RMHS Cluster Meeting last night

[Anonymous]

Can someone who attended comment on the meeting? Was it well attended? Was useful information shared? Does it seem that MCPS is dealing with the situation well?

[Anonymous]

I wasn't able to attend the meeting last night, but I also wanted to tag onto this post and find out if anyone specifically addressed the proposed size of Julius West Middle School. I'm interested in hearing the MCPS rationale behind proposing a middle school with a program capacity of approximately 1,450 students. I think that is insane and I'd like to hear someone tell me why it is not. The RM Cluster needs a second middle school, or we need to redistrict the entire county to even out capacity issues.

[Anonymous]

If they added a second one..then there would be two in the 700-750 range. Are there any that small in the county?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wasn't able to attend the meeting last night, but I also wanted to tag onto this post and find out if anyone specifically addressed the proposed size of Julius West Middle School. I'm interested in hearing the MCPS rationale behind proposing a middle school with a program capacity of approximately 1,450 students. I think that is insane and I'd like to hear someone tell me why it is not. The RM Cluster needs a second middle school, or we need to redistrict the entire county to even out capacity issues.

Julius West 1,038

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/03211.pdf

Pyle Middle School 1,291

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/03428.pdf

Currently, Julius West has less enrollment than Pyle. They must be looking at growth projections, but if any school needs capacity help, it is pyle.

[Anonymous]

The handout from last night showed current enrollment of 1094 at JW going up to 1312 in 2016-2017 and to 1400 eventually. All 4 feeder elementaries are overcrowded so that must be driving their projections.
They said the extra students aren't enough to justify a second middle school for the cluster and there aren't any other nearby clusters that need more middle school capacity (although some have questioned that) so the only choice is to make it one huge school. This news wasn't exactly well received especially the part where they said they might not expand the cafeteria (designed for 980 students).