Buckley Country Day school’s application for a $5 million capital project that will include a parking lot renovation, dining hall expansion, addition to the headmaster’s house and six new classrooms foresees no change in enrollment.
The project had been in development for two years, Headmaster Jean-Marc Juhel said at a February 2019 Board of Trustees meeting in the Village of North Hills. A public hearing on the plan, which has been revised, was postponed to Wednesday from March 2019.
“We created a master plan for what we needed to do to enhance the quality of the programs here, the quality of the experience of the students and to enhance traffic,” Juhel said at that meeting.
Plans obtained from the Village of North Hills through a Freedom of Information Law request say that while the number of parking spaces would be increased from 120 to 317, proposed enrollment would remain the same.
The intention behind the parking lot renovation, the headmaster said last year, is to beautify the campus and make it safer for pedestrians.
“Our youngest children are 2 1/2 and our oldest are 14,” Juhel said. “I really want them to be able to enjoy this beautiful location that we’re in without having to worry about cars.”
A dining hall and six new classrooms for the performing arts and language departments will also be built, as per the original plans.
Additions to the original site plans include a proposed garage and equipment storage building, and a black aluminum fence around the perimeter of the school’s property.
The additional classrooms would reinforce Buckley’s commitment to foreign language and performing arts programming, he said.
The school’s support for the project will come from alumni and parents, the headmaster said, and the school’s endowment will receive part of the $5 million, according to the campaign’s webpage.
“They gave us a preliminary site plan and that’s where we’ll start the public hearing,” North Hills Mayor Marvin Natiss said last year.
Buckley Country Day School was unavailable for comment.
