The Contrasting Conditions and Environments of Prince George’s County Public High Schools

Clara Janzen and Noah Waldron

Visits to nine Prince George’s County public high schools – Bladensburg, Bowie, Crossland, Duval, High Point, Northwestern, Parkdale, Potomac, and Suitland – revealed a wide range of pros and cons in regards to building conditions and student ratings of the school environment, with large differences not only between schools but inside of schools themselves.

If there was one constant throughout the county high schools, it would be contrast. Looming, undecorated corridors interlaced hallways lined with vibrant displays of student artwork and achievement; concrete interiors and vast brick walls mingled with outdoor green spaces and gardening initiatives; and progress and success collided with funding deficits and signs of disrepair: senior Armond Dorsey, pioneer for Suitland’s Ivy League presence, studied in a desolate library; a shiny black Porsche Boxster sat parked in front of High Point’s hopelessly decaying building; vivacious foliage neighbored graffiti reading “Kill me God” on an otherwise spotless Northwestern exterior wall.

High Point, with its outdated building and severe chipping paint, notably looked the worse of the nine schools, though Crossland also received particularly negative student reviews. Northwestern and Bladensburg each stood out for their newer, more modern structures, as did the so-called “A Building” for ninth graders at Potomac.

“Overall it’s pretty clean,” said Northwestern senior Abigail Kingston. Sophomore Faith Wilson noted the same. “The students can be messy, but the maintenance does a good job cleaning up after them.” Both students expressed little, if not nothing wrong with their school’s environment. Yet on the other side, students like Jordan Mathis had different perspectives from their experiences in other parts of the county.

“I just feel like it’s just a bad school,” said Mathis of Crossland HS, who currently attends Gwynn Park HS but went to Crossland up until halfway through his junior year. “From the outside you can tell that it’s an old school, and then when you come inside, you also see, it’s a dirty environment… I see roaches and mice… during lunch one time there was hair in our food,” said Mathis. “It affects the learning environment a lot. And some of the teachers, they don’t care, like what the students do. So that also takes a part… Of course a teacher after a while is going to get tired if a student [is] acting up and misbehaving, but sometimes a teacher, if she’s not showing any effort that she cares or wants to help, then what’s the student supposed to do if he can’t get any help?”

In turn, Mathis said, teachers and administrators should talk with students more. “They don’t really connect with students because the fact that the things we do, we act up and stuff like that, but sometimes they don’t realize that the reason we’re doing this is because we don’t have nobody to talk to us or connect with us and understand.”

Like Mathis, students continuously mentioned pests as concerns. “We have a lot of bugs,” said Suitland junior Jameah Peters. High Point junior Marcus Conway mentioned the presence of “roaches, rats, [and] mice.”

Many students seemed keen to rebutt negative stereotypes surrounding their school’s atmosphere.

“People like to proliferate its downs,” said Dorsey. “We have a very supportive faculty… It’s really easy to make friends here… I’m actually happy I went to Suitland and not some other school because I feel that here, albeit [it] was more difficult to get those opportunities, I grew as a person.”

Potomac junior Edwin Martinez explained that he had doubts entering the high school, as his peers and family had led him to believe that at Potomac he was “not gonna receive a good education.” However, he said that he has found quite the opposite, noting that for the kids that work hard, teachers such as his ninth grade English teacher want to “take you far.”

“He was great, he was supportive,” said Martinez of this teacher. “I mean he saw that I had potential.”

Despite Peters’ acknowledgement of violence within the school, which she referred to as “basically the main distraction,” Peters’ review was positive. “I love Suitland,” she said, then illuminating the supportive and nurturing faculty. “You really can get your education.” She highlighted Suitland’s Visual and Performing Arts program as well. “We have a lot of talent. We have singers, dancers, actors. We have artists.”

Glory Ngwe, an eleventh grader at Duval, proclaimed, “it’s not that bad.” Both her and Symone Temoney, a Duval sophomore, agreed that the school had a bad reputation, but that it has undoubtedly changed.

What did not change, however, was the consistency of students’ quickness to comment on other student behavior. From obnoxious and violent, to spirited and vibrant, to productive and helpful, students had widely-ranging opinions of their peers, even within schools.

Ariyal Yarborough, a junior at Potomac, said she thinks her student body to be well-knit with “lots of energy,” though she complained about the excessive and obnoxious behavior of her peers. “Sometimes they just be doing too much,” she said, clarifying that her annoyance stemmed from their noise and attitude, not their violence.

Mentions of violence, however, were not uncommon at most of the visited schools, though many students noted that administration was usually quick to break it up.

Temoney said that she had observed three fights in that week alone (5/2-5/6). However, her classmate Ngwe claimed, “there’s not as much fighting as there used to be.”

“There’s a lot of fighting here,” said Crossland sophomore John Martin. Though he later admitted to a definitive gang presence, him and the other Crossland students said they generally felt safe within the building.

Below, photographs exhibiting the exteriors and interiors of each of the nine schools.

Bladensburg HS, Bladensburg, MD