Board Says Yes to Building new High School

Despite offering students no parking and no athletic fields, the Anne Arundel County School Board Of Education and Superintendent Kevin Maxwell unanimously agreed Wednesday to support Feasibility Study Replacement Plan B for Severna Park High School.  

Under the plan, the $1 million artificial turf field, installed in 2008, and surrounding fields would be demolished. As for the stadium's bleachers and Andy Borland Field House, Bob Mosier, public information officer for the Board of Education, said they are looking at how to salvage and hold these structures for use again once the new building is complete. The press box and lights would also be a casualty of the construction and not salvaged.

The new school would then be built on the athletic fields, while students would continue to attend school in the old building during construction.  Under Plan B, "The location of the stadium and school basically flips," said Mosier.

The total time for construction would be 3 and a half years.  However, students would be able to use the new school building in approximately 2 years and 3 months.  The new building would be 333,735 square-feet (the current building is 296,191-square-feet).  The estimated construction cost is $98,931,568. 

Over the 40 year life cycle of the building, the estimated cost is $232,360,136.  This amount includes the initial construction costs and estimates amounts that would be spent to maintain and care for the building (fuel, utilities, paint, roof, boiler, etc).  The initial construction costs for Replacement Plan B are approximately $5 million less than the Replacement Plan A which keeps the stadium in it's current location.

For a comparison of all of the options, look at the Board Exhibit - Severna Park High School Feasibility Study, page 9 of the 131 page document:   http://www.boarddocs.com/mabe/aacps/Board.nsf/files/8DJM6A597E50/$file/Board%20Exhibit%20-%20Severna%20Park%20High%20School%20Feasibility%20Study%20.pdf 

The Feasibility Committee found that the Replacement Plan B has the lowest cost, the shortest construction time and impacts students the least out of all the options that were presented.  The students, staff and community will be impacted by the lack of parking at the school during construction as well as the lack of fields for athletic programs.

The next step is for the Board (http://aacps.org ) to vote on the 2012 budget on Feb. 9 at 7 p.m.  The current request is for $3.6 million to design and do the preliminary geo-technical and environmental research for the new school.

After this meeting, the Board will submit their budget to County Executive, John R. Leopold (http://www.aacounty.org/CountyExec/index.cfm ) who has until April 15 to decide whether to fund all, some, or none of this project. 

The County Executive then presents his recommendation to the County Council (http://www.aacounty.org/CountyCouncil/index.cfm ).  The County Council has from April 15 to May 31 to make their decision regarding funding the construction.