The construction for West Potomac is scheduled to begin during or just after Spring Break. Construction workers will break ground in the back parking lot, or the overflow lot, at some point in the next couple of weeks. This will be the beginning of around 18 months of construction, with everything set to be done at the beginning of the 23/24 school year, though everyone should be mostly moved in by the beginning of the 22/23 school year.

Some have been wondering why the county didn’t take advantage of the school shut down to start the project early. The simple reason is they couldn’t. “The timelines they have set for all the projects across the district are extremely tight, because they literally jump from one site to the next, or have multiple sites going at the same time,” Ms. Tanganyika Millard, the West Potomac Principal, said. While taking advantage of the shutdown would have been convenient for the student body and staff, it was impossible for the construction workers.

There is currently construction happening at West Potomac, but this is a separate project that is in no way tied to the renovation. The community that surrounds the school on Quander Road, had been asking for a sidewalk that goes the full length of the road in front of West Potomac and the Quander Road School for some time.

Construction will occur in 4 phases: the first is beginning the extension in the overflow lot. Soon after this they’re going to begin laying the groundwork for phase 2, the connector between Quander and Springbank. This will involve Dominion Power coming in and starting to dig to put in the electrical lines for the connector. The brunt of the construction of phase 2 will take place this summer. “They’ve set the work that would be disruptive to day to day functioning will happen over the summers, right, so that you’re not impacting instruction and movement across the school,” Ms. Millard said, so there will be a lot of work getting done over the summer, including the extension. Ms. Millard expects that there will be access to some of the rooms in upper Quander when school returns.

The final part of construction will be the construction of the new Kiss-and-Ride loop that will go back behind Quander and Springbank, which will help get more cars off of Quander in the mornings and afternoons in order to help combat the back-up that occurs during those times on school days. The construction of this will take place, most likely, between the end of the 22/23 school year and the beginning of the 23/24 school year. By the time that this is finished, most of the extension should be done along with the connector, and most, if not all, students and staff should be inside the building.