The only Harford County school exclusive to special education students is in the preliminary stages of changing locations, officials said.
The John Archer building is about 36 years old and serves the “profoundly or severely disabled,” county schools spokesman Don Morrison said. About 165 students, from preschool age to 21, attend school there.
“It is a school that is approaching time you need to address it,” Morrison said. “It?s very old.”
The most plausible plan to give students more room in a modern building is to build a wing attaching to Bel Air Middle School, and the same architect firm that carried out a similar plan in Howard County, at Cedar Lane School, has been hired, said Kathleen Sanner, schools supervisor of planning and construction. The old building would probably be utilized by Harford Technical High School, which is within walking distance,she said.
Because the state has a policy where it will no longer renovate separate schools for special education students, Morrison said, the county is forced to build a wing for students.
“The thinking is that even with kids who need to be separate for their special needs, they should still be integrated with others,” Morrison said. “The more you can integrate special education kids, the better it is mainly for them, but also for other kids.”
The current building is about 63,000 square feet, and the new one could be as large as 100,000 square feet, Sanner said.
One teacher usually teaches two or three students, and with a growing enrollment, more space is necessary for learning, said County Councilman Dion Guthrie, whose grandson, 18, attends the school.
And with advancing technology, some students may require three or four pieces of equipment, such as powered wheelchairs, which need extra storage space and are cumbersome to transport on a bus, said Ann-Marie Spakowski, special education director for schools.
The new attachment could cost as much as $22.5 million to build, according to current comparable construction costs per square foot, Sanner said. The state would help fund it. Next year, the county is giving $1 million for design planning, documents show.
