Blair's portables address student overflow but present new problems. Addition will put Blair at 3,600 Students.

At the far end of Blair, past the SAC doors and the student courtyard, sit four brand new portables, a mass of beige and wood lazing in the afternoon sun. The portables, a result of Blair's expanding student population, are a new addition meant to help with the increasing Blazer population. 

The new Blair building, which first opened for the 1998-1999 school year, was meant to hold only 2820 students, but currently holds about 3100 students and 307 staff members. According to Blair principal Renay Johnson, Blair's student population will continue to increase each year. "I've been told that every year we get 200 more students until we get up to 3600 students, and then it may stabilize a little bit," she says. 

After Blair reached its capacity last year, MCPS assigned four new portables to Blair that would help alleviate the classroom shortage. "We got brand new portables; sometimes the county refurbishes them from different schools, but these were brand new, constructed on site and they put decking in the front," Johnson explains. 

The recent increase in high school students is a result of an influx of students from elementary and middle schools nine years ago. Student enrollment has gone from 2900 students to 3100 students, and is expected to reach 3300 students by the 2018-19 school year. To help with the second wave of new students, Blair will receive four more portables next year. 

In order to address the growing number of enrolled students, Blair has met with architects and has plans to be renovated and receive additions sometime in the near future. "We had a meeting last April with architects, and they showed us some plans of what it would look like to expand Blair so it would be 3600 students without portable classrooms...

...The time it takes for students to get to the portables has definitely been an adjustment for teachers such as math teacher John Giles who teaches in portable four during periods one, three, seven, eight and nine. He finds that a lot of his students show up late to ninth period because the shortened passing period leaves little time for students to get all the way out to the parking lot on time, sometimes from the complete opposite end of the school. "It's a hike to get here so unless they're like lined up at the door ready to bolt the second the bell rings it is kind of hard for them to get here in five minutes, so they are kind of routinely late," Giles says...

...Agbonselobho Yakubu, the building services manager, described the portables as an increase in the work that is already asked of the building services staff. "It's an extension of what we are doing already, we take on the new workload, that's what it is," Yakubu explains...

https://silverchips.mbhs.edu/story/13612