Brown Station CDP, Maryland – Racial and ethnic composition Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos may be of any race.
Obama Elementary was the first school in the Washington, D.C., area that was named after the former president.[18] It is adjacent to Wise High School.[19] The Prince George's County school board approved of the name of the school on June 25, 2009;[18] all board members voted in favor of the renaming.[19] The school opened on August 23, 2010, and had a cost of $25 million. The architect was Grimm + Parker Architects,[20] and it was built for 792 students.[19] The school's cooling system relies on over 144 geothermal pumps.[21] The initial enrollment was 798, slightly higher than the school's stated capacity.[18] Its opening relieved Arrowhead, Marlton, Melwood, Patuxent and Perrywood, elementary schools.[20] The first principal was Pearl Harmon, a Liberian American;[21] in 2014 she was reassigned to an administrative position in the PG County school system.[22] Several school board members argued that naming a school after Obama would inspire area students. Many schools in PG County were named after African-Americans, and PG County voters primarily support the Democratic Party, Obama's political party.[23] In the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, 89% of PG County residents voted for Obama. The chairperson of the PG County Republican Party Central Committee, Mykel Harris, argued that the county should not name a school after a current president, while the chairperson of the board, Ron L. Watson, stated that the vote was not done out of political considerations.[19]