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Linganore at Oakdale High School now has a banner that more accurately describes its student population.
The banner was placed on the front of the building after metal letters, which named the school Oakdale High, were removed Friday.
Linganore students are expected to be housed at Oakdale for the next two school years while their school is rebuilt.
Roger Fritz, senior project manager for the construction at the school, said that the banner was a last-minute addition — amid "a thousand other things" he had to oversee to prepare the school for students on Monday — and that by mid-September, more permanent letters would replace the banner to proclaim the school as Linganore High.
He said that while there would be a cost associated with the change, it would be on the order of a few hundred dollars, a small part of the school's $70 million price tag.
"We're not talking a lot of money," he said.
Ray Barnes, director of facilities for Frederick County Schools, said Friday afternoon that the change was not the result of a recent decision, but of a discussion that had been taking place over the last several months, and that the Frederick County School Board had designated the school Linganore High at Oakdale months ago.
Barnes said the plan was to have the permanent letters in place soon after the first day of school. "We finally got around to it," he said.
Barnes said the banner would not be a permanent solution because bad weather would damage or remove it. "We were afraid it wouldn't hold up very well," he said.
The new letters that would proclaim the school Linganore High School will be installed in the soft concrete surface over the school's main entrance that until Friday proclaimed the building Oakdale High.
He said that the school system planned to hold on to Oakdale's letters until 2010, when Linganore High School was expected to be rebuilt at its original location. At that point the building would revert to the name Oakdale High School, and the original letters would be put up again.
Marita Loose, spokeswoman for Frederick County Public Schools, said the banner was placed on the school to remind the community that although the students and staff of Linganore High School were no longer in the building that traditionally housed them, they were still Lancers.
Principal Marge Lyburn said that students were settling in well to their new home. Walking around the school, she said she saw students quickly adapting to their new surroundings on Monday and Tuesday.
She said Linganore students learned to be flexible in their old school, where they frequently had to deal with insufficient space and equipment, and that they carried this flexibility to their new surroundings. Students had almost completely gotten used to the school by lunchtime on the first day of school, she said Tuesday.
"It was almost as if this was nothing unusual," she said.
As for the temporary renaming of the building to Linganore High School from Oakdale High, she said that she expected the installation of a permanent sign by the first week of September, and that the letters will remain in place until her students return to 12013 Old Annapolis Road.
"[The letters] will be out there until it's no longer Linganore," she said.
