The Montgomery County school board approved preliminary plans for a three-story addition to Highland View Elementary School in Silver Spring on Thursday, after delays in the project in 2022.
The new three-story addition would create eight new classrooms, additional offices and storage, and a pedestrian bridge for greater accessibility.
Shiho Shibasaki, assistant director of facilities management, said the project would help solve capacity and accessibility issues within the school, located at 9010 Providence Avenue. Currently, the school uses several relocatable classrooms to teach students.
According to the 2025-2030 MCPS Captial Improvement Program (CIP), Highland View has a capacity of 336. The addition is expected to bring the capacity to 525, according to the CIP.
Kori Purdum Matheis, president of the Frederick-based architectural firm Proffitt and Associates handling the project, said the project site presented several challenges.
Matheis said the steep slopes next to the building — one going down toward apartment buildings and one rising toward play areas — prevent the school from having accessible pathways for students to get to designated play areas.
The building is also “split level,” which means the floors are staggered, creating more challenges for the building expansion, Matheis said.
According to Matheis, the new three-story addition would be connected to the front part of the building on the east side, where the front entrance and media center are held. It would be built into the hillside, according to the plans, allowing ground floor access to the media center on the second floor. The new addition will also allow for the creation of a pedestrian bridge to playgrounds on the hill.
The first floor of the addition, next to offices in the main entrance and music and art classrooms, would include two instructional support spaces, an office, PTA storage and music instrument storage, Matheis said. The second floor, adjacent to the media center, will include four classrooms for grades one through five, bathrooms, offices and a conference room. The third floor would include four classrooms for grades one through five, restrooms and the pedestrian bridge.
The bus loop will also be expanded slightly to create better bus circulation and emergency services access. Matheis also presented possible additional options to improve the building, including adding a maker space to the media center and changing support staff areas on one classroom wing into kindergarten restrooms and storage space.
Board member Lynne Harris, whose son had attended Highland View Elementary, said she sat through a similar presentation nearly 15 years ago, so she was glad to be able to move the project forward.
In 2010, a feasibility study was held for a school addition, according to the Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) 2025-2030 CIP. According to a Highland View website page about the study, following the study a date for the addition would be considered in future CIPs.
In 2020, money was approved to begin the architectural design, and in 2022, funds were reallocated from the Silver Spring International Middle School addition project to Highland View’s addition to be completed in August 2025.
But as a part of the 2023-2028 CIP adopted by the County Council, the project was delayed by two years. Shibasaki said the project is slated to start in winter 2026 and be completed in August 2027.
“We have been talking about this project for many years, so this is certainly a long time coming,” Shibasaki said.
Shibasaki said the district was looking into holding school options for Highland View, because construction would impact school operations.
