I agree that a ~500 student school is too big for right now. A ~300 student school would however relieve overcrowding at the other elementaries feeding Hardy and give the city the classroom space it needs to guarantee Pre-K via DCPS across the city (which would be a huge deal).

The area will inevitably densify as families move in to the area to access the new high school and so it’d make sense to build it large enough to add additional classrooms as necessary. LAB is only using 1/2 of the Old Hardy building as it is so hopefully the city to take back what they are not using and use that for the new school with an annex on the parking lot beside the building. Best case scenario is to overturn the lease extension but I can’t see how that would ever happen.