the building,” Carothers said.