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A new Fairmont Heights High School has been scaled down to a smaller building holding fewer students than initially planned, but the redesign will tack an additional half-million dollars onto its cost.

The Prince George's County Board of Education approved Sept. 10 a $508,000 fee increase from $2.6 million to $3.1 million for its contract with Calverton-based Grimm and Parker Architects to revamp design plans for the Capitol Heights school after the state reduced the student capacity, according to county school officials.

A redesign approval was necessary before the county school system presented Oct. 3 to the Board of Education its list of Capital Improvement Projects it will ask the state and county for funding for fiscal 2011.

According to the Oct. 3 CIP funding presentation, the Maryland Interagency Committee on School Construction, also known as the IAC, will review the requests and submit them to the state's Board of Public Works. The board will make a final decision in June 2010 on which projects will get funding in fiscal 2011, which begins July 1, 2010.

Fairmont Heights' capacity is now 953 students compared with its current capacity of 1,139 students. The estimated size of the new $54.8 million school is 180,238 square feet, down more than 13 percent from the planned 208,000 square feet, according to Paul Taylor, director of the county schools' Department of Planning and Architectural Services.

The current school is 174,128 square feet, according to Department of Planning and Architectural Services documents.

"Drawings for the facility had already progressed to the design development stage. The architects and engineers designing the facility now have to redo that work for the revised building program before moving forward," Taylor wrote in an Oct. 9 e-mail to The Gazette.

The additional $508,000 is covered under the $5 million the county put toward the project, which falls under the project's budget. The new school is projected to open in 2013, Taylor wrote.

A new school would sit on 29.6 acres on Columbia Park Road in Landover and would be bordered by commercial property and residential lots, according to the Planning and Architectural Services documents. No decision has been made yet on what will happen to the existing building, Taylor wrote.

The projected enrollment for the 2015-2016 school year is 817 students, Planning and Architectural Services documents state. However, the building will be designed to accommodate future building additions if enrollment projections increase, Taylor wrote.

Emma Andrews of Capitol Heights, a community activist and school volunteer, said she is concerned that when school boundaries are eventually redrawn for county high schools, the county will view a low enrollment as a reason to make Fairmont Heights a low priority.

"I'm seeing that eventually there will not be justification for actually qualifying for a new Fairmont Heights [High School]," Andrews said.

The IAC initially denied the county's request for funding for a new Fairmont Heights High in 2008 because of its projected lower enrollment and asked the county to resubmit its request after revising its plans to reflect a lower student capacity.

Fairmont Heights High School opened in 1950 as one of two county high schools only open to black students. There have been three additions to the school in 1951, 1956 and 1983, plus a boiler renovation in 1988 and a school elevator renovation in 2004, according to planning and architectural documents.

E-mail Natalie McGill at nmcgill@gazette.net.