The new Patterson Mill Middle/High School in Emmorton is more than halfway completed, and with Harford County Public Schools facing a serious problem with overcrowding, the school is expected to ease the rolls at many neighboring schools.
“Maryland is one of the fastest growing states in the country. Now that BRAC is coming, that adds to the pressure,” said Harford County Public School superintendent Jackie Haas of Ground was broken last year on the $59 million project, and the school is expected to open in the fall of 2007, welcoming 900 high school and 700 middle school students onto the 88-acre campus.
“It?s on schedule and on budget,” said Harford County Public Schools spokesman Don Morrison. The two structures of the two-story school structure already has a roof, and some parts of the building are already showing brick on the exterior. At present, work is progressing on door and window frames, duct work, mechanical and electrical systems, excavation of site utilities and interior masonry walls.
The 1,600 seat capacity school will draw students from an attendence area that is marked to the south by Singer Road, north by west Ring factory road, slightly west of Route 24 and just east of Route 924. “It?s a very densley populated area and it doesn?t take a lot to fill up a school,” Morrison said.
That will relieve overcrowding at Fallston Middle/High, Southampton Middle, C. Milton Wright High, Bel Air Middle/High, Aberdeen Middle/High, and Edgewood Middle/High, school officials say. They say enrollment in all of the county?s secondary schools will be at or below capacity when Patterson Mill opens.
Eventually, a separate middle school will be constructed at Patterson Mill, and the existing building will become a 1,600-seat high school.
