Taylor's Feb Rec for Crown Boundary Study

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wootton needs to stop the drama. Wootton families said the building is unsafe. MCPS listened and gave them a new building. Be grateful.

MCPS created the drama. Wootton doesn’t want Crown. Give it to Magruder as a holding school so it can get its badly needed renovation of an even more unsafe building done ASAP. MCPS can always transplant Wootton to Crown later if that’s what enrollment projections really support. What’s the rush?

Some of Wootton doesn't want Crown. Some of Wootton wants out of the unsafe Wootton building and is happy with Crown.

Problem is, we don't really know how the split breaks. Doing so would require a survey, and who has time for that? Survey of Wootton parents' appetite for being relocated should've been done when the Boundary Study was happening all of last year. But oh well, MCPS blew that and instead suprised parents and got to find out in a chaotic, real-time manner, the response to their unanticipated proposal.

Honestly, Wootton's parents' appetite for being relocated isn't really relevant. Boundary changes are always contentious because few people want 'change,' whatever that change is. If they did surveys of parents whose kids are affected the responses would always be "no." MCPS's job isn't to make every parent happy. It's to make hard decisions that are good for the county as a whole and can be sustained for decades. I'm sympathetic to a pp who suggested they could use Crown as a holding school for a few years and postpone the decision to see how demographics work out, but I'm sure one of their priorities is to make a decision now that can be keep things constant for 20 years or so, as predictability and consistency is valuable in its own right.

It would be relevant to gauge the intensity of pushback and ensure the thoroughness and collaboration needed to minimize fighting by communicating directly, fairly and in a manner that allowed for understanding to be developed between the system and the community.

Even if you believe Option H is the right decision, which it might be, the way MCPS dropped it on the Wootton community out of thin air was at best inconsiderate, and at worst, disrespectful.

Inconsiderate and disrespectful are reasons you break up with a guy, not sue a school system.

Right… as if there wouldn’t still be a legal fundraiser going on right now if mcps had been more considerate and respectful but with the same end results. That’s all it would have taken. Sure

You're not grasping the disrespectful part.

Everyone who participated in the Boundary Study knew and understood that the BOE would redrawing which kids and neighborhoods went to which schools. And that the meetings, surveys and testimonies that MCPS held and staff gathered on behalf of the superintendent and the board, were to shape and inform how those boundaries were drawn.

It was NEVER discussed that a scenario on the table was for a school building to be closed and a whole community moved without their input and say. If that was always an option the board and superintendent was willing to consider, then they should have said that from the beginning.

The "disrespect" was in dropping an unpleasant surprise on a community that never knew or understood that was a potential outcome.

The building is being removed from service as YOU PARENTS and the school COMMUNITY said it was unsafe for your kids to be there. Cause - Effect. Everyone is facing changes to their schools and assignments. The difference is they listened to you about the safety and fixed that for you. They aren't fixing other schools in equally bad shape nor giving them a new school.

You haven’t explained why Wootton was taken off the CIP in May 2024 if it’s so unsafe. Why would MCPS do that and leave the kids in an unsafe building for over 3 years until Crown opens in fall 2027? Shouldn’t Wootton’s building have been remediated immediately (not the opposite) or condemned and its kids moved to a safe building?

Wootton isn’t unsafe to use as a school. MCPS wants to cover its tail and get kudos by adding an instant academic reputation. Why else would it rename Crown as Wootton?

Good point! Let’s change the name, please!

I think it should be renamed “North Potomac Memorial High School” since its erection essentially negates the utility of North Potomac as a concept.

For the record, no one in North Potomac really likes the fact they live in “North Potomac”. It’s embarrassing to say the city name. I think they’d all be happy actually to be in a real city. Probably choosing Gaithersburg over Rockville of course because Rockville elected officials are awful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wootton needs to stop the drama. Wootton families said the building is unsafe. MCPS listened and gave them a new building. Be grateful.

MCPS created the drama. Wootton doesn’t want Crown. Give it to Magruder as a holding school so it can get its badly needed renovation of an even more unsafe building done ASAP. MCPS can always transplant Wootton to Crown later if that’s what enrollment projections really support. What’s the rush?

Some of Wootton doesn't want Crown. Some of Wootton wants out of the unsafe Wootton building and is happy with Crown.

Problem is, we don't really know how the split breaks. Doing so would require a survey, and who has time for that? Survey of Wootton parents' appetite for being relocated should've been done when the Boundary Study was happening all of last year. But oh well, MCPS blew that and instead suprised parents and got to find out in a chaotic, real-time manner, the response to their unanticipated proposal.

Honestly, Wootton's parents' appetite for being relocated isn't really relevant. Boundary changes are always contentious because few people want 'change,' whatever that change is. If they did surveys of parents whose kids are affected the responses would always be "no." MCPS's job isn't to make every parent happy. It's to make hard decisions that are good for the county as a whole and can be sustained for decades. I'm sympathetic to a pp who suggested they could use Crown as a holding school for a few years and postpone the decision to see how demographics work out, but I'm sure one of their priorities is to make a decision now that can be keep things constant for 20 years or so, as predictability and consistency is valuable in its own right.

It would be relevant to gauge the intensity of pushback and ensure the thoroughness and collaboration needed to minimize fighting by communicating directly, fairly and in a manner that allowed for understanding to be developed between the system and the community.

Even if you believe Option H is the right decision, which it might be, the way MCPS dropped it on the Wootton community out of thin air was at best inconsiderate, and at worst, disrespectful.

Inconsiderate and disrespectful are reasons you break up with a guy, not sue a school system.

Right… as if there wouldn’t still be a legal fundraiser going on right now if mcps had been more considerate and respectful but with the same end results. That’s all it would have taken. Sure

You're not grasping the disrespectful part.

Everyone who participated in the Boundary Study knew and understood that the BOE would redrawing which kids and neighborhoods went to which schools. And that the meetings, surveys and testimonies that MCPS held and staff gathered on behalf of the superintendent and the board, were to shape and inform how those boundaries were drawn.

It was NEVER discussed that a scenario on the table was for a school building to be closed and a whole community moved without their input and say. If that was always an option the board and superintendent was willing to consider, then they should have said that from the beginning.

The "disrespect" was in dropping an unpleasant surprise on a community that never knew or understood that was a potential outcome.

The building is being removed from service as YOU PARENTS and the school COMMUNITY said it was unsafe for your kids to be there. Cause - Effect. Everyone is facing changes to their schools and assignments. The difference is they listened to you about the safety and fixed that for you. They aren't fixing other schools in equally bad shape nor giving them a new school.

I'm not a Wootton parent. I belong to a different school community. But it is fair to say that a school closure or removal was NEVER disclosed or discussed as a possible outcome of the Boundary Study by Taylor or the BOE. That was my point. If they were considering that as an option all along, that should have been communicated to everyone from the beginning.

DP. My understanding is that it was not considered as an option in the boundary study all along, but it came about as a result of the new CIP being released last fall.

I'm not sure I believe that, but even if I did, then that still means MCPS could have told Wootton about this possibility way before Dec 2025.

It was first thought to use Crown as a holding school, and then when exploring the various possibilities there the relocation of Wootton was put forth as an option. Doesn't seem that hard to believe.

So you’re telling me the BOE and the Superintendent have no idea all of the options they have at their disposal when they started the Boundary Study?

That makes them sound incompetent. But that could be the case given the performance of this superintendent and BOE thus far.

But if they didn’t realize they had the option to move Wootton to Crown, who put this option on their radar?

It seems hard to believe that they didn’t develop at least some of these plans little by little. Options 1-4 were using some other sort of metric entirely because they created MANY, MANY split articulations for elementary schools and gradually the plans have been toning that down. So maybe they had the idea of moving wootton some time ago (but maybe not) - the rumor, I thought, was that it was initially the idea of someone from Bethesda - but probably not in the way H looked. And even then I’m unsure

[Anonymous]

Ugh this whole Wooton debate is so annoying. It’s happening so just shut your traps already. What will be really sad is when all your lovely snowflakes contract health issues down the road because you opted to keep them in a decrepit mold filled building so you could control the student body instead of letting them be in a clean brand new building.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wootton needs to stop the drama. Wootton families said the building is unsafe. MCPS listened and gave them a new building. Be grateful.

MCPS created the drama. Wootton doesn’t want Crown. Give it to Magruder as a holding school so it can get its badly needed renovation of an even more unsafe building done ASAP. MCPS can always transplant Wootton to Crown later if that’s what enrollment projections really support. What’s the rush?

Some of Wootton doesn't want Crown. Some of Wootton wants out of the unsafe Wootton building and is happy with Crown.

Problem is, we don't really know how the split breaks. Doing so would require a survey, and who has time for that? Survey of Wootton parents' appetite for being relocated should've been done when the Boundary Study was happening all of last year. But oh well, MCPS blew that and instead suprised parents and got to find out in a chaotic, real-time manner, the response to their unanticipated proposal.

Honestly, Wootton's parents' appetite for being relocated isn't really relevant. Boundary changes are always contentious because few people want 'change,' whatever that change is. If they did surveys of parents whose kids are affected the responses would always be "no." MCPS's job isn't to make every parent happy. It's to make hard decisions that are good for the county as a whole and can be sustained for decades. I'm sympathetic to a pp who suggested they could use Crown as a holding school for a few years and postpone the decision to see how demographics work out, but I'm sure one of their priorities is to make a decision now that can be keep things constant for 20 years or so, as predictability and consistency is valuable in its own right.

It would be relevant to gauge the intensity of pushback and ensure the thoroughness and collaboration needed to minimize fighting by communicating directly, fairly and in a manner that allowed for understanding to be developed between the system and the community.

Even if you believe Option H is the right decision, which it might be, the way MCPS dropped it on the Wootton community out of thin air was at best inconsiderate, and at worst, disrespectful.

Inconsiderate and disrespectful are reasons you break up with a guy, not sue a school system.

Right… as if there wouldn’t still be a legal fundraiser going on right now if mcps had been more considerate and respectful but with the same end results. That’s all it would have taken. Sure

You're not grasping the disrespectful part.

Everyone who participated in the Boundary Study knew and understood that the BOE would redrawing which kids and neighborhoods went to which schools. And that the meetings, surveys and testimonies that MCPS held and staff gathered on behalf of the superintendent and the board, were to shape and inform how those boundaries were drawn.

It was NEVER discussed that a scenario on the table was for a school building to be closed and a whole community moved without their input and say. If that was always an option the board and superintendent was willing to consider, then they should have said that from the beginning.

The "disrespect" was in dropping an unpleasant surprise on a community that never knew or understood that was a potential outcome.

The building is being removed from service as YOU PARENTS and the school COMMUNITY said it was unsafe for your kids to be there. Cause - Effect. Everyone is facing changes to their schools and assignments. The difference is they listened to you about the safety and fixed that for you. They aren't fixing other schools in equally bad shape nor giving them a new school.

I'm not a Wootton parent. I belong to a different school community. But it is fair to say that a school closure or removal was NEVER disclosed or discussed as a possible outcome of the Boundary Study by Taylor or the BOE. That was my point. If they were considering that as an option all along, that should have been communicated to everyone from the beginning.

DP. My understanding is that it was not considered as an option in the boundary study all along, but it came about as a result of the new CIP being released last fall.

Yup.

October: Options A-D are released.
Later in October: CIP is released, enrollment drop is released, Taylor floats idea of using Crown as a holding school, given enrollment drop and CIP needs.

(as an aside, this is where I saw a bunch of Wootton people jumping on the idea of Crown as a holding school on Nextdoor, complaining about the condition of the school, because they think this will lead to Wootton getting renovations even though it's not on the CIP.)

November: Board of Education votes to expand the scope of the boundary study to include the option of Crown as a holding school

December: E-H are released. H is a surprise, move of Wootton to Crown.

(People are mad)

February: Superintendent formally recommends H, still lays out option D as an option (Crown / Wootton as high schools) but does not recommend it given the cost.

(People are still mad. We are here.)

Late March: BoE will vote; we generally assume they'll vote for H given the budget and enrollment constraints and lack of an alternative plan.

(Lawsuit? People will still be mad.)

Then we get to do this all again in 2 years when they do elementary and middle school boundary studies and this will involve actual closures.

Incorrect. Relocating an existing school to Crown was officially considered by MCPS in November 2024 - a year plus before Option H was released.

Coincidentally, Wootton was taken off the CIP in May 2024 and MCPS broke ground for Crown in July 2024.

Things that make you go hmmmm.

MCPS commissioned the boundary study to see if transplanting Wootton to Crown was feasible (i.e. justify the decision). This is why companies and governments hire consultants - to justify their decisions to the Board or to the voters.

So the consultants who came up with 8 options, none of which moved Wootton, were somehow designed to justify it?

If they knew they wanted to move or even close Wootton, why wouldn’t they just ask the BOE the amend the scope to do that? Moving schools and closing schools are well within MCPS’s power and the process for doing so isn’t drastically different than the one they were using for the boundary study. And sure, closing Wootton would make a bunch of people pretty mad, but notably, people are mad anyway! So what would they get by hiding their goal?

It's a stupid and unpopular idea that makes no logical sense. This is measurably true by the fact that survey response to the idea are overwhelmingly negative (Taylor has dismissed the survey results) and that every single meeting since the idea was raised has been completely filled with opposition.

It is immediately obvious to anyone who knows anything about the community that it would react this way to the idea of closing Wootton, which is one of the most successful and high performing regions in MCPS, which people make huge personal sacrifice to move into.

It's easier to get this done with last minute chaos, because the alternative lowers the odds of it happening. Time allows people to think about it and be like "Wait, if it's not safe to use the school, why is it going to be used as a holding school? Wait, if there are funds to renovate it to be used as a holding school, why can't they just renovate the school, so that the thriving community continues to draw people to MCPS?"

The fact that there have been years of planning and this drastic change came at the last minute is highly suspect, and very strange, especially in a district marred by a corruption scandal in recent history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh this whole Wooton debate is so annoying. It’s happening so just shut your traps already. What will be really sad is when all your lovely snowflakes contract health issues down the road because you opted to keep them in a decrepit mold filled building so you could control the student body instead of letting them be in a clean brand new building.

Is closing the school the only way to avoid those health issues? Does that mean if Wootton is used as a holding school, the kids who used it are going to contract health issues instead?

[Anonymous]

Anytime a decision seems really strange it's useful to look at who benefits from its outcome.

Who really benefits from moving high performers into the new high school? The Wootton community is vehemently against it, so not them. There are arguments that Rosemont and Fields Road would benefit, but nobody is opposing them using the school w/o dismantling Wootton.

Developers on the other hand rake in hand over fist on properties sold that are "districted to Wootton". These sell at VERY inflated prices.

The county's EV bus contract was recently cancelled due to corruption.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wootton needs to stop the drama. Wootton families said the building is unsafe. MCPS listened and gave them a new building. Be grateful.

MCPS created the drama. Wootton doesn’t want Crown. Give it to Magruder as a holding school so it can get its badly needed renovation of an even more unsafe building done ASAP. MCPS can always transplant Wootton to Crown later if that’s what enrollment projections really support. What’s the rush?

Some of Wootton doesn't want Crown. Some of Wootton wants out of the unsafe Wootton building and is happy with Crown.

Problem is, we don't really know how the split breaks. Doing so would require a survey, and who has time for that? Survey of Wootton parents' appetite for being relocated should've been done when the Boundary Study was happening all of last year. But oh well, MCPS blew that and instead suprised parents and got to find out in a chaotic, real-time manner, the response to their unanticipated proposal.

Honestly, Wootton's parents' appetite for being relocated isn't really relevant. Boundary changes are always contentious because few people want 'change,' whatever that change is. If they did surveys of parents whose kids are affected the responses would always be "no." MCPS's job isn't to make every parent happy. It's to make hard decisions that are good for the county as a whole and can be sustained for decades. I'm sympathetic to a pp who suggested they could use Crown as a holding school for a few years and postpone the decision to see how demographics work out, but I'm sure one of their priorities is to make a decision now that can be keep things constant for 20 years or so, as predictability and consistency is valuable in its own right.

It would be relevant to gauge the intensity of pushback and ensure the thoroughness and collaboration needed to minimize fighting by communicating directly, fairly and in a manner that allowed for understanding to be developed between the system and the community.

Even if you believe Option H is the right decision, which it might be, the way MCPS dropped it on the Wootton community out of thin air was at best inconsiderate, and at worst, disrespectful.

Inconsiderate and disrespectful are reasons you break up with a guy, not sue a school system.

Right… as if there wouldn’t still be a legal fundraiser going on right now if mcps had been more considerate and respectful but with the same end results. That’s all it would have taken. Sure

You're not grasping the disrespectful part.

Everyone who participated in the Boundary Study knew and understood that the BOE would redrawing which kids and neighborhoods went to which schools. And that the meetings, surveys and testimonies that MCPS held and staff gathered on behalf of the superintendent and the board, were to shape and inform how those boundaries were drawn.

It was NEVER discussed that a scenario on the table was for a school building to be closed and a whole community moved without their input and say. If that was always an option the board and superintendent was willing to consider, then they should have said that from the beginning.

The "disrespect" was in dropping an unpleasant surprise on a community that never knew or understood that was a potential outcome.

The building is being removed from service as YOU PARENTS and the school COMMUNITY said it was unsafe for your kids to be there. Cause - Effect. Everyone is facing changes to their schools and assignments. The difference is they listened to you about the safety and fixed that for you. They aren't fixing other schools in equally bad shape nor giving them a new school.

I'm not a Wootton parent. I belong to a different school community. But it is fair to say that a school closure or removal was NEVER disclosed or discussed as a possible outcome of the Boundary Study by Taylor or the BOE. That was my point. If they were considering that as an option all along, that should have been communicated to everyone from the beginning.

DP. My understanding is that it was not considered as an option in the boundary study all along, but it came about as a result of the new CIP being released last fall.

Yup.

October: Options A-D are released.
Later in October: CIP is released, enrollment drop is released, Taylor floats idea of using Crown as a holding school, given enrollment drop and CIP needs.

(as an aside, this is where I saw a bunch of Wootton people jumping on the idea of Crown as a holding school on Nextdoor, complaining about the condition of the school, because they think this will lead to Wootton getting renovations even though it's not on the CIP.)

November: Board of Education votes to expand the scope of the boundary study to include the option of Crown as a holding school

December: E-H are released. H is a surprise, move of Wootton to Crown.

(People are mad)

February: Superintendent formally recommends H, still lays out option D as an option (Crown / Wootton as high schools) but does not recommend it given the cost.

(People are still mad. We are here.)

Late March: BoE will vote; we generally assume they'll vote for H given the budget and enrollment constraints and lack of an alternative plan.

(Lawsuit? People will still be mad.)

Then we get to do this all again in 2 years when they do elementary and middle school boundary studies and this will involve actual closures.

Incorrect. Relocating an existing school to Crown was officially considered by MCPS in November 2024 - a year plus before Option H was released.

Coincidentally, Wootton was taken off the CIP in May 2024 and MCPS broke ground for Crown in July 2024.

Things that make you go hmmmm.

MCPS commissioned the boundary study to see if transplanting Wootton to Crown was feasible (i.e. justify the decision). This is why companies and governments hire consultants - to justify their decisions to the Board or to the voters.

So the consultants who came up with 8 options, none of which moved Wootton, were somehow designed to justify it?

If they knew they wanted to move or even close Wootton, why wouldn’t they just ask the BOE the amend the scope to do that? Moving schools and closing schools are well within MCPS’s power and the process for doing so isn’t drastically different than the one they were using for the boundary study. And sure, closing Wootton would make a bunch of people pretty mad, but notably, people are mad anyway! So what would they get by hiding their goal?

It's a stupid and unpopular idea that makes no logical sense. This is measurably true by the fact that survey response to the idea are overwhelmingly negative (Taylor has dismissed the survey results) and that every single meeting since the idea was raised has been completely filled with opposition.

It is immediately obvious to anyone who knows anything about the community that it would react this way to the idea of closing Wootton, which is one of the most successful and high performing regions in MCPS, which people make huge personal sacrifice to move into.

It's easier to get this done with last minute chaos, because the alternative lowers the odds of it happening. Time allows people to think about it and be like "Wait, if it's not safe to use the school, why is it going to be used as a holding school? Wait, if there are funds to renovate it to be used as a holding school, why can't they just renovate the school, so that the thriving community continues to draw people to MCPS?"

The fact that there have been years of planning and this drastic change came at the last minute is highly suspect, and very strange, especially in a district marred by a corruption scandal in recent history.

Yawn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wootton needs to stop the drama. Wootton families said the building is unsafe. MCPS listened and gave them a new building. Be grateful.

MCPS created the drama. Wootton doesn’t want Crown. Give it to Magruder as a holding school so it can get its badly needed renovation of an even more unsafe building done ASAP. MCPS can always transplant Wootton to Crown later if that’s what enrollment projections really support. What’s the rush?

Some of Wootton doesn't want Crown. Some of Wootton wants out of the unsafe Wootton building and is happy with Crown.

Problem is, we don't really know how the split breaks. Doing so would require a survey, and who has time for that? Survey of Wootton parents' appetite for being relocated should've been done when the Boundary Study was happening all of last year. But oh well, MCPS blew that and instead suprised parents and got to find out in a chaotic, real-time manner, the response to their unanticipated proposal.

Honestly, Wootton's parents' appetite for being relocated isn't really relevant. Boundary changes are always contentious because few people want 'change,' whatever that change is. If they did surveys of parents whose kids are affected the responses would always be "no." MCPS's job isn't to make every parent happy. It's to make hard decisions that are good for the county as a whole and can be sustained for decades. I'm sympathetic to a pp who suggested they could use Crown as a holding school for a few years and postpone the decision to see how demographics work out, but I'm sure one of their priorities is to make a decision now that can be keep things constant for 20 years or so, as predictability and consistency is valuable in its own right.

It would be relevant to gauge the intensity of pushback and ensure the thoroughness and collaboration needed to minimize fighting by communicating directly, fairly and in a manner that allowed for understanding to be developed between the system and the community.

Even if you believe Option H is the right decision, which it might be, the way MCPS dropped it on the Wootton community out of thin air was at best inconsiderate, and at worst, disrespectful.

Inconsiderate and disrespectful are reasons you break up with a guy, not sue a school system.

Right… as if there wouldn’t still be a legal fundraiser going on right now if mcps had been more considerate and respectful but with the same end results. That’s all it would have taken. Sure

You're not grasping the disrespectful part.

Everyone who participated in the Boundary Study knew and understood that the BOE would redrawing which kids and neighborhoods went to which schools. And that the meetings, surveys and testimonies that MCPS held and staff gathered on behalf of the superintendent and the board, were to shape and inform how those boundaries were drawn.

It was NEVER discussed that a scenario on the table was for a school building to be closed and a whole community moved without their input and say. If that was always an option the board and superintendent was willing to consider, then they should have said that from the beginning.

The "disrespect" was in dropping an unpleasant surprise on a community that never knew or understood that was a potential outcome.

The building is being removed from service as YOU PARENTS and the school COMMUNITY said it was unsafe for your kids to be there. Cause - Effect. Everyone is facing changes to their schools and assignments. The difference is they listened to you about the safety and fixed that for you. They aren't fixing other schools in equally bad shape nor giving them a new school.

I'm not a Wootton parent. I belong to a different school community. But it is fair to say that a school closure or removal was NEVER disclosed or discussed as a possible outcome of the Boundary Study by Taylor or the BOE. That was my point. If they were considering that as an option all along, that should have been communicated to everyone from the beginning.

DP. My understanding is that it was not considered as an option in the boundary study all along, but it came about as a result of the new CIP being released last fall.

Yup.

October: Options A-D are released.
Later in October: CIP is released, enrollment drop is released, Taylor floats idea of using Crown as a holding school, given enrollment drop and CIP needs.

(as an aside, this is where I saw a bunch of Wootton people jumping on the idea of Crown as a holding school on Nextdoor, complaining about the condition of the school, because they think this will lead to Wootton getting renovations even though it's not on the CIP.)

November: Board of Education votes to expand the scope of the boundary study to include the option of Crown as a holding school

December: E-H are released. H is a surprise, move of Wootton to Crown.

(People are mad)

February: Superintendent formally recommends H, still lays out option D as an option (Crown / Wootton as high schools) but does not recommend it given the cost.

(People are still mad. We are here.)

Late March: BoE will vote; we generally assume they'll vote for H given the budget and enrollment constraints and lack of an alternative plan.

(Lawsuit? People will still be mad.)

Then we get to do this all again in 2 years when they do elementary and middle school boundary studies and this will involve actual closures.

Incorrect. Relocating an existing school to Crown was officially considered by MCPS in November 2024 - a year plus before Option H was released.

Coincidentally, Wootton was taken off the CIP in May 2024 and MCPS broke ground for Crown in July 2024.

Things that make you go hmmmm.

MCPS commissioned the boundary study to see if transplanting Wootton to Crown was feasible (i.e. justify the decision). This is why companies and governments hire consultants - to justify their decisions to the Board or to the voters.

So the consultants who came up with 8 options, none of which moved Wootton, were somehow designed to justify it?

If they knew they wanted to move or even close Wootton, why wouldn’t they just ask the BOE the amend the scope to do that? Moving schools and closing schools are well within MCPS’s power and the process for doing so isn’t drastically different than the one they were using for the boundary study. And sure, closing Wootton would make a bunch of people pretty mad, but notably, people are mad anyway! So what would they get by hiding their goal?

It's a stupid and unpopular idea that makes no logical sense. This is measurably true by the fact that survey response to the idea are overwhelmingly negative (Taylor has dismissed the survey results) and that every single meeting since the idea was raised has been completely filled with opposition.

It is immediately obvious to anyone who knows anything about the community that it would react this way to the idea of closing Wootton, which is one of the most successful and high performing regions in MCPS, which people make huge personal sacrifice to move into.

It's easier to get this done with last minute chaos, because the alternative lowers the odds of it happening. Time allows people to think about it and be like "Wait, if it's not safe to use the school, why is it going to be used as a holding school? Wait, if there are funds to renovate it to be used as a holding school, why can't they just renovate the school, so that the thriving community continues to draw people to MCPS?"

The fact that there have been years of planning and this drastic change came at the last minute is highly suspect, and very strange, especially in a district marred by a corruption scandal in recent history.

Yawn.

If you’re yawning so much, maybe it’s nap time for you. Mommy will get you a bottle and change your nappy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anytime a decision seems really strange it's useful to look at who benefits from its outcome.

Who really benefits from moving high performers into the new high school? The Wootton community is vehemently against it, so not them. There are arguments that Rosemont and Fields Road would benefit, but nobody is opposing them using the school w/o dismantling Wootton.

Developers on the other hand rake in hand over fist on properties sold that are "districted to Wootton". These sell at VERY inflated prices.

The county's EV bus contract was recently cancelled due to corruption.

Of course. This is why, despite moving Wootton being on the drawing board since November 2024 (or May 2024 when it was taken off the CIP), MCPS decided to hide the ball when it first offered a vague Option H on December 1, 2025. Confronted with questions about ambiguities in that version, MCPS realized the jig was up and finally came clean in a reissued Option H on December 3, 2025. But by that time, MCPS could see the finish line and hoped it could delay and outrace there backlash with the holidays. The Wootton community mobilized relatively quickly, leading to very vocal opposition at meetings and petitions- all of which the BOE and MCPS ignored to the beat of their ability.

Why? Because the fix was in and Taylor already had the BOE votes he needed before even proposing Option H.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anytime a decision seems really strange it's useful to look at who benefits from its outcome.

Who really benefits from moving high performers into the new high school? The Wootton community is vehemently against it, so not them. There are arguments that Rosemont and Fields Road would benefit, but nobody is opposing them using the school w/o dismantling Wootton.

Developers on the other hand rake in hand over fist on properties sold that are "districted to Wootton". These sell at VERY inflated prices.

The county's EV bus contract was recently cancelled due to corruption.

Of course. This is why, despite moving Wootton being on the drawing board since November 2024 (or May 2024 when it was taken off the CIP), MCPS decided to hide the ball when it first offered a vague Option H on December 1, 2025. Confronted with questions about ambiguities in that version, MCPS realized the jig was up and finally came clean in a reissued Option H on December 3, 2025. But by that time, MCPS could see the finish line and hoped it could delay and outrace there backlash with the holidays. The Wootton community mobilized relatively quickly, leading to very vocal opposition at meetings and petitions- all of which the BOE and MCPS ignored to the beat of their ability.

Why? Because the fix was in and Taylor already had the BOE votes he needed before even proposing Option H.

As evidence that developers will be the winners here, Crown is being renamed Wootton, even though 40% of its student body will not come from Wootton.

Also, renaming Crown to Wootton is a fig leaf for MCPS to avoid running afoul of the COMAR requirements for closing a school.

[Anonymous]

This is exactly why people don’t trust the process—and you don’t have to assume bad intent to see it.

If moving Wootton had been under consideration for months, why did the initial Option H not clearly say that—only to be revised 48 hours later once people started asking questions? That’s a transparency problem, plain and simple.

Then you roll it out in early December, move quickly through the holidays, and limit the window for meaningful analysis or alternatives. At that point, it’s not just “imperfect process”—it looks like a process designed to move one outcome forward quickly.

And yes, MCPS collected input. But collecting input isn’t the same as letting it influence the result. When a decision this big moves forward with no meaningful change despite significant pushback, it’s completely reasonable for people to conclude the outcome was effectively decided in advance.

[Anonymous]

Just think … they closed Woodward and we eventually are moving back in to a new building. It just took 30+ years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is exactly why people don’t trust the process—and you don’t have to assume bad intent to see it.

If moving Wootton had been under consideration for months, why did the initial Option H not clearly say that—only to be revised 48 hours later once people started asking questions? That’s a transparency problem, plain and simple.

Then you roll it out in early December, move quickly through the holidays, and limit the window for meaningful analysis or alternatives. At that point, it’s not just “imperfect process”—it looks like a process designed to move one outcome forward quickly.

And yes, MCPS collected input. But collecting input isn’t the same as letting it influence the result. When a decision this big moves forward with no meaningful change despite significant pushback, it’s completely reasonable for people to conclude the outcome was effectively decided in advance.

Thanks ChatGPT

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anytime a decision seems really strange it's useful to look at who benefits from its outcome.

Who really benefits from moving high performers into the new high school? The Wootton community is vehemently against it, so not them. There are arguments that Rosemont and Fields Road would benefit, but nobody is opposing them using the school w/o dismantling Wootton.

Developers on the other hand rake in hand over fist on properties sold that are "districted to Wootton". These sell at VERY inflated prices.

The county's EV bus contract was recently cancelled due to corruption.

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just how public school districts work. Their goal is to provide fair access to high quality education. They fail at that all the time, but this move lets them do that slightly better for a small number of kids. You simply haven’t made any arguments that persuade them that the “harm” being done to your kids outweighs the benefits the Rosemont and FRES will get from moving to Wootton (particularly since every harm you name - having a long bus ride, being at a middle school that isn’t right next to the high school - are things that current Wootton students already deal with without any negative consequences). They’re not acting irrationally. They just don’t share your goals.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wootton needs to stop the drama. Wootton families said the building is unsafe. MCPS listened and gave them a new building. Be grateful.

MCPS created the drama. Wootton doesn’t want Crown. Give it to Magruder as a holding school so it can get its badly needed renovation of an even more unsafe building done ASAP. MCPS can always transplant Wootton to Crown later if that’s what enrollment projections really support. What’s the rush?

Some of Wootton doesn't want Crown. Some of Wootton wants out of the unsafe Wootton building and is happy with Crown.

Problem is, we don't really know how the split breaks. Doing so would require a survey, and who has time for that? Survey of Wootton parents' appetite for being relocated should've been done when the Boundary Study was happening all of last year. But oh well, MCPS blew that and instead suprised parents and got to find out in a chaotic, real-time manner, the response to their unanticipated proposal.

Honestly, Wootton's parents' appetite for being relocated isn't really relevant. Boundary changes are always contentious because few people want 'change,' whatever that change is. If they did surveys of parents whose kids are affected the responses would always be "no." MCPS's job isn't to make every parent happy. It's to make hard decisions that are good for the county as a whole and can be sustained for decades. I'm sympathetic to a pp who suggested they could use Crown as a holding school for a few years and postpone the decision to see how demographics work out, but I'm sure one of their priorities is to make a decision now that can be keep things constant for 20 years or so, as predictability and consistency is valuable in its own right.

It would be relevant to gauge the intensity of pushback and ensure the thoroughness and collaboration needed to minimize fighting by communicating directly, fairly and in a manner that allowed for understanding to be developed between the system and the community.

Even if you believe Option H is the right decision, which it might be, the way MCPS dropped it on the Wootton community out of thin air was at best inconsiderate, and at worst, disrespectful.

Inconsiderate and disrespectful are reasons you break up with a guy, not sue a school system.

Right… as if there wouldn’t still be a legal fundraiser going on right now if mcps had been more considerate and respectful but with the same end results. That’s all it would have taken. Sure

You're not grasping the disrespectful part.

Everyone who participated in the Boundary Study knew and understood that the BOE would redrawing which kids and neighborhoods went to which schools. And that the meetings, surveys and testimonies that MCPS held and staff gathered on behalf of the superintendent and the board, were to shape and inform how those boundaries were drawn.

It was NEVER discussed that a scenario on the table was for a school building to be closed and a whole community moved without their input and say. If that was always an option the board and superintendent was willing to consider, then they should have said that from the beginning.

The "disrespect" was in dropping an unpleasant surprise on a community that never knew or understood that was a potential outcome.

The building is being removed from service as YOU PARENTS and the school COMMUNITY said it was unsafe for your kids to be there. Cause - Effect. Everyone is facing changes to their schools and assignments. The difference is they listened to you about the safety and fixed that for you. They aren't fixing other schools in equally bad shape nor giving them a new school.

I'm not a Wootton parent. I belong to a different school community. But it is fair to say that a school closure or removal was NEVER disclosed or discussed as a possible outcome of the Boundary Study by Taylor or the BOE. That was my point. If they were considering that as an option all along, that should have been communicated to everyone from the beginning.

DP. My understanding is that it was not considered as an option in the boundary study all along, but it came about as a result of the new CIP being released last fall.

Yup.

October: Options A-D are released.
Later in October: CIP is released, enrollment drop is released, Taylor floats idea of using Crown as a holding school, given enrollment drop and CIP needs.

(as an aside, this is where I saw a bunch of Wootton people jumping on the idea of Crown as a holding school on Nextdoor, complaining about the condition of the school, because they think this will lead to Wootton getting renovations even though it's not on the CIP.)

November: Board of Education votes to expand the scope of the boundary study to include the option of Crown as a holding school

December: E-H are released. H is a surprise, move of Wootton to Crown.

(People are mad)

February: Superintendent formally recommends H, still lays out option D as an option (Crown / Wootton as high schools) but does not recommend it given the cost.

(People are still mad. We are here.)

Late March: BoE will vote; we generally assume they'll vote for H given the budget and enrollment constraints and lack of an alternative plan.

(Lawsuit? People will still be mad.)

Then we get to do this all again in 2 years when they do elementary and middle school boundary studies and this will involve actual closures.

Incorrect. Relocating an existing school to Crown was officially considered by MCPS in November 2024 - a year plus before Option H was released.

Coincidentally, Wootton was taken off the CIP in May 2024 and MCPS broke ground for Crown in July 2024.

Things that make you go hmmmm.

MCPS commissioned the boundary study to see if transplanting Wootton to Crown was feasible (i.e. justify the decision). This is why companies and governments hire consultants - to justify their decisions to the Board or to the voters.

So the consultants who came up with 8 options, none of which moved Wootton, were somehow designed to justify it?

If they knew they wanted to move or even close Wootton, why wouldn’t they just ask the BOE the amend the scope to do that? Moving schools and closing schools are well within MCPS’s power and the process for doing so isn’t drastically different than the one they were using for the boundary study. And sure, closing Wootton would make a bunch of people pretty mad, but notably, people are mad anyway! So what would they get by hiding their goal?

It's a stupid and unpopular idea that makes no logical sense. This is measurably true by the fact that survey response to the idea are overwhelmingly negative (Taylor has dismissed the survey results) and that every single meeting since the idea was raised has been completely filled with opposition.

It is immediately obvious to anyone who knows anything about the community that it would react this way to the idea of closing Wootton, which is one of the most successful and high performing regions in MCPS, which people make huge personal sacrifice to move into.

It's easier to get this done with last minute chaos, because the alternative lowers the odds of it happening. Time allows people to think about it and be like "Wait, if it's not safe to use the school, why is it going to be used as a holding school? Wait, if there are funds to renovate it to be used as a holding school, why can't they just renovate the school, so that the thriving community continues to draw people to MCPS?"

The fact that there have been years of planning and this drastic change came at the last minute is highly suspect, and very strange, especially in a district marred by a corruption scandal in recent history.

Yawn.

If you’re yawning so much, maybe it’s nap time for you. Mommy will get you a bottle and change your nappy.

Yes, I would love a nap! I'm sure it's been a long time since you've had young children at home but I trust you'll quickly get the hang of the nappy and bottle thing again.