In recent years, the answer seems to have been, “Wherever we can get some free land.”

Even the “free” land in the Clarks Rest subdivision in Leonardtown will cost the Board of Education $450,000 to prepare for school construction. Of course, every site has certain site preparation costs. It’s just that the one in Clarks Rest is going to need quite a bit of fill to be readied for construction and fill is costly.

We know that Wildewood will require at least one of the new, 650 student elementary schools when all 2,500 homes in the original PUD are completed. That is, it will require a 650 student school if our new superintendent, Dr. John Martirano, doesn’t follow a more educationally sound course by proposing smaller schools for elementary students.

Where is the site in Wildewood? A prior Board of Education in its wisdom let the original site in Wildewood expire by choosing to build in Hollywood on a site that has required a lot of shoring up (translate shoring up to $$$$$) to withstand the effects of severe soil erosion.

The new developer of Wildewood offered the Board of Education another site, but only if more land could be added to Wildewood, thus creating a need for second elementary school in Wildewood. The Board of County Commissioners ended that deal when they refused to enlarge the only partially developed development district.

Isn’t it time we identified another school site in Wildewood and set about purchasing it? If an Ohio city can take people’s homes for a developer’s condo in the name of “public good”, surely St. Mary’s County can perfect a claim on undeveloped land in Wildewood and pay the property owner fair market value for that property?

Several years ago the school system’s own Growth Management Advisory Committee recommended that the system obtain a site on Peggs Road or Chancellors Run Road. Why hasn’t the school system followed up on that advice? No one wants to sell? If that is where the school should be, why can’t the school system begin condemning a site?

Why does St. Mary’s County not require an acceptable school site from every development which produces 300 or more elementary students?

I hate to say it, folks, because neither our Board of Education nor our Board of County Commissioners really wants to think that the Town of Leonardtown is way ahead of the rest of the County, but the Town of Leonardtown is way ahead of the rest of the County. Build a subdivision - donate a school site. That’s the Town’s way of making things work. And it does make things work.

Meanwhile, the school system has only one usable site of the four sites needed in the next ten years, and it has come from Leonardtown.