The process to build a new, improved Buckingham Elementary School is continuing to work through the Worcester County’s internal process.
A Buckingham Elementary School classroom is pictured on the first day of the 2024-25 academic year.
File photo courtesy Worcester County Public Schools
By Tara Fischer, Staff Writer
The process to build a new, improved Buckingham Elementary School continues to work through the county’s internal process.
A construction plan has been recommended by a workgroup studying the Buckingham Elementary Replacement School Project.
Facilities Manager Joe Price presented the outline at a meeting of the Worcester County Board of Education on Sept. 17. The governing body unanimously approved the suggestion to build a replacement Buckingham Elementary School and then proceed with the design of a new Berlin Intermediate School. The first step of the BIS project will be to complete a feasibility study, which will determine whether the existing facility should be renovated or if a new structure should be created.
The board approved the recommendation in a 6-0 vote. Member Donald Smack was absent. Commissioner Jon Andes motioned to approve the outline, which Elena McComas seconded.
The project’s workgroup reviewed five options for moving forward with a new BES. The first choice was to combine Buckingham and BIS, which the team concluded was impossible, as neither facility’s current site was large enough to accommodate a 1,200-student school.
The group considered moving sixth grade from BIS to Stephen Decatur Middle School and constructing a pre-k to fifth grade BES, moving sixth grade from BIS to SDMS and creating a pre-k-grade five BES and adding fifth grade to Ocean City Elementary School and Showell Elementary School, or acquiring all funding for the initiative from the Worcester County Commissioners. These options were determined as impractical and were shot down by the workgroup.
The chosen plan, the construction of a new BES immediately followed by an updated BIS, initially presented challenges, as the Interagency Commission on School Construction (IAC) required that the replacement facilities be built “at or near the IAC Gross Area Baseline size.”
Price said that while the BES conceptual plan accounted for 103,000 square feet, the maximum the state would allow the county to build was 83,446 square feet.
IAC and Worcester County Public Schools staff worked to amend the size discrepancies. The IAC reviewed the original plan, looked at 2032 BES enrollment projections, and amended it to provide additional square footage for cooperative use space and concentration of poverty.
WCPS also agreed to reduce its initial floor plan by 12,163 gross square feet. The two parties compromised to allocate a 90,837-square-foot Buckingham replacement school.
Price presented the preliminary cost estimates for the project. Bidding for the BES initiative is expected to start in the fall of 2026, construction will begin in May 2027, and the total price tag will be $73,700,000. Of that, $47,944,000 will come from local funding, while $25,756,000 will be provided by the state.
With bidding, the BIS project is expected to get off the ground in fall 2028. Construction will begin in May 2029. The total cost is $80,100,000, with $23,145,000 from state funding and the remaining $56,955,00o provided locally.
“Never in our history have we seen $49 million from the state, and Joe singlehandedly took us to that level …,” WCPS Superintendent Lou Taylor said. “It was a tremendous amount of time and energy, and we were sweating this process because we were not going to let Buckingham go. The county had clearly said to me that they were going to put in $50 million, and that was not even close to getting us there … $49 million from the state is more than Worcester County has seen, probably if you put everything together, in the last 15-20 years. We are going to build BES and go right to BIS … this is good news for Worcester County.”
Price said the Buckingham Replacement School Project began with a feasibility study in December of 2022.
“We spent the next two years trying to get the state to approve design or construction funding for the project … they did not because allegedly, we had 799 empty seats at Showell Elementary, OCES, and BIS,” said Price.
The IAC then met with the board and the county commissioners and created a set of options to propel the project forward. The workgroup met three times to determine the plan that was approved on Tuesday.
The workgroup consists of Andes, William Gordy, and Donald Smack representing the Worcester County Board of Education; Sen. Mary Beth Carozza (R-38); Ted Elder and Eric Fiori from the Worcester County Commissioners; Chief Financial Officer Vince Tolbert; and Chris Welch, principal of Buckingham Elementary School, among others.
Price said that as of now, the BIS initiative is two years behind the BES project, which will be negotiated between the county commissioners and the IAC via a memorandum of understanding. If the MOU is completed and forwarded to the commissioners by Oct. 1, as is the goal, the local leaders will hear a presentation on the recommended facility replacement option on Oct. 15.