In recent years, Pointer Ridge Elementary School has hovered around 50% capacity, with the most recent numbers from September of 2022 showing it was at 53% capacity, tied for the lowest school population in all of Prince George’s County.
It was one of a handful of schools the county was ready to close at the end of last year, but a furious fight by the parents at the school led former chief executive officer for Prince George’s County Public Schools Monica Goldson to delay the decision by a year. Her replacement, new Superintendent Millard House, has indicated he’s ready to move ahead with the closure of the school, though parents aren’t giving up the fight.
House will meet with parents at Pointer Ridge on Wednesday night, and a statement provided to WTOP from PGCPS ahead of the meeting said the decision was “well-considered,” noting low enrollment for several years in a building that’s more than 50 years old.
Closing the school, the county said in the statement, will save the school system the money it spends operating a half-empty school, meaning there will be more money to invest in classroom instruction and specialty teachers.
But parents at the school said Pointer Ridge won’t be half empty forever. They pointed to three major developments within the school’s boundary — South Lakes, Amber Ridge and Mill Branch Crossing — that are currently under construction. When the last nails are hammered in, about 2,000 new residential units (a mix of apartments, town homes and single family homes) will have been added.
The county has been adamant that out of all that new construction, only 100 students will be added to Pointer Ridge. Parents said those estimates will prove to be woefully short.
“They are pretty bent on the numbers that they’ve presented, which we aren’t pleased with, because they’re only in favor of what they want to do,” said Darius Hyman, president of the Pointer Ridge PTA. “We’ve already had new students enrolling every week this school year.”
He said the arguments conveyed and the estimates used to guide the decisions have only bred mistrust among parents at Pointer Ridge.
“Those numbers are so far off from what we’re seeing on the ground,” he added.
Hyman also said Pointer Ridge, which currently sees almost all of its students classified as “walkers,” will exacerbate a calamitous bus situation in the county when students are split up between Northview Elementary in Bowie and Perrywood Elementary in Largo.
But the county said in the statement the students at Pointer Ridge will be relocated to “safer, newer facilities that better support modern education,” and that it “marks a significant step toward ensuring our schools are properly utilized to provide the best educational experience for all students in the county.”
Parents from Northview are also expected at Wednesday night’s meeting, where they intend to argue against the decision to bring students from Pointer Ridge into their school, with some likely to cite traffic backups at the beginning and end of the school day that already exist on Northview Drive.
Long term, while nothing is definite, the county said it views Pointer Ridge as a facility that could be used as a temporary school when other schools in the county are renovated (the old Meadowbrook Elementary in Bowie is used in a similar fashion) before it’s eventually transitioned into something else. A regional early childhood center is one option that’s been mentioned.
But Hyman is hopeful that at the end of the meeting, Superintendent House and PGCPS will be persuaded to reverse the ruling. The statement from the school system said the decision “is now final.”
