The Silver Spring Penguin

Kiddies at the East Silver Spring Elementary School can expect more leg room — and more classmates — for the 2010 school year, now that the county planning board has approved the school’s expansion plans.

The proposal, which the planning board checked out Thursday at its weekly meeting near Woodside, drops an extra 30,000 square feet of space on the school’s Silver Spring Avenue campus. The add-ons allow the school to expand its student body from 354 to 548 eager young minds.

That comes out to six small classrooms on the school’s north side (away from Silver Spring Avenue) for kiddies in pre-K and K, and those studying English as a second language. It also tacks on two large classrooms on the main building’s southeast side, towards Silver Spring Avenue.

Before

After

Add to that a new circular driveway for kiddie drop-offs and an expanded school-bus loop. To score those points, the public-school system agreed to improve sidewalks leading to and from the drop-offs, and to discourage parents from unloading the kids onto Silver Spring Avenue.

The expansion project steers clear of a wooded area towards Thayer Avenue, but two fat trees on campus — a locust and a mulberry — are coming down.

“It’s not our policy to take down trees because they’re inconvenient,” Craig Shue, with the school system, told planning commissioners. “It’s important for those students to see that we have a history in this community.”

Nonetheless, the two trees are done.

Amy Lindsey, with the planning department’s environmental crew, said she was cool with that. Besides, the trees may be too big and their root systems too well established to survive the trip to another part of the campus — a move suggested by commish Joe Alfandre, who dropped $50,000 to transplant a magnolia tree when his crew developed the Kentlands.

When asked about the project’s earth-friendly intentions, Shue said it aimed for “LEED Lite”, a lesser version of the US Green Building Council’s seal of approval. Recycling, energy-efficient fixtures and window placements that take advantage of sunlight are part of the deal, project manager Ray Marhamati spelled out.

Construction should be done by spring 2010, Marhamati said. That’s when the school system will shift kids from four elementary schools — East Silver Spring, Sligo Creek, Takoma Park and Piney Branch — to even out the head count. Reshuffling the deck also means that East Silver Spring Elementary goes from pre-K through grade 2, to pre-K through grade 5.

Illustrations courtesy of MNCPPC. Lead photo courtesy of Flickr user HC Woodward.