BLOG: Rock Creek Hills Too Small for School
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Françoise Carrier, chair of the Montgomery County Planning Board, attended the April 17 meeting of the Montgomery County Board of Education. There, Montgomery County Board of Education member Laura Berthiaume told Carrier that, due to the small size of Rock Creek Hills Park, if Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) were to take the park to build B-CC middle school No. 2, then it would soon become necessary to build a third B-CC middle school, on the site of the former Montgomery Hills Junior High (currently the Yeshiva and Torah School of Greater Washington).
Here is the exchange between Berthiaume ("LB") and Carrier ("FC"):
LB: "Our duty is to build a school sufficient to the needs of our future population. If we were to come back and say what we think is, because there's more land at North Chevy Chase, if you would be willing to talk with us about that, there would be adequate size to build, to only build once, rather than going back in seven years for the Montgomery Hills Junior High site, which I project would be necessary.."
FC: "For the middle school?"
LB: "For a third middle school because there's just not going to be enough room..."
FC: "At the Rock Creek [Hills] site you mean?"
LB: "Yes, eventually."
FC: "Well, that would certainly be a shame."
Carrier told Berthiaume and the other members of the Montgomery County Board of Education that the Montgomery County Planning Board was willing to discuss the much larger North Chevy Chase Local Park, MCPS's recommended alternate site, in order to minimize impacts on park users:
LB: "It was suggested in some of the testimony that Parks and Planning is open to negotiations. ... What I want to know is ... having looked at an aerial [photograph] of North Chevy Chase, there's lots of land there, and not much actual facilities in terms of park facilities. It looks to me like it wouldn't be that hard to put a school at the back of it. Is Parks and Planning willing to negotiate to take a look at a joint use of that site, rather than get into loggerheads over Rock Creek Hills or Lynnbroook?"
FC: "I think we're certainly willing to negotiate about North Chevy Chase..."
However, the Montgomery County Board of Education declined to discuss the issue further with the Montgomery County Planning Board. (As the first year of appropriation for the project is not until 2014, there's time to consider such options.) Instead, in a decision that appears arbitrary and capricious, the education board voted at that meeting to take Rock Creek Hills Park, even though the MCPS-recommended alternate site is much larger, better comports with their site evaluation criteria, and would likely reduce construction costs by $4 to $6 million.
Tom
9:13 pm on Thursday, April 26, 2012
I cannot believe that, on the public record, they turned down the offer to negotiate on the alternate site picked by the SSAC, a site that can fit the entire RCHLP without disturbing existing park facilities. What you didn't capture was the explanation for the Planning Board's original recommendation. As the Planning Board Chair pointed out, the two MCPS representatives at the Planning Board meeting couldn't answer the Planning Board's questions regarding the sites, leaving it to accept the Park Department's recommendation. Perhaps the MCPS representatives couldn't answer the Planning Board because MCPS didn't conduct any school siting analysis, any facilities cost analysis, or any traffic analysis for the NCCLP site. Or, perhaps the answer lies in MCPS' statement that the overriding factor was the reclaim right to RCHLP (talk about whistling past the graveyard!). All to give the citizens of Montgomery County the possibility of a _third_ middles school in the near future?!?! Arbitrary and capricious is an understatement.
Thank you for another excellent post. Let's hope that reason and fiscal responsibility reside in the County Council and the County Executive so that the dispute won't have to continue.
mpd
2:01 pm on Friday, April 27, 2012
I never considered the possibility that building a middle school at RCH Park may result in the need for a third middle school down the road. But, I actually think that would be a positive factor that weighs in favor of . Why have have two mega schools (or worse, one mega school at Westland)? With the projected population increase and development down county, getting to the RCH middle schoool for some folks may prove just as difficult and time consuming as it currently is to get all the way to Westland. By spacing out multiple middle schools throughout the cluster, travel time will be reduced for the students and parents.
Tom
2:57 pm on Friday, April 27, 2012
Unfortunately, that issue could never be addressed in the meetings. People asked for some idea of the cluster boundaries and from which locations the school would draw students just to get a sense of the neighborhoods involved. Each time they asked, they were stonewalled.
In any case, we are talking about spending an incredible amount of money just to squeeze the new MS on 2/3 the site that existed when a school last was there. An independent engineer found that for construction costs alone MCPS understated its costs at RCHLP by 40%. There was no assessment of facility costs at the site, which we now know top $6 million, and now, for the first time, we're hearing that's this isn't over? We're going to spend another, what, $50 million for another school?
NCCLP is a 32 acre site. RCHLP fits inside it leaving the existing facilities and half the trees undisturbed, a fact that MCPS wouldn't know because it didn't conduct siting studies there. Doesn't anyone think that this new information about a third school would have been of interest to the SSAC in making a decision?
Further, where will they put this third school? Montgomery Hills comes with a huge lease termination charge, not to mention the significant disruption to that community. Aside from that site, according to the SSAC, there is no other site available, unless you think that Park and Planning will release NCCLP for a MS a mile away from the park it lost, RCHLP.
This is just plain crazy.
Maria Fusco
8:20 pm on Saturday, April 28, 2012
It doesn't make sense. I was driving over there to deliver a Brickyard Sign, and it is a beautiful public park that is worked nicely into your neighborhood. And to think that building this will not even take care of the school issue -- why spend all this money to re-spend it & more later? ... doesn't make sense.
Add this what Leggett says on "Neighborhoods" & importance of ~ it's in the 1st minute:
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/mcgtmpl.asp?url=/content/pio/goodneighbors/index.asp
Brian
10:32 am on Monday, April 30, 2012
So the Parks Department draws a line in the sand saying that no park will be given up for a school site effectively forcing the hand of MCPS to chose a private site or a site with an established reclaim right. When it becomes clear that a private site will not work RCH is selected. At that point the Parks Department staff offers up a smaller, clearly inadequate site and is hailed as being willing to negotiate. Then, after an off the cuff remark by a BOE member, we get the first mention of the possible availability of NCC park. At this point I wouldn't trust anything the Parks Department says given the fact that it was clear that availability would play a major role in the site selection process and they've had over a year to speak up.
That being said, the land area at NCC does make it a very attractive location for a middle school. If I were MCPS I would continue down the path with RCH until an actionable transfer proposal is presented by the Parks Department for NCC. At that point the sites can be evaluated against each other without having to consider availability.