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Carver facility to be razed after housing Stoneleigh in 2012-13

Despite efforts by some to keep it open to help ease crowding in area schools, the old Carver school building will be demolished after it is used as a temporary home for Stoneleigh Elementary during the 2012-13 school year. School officials say it would not be cost-effective to keep the school built in 1949 open due to its age.
Despite efforts by some to keep it open to help ease crowding in area schools, the old Carver school building will be demolished after it is used as a temporary home for Stoneleigh Elementary during the 2012-13 school year. School officials say it would not be cost-effective to keep the school built in 1949 open due to its age. (Staff photo by Brendan Cavanaugh)

Parents, school administrators and elected officials agree that elementary school overcrowding in the York Road corridor has reached a point that requires action, but one facility that's already standing has been ruled out as a possible solution.

According to a handout distributed at a Feb. 9 meeting at Ridge Ruxton School — and confirmed by local elected officials — the old Carver Center for Arts and Technology is not a long-term option to serve as a replacement school, and will be demolished after it serves the 2012-13 year as a temporary home to Stoneleigh Elementary..

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"After next school year, the plan is to demolish the former Carver building," according to the handout. "It is an old building and cannot be maintained cost-effectively."

Carver's current high school tenants will move this fall into the new Carver Center for Arts and Technology, which is being built next door on the campus off York Road.

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Elected officials and others had expressed interest in keeping the old Carver Center standing past next year to have as an option to ease overcrowding.

Though the building, which was built in 1949 and expanded in 1983, is a high school, it will be retrofitted as an elementary school this summer if state funding comes through for a 200-seat addition at Stoneleigh Elementary School.

Last fall, Stoneleigh parents agreed that their students would spend the 2012-13 school year at Carver. The move will allow construction to be completed in time for Stoneleigh students to return to their campus during the 2013-2014 school year.

But after Stoneleigh is through with the building, Carver will be leveled.

Fifth District County Councilman David Marks, who represents Towson, said that at a meeting on Feb. 3 with Baltimore County Public Schools Superintendent Joe Hairston, he and other council members unsuccessfully raised the issue of keeping Carver.

"There's no consensus within the administration and school system for keeping that school," Marks said.

"There's an impact on the recreation fields because those fields were supposed to go to the recreation councils," Marks said, "and there are concerns about the age of the building and whether it would need to be renovated."

But even with those limitations, Marks said he still thinks the school should remain standing because of potential overcrowding issues as the elementary students progress through the school system.

Councilman Todd Huff, who represents the 3rd District — which includes the Cockeysville and Timonium areas, where other schools are overcrowded —also attended the Feb. 3 meeting with Hairston.

He said council members were told the school would be leveled because it wouldn't be cost-effective to keep it open, but that they weren't given a definitive answer as to why.

Juliet Fisher, a Stoneleigh resident who has fought school overcrowding for the past several years, said she met with the council members to try and convince them to keep Carver open past next year as well.

Fisher, like Marks, is not only concerned about overcrowding in the elementary schools, but said the school could be useful to have going forward when the population bubble rises to the middle- and high-school levels.

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