Politics & Government

Parents, Officials Break Ground on Hampton Expansion

$19 million addition, renovation to overcrowded school to begin Monday.

It was three years ago that parent Yara Cheikh attended her first PTA meeting.

She “timidly” raised her hand to speak to a small crowd about ongoing overcrowding issues and a possibly bleak future. The Lutherville school was already tight on space, and projections showed that it would only get worse—unless parents were to act.

Three years later, she wiped a tear from her eye, sporting a hardhat and shovel, scooping up a fresh clump of dirt marking the official groundbreaking of a $19 million expansion project.  The addition, expected to be completed for the 2012 school year,  will include more classrooms, a library and speciality education space.

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“When you campaign for years and it finally comes to fruition, there is a lot of excitement and joy for the community,” Cheikh told Patch Friday morning. “We can’t invest enough funds into our children. This money will pay forward for the entire community.”

Hampton Elementary School was nearly 200 students over capacity in September. The school, built in the 1950s, had fallen behind the times and to make matters worse, parents saw their funding priority slip two years ago behind other Baltimore County schools with greater needs.

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That only made parents work harder.

“This construction is underway because one concerned parent became a small group of concerned parents and grew into a large group of concerned parents and community leaders that simply demanded a seat for every child inside a school,” said Hampton PTA president Maureen Zingo addressing a crowd of faculty, officials, parents and students.

Zingo said the new expansion and renovation would yield 24 new classrooms, a science lab, music room, state-of-the-art library and media center and “of course” air conditioning.  The improvements are being done with $13 million from Baltimore County and $6 million from the state.

“Everyone was just holding their breath and now we can breathe,” Zingo said.  “I don’t even know if I can put it into words. I’m thrilled for the children and I’m sad for the ones who aren’t going to be here.”

The 24 classrooms will replace the “learning cottages” (portable classrooms) that housed the entire fourth- and fifth-grade classes. It was the students themselves who began Friday morning’s ceremony by walking hand-in-hand out of the school into the fields forming the outline of where the expansion will take shape.

Filling the critical need for classroom space was priority No. 1 for parents, although Chiekh said she’s grateful the school will be getting a much-needed modernizing.

“I think the new media center is going to meet needs that were never even thought of in the 1950s when the building was created,” she said. "The accessibility to computers, Internet access, creating a Wi-Fi school, those things are very important.”

Chiekh has four children who either currently attend or will attend Hampton Elementary. When asked how she balanced acting as a legislative liaison and mother of mother of four, she calmly said, “It takes a community.”

A handful of elected officials including County Executive Kevin Kamenetz, County Council members and representatives from the state legislature attended the ground-breaking ceremony.

Third district Councilman Todd Huff attended in his capacity as an official and as a father of two.

“This definitely shows me that the Board of Education for Baltimore County and the State Delegation is looking at our needs and helping us get the funding for the expansion,” Huff said. “I can’t wait. The exciting news is that both of my [children] will be able to see the expansion.”

Councilman David Marks, who aided lobbying efforts for the Hampton expansion, will again have to work with parents in Towson to secure an addition for Stoneleigh Elementary School. 

"We’re seeing tremendous growth and revitalization in Towson and it’s important that all of our schools keep pace with that,” Marks said. “Stoneleigh is the most critical need and I would argue that we need to do whatever we can to accelerate the addition at Stoneleigh."

The Baltimore County Planning Board

 “The growth in southern Towson is being driven by demographics—older homeowners moving out and younger families moving in. Stoneleigh United is following in the tradition of what the parents did at Hampton. They’re getting very organized,” Marks said. 

Editor's Note: Patch has been covering parents' effort to secure an expansion for Hampton Elementary since we launched in August 2010. You can read the series of stories below: 

 

 


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