Lockerman Middle School project moves forward

DENTON – Plans for a new or renovated Lockerman Middle School are moving ahead, with shovels in the ground projected by as early as July 2027, and move-in for the start of school in August 2029.

During a Feb. 18 work session with the three Caroline County Commissioners, Caroline County Public Schools Director of Operations William Mengel provided an update on the LMS project.

“I appreciate the Commissioners’ support,” CCPS Superintendent Dr. Derek Simmons said. “(The Lockerman project) is definitely needed.”

Simmons presented a timeline of the “community engagement process.”

While snowstorms during the past two months have set the project back by about a month, stakeholder listening sessions have been taking place since late 2024. A meeting with the Lockerman staff took place in early December 2024, and in mid-February, CCPS administrators and staff met with the Lockerman Alumni Association and the NAACP to discuss “aspirations, opportunities and concerns.”

“So, we're starting to get the stakeholders involved, the community involved,” Mengel said. “We still have to meet with the Maryland Stadium Authority, who's very interested in our project, as well as the IAC, “who holds the cards for the money.”

The first in-person Educational Specifications (Ed Specs) meeting with the Maryland State Department of Education’s Interagency Commission for School Construction (IAC) staff is scheduled for March 24.

A committee of about two dozen members is being formed and will meet about eight times over the next few months to “start hammering things out,” Mengel said. The first community workshop will be held in April, during which individual elementary schools will present draft options. A second community workshop in May will present final prototypes, a question-and-answer session and next steps.

The committee will be comprised of staff members and community members in the county, and possibly parents who have students in the third grade now, “who would be attending Lockerman when it’s built,” he said, and representatives from MSDE and IAC.

“I think it's going to be a lot of good discussion,” Mengel said. “There's going to be a lot of good diversity of opinions of what a new school should look like and what they're looking for.”

“As soon as that is over, we shift gears right into the feasibility study,” a months-long process that could begin as early as April 3, he said. “And that's the one that everybody's really interested in because that is where the location will be established.”

The feasibility study could be presented to the Board of Education as early as July, but perhaps could be August or September. “We still want to hit that October deadline to submit for full funding for the first year,” he said. For that deadline, Mengel will submit a Capital Improvement Program (CIP) to the IAC.

An architectural firm will need to be hired to help with the feasibility study, and Mengel hopes to work with an Eastern Shore firm to keep costs down.

The LMS project will “take five years from start to finish,” Mengel said. “As Dr. Simmons said, ‘It’s not a sprint but a marathon.”

Three locations are being considered for the new school building: the current location in Denton, property on Double Hills Road in Denton, and at North Caroline High School.

Mengel said he “put out feelers” to see if there might be any other available properties.

“I haven't heard back, so I think those are the three that we're going to go with,” he said. “I'll be honest with you: every one of those sites has serious pros and serious cons, … and that's the purpose of the feasibility study.”

The Feb. 18 work session participants discussed how the Double Hills Road site might present a traffic flow problem, but with the school’s current location in Denton, traffic pattern and volume issues present a challenge, as well.

Simmons said he discussed the “real logistics” that need to be considered at the current LMS site with the Lockerman Alumni Association. The former Lockerman High School was an African American school during the segregation era more than 50 years ago.

“I talked about the way that Talbot County embraced the Moton and Dobson buildings being torn down, and what they did at the new Easton Elementary to honor the past,” Simmons said.

While difficult, renovating the current building is not off the table, and will be considered by the feasibility committee. “You have to rule out a renovation before (the state) will fund a new build,” Simmons said.

Caroline County Commission President Travis Breeding said, “The only thing I ask is, keep it practical.”

“I'll give you a prime example,” Breeding said. “My wife teaches at Greensboro. My parents went up to Grandparents Day all through my son's going through the old school. My daughter's in the new school, and my dad can't even eat lunch with her during Grandparents Day because the ceiling is 30 foot tall, but there's not enough floor space for the grandparents to go in.”

Mengel said he is going to push for simplicity and “simple elegance.”

“Let's make it practical,” Mengel said, who said he “learned a lot from the GES build already that give my maintenance crew, my custodians, and myself headaches, absolute headaches.”

Mengel said he hoped the state-county funding ratio would be close to 90% - 10%, with the “worst-case scenario” being 85% - 15%. “I think they do take into consideration the concentration of poverty with the county.”

For the fiscal year 2026 proposed county budget, $165,000 has been requested for early planning and design of the LMS project.

This is Mengel’s first school building project, and he said the project team will take into consideration lessons learned from the Greensboro Elementary School building project as well as help from contracted consultants.