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Caroline County Public Schools presented concepts for placing the planned new middle school building, as well as related outdoor structures, parking, and environmental requirements on the North Caroline High School campus at a public meeting on Tues., August 5.
CCPS is early in the stages of a nearly $104 million project to build a new middle school as a replacement for the current Lockerman Middle School. The location of the new school building will be on the county owned property at the North Caroline High School campus, 10990 River Rd, Ridgely, MD 21660; no new land acquisition is required. The Board of Education voted to build the new middle school alongside the high school in July 2025. The project is now moving to architecture and engineering stages.
The project partners include Caroline County Public Schools, the Maryland Stadium Authority, Educational Facility Planning, LLC & Szyfer Consulting, LLC, and Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Assoc. The Maryland Stadium Authority participates in all Maryland-funded school capital projects. Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Assoc., is the selected firm for Architecture and Engineering; the firm has been working for six weeks on developing site concepts.
The project team considered five concepts for orienting the campus, all of which placed the middle school building to the west side of the campus. Todd Vukmanic, project manager with Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Assoc., gave an overview of four of the concepts that had been considered and rejected before presenting the fifth concept for consideration by the public.
One of the challenges that had been highlighted in the early location feasibility study was the solar panels that are currently on the high school campus. Dr. Derek Simmons, Superintendent of Caroline County Public Schools, stated that the decision was made recently to remove the solar panels, which allows for more flexibility in placing the middle school building to meet all construction requirements. Chief among the requirements is to ensure educational goals are met, such as classroom size, growth potential based on Maryland Department of Planning estimates, and sufficiently sized common areas, such as the media center, gym, and cafeteria. Other considerations for the building site include storm water management, vehicle and pedestrian traffic flow, and environmental concerns including noise, light, historic, and community impacts.
Simmons pointed out that the building size and student capacity is prescribed by state of Maryland funding requirements. The state projects growth and caps its funding contribution within those projections, and any additional square footage costs would be borne by the Caroline County government.
Communication and transparency
In introducing the draft options for the first time to the public, Vukmanic outlined some of the architectural and engineering pros and cons of each option to the approximately 50 people in attendance.
In the audience were residents of the neighboring Ashworth Subdivision, and in seeing the concept options for the first time, several expressed frustration with the North Caroline High School campus being selected as the site of the new Lockerman Middle School instead of the other option at Double Hills Road. Athena Mellis, who lives across the school campus off Tribbett Circle, stated that the first time they became aware of the project was through receipt of a letter regarding this most recent public meeting.
Among Mellis’ concerns is a lack of transparency to the residents surrounding the school campus. She expressed that the neighborhood specifically should have been brought into the location selection process earlier. She questioned some of the data and information from the feasibility study that drew to the conclusion of selecting North Caroline High School over Double Hills.
When asked about the Lockerman Middle School project’s communication strategies, Simmons said the previous avenues for communication were social media and internal school communications tools because the target audiences were the current and soon-to-be students and parents of Lockerman. It became apparent that as the project moved through construction phases, communicating individually to neighboring residents and property owners was necessary because of the impact of a construction project of this magnitude.
Mellis wants the communication strategy about the project to be timely, more individualized, and to take into account the residents who will be impacted by the change in the landscape of the high school campus.
Exasperating Current Issues
Another theme of the public’s comments was the potential for additional students to adversely affect bus traffic, parent drop-offs, and evening and weekend activity traffic, specifically concerning traffic flow onto Central Avenue and River Road. Audience members noted that delays and potential safety issues already occur, and that adding students, teachers, support staff, and parents will further worsen the conditions.
Dr. Simmons said that while this is a middle school project, CCPS hopes that by sharing a campus, the funding could help to resolve some of the parking issues that exist for student parking and event parking, alleviating the need for students, teachers, and visitors to park along Central Avenue. “Hoping to mitigate the issues of foot traffic… as students park in student parking, they walk up Central (Ave) to get to the school because there are no sidewalks,” he said.
Other concerns from audience members included additional noise and changing vistas from green fields to buildings. Simmons said, “if we have the opportunity, because we are redoing the landscaping, redoing the grounds, do we have an ability to better layout structures.”
According to Dr. Simmons, one of the realizations that came to light in this phase of design is that the entrance of North Caroline High School faces away from the west side of campus where the middle school building will be located, which makes sharing bus and parking spaces in the middle nearly impossible. “You can’t get a student body flow of 1200 (high school) kids out the back door.”
North Caroline High School versus Double Hills
At the base of many of the commenters’ concerns was the question of North Caroline High School campus being selected over the Double Hills property. Mellis questioned whether the selection process had been fully transparent. She compiled a timeline of meetings and milestones and asked specifically why the residents in Ashworth subdivision and along Tribbett Circle did not receive notice of public meetings in which the decision to site at North Caroline High School was made.
Simmons noted throughout the meeting that the selection process took into account property already owned by Caroline County government in order to avoid additional costs of acquisition of green space. North Caroline High School and Double Hills were the two available pieces of property owned by the county and located centrally. Feasibility studies on each property were conducted.
Why was Double Hills not selected? Simmons said that the feasibility of Double Hills presented challenges, among those that could not be changed within the scope of the project: protected wetlands dotted the full 107 acres causing smaller parcels available for construction, potential co-location with county buildings including a new detention center, and major highway feeder to limited roadway access.
Community Asks and Next Steps
A consensus among meeting participants was that the project team reevaluates placing the middle school building nearer to the high school building. Vukmanic said that the engineers would look into that as an option. He also said throughout the meeting that a traffic study had yet to be completed, and that the results of that study may call for modifications to the parking and traffic flow.
The communications strategy to all groups impacted by the new middle school will be evaluated. Comments from the meeting were captured, and the public will have an opportunity to submit comments to publiccomment@ccpsstaff.org.
CCPS has a website dedicated to the Lockerman Middle School building project at https://www.carolineschools.org/page/lockerman-middle-school-building-plans
