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Just shy of a month after their last “Community Listening” session on May 8, Caroline County Public Schools hosted the second of two planned sessions on the evening of Monday, June 2, where community members were invited to see a presentation on the possibilities of new sites and building plans for a new Northern Caroline County Middle School.
The presenters included CCPS Director of Operations Bill Mengel, Robyn Toth of TCA Architects, David Lever of Educational Facilities Planning LLC, and Civil Engineer Kevin Shearon of DMS & Associates. Their goal is to plan, design, and build a new middle school to replace Lockerman Middle School, with an anticipated opening date of August 2029 and an anticipated price tag of $86 million. Project Planner David Lever echoed Superintendent of CCPS Dr. Derek Simmons’ comments that $9 to $10 million of that would come from the county, with the state footing the rest of the bill, “if everything goes well.”
As part of the planning process, the Lockerman Project team has asked for community input via these “Listening Sessions” and public surveys. At the May 8 session, three options were brought forward to the public: keeping Lockerman at its current site with major renovations, adding a middle school onto the campus of North Caroline High School on Central Avenue, or building a new school on county-owned property on Double Hills Road near the Caroline County Sheriff’s Office.
During the June 2 meeting, attendees could see printed visuals for the five total proposed site plans for the next Lockerman Middle School. Three of these were for the North Caroline site and two for the Double Hills Road site. Toth explained that it had been decided by both the state and the team that the current Lockerman Middle School site was inadequate for a new school. She cited safety concerns due to traffic, acreage constraints, and “other factors.” After a new school is built, the old Lockerman Middle School building will be transferred to the hands of the Caroline County Commissioners.
The Lockerman Project is currently still in the pre-design stage. The Project Team asked that community members “rank” the five proposed configurations in order of their personal preference. The Team will then use this information to move forward with receiving cost estimates, and the most popular design for each of the two sites will be submitted with cost estimates to the Caroline County Board of Education for consideration on July 1. Mengel stressed that the plans shared during this meeting were “strictly conceptual” and are subject to change as the Project evolves, so the community should “take them with a grain of salt.”
The plans included two potential designs for a middle school: either a two-story building divided in four basic sections (6th grade classrooms on the rear of the ground floor, and two wings upstairs for 7th and 8th grade classrooms, with administrative and shared spaces in the front of the ground floor) or a building with a large ground floor for 6th graders and shared spaces, with two stories added onto the back for 7th and one for 8th graders respectively, effectively making half of the building three stories. Each configuration shows how the school would sit on its site, where entrances for buses and car riders would be, parking, athletic fields, solar panels, and all other necessary considerations.
The Educational Specifications Committee gave a report on their progress, having had six meetings. “Ed Specs” describes the list of everything a school needs, such as classrooms, cafeterias, and supply closets, as well as environmental needs like acoustics for music rooms, aptly placed parking, access doors to public gathering spaces, and more. In addition to those on the Project Team from Educational Facilities Planning LLC, the Committee is comprised of school administrators and staff, central office staff, community representatives, and state and county officials, who work together to incorporate details that meet the specific needs of Lockerman Middle School’s students and staff. To this point, Educational Facilities Planning LLC has brought on an archival research intern to meet the demands of the Caroline County community that Lockerman’s legacy and history as an all-Black High School be somehow preserved in the new school. Lever listed the key decisions or conclusions that the Ed Specs Committee has come to after their six meetings: the current site is not adequate, separate busses from cars, facilitate community use of the new school, provide display cases for historical Lockerman memorabilia, organize by grade/team level, locate all unified arts classrooms in one area, provide locker bays, provide a recess area outside the cafeteria, and provide sufficient physical education spaces.
Toth went through each of the previous session’s survey responses in condensed form, highlighting the positive and negative responses to building a new school on either North Caroline’s campus or Double Hills Road.
For the North Caroline site, the survey responses included pros like the students from both schools sharing athletic fields, additional parking for larger events, and integration between the school communities. The cons shared by the community via the last session’s survey were that current walkers to Lockerman would now have to find transportation, traffic would overwhelm the area of River Road and Central Avenue, and space would be lost for future expansion of NCHS or its athletic fields. The Team discussed that if the school were moved to NCHS, Central Avenue would be widened all the way down. According to Shearon, "that would not be part of this project’s budget."
For the Double Hills Road site, the survey responses said it was favorable because the area includes more room for future growth, proximity to the Sheriff’s Office may deter bad behavior, and it has the easiest accessibility traffic-wise. The County has already planned to pave roadways on the land that would feed into the new middle school; the bids on the construction of these roadways are already in. But the negative side of the survey responses - and responses from the crowd during the June 2 session - showed that many believed the opposite would be true about the traffic accessibility. Beach traffic became an area of concern, as well as existing and future development in the area near the Denton Plaza potentially adding to the traffic flow. Longtime CCPS employee Dan Towers said that traffic in that area is "awful now, and it's going to get awful-er." His comment was met with laughter as well as validation from the crowd.
While the issue of traffic was one of the main uncertainties of the evening, the question of what to name the new school sparked a debate. In the original survey responses, some community members believed the Lockerman name should stay with the current building exclusively, while others believed the name and legacy should travel with the middle school wherever it goes. Disagreements over this came up during the meeting as well, with one Lockerman Alumni Association member, Viola Gibbs, advocating for the new school to have a new name. “The name for some new building is not what we want. Nobody went to that building that was Lockerman. All these little kids that are coming up now are not Lockerman people… this is Lockerman. You changed it once, we fought to get it back.”
Another Alumni Association member, Tom McKnight, said he disagreed with Gibbs’ position, “But what about the kids who are going to be going to Lockerman in 2027? I think they should know about the legacy of Lockerman, and if the school is not named Lockerman, they will have no idea.”
School officials and Toth talked with the crowd, answering questions and providing possible compromises such as having the new school be named Joseph H Lockerman Middle School. Mengel eventually stepped in to assure attendees that while their voices were being heard and appreciated, the time for naming the school would be much farther down the road, and would ultimately be up to the Board of Education. Board of Education President Michele Wayman said this was the first she had heard of discontent with naming the new school Lockerman, but she told attendees that, regardless, the current Lockerman Middle School would continue to be called Lockerman even after the new school is built. Toth posed a question to the crowd, "Is there anything wrong with having two buildings that honor Lockerman?"
“I appreciate everyone’s heartfelt emotions… but we need to carry on with what the mission is," said Mengel, referencing picking a site for the new school. He continued, “As Mrs. Wayman was saying, there’s going to be a time for [choosing the name]… we can carry on that conversation.”
Mengel said site plans will be posted on the CCPS website. Digital plans for the five options can also be seen in this story's attached photos. Surveys to rank the proposed layouts can be completed online, on paper, or sent in via email to mengel.bill@ccpsstaff.org. Completed surveys must be turned in by next Monday, June 9.
