At Mount Airy Middle School, 1 in 3 students learns in portable classrooms every day, and fed-up parents are demanding the school be renovated and expanded.
But Mount Airy?s additions renovations are not even scheduled to begin for at least another eight years.
For their part, parents have deluged the school board with requests to speed the process at the 50-year-old school, which has never undergone major renovation.
“I was under the impression that no matter where we lived in Carroll County that the education provided for the children was very good. … Unfortunately, I was wrong,” Tara Sherwin, a Mount Airy mother of three, said in an e-mail to the board. “Our move to Mount Airy from Sykesville will prove to have a devastating effect on their education unless you address the needs of Mount Airy students.”
More than 600 students attend the school designed for 510. Its 220sixth-graders have class in 10 portable classrooms, officials said.
Some parents call safety the biggest concern because intruders could enter the portables.
“As an educator who taught for years in a portable classroom, I can tell you that I worried every day that someone would enter the classroom and harm my students,” said Jennifer Seidel, a teacher of 16 years whose two children will soon enter Mount Airy Middle. “There were a lot of nights when I lost sleep, wondering how I would protect my students.”
But school officials say the school has not been ignored, and just because parents in Mount Airy are more vocal than others does not mean they deserve more funds.
“We?ve not done the modernization that the community would like, but they?re in line with all the other schools,” Assistant Superintendent Steve Guthrie said.
WHAT?S NEXT
The Carroll school board takes up construction projects at its next meeting, Sept. 26.
