New Windsor Holding LLC, on behalf of Springdale Preparatory School, is exercising its ability to purchase Springdale’s primary academic building, the former New Windsor Middle School at 1000 Green Valley Road.
Legal representatives of the holding company wrote to the Board of Carroll County Commissioners on Dec. 30 that they were electing to purchase the 30.009 acres of property for $4.25 million. If the sale is finalized, the money from the purchase will go into the county’s general fund.
The former New Windsor Middle closed in 2016, and the property was transferred to the county. Springdale Preparatory School has been leasing the space in since 2018, Carroll County Economic Development Director Denise Beaver said. The rental contract gives the school’s holding company the right to purchase the property at any time.
Beaver said the county is eager to have the property off its hands.
“Carroll County isn’t in the business of owning schools,” she said. The county will now “be free of this obligation of having a school on the books,” Beaver said.
The Carroll County Times reported in 2018 that the county spent nearly $100,000 on the property’s maintenance.
Springdale is a coed boarding and day school for students in sixth through 12th grades. Jessica Taylor, the assistant director of admissions, communications and marketing for Springdale, said 200 students attend the school, with about half making up the boarding program. The majority of boarders are international students, Taylor said.
While the original school building was built for a much bigger student body, Taylor said the school uses all of the classroom space because the school has a 7-to-1 student-to-teacher ratio.
In addition to the building they lease from the county, Springdale owns five buildings that are used for the residential program. Those buildings were formerly part of the Church of the Brethren, an Illinois-based organization that used the property as a service center and had owned the property since the 1940s.
Beaver and Tim Burke, the county attorney, will brief the county commissioners on Thursday on New Windsor Holding’s decision to purchase the middle school property.
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