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Wednesday, December 2, 2020

New K-8 School Town Hall - Dec. 2, 2020

(Click on the image for the video)
  •  K-8 School overview and design starts at 25 minutes.
  • Q&A starts at 41 minutes.
Notes on the meeting thanks to Hazel Robinson, TSACA President:

  • The Town Hall meeting was held on Wednesday, December 2, 2020, from 7 – 8 pm.  It was led by Mr. Jason Washington, Director, Public-Private Partnerships Program, Prince George's County Public Schools along with three other persons (I did not get their names and company). Also attending at the meeting were also School Board members Edward Burroughs, District 8 and Sonya Williams, District 9. There was approximately 50 people attending.
  • Our unnamed school, but known as K-8 southern school will be bordered by Fort Washington Road to the West, Swan Creek Road to the north and Asbury Drive to the East. The main entrance to the school will be on Fort Washington Road, and a secondary entrance off of Swan Creek Road. The school will be designed so that school buses will come on to the school property without blocking Fort Washington Road.
  • The school will hold 2,000 students (800 K-5 students & 1200 6-8 students) and will be built by July 15, 2023. They will start clearing the site this July 2021.  The $30 million a year maintenance agreement takes effect between the years 2023-2053. They will take a full two years for construction. Right now, the school board is in exclusive negotiation period with the builder or P3 Team which will last until mid-January and they are negotiation some areas that were previously locked. They did admit that there is standing water on the property that they would have to address through the storm water management.  They gave me the impression that this was not a show- stopper.
  • You can find the hearing and PowerPoint presentation of the townhall on www.pgcpsschoolsnow.com.  They will be uploaded by December 31, 2020.  The County & School Board will have a townhall meeting every other month and our next meeting will be in February 2021, date unknown.  They will be hosting other townhall meetings for the other schools that they plan to build, and you are welcome to attend those.
  • Participants could submit questions.  Not all questions were answered last night but will be answered and placed on the website.
The questions that were answered last night:
  1. What was the reason for this meeting? To educate and inform the public where we are with the building of the school.
  2. Are environmental impact studies being done? Yes, and additional environmental impact studies will be done along the way.
  3. Why is the school only being identified as a K-8 school in the southern area? Because the school has not be named, and they wanted to be general and just give a geographic location.
  4. What is the mitigation strategy for traffic? There is none. They mentioned the two entrances: Fort Washington Road and Swan Creek to the school