001So I think we can start the recording. Okay. So, Ms. Thank you so much. The time is now 5.33 p.m. Good evening and welcome to the April 17, 2025 special virtual boundary public hearing. I'm Jonathan Briggs, Vice Chairman of the Prince George's County Board of Education. Thank you all for joining us. And please note that Spanish interpretation services are available during this evening's meeting. To access this feature, click the globe icon at the bottom of the screen. Ms. Zalika. Deadly, please make this announcement in Spanish. Los resemos interpretación en español. En cuentra en la parte baja. De esta pant taya. Mr. Briggs, let me clarify. Ms. Lopez I am not in the interpretation room So do you want me to just stay out here or how do you want to move forward? This is Suleika.
002Yes. Okay. Is that Ms. Suleka Okay. I won't be able to hear you guys anymore, Mr. Brigg, so you can start and I'll just do the interpretation. All right. Thank you. Okay, thank you so much, Ms. Dudley. All right. You're welcome. Unable to observe now. The meeting is being recorded and can be accessed later on the PGCPS YouTube channel. In meeting with the board's rules of procedure section for internet meetings, the internet standing rules are as follows. Members shall keep their video on and remain on camera at all times, keep their microphones on and mute until recognized by the chairman. Raise their hand icon and wait to be recognized by the chairman. Unmute their microphone to speak and mute it when done speaking. Members may speak twice on any motion for two minutes each time.
003Failure to adhere to the internet standing rules will result in the member being removed until the member can rejoin when the rules can be adhered to. Before we proceed, the chairman reminds everyone to adjust their wireless communication devices to prevent technical interference with the meeting's recording. Please ensure all microphones are muted until the chairman grants you the floor. The chairman reminds all board members to ensure their microphones are turned on while speaking for recording purposes. Lastly, the chairman wishes to inform the public that the registration link for tonight's meeting will remain open until 545 p.m. To accommodate additional comments. In accordance with policy 8345, public comment, the public may register on site for public hearings until notified that the testimony registration form is closed. The link can be found on the board's webpage and the
004board's social media platforms. I'm now going to move on to roll call. Ms. Mcmillan, please call the roll. Dr. Anderfel? Ms. Boozer Struther. Present. Mr. Briggs. Ms. Brown. Present. Ms. Goines McCants. Mr. Jango. Dr. Moss. Ms. Walker. Present. Mr. Jackson. Great. We don't need a quorum, so thank you so much for making that roll call. We're now going to move on to tonight's presentation. So tonight's public hearing is being conducted exclusively to gather public input on the boundary proposal presented by the superintendent. The Board of Education thanks you for participating in this public hearing to share your thoughts on the boundary proposal. Through community involvement, we strive to address the needs of our students and staff in Prince George's County Public Schools through a collaborative approach. So I recognize Superintendent House to provide a brief
005overview outlining the boundary proposal. Thank you, Vice Chair Briggs. We appreciate it. It's great to see everyone here this evening. I'd like to turn things over to our chief of accountability Dr. Doug Strader, and Doug will give that overview for us. All right. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us this Thursday evening. We again are focusing on the Brandywine School District. I would like to introduce Ms. Brianna McCarter. She's the supervisor over the boundary department that our office utilizes anyway and making these decisions and making our public aware what it is that we're doing in the future regarding our boundaries. Also, Sharaska Coleman, Dr. Coleman is with us uh to Talk about some of the planning issues. So I will now turn the presentation over to Supervisor Rihanna McCarter to lead us through
006the presentation and we'll follow up with Dr. Coleman if he has any Comments. So Rihanna, I'll turn it over to you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Presentation. Okay, and I do apologize for the sniffles. Okay. So again, we are focused this evening on the Brandywine area reorganization plan These are the major topics that we'll cover in this brief presentation. We're going to start with a look at the housing in the Brandywine area. I think most people are aware that this is an area of high residential growth in the county. And over the last 10 years, approximately 1,600 single family and townhomes have been built As well as a 270 unit apartment building. Looking to the future. The next seven to 10 years.
007We are anticipating another 1,400 single family and townhomes and 1300 multifamily units to be constructed. It's important to note that not every home will produce a school-aged child. And multifamily units in particular, we have not seen a high yield of students residing in that housing type. This graph shows the enrollment trend for the attendance areas of Baden Elementary, Brandywine Elementary, and Gwen Park Middle School. And again, we see the result of that housing growth and we've observed an increase in the local school enrollment, particularly at Brandywine Elementary and Gwen Park Middle School. They've been the primary recipients of the enrollment growth. So this school year The enrollment at Brandywine Elementary It surged to an unmanageable level. And the pre-kindergarten students that live in the Brandywine Elementary area, they already are assigned to Baden Elementary School.
008And they've attended Baden for pre-kindergarten for many years. And so in order to ameliorate the overcrowding at Brandywine. A decision was made to relocate the kindergarten classes from Brandywine Elementary to Baden Elementary. And based on our projected enrollment. Kindergarten, the Brandywine kindergarten will need to remain housed at Baden. For school year 25, 26 and 2627. Students will attend in the Brandywine attendance area will attend Brandywine the Brandy Run Elementary building for first through fifth grades. During those years. As many of you know, the Brandywine area was selected to receive a new K-8 facility through the Blueprint to schools program. And this selection was based on the aging school facilities in the area, as well as that enrollment growth that we Looked at previously. When it was first envisioned, the plan was to build a 2000
009seat capacity K-8 school that would combine gwen park middle Baden Elementary and Bradywine Elementary into a single facility. However, several years later. Coming into 2024. The budget realities of the blueprint program materialized And rising costs resulted in square footage reductions for that entire package across that package of eight schools. Including the Brandywine building. So as part of that budget reconciliation. The capacity of the Brandywine Academy will have capacity of around 1,500 seats. And given that when we see the enrollment at 1,650 students, that's our projected pre-K enrollment for those three schools. But given that we don't want to put schools up to capacity on day one. We want to allow room for growth. We're looking at an approximately 300 seat deficit upon opening that building. And so the result of that is that that academy
010building will not be able to consolidate all three of the facilities as originally what was originally proposed. So, you know, the district had to shift gears to deal with that reality. And various configurations were reviewed that would still give all students access at some point to the new academy. And ultimately, it was determined that it made sense to create a lower and upper school concept. And that would keep the Brandywine Elementary building in use. And students from Baden and Brandywine attendance area would attend the Brandywine building for grades pre-K through second And then grades three through eighth would go to the new academy. Here is the… a proposed attendance area for the Brandywine building. And it essentially just combines the current attendance areas of Brandywine Elementary and Baden Elementary into one single unified boundary and
011again pre-K through second would be housed at that building. Baden Elementary building would be surplus for other uses. For this slide shows the boundary for the sixth through eighth grade. So there won't be any change in the boundary for grades six through eight. Students will to feed our schools, Marlton, Mattapani rosaryville will remain feeders. And when the new facility opens, students will move from the Gwen Park Middle School building into the new facility, but the attendance area itself remains unchanged. Just briefly, Brandywine Elementary, up some upgrades, recent upgrades that have been put in place, the HVAC system. Playground and Paint. Transportation, of course, is a critical factor. And with this plan. Transportation believes they can improve some route efficiency. There will be fewer stops because what we're going from three schools to two. So there'll
012be some consolidation of routes and stops. There's no anticipated instructional impact. It's the same curriculum. At the facility, so no change there. Here's some background information about curriculum. And the creative arts and pro offerings that are available, early childhood education. I'm going through this quickly. I will share in just a second where this presentation is posted online. So right now we're at the April 27th, April 17th public hearing and our next event is the board vote, which will happen on April, Thursday, April 24th. Again, there's a website. This presentation is posted on the Boundary webpage. And our email is also available if there are any questions, concerns, or comments. That anyone would like to share. And that concludes the presentation. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Rihanna. We really appreciate the insight and information. And for the
013last portion of the presentation, I'd like to flip it over to Dr. Sharaska Coleman, our Chief Operating Officer, is going to share Last couple pieces of the puzzle here. Dr. Coleman. Thank you so much, Superintendent House. As Ms. Mccarter shared the new Brandywine three through eighth grade and the new Brandywine pre-K through two Early Education Campus will open in fall of 2027. A major component of our educational facilities master plan is consolidating older, smaller facilities into modern buildings wherever possible. As such, we will be consolidating the student population from Gwynn Park Middle School and Baden Elementary School, as stated, while we keep the current Brandywine Elementary School. Gwen Park Middle School will be demolished because that is the site location of the new Brandywine, excuse me. Third through eight building, the new Brandywine third through
014eight building. And we are still making a determination of the future status of Baden Elementary School, but it will likely be surplused back to the county government. As you may be aware, Baden Elementary School has an adjoining public library that will likely stay in In operation and we have no future determined use for Baden Elementary School beyond that. So we will likely make the decision to surplus that building back to the county so that it can maintain that service for the community. With that, I will turn it back over to Superintendent House. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Coleman and uh Vice Chair Briggs, that pretty much sums up our presentation for the evening so we'll Pass things back over to you. Okay, thank you so much, Superintendent House and team. Board members want
015to make a space for any questions you may have. In this interim period. See the hand from board member Walker. Thank you so much. I just wanted to thank the team for their continued communications by way of this program. I know the shift. Really had a lot of questions from District 9, specifically those that were impacted and you all made time to make sure that we over communicated by way of in-person meetings as well as virtual meetings. So I just wanted to say thank you on behalf of District 9. I know that continued questions will come, but I do appreciate in advance you all getting back so that we could get that back to the community. And I look forward to continuing to participate in the design meetings and making sure that we have the
016input from the community. Just a thanks from a district nine perspective, and we'll continue to work together to make sure that this is implemented effectively and successfully. All right. Thank you so much, Board Member Walker Any other questions? Okay. Seeing no hands, we're going to move to adjournment because there are no public commenters for this evening. So there being no public comments, the time is now 549 p.m. And the April 17, 2025 special virtual boundary public hearing is adjourned. Thank you all for watching and joining and hope you have a good evening. Well.