Lakelands Park Middle School is a public middle school located in Gaithersburg, Maryland, United States. Managed by Montgomery County Public Schools, the school educates over 1,000 students in grades 6-8. The school was named after Lakelands Park, which is adjacent to the school. With its premises used regularly for community events, the school has a high local profile. Deborah R. Higdon is the school's principal. She took over from the original principal, Joseph M. Sacco, who left on January 1, 2009.
The school
Lakelands Park Middle School was built in 2005 to resolve overcrowding in other schools in the county, as a result of a unique collaborative effort between the Montgomery County Board of Education and superintendent Dr. Jerry Weast, at a cost of $21 million. Lakelands was designed to accommodate up to 1,200 students and is located amongst local housing to enable the students to be able to walk to school. The building is, and includes three floors, a full-size gym, auxiliary gyms, three computer labs, and rooms for art, music and technology. The media center has a collection of more than 18,000 print and non-print materials, including books, magazines, videos, DVDs and CD ROMs. The Research Learning Hub includes 32 networked computers. The school set ambitious academic targets, including 100% of the students reading at or above grade level by the time they leave the school. However, the school was soon placed on the state watch list due to poor results. Following the decision of the Montgomery County school board to allow cell phones in schools other than high schools, in August 2007 Lakelands was one of four selected to trial this arrangement. In the 2018 annual assessment for Maryland schools, Lakelands Park received four stars out of a possible five as a measurement of overall effectiveness.
Feeder patterns
After students graduate from 8th grade, the high school they go on to depends on the elementary school they attended. Students move to Quince Orchard High School if they went to Brown Station or Rachel Carson elementary schools, and those who went to Darnestown Elementary School attend Northwest High School. If students went to Diamond Elementary School, they either attend Quince Orchard High School if their home is south of Great Seneca Highway, or Northwest High School if their home is north of Great Seneca Highway.
Lakelands Park has competitive teams in boys' and girls' softball, boys' and girls' basketball, boys' and girls' soccer, and coeducational cross country. The city constructed a synthetic turf sports field, at a cost of just under $950,000, in the adjacent Lakelands Park. The field opened in October 2014. Initially there was no public access but, in May 2015, it was announced that the field would be available to the community on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. However, due to on-street parking because of the absence of car parking facilities and litter issues, the use of this facility has caused what residents call "quality of life issues". Student Sara Mercer was selected to represent the United States in China at the 2016 Acrobatic Gymnastics World Championships.
Music and theatre
The Lakelands Park Theatre, the school's drama club, wrote and gave a public performance of an original drama, Pirate School!, in February 2008. The school's Advanced Orchestra received an overall Superior rating at the Maryland State Orchestra Festival in 2010, which is the highest possible rating.
