B-CC Middle School Site Selection Committee Recommends Rock Creek Park

(3701 Saul Rd., Kensington) is back in the running as the most likely location for the new Bethesda-Chevy Chase school cluster middle school, scheduled to open in 2017.

The park was recommended by the school's site selection advisory committee to the Montgomery County Board of Education and Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr on March 12.

The report listing Rock Creek Hills Local Park as the preferred option also listed (4105 Jones Bridge Rd.) as the alternate site.

"Through a scoring process, the [site selection committee] determined Rock Creek Hills Local Park as the preferred recommended site for the new middle school (with a score of 130) and North Chevy Chase Local Park as the recommended alternate site (with a score of 28)," the report stated.

Last year, , and designs for the school were already underway when Starr called for a re-do of the site-selection process, . As of this week, the re-do has resulted in the same preferred site.

While private sites were considered in addition to public land (like the local parks), most "private candidate sites were not available for sale and the sites that potentially were available would [have been] difficult to acquire within the timeframe needed to open the new middle school by ... August 2017. In addition, private properties of adequate size carried high acquisition costs," the committee's report stated.

The public is invited to review the report and submit comments about it until March 26. Send comments to bruce_crispell@mcpsmd.org or to janice_turpin@mcpsmd.org.