Calvert County has a newly occupied school building. The new Northern Middle School on Chaneyville Road in Owings has opened its doors to families, with staff moving into the building on November 2 and students following soon after, roughly 22 months after a January 2025 groundbreaking ceremony.
The three-story, 109,237-square-foot building cost nearly $60 million, funded through a combination of state and county dollars, according to somdnews.com. Per the Southern Maryland Chronicle, that construction money came from state public school construction program dollars and county general obligation bonds. The school replaces a building that opened in the 1970s, which a stakeholder committee recommended replacing rather than renovating given its age of nearly 50 years, per the Chronicle's reporting.
Enrollment stood at 715 students at the time of the somdnews.com report, making the new building still Calvert County's most populous middle school even with room to grow. The school's capacity figures are not entirely consistent across available records: the opening-day report from the same outlet states the building can accommodate 800 students, while an earlier construction announcement from Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates, the project's architect, described a planned capacity of up to 796 students. The Chronicle's own reporting lists a state-rated capacity of 796 students, aligning with the architect's figure.
A Move Powered By Staff and Student Volunteers
Superintendent Marcus Newsome credited school staff, assisted by honor students from Northern High, with pulling off the move from the old building to the new one, the same somdnews.com report notes. At the school board's Nov. 5 meeting, Newsome said every department in the school system had contributed to the effort, and he noted it had been 22 months since his predecessor and other community leaders broke ground with golden shovels.
The move itself took days, with crews hauling boxes for several days and not every system working smoothly from the start — the elevator was out of service during some staff moves to the second and third floors, according to the Chronicle. Despite that hiccup, some rooms came together fast: the art room was ready just two days after unpacking began. Northern High School honor society students pitched in to help teachers unpack classrooms, while librarians from six Calvert schools worked together to set up the new media center, filling its shelves by the day after that Tuesday.
Families Get a Look Inside
Families attended an open house at the new school on November 4, with eighth-grade student ambassadors leading tours through the building. Students were on hand to take families on tour, according to the same somdnews.com account. The building's design includes floor-to-ceiling windows — which Newsome said are bulletproof and can be secured as a safety measure — along with conference rooms, a feature the old building largely lacked, per the Chronicle.
The new school was built on the parking lot north of the existing building, designed by Crabtree, Rohrbaugh & Associates and constructed by Keller CM, according to the architect's own announcement. That announcement also projected the facility would be completed in time for the 2026-27 academic year, with final site improvements continuing into spring 2027 — a timeline that tracks with the project's broader schedule. Earlier reporting had attributed construction delays to adverse weather and difficulty obtaining building materials, and at an Aug. 13 school board meeting, the construction director said the contractor had projected substantial completion by mid to early October.
What Happens to the Old Building
Calvert County Public Schools held a farewell walk-through of the old building for former students and others on Nov. 8, according to the Chronicle. The old Northern Middle School will remain in use until students fully move over, after which the school system will have about three and a half weeks to clear out reusable items. The building will then be demolished, and the former site will become parking and vehicle drop-off and pickup loops for the new school.
The new Northern Middle School is being certified through Green Globes and stands as Calvert County's third green school building, the Chronicle reports. The project was the school system's top capital improvement request for fiscal 2027, following Northern High School's own replacement in 2019. A separate, combined Calvert Elementary and Calvert Middle project is still awaiting state planning approval, the outlet notes.
Newsome also used his report to highlight other district achievements, saying five Calvert County schools received five-star ratings on the state's school report card and that Calvert County Public Schools earned an A-minus rating from Niche, according to the Chronicle's account of his remarks.
