Option H is permanent and the old Wootton HS campus will be closed for good?
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Anonymous
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The problem is that there are not enough kids to fill up an additional high school, otherwise there won't be Options E-H.
Rezoning Churchill to Wootton and Wootton to Crown won't solve the under enrollment problem.
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Anonymous
What lower class upper Mo Co residents? the ones that bought $1 million houses in Criwn? There were no comments like that, that person was lying. Also how’s Crown upper MoCo? |
Anonymous
Then how do you know the Nextdoor person was not trying to make Wootton look bad then? Just like what you are doing. People clearly discriminate Wootton due to high proportion of Asians. |
Anonymous
There are a lot of Asian haters |
Anonymous
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Wootton parents can’t seem to win. If we support Option H, we’re framed as privileged parents pushing out Gaithersburg. If we question Option H, our facility concerns are mischaracterized as racial motives rather than what they are: concerns about safety and infrastructure. That framing needs to stop.
We are parents advocating for our children’s safety and health. We do not want students learning in a building with failing HVAC systems, chronic plumbing and restroom failures, and aging electrical infrastructure that no longer meets modern safety standards. Wootton has been placed on the Capital Improvements Program twice, only to be removed both times, leaving families with years of documented need but no path forward. There are pros and cons to every option—whether that means a safe, secure Wootton High School on Wootton Parkway or a permanent move to Crown. Disagreeing on solutions does not make anyone ill-intentioned; it reflects a community grappling with difficult tradeoffs under DECADES of delayed investment and county-wide neglect. |
Anonymous
Nothing here provided any information on why option H doesn’t work |
Anonymous
Which of the options offers a safe, secure Wootton High School on Wootton Parkway? |
Anonymous
The reasons Option H doesn't work have been discussed ad nauseum on this board. Don't be intentionally obtuse. |
Anonymous
| How is having an empty school helpful? They say they will use it as a holding school but if it’s not safe how are they going to do that? So it’s not safe for the current students but safe to be used for others???! |
Anonymous
Providing a particular location is not an imperative, Providing relatively manageable (when compared with those of other schools) travel times given various modes of transportation is an imperative. Providing a safe structure for learning is, as well. |
Anonymous
| Option H may work and could be a strong long-term solution, but it also comes with significant uncertainties. It risks leaving an empty building behind, as we have seen elsewhere, and it would remove a neighborhood high school from the heart of Rockville. Many families are also confused by the idea that funding exists to use Wootton as a holding school, yet not to fully modernize it. That said, Option H does have real advantages and should be considered carefully as part of an honest, transparent discussion. This discussion casts families as either “stealing” Crown or acting as though they are “too good” for Crown. BOTH characterizations are harmful and untrue. What needs to stop is the name-calling and the assumption of bad motives when parents are advocating for their children. Years of fiscal and planning decisions by MCPS and the Board of Education put us in this position. Parents are trying to navigate the consequences, not undermine solutions. Assumptions and name-calling don’t move us forward. |
Anonymous
They can use a year with no students in the building to address the more pressing/health-related issues at a hugely lower cost than afforded with other options. I'd guess that either means having Damascus students remain on-site, at least for a year, while their new facility is being built or delaying the Damascus & Magruder projects by a year to allow for the old Wootton facility reconditioning. The latter may be the option chosen if the County Council underfunds the CIP request, as it pushes overall cost to later years...though we know this often is folly, not only failing due to the delay in providing educational services at an adequate level, but also often costing more in that long run due to the combination of higher maintenance expenses and inflation in construction costs outpacing budget increases. Maybe they think they can do what is needed with the current Wootton in an intensive summer effort, placing anyone at Churchill or QO for summer programs and preserving the current Damascus/Magruder timeline? That approach still may show overall savings, despite the presumed higher cost of crashing a Wootton reconditioning project schedule. |
Anonymous
What people are irritated about is that Wooten is not unique in needing repairs or a new school. They are not the only school who has been on the CIP, removed and is still waiting. You’re being presented the chance to get a new building but complaining about where it is located. Read the room. Be adults. No one is getting everything they want. So either you want a new building or you don’t. And if you choose no, understand that no one wants to hear ya’ll complaining about how unsafe Wooten is. |
Anonymous
The fact that they set things up so that they have no options for moving neighborhoods between Churchill and Whitman is all anyone needs to know to see that their scoping of the boundary studies was woefully insufficient. And have you heard about the ridiculous unaddressed overcrowding situation at Blake? It isn't that some schools belong in one study or another more, it's that all schools should have been involved in a single study from the beginning. Elementaries too, as they are setting themselves up for more failure by first constraining the secondary boundaries to inefficient fixed elementary boundaries (or limiting split articulations, there) and then coming back in a year to do elementary boundaries that will be artificially constrained by the then-fixed but inefficient (due to the prior elementary constraint) secondary boundaries they will have chosen. The system needs to be doing this overall adjustment about once a decade. That would tend to have more incremental effect. It's been far, far too long, and the large disruptions seen for some communities in the current effort are a result. |
Anonymous
Howard County went through a couple within a short time span and sounds like they will continue to reevaluate boundaries every couple of years. The last major was started around 2019: https://www.hcpss.org/school-planning/boundary-review/ and had a goal of balancing out FARMS rate to around the 20-30 percent mark across multiple schools. Then they just did another recently: https://www.hcpss.org/school-planning/boundary-review-for-26-27/ Which was supposed to help with relieving overcrowding and looks like they were potentially going to mix up the areas with Centennial High, which is kind of like a W school. I'm not really familiar with the areas there but it looks like in the end they didn't change any areas that were originally assigned to Centennial High: https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/hcpssmd/Board.nsf/files/DNSJG94D1519/$file/12%2004%202025%20Redistricting%20Approval.pdf So there are other school districts that do regular boundary studies and changes. And I'd be kind of careful of assuming anything is set for the long term, unless maybe you're in the heart of one of the "untouchable" areas, like the ones that have had no changes proposed in any of the rounds of proposals. |