Carroll officials approve addition plans at four elementary schools

The Carroll County Board of Education on Wednesday unanimously approved plans for kindergarten and prekindergarten classroom additions at Cranberry Station, Friendship Valley, Sandymount and Taneytown elementary schools.

Each of the four individually approved design submissions had a reduced scope from what was originally planned, thus lessening construction expenses, Superintendent Cynthia McCabe said during the school board’s regular monthly meeting. She said moving forward there are limited options to save costs further, other than reducing square footage for the classrooms.

“We will continue to work on all options to lower project costs,” she said Wednesday.

McCabe had told school board members in November that estimated construction costs were expected to be higher than those approved in September as part of the school system’s capital budget request to the county. The increases were due to differences in the way costs are estimated and increases in the amount of square footage for each addition, school facilities planner William Caine told the board in November.

Since then, staff worked to reduce costs for each of the planned additions.

The Friendship Valley project’s estimated cost was reduced by $1 million to about $8.8 million by eliminating 2,041 square feet. The classroom addition will add approximately 5,728 gross square feet to the existing building, for two kindergarten and two prekindergarten classrooms, and a reconfigured instructional resource room. The project also adds a Positive Response to Issues of Discipline with Elementary Students (PRIDE) space, adding approximately 7,959 gross square feet to the existing building, for an overall building size of 71,110 gross square feet.

The Sandymount project’s cost was reduced from $6 million to about $5.6 million by eliminating 1,193 square feet. The addition will add approximately 8,817 gross square feet to the existing building, representing four kindergarten and two prekindergarten classrooms, and a reconfigured third grade classroom, for an overall building size of 70,237 gross square feet.

The Taneytown project’s estimated cost was reduced from $4.4 million to about $4.1 million by eliminating 809 square feet. The classroom addition will add approximately 5,843 gross square feet to the existing building, for two kindergarten and two prekindergarten classrooms and a reconfigured instructional resource room, for an overall building size of 75,288 gross square feet.

The Cranberry Station project’s projected cost was reduced from $3.7 million to about $3.5 million by eliminating 789 square feet. The classroom addition will add approximately 5,331 gross square feet to the existing building, for two kindergarten and one prekindergarten classrooms, and an instructional resource room, for an overall building size of 68,533 gross square feet.

“You do see a variance between the projects,” Caine said.

Reconfiguring or renovating a space lowers a projects cost per square foot, Caines said, and projects have varying requirements, for example the Taneytown and Cranberry Station projects require a water line to be relocated.

“Reducing square footage has the most impact on lowering the project’s cost,” McCabe said. “Once the bids are received and reviewed, we know what the final actual cost of the project will be.”

Designing the projects will continue, McCabe said, leading to construction design documents, a formal project plan used to issue project bids.

“The commissioners have a proposed capital budget with a dollar amount for these projects’ plans for construction,” Caine said. “The state (provided) construction funding we requested in fiscal 2025, but they did not provide construction funding this year, so we’ll have to ask for the state share in fiscal 2026, which still works out, timing-wise, with when we plan to start construction, but it does bring in a bit of unknown in how much we’ll get from the state because the state hasn’t published their cost per square foot number yet. They’ll do it in June, then we’ll start working on the capital request for fiscal 2026 this summer, which will come to the (Carroll school board) in September.”