Design contract for new Washington County school includes looking into traffic roundabout

The Washington County Board of Education recently approved an approximately $1.7 million design contract for a new elementary school to be built along Downsville Pike, including whether a traffic roundabout should be built.

The contract was awarded to Moseley Architects, which is based in Richmond, Va., and its offices include one in Baltimore.

The overall estimated cost of the school project also has increased about $4.7 million, to $50 million, since the spring due to rising construction costs, a change in the funding formula and plans to add more prekindergarten classrooms, said Jeff Proulx, chief operating officer for Washington County Public Schools.

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The school board voted in June to close the aging Hickory and Fountain Rock elementary schools after the 2026-2027 school year. A redistricting process is expected, which could affect neighboring school districts, to create a new attendance area for the temporarily named Downsville Pike Elementary School. The new school is expected to open in August 2027.

The new school is to be built on land the school system already owns, part of the frontage of an almost 45-acre campus that is home to the school system's headquarters, the Center for Education Services.

Traffic improvements being considered for Downsville Pike area

One of Moseley Architects' initial tasks will be a traffic study to determine whether a traffic roundabout or traffic signals should be built at Downsville Pike and Sterling Road.

School planners' initial thoughts are to put one of the entrances to the elementary campus at the intersection of Sterling and Downsville, Proulx said in a phone interview on Friday.

That area is currently a T-intersection with Sterling — a popular route to and from the Williamsport area — ending at Downsville Pike.

With the newer schools the system has opened it has separate entrances for parent and bus traffic so the idea is to have one of those be through the current campus entrance and the other be at the Sterling/Downsville intersection where Sterling now dead ends, Proulx said. Improvements would likely be needed to the current WCPS headquarters driveway.

Improvements along Downsville Pike and Sterling Road are already in the works with developer Trammell Crow's MidAtlantic Crossroads warehouse project across Downsville Pike from the educational campus.

Frederick, Seibert & Associates Vice President Trevor Frederick, in an email Friday, said Trammell Crow's project includes installing a traffic signal at the project's main entrance off Downsville Pike, which is directly across from the educational campus' current entrance.

Downsville Pike also will be widened from that entrance up to the Interstate 70 interchange, so there will be two southbound lanes and two northbound lanes, Frederick wrote.

The warehouse project will have two entrances off Sterling Road with deceleration/acceleration/left-turn lanes for both entrances, Frederick wrote. A right-turn lane also will be added onto Sterling Road at the intersection with Downsville Pike.

If traffic engineers determine a signal or roundabout is needed at Downsville and Sterling, the Maryland State Highway Administration will need to approve either since Downsville Pike is a state highway (Md. 632), according to Proulx and the school system's request for design service proposals.

The extra design cost for the signals or roundabout are $33,000 to $68,500, according to Moseley Architects' bid.

Cost of planned Washington County elementary school goes up

The estimated cost for the Downsville Pike elementary school is now $50 million, up from $45.3 million in the spring.

That is due in part to the increasing cost of construction. The Maryland Interagency Commission on School Construction reevaluates the statewide average school construction cost every summer, so that square-footage cost estimate increased to $404 from $385 in the spring, Proulx said. That figure will likely increase again next summer before construction bids are expected in 2025, he said.

The plan is to break ground in fall 2025, Proulx said.

The school system also is now planning six prekindergarten classrooms instead of three. Four of those classrooms will be for 4-year-olds and two will be for 3-year-olds.

The previous estimate was for three prekindergarten classrooms for 4-year-olds, Proulx said.

The state's Blueprint for Education pushes adding prekindergarten classrooms for 3-year-olds so school system officials decided to add two classrooms for that age, Proulx said. It would be "short-sighted" to build the new school without addressing that, he said.

The pre-K classes at Hickory and Fountain Rock have been full, so the updated plan includes another pre-K classroom for 4-year-olds, bringing the total pre-K classrooms to six.

School construction formula shifts more to local government

The Interagency Commission also revised the cost share for school construction projects this summer, shifting 1% to local governments, so the state now pays for 78% of eligible costs, Proulx said.

The Board of County Commissioners' long-term capital improvement plan includes money for the new elementary school according to an earlier cost estimate, Proulx said. School system officials will discuss with county officials the need for approximately $3.5 million more in local funds, he said.

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The school system plans to use about $19 million from state Built to Learn Act funds, which the Maryland General Assembly approved in 2020, for the new school.

The school board is seeking an additional $12.2 million from the state and $19 million total from the county for the project, according to the school system's recently approved capital improvement plan.

The state does not cover change orders, furnishings and equipment, or off-site work like road improvements, Rob Rollins, director of facilities planning and development, told the school board, according to a YouTube video of the Sept. 19 board meeting.

Moving forward with design work

This is the first time Moseley Architects has been hired to do design work for Washington County Public Schools.

The other two finalists for the project haven't done work for the school system either, Proulx said.

One of the things school system officials like about Moseley is that it is a fully integrated firm so it has its own structural and mechanical engineers as well as architects, Proulx said.

What ultimately sold the team on Moseley were school system officials being impressed with some of Moseley's initial thoughts for how to potentially lay out the new school on the site, given its topography, Proulx said. There is a 20-foot grade drop from the highest to lowest point on the site. While officials haven't decided if the school will have two stories, that grade drop lends the project to having two stories for parts of the school, he said.

Moseley had done school projects for Montgomery County (Md.) Public Schools, including designing Potomac Elementary, according to its website. Potomac was completed in 2020, according to Moseley Marketing Director Lisa Demmel.

School system officials evaluated bidders' technical abilities before seeing the pricing and Moseley had the lowest bid, Proulx said.

The firm's $1,737,840 base bid is $259,611 less than the second-lowest bidder, Hord Coplan Macht, according to the bid sheet.

Staff narrowed the initial technical proposals to four firms who went through an interview process. Then three finalists submitted prices, Proulx said.

The 82,233-square-foot school would have capacity for 688 students.

The new school would be a four-round elementary, meaning there would be four classrooms each for kindergarten through grade five.

What about redistricting, a name for the new school?

Proulx said school system staff expect the school board to issue a charge for redistricting to create a new attendance zone for the Downsville Pike school.

In addition to the Hickory and Fountain Rock schools, that process is expected to affect adjacent school districts including Sharpsburg, Rockland Woods, Williamsport, Lincolnshire and Emma K. Doub, Proulx said.

That charge could come in a year, Proulx said. The idea would be to seek approval for boundary changes in spring 2026 so affected families have a year's notice, he said.

There isn't a schedule for the naming process yet for the school, but Proulx said given past experiences, he anticipates seeking naming approval in spring 2026. That process will involve community members.

There's also the need for a new school mascot, which Proulx said likely will involve students.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Md. school design contract includes considering roundabout on highway