A $12 million expansion at the Chelsea School in Silver Spring would help transform the school into a college preparatory institution focused on math, science and technology for students with language-based learning disabilities.
The conceptual design for the physical expansion includes a two-floor library made of zinc and glass, a new gymnasium, underground parking, two sports fields and a new entrance facing Ellsworth Drive. Any new buildings would be constructed on the school’s current site at 711 Pershing Drive. The yellow David S. Stone Building, which currently houses administrative offices, would be used as an incubator for visiting researchers, said Tony Messina, the head of the school.
‘‘We have to be forward-thinking,” Messina said. ‘‘Why shouldn’t these students have access to the very best?”
Another $8 million, paid for by a capital campaign that kicks off next month, would go toward endowments for staff development, outfitting the school with modern technology and setting up a scholarship fund for students. Tuition is $34,700 per year, and most students have their tuition paid for by the public school systems they come from, Messina said.
The design of the new facility, which would not be up for public and county scrutiny for at least four years, the length of the upcoming capital campaign, was created by Montreal-based architect Robert Claiborne. Claiborne is a protégé of Daniel Libeskind, the architect whose design will be used to create a new structure on the former World Trade Center site in New York.
Claiborne agreed to consider the project on the insistence of Libeskind and his wife, Nina Libeskind, who have donated $50,000 to the capital campaign and arranged about $1 million in savings by finding companies to sell materials for the project at cost. The Libeskinds were introduced to the Chelsea School by Eric Miller, the school’s consultant on the capital campaign.
Claiborne said the biggest obstacle in coming up with a design was incorporating the site’s existing 40-foot drop in elevation. Otherwise, he said he was inspired by a visit to the school and watching the students learn to work with their disabilities. He used what he saw to design the focal point of the site – the library.
‘‘There was this image I had, that the book is always up there as something to aspire to,” Claiborne said.
Messina said designing a library that jutted out above the school’s sports fields and brought students’ eyes upward promoted the idea of literacy, the school’s primary goal.
‘‘We went back to our core beliefs. ... Literacy, that’s the basics,” Messina said.
The school, serving 85 students in grades 5-12, was founded in 1976 by two parents of dyslexic children. The current site was once home to the Academy of the Holy Names, a Catholic school that left behind an old red-brick school building and convent, which would be torn down in the renovation.
Messina, the father of a learning-disabled child, arrived at the school three years ago, shortly after a series of protests by parents at the school over the former interim headmaster’s order to have all the teachers reapply for their jobs.
A renovation that included improvements to the school’s gym and classroom building, parking and a relocation of the student drop-off area to the Ellsworth Drive side of the campus was proposed by the school’s former head, Timothy Hall, but did not move forward despite preliminary approvals by the county Planning Board in 2001.
‘‘[The school] definitely needs to have upgrades. It’s not just the aesthetics, but things like adding air conditioning,” said Bowie resident Linda MacPherson, whose 17-year-old son is an 11th-grader at Chelsea. ‘‘I personally was surprised looking at the design, and thinking, ‘How can they fit that on that property?’ But they did.”
Messina and Phyllis Love, the chairwoman of the board of directors at the Chelsea School, met with neighbors in April to give a presentation on the new proposal. Mark Gabriele, president of the Seven Oaks-Evanswood Citizens Association, said the neighborhood was enthusiastic, especially the aspects of the design that addressed traffic.
With the new design, the entrance would be shifted a block, and buses would come in on Cedar Street and up Ellsworth Drive, much like the previous proposal.
To learn more
For more information on the Chelsea School or the school’s capital campaign, visit www.chelseaschool.edu.
