Leonardtown’s planning and zoning commission members agreed this week to carve out a 16-acre subdivision for a new elementary school and future early childhood center on St. Mary’s County government’s 171 acres of farmland off Hollywood Road.

Brad Clements, chief operating officer for St. Mary's public schools, said the school will be located near a corner of the property, adjacent to homes in the Leonard’s Grant community and having a main entrance off the neighborhood’s parkway.

“We’re planning to move forward this fall” on the school, Clements said, and begin actual construction next year. “It’s needed,” he said, “especially throughout the central part of the county.”

The early childhood center would come later, on the same corner of the tract of land now known as the county’s Leonardtown Educational and Recreational Site.

“It’s not going to be built right now,” Clements said. “We really put this aside for down the road.”

George Erichsen, the county’s director of public works and transportation, said the county later will deed over land to the school system for a middle school.

“The decision was made to do it in two separate steps,” Erichsen said.

JOHN WHARTON