School Officials Still Plan to Raze Carver

Despite the hopes of parents in central Baltimore County,  officials still plan to demolish the old in Towson in 2013.

The current magnet high school will be used during the next school year to house Stoneleigh Elementary School students at their school. Carver's current students will move to their new school just yards away on the same lot this fall.

The decision was first reported by the Towson Times.

Parents and elected officials wanted to see the old school remain standing, at least for one more year, to serve as a stopgap for elementary school overcrowding in the York Road corridor, or perhaps a new middle school.

Instead the school will be torn down to make way for the new Carver's parking lot and athletic fields.

"I hope that they have some other plans that they're just not sharing with us," said Stoneleigh parent Juliet Fisher. "Making a determination that you don't need another building when you don't have other options just seems like a foolish decision to me."

School system spokesman Charles Herndon said it would not be cost-effective to perform the work necessary to keep the building, first opened in 1949 as Towsontown Junior High School, operational.

"You're talking about a very old building that's in need of an awful lot of work and it's really not suitable to keep open as an ongoing proposition for keeping a school," Herndon said.

"The school is in no imminent danger of collapsing," said County Councilman , who attended a meeting earlier this month with school system officials and felt that, though officials were set on tearing down Carver, there was still a chance for a change of heart.

Parents and local officials, including Marks, have suggested in the past that the school system should repurpose Carver as a middle school. Herndon, however, said current system enrollment projections don't show the same kind of bubble in area middle schools as in the elementary schools. Only , he noted, is currently operating over capacity.

Marks was also hopeful the system could keep the school as a stopgap as the school system moves forward on .

Many elementary schools in the Towson area and throughout the York Road corridor are well over capacity. Renovation and expansion work is and is .

Parents at and schools met in late January and early February to discuss plans to to the adjacent special-needs school.

"The school system has been very supportive of new construction in my district and I appreciate that, but I think it's a premature decision to tear down Carver high school so soon," Marks said.