The Chelsea School, which helps struggling students to read, finds a new home in Laurel

The Chelsea School, a special education institution focused on reading intervention, is moving its campus from Hyattsville to Laurel, raising concerns about longer trips to school.

The school, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, serves students with language-based learning disabilities, principally dyslexia, followed by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Students come to the Chelsea School with “major reading deficits,” according to Frank Mills, executive director.

Founded in a Washington church basement in May 1976, the school has been based on the fourth floor of a Hyattsville shopping center for more than two decades, largely invisible, with no curb appeal and no green space, Mills said.

The new location, on Laurel’s Montpelier Road, is a two-story, single-tenant building with 32,000 square feet and natural light, larger classroom spaces and green space around it.

Chelsea School is one of the 70 nonpublic special education facilities recognized by the Maryland State Department of Education. The schools serve over 3,000 special education students from 3-21.

By the time a student is referred to attend the school, they have gone through unsuccessful reading interventions at their home school, Mills said. Chelsea serves students in fifth through 12th grade.

Through the school’s program, “our kids really start to learn to read for the first time,” he said.

Ellen O’Neill, a former Chelsea School board member, helped two undocumented immigrant families place their children at Chelsea to receive targeted support and develop their reading skills at no cost. The students were emerging English learners.

“This is exactly what we believe in when we talk about closing achievement gaps and equity in education,” said O’Neill, who is also the executive director of the Atlantic Seaboard Dyslexia Education Center.

The move, however, creates potentially longer commutes for many students. The Laurel location is roughly 17 miles and a 30-minute drive, without traffic, away from the old one, and it lacks a Metro station.

O’Neill, a founding Maryland Reads board member, acknowledged the value of the larger Laurel location but worries about children needing to travel farther, including undocumented families who don’t want to send their kids to Howard County.

Although the distance is “a little more in mileage,” Mills doesn’t anticipate the commute will increase that much because the Laurel location won’t have the traffic congestion caused by the construction of the Metro Purple Line light rail.

Tuition for the most recent school year was $57,544.25, though that’s often covered by the student’s home school district. Additional services such as speech-language pathology, occupational therapy, counseling and tutoring programs add to that cost.

Because the school accepts both publicly funded and privately enrolled students, its tuition rate is set annually by the state education department. Although no full scholarship is available for students, there are financial aid opportunities.

The school year begins Aug. 24. A 50-year celebration gala is set for Nov. 7 in the new location.

“We’re really excited. It’s a small school, and it’s very intimate,” Mills said. “You definitely feel like it’s your family.”