Despite Reduced Budgets, Many Students Will Return To New or Restored Facilities

Higher Test Scores Among Counties' Goals

Even with tighter public school budgets, Southern Maryland students and their parents can anticipate new initiatives, construction projects and curriculum changes when schools reopen this week and next.

Students in St. Mary's and Calvert counties return to class Wednesday; Charles County students start Aug. 25. School officials in the three counties say they are working to increase state standardized test scores, launch safe-driving initiatives in high schools and offer intense science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) classes.

Some students will arrive for their first day at new or renovated schools. Charles is opening its 21st elementary school, Mary B. Neal Elementary on Piney Church Road in Waldorf. Students decided in the spring that the school's mascot should be a blue crab, so on Wednesday they will be greeted by Pinch, the furry blue mascot of the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs baseball team.

"It's all ready to go," Charles School Superintendent James E. Richmond said of the new building, which can accommodate 760 students and will relieve crowding at other schools.

Charles is also building additions or renovating at four elementary schools that lost classroom space when the county implemented full-day kindergarten.

Calvert is finishing construction of Barstow Elementary School on Williams Road in Prince Frederick. The school's opening has been delayed until at least November, so Barstow students will temporarily attend classes in trailers at Calvert Elementary. Calvert is also starting construction of a Calvert Middle School building. Its students will not have to be relocated during the project because they'll continue to go to the existing school.

In St. Mary's County, Leonardtown Elementary School has reopened after two years of renovations that put students in trailers outside Benjamin Banneker Elementary School in Loveville. "If you didn't know it was renovated, you would think it's a brand-new school," Principal Denise M. Eichel said.

St. Mary's is also continuing construction on its first new school since 1980, Evergreen Elementary, in the Wildewood development in California. The $20 million "green" facility is expected to open for the 2009-10 school year.

Southern Maryland schools are also launching initiatives. Calvert received a nearly $100,000 grant from the Maryland Department of Education for STEM classes, in which teachers offer hands-on experiments, real-life examples and guest speakers who work in related fields.

Aspects of the program will be integrated into all classes, but Calvert officials will focus on Barstow and Calvert elementary schools, Calvert Middle, Calvert High and the Calvert Career Center. The county also plans to open a STEM Academy at Calvert School within a few years.

Charles and St. Mary's schools have STEM programs, and superintendents in the counties said they have gotten students interested in math and science at an early age. In Charles, middle school students learn about rocketry from experts at the Naval Surface Warfare Center. St. Mary's students go on tours of the Patuxent Naval Air Station in Lexington Park and learn about aerospace engineering.

St. Mary's has 270 students in STEM classes and plans to expand the program to Chesapeake Public Charter School and additional grade levels at the current schools offering the classes.