Students at Waverly Elementary Middle School in Greater Homewood will have a brand spanking new, state-of-the-art, LEED-certified school building within the next three years, the Greater Homewood Community Corporation announced.
In the works since 2004, the new school building will replace two relics of the last century situated roughly one and a half blocks apart in which students have been housed for the past six years.
"For many, many years, the school was K through 5. Back in 2003 there was a decision made to keep middle schoolers who had been zoned for Roland Park, closer to the community. The school board added grades making Waverly K through 8. They realized quickly though that there wasn't enough room for the middle schoolers and wound up putting them in building that was about a block away from the elementary school. The old Venable vocational special ed building plus a really ancient portable became the middle school for Waverly," explains Karen DeCamp, director Neighborhood Programs at Greater Homewood Community Corporation.
After several years during which the city would submit requests for funds to build a new school for the neighborhood that the state repeatedly rejected, progress finally came in 2007 after Dr. Alonso Gates became head of the Baltimore City Public School System.
With his support and that of local councilwoman Mary Pat Clark, the city was finally able to submit a plan that the state eventually approved in 2008.
A culmination of years of advocacy and community action, this new building will not only move students out of a sub-standard facility, it will bring competitive academic programs to the school and provide Waverly, Oakenshawe, and Ednor Gardens-Lakeside families with a great public school option in their neighborhood, says DeCamp
The new building, designed by Grimm and Parker Architects, will include a green roof of low-growing succulents and other energy efficient technologies. The building will be constructed in two phases. The new building will be constructed on the field adjacent to the current school building. Students will be able to continue to attend classes in their current building with the elementary school demolished and add the remaining classrooms and a gymnasium once the main structure has been completed.
"For us this is a huge victory for the community. The middle-schoolers have toiled away in substandard circumstances that we think affects achievement and this is just a great victory," DeCamp says.
Source: Karen DeCamp, Greater Homewood Community Corporation
Writer: Walaika Haskins