Residents living near Long Branch Elementary School will continue living without a slice of a neighborhood park for the foreseeable future.
Arlington County Board members on April 20 approved a proposal allowing the county school system to continue use of a portion of the adjacent Fillmore Park at 33 North Fillmore St. for portable classrooms.
Such relocatable-classroom facilities (which one former superintendent notoriously referred to as “learning chalets”) have been in place since 2015. The most recent agreement between the county government and school system expired in July 2023.
The agreement approved April 20 retroactively legalized use of the site over the past 10 months, and will extend the license through July 2029.
Constructed in 1973, Long Branch Elementary in March had 420 students in kindergarten through fifth grade and an additional 22 pre-kindergarten students. That makes it among the smaller elementary schools in Arlington; the average enrollment among the 25 schools in March was 534, according to school-system data.
In addition to the four-classroom portable building, a portion of the schoolyard and the playground also occupy a portion of the one-acre Fillmore Park.
