BCC Middle School Site Selction number 2 - 2012 version -

[Anonymous]

Does that mean that the construction will start soon?

[Anonymous]

Hope so. Thanks so much to RCH for trying to delay the process. I'll be sure to make extra noise when I drive thru your precious neighborhood to pick up my kids at the new middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hope so. Thanks so much to RCH for trying to delay the process. I'll be sure to make extra noise when I drive thru your precious neighborhood to pick up my kids at the new middle school.

I'm not an RCH resident, but as a BCC cluster community member, I have been appalled by the tenor of discussion over these issues at PTA meetings and online. Much of the discussion has been very "mean girl" or exclusionary. Anyone who opposed a particular siting was labelled selfish or NIMBY or anti-progress, etc. Your comment above has been typical. I found the comments by Rafe whoever in the linked article above to be reprehensible. RCH organized to prevent something happening in their neighborhood that they didn't think was in their interests. East Bethesda (behind BCC) parents did the same thing by organizing against using the Lynbrook area and continually arguing that that area should be "saved" for future elementary school reclamation. Rosemary Hills neighbors organized and spoke out against the use of the Coffield center for the new middle school. Somerset and Westbrook neighborhood sitings were never seriously considered, so they didn't have to organize. No community has a monopoly on knowing what is right for the cluster as a whole.... and the self-righteousness above is narcissistic.

The site selection committee knew that these issues about the zoning of the RCH site were ripe to be argued in court and when the committee chose the site, they had to know that litigation might cause a delay. RCH was only pursuing all remedies available to it. That doesn't mean that they are somehow a "precious neighborhood."

I personally think the RCH siting is a mistake (although not because of the zoning issue) and would have preferred a more central cluster site at Norwood Park or Lynbrook. But, the (imperfect) process (including court cases) came out the way it did, and I can't really be angry at the people who didn't think the way I did.

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of the irritation you hear is how slow/delayed this process has been. There is a huge wave of kids - that was predictable for years - and Westland doesn't have space for them. Last I heard was that the earliest the new MS would have been ready (had construction not been delayed by the RCH lawsuit) was for 6th graders in the fall of 2017.

Since RCH may yet appeal - and I assume that construction is not about to begin imminently (isn't there a bidding process that needs to take place? is there a final design?) - I can only assume that it will be open for 6th graders in the fall of 2018 or later. What about all the 6th, 7th, and 8th graders in the BCC cluster in the meantime?

[Anonymous]

I'm the PP who posted a sarcastic comment about RCH, and I stand by it. I live 2 blocks from one of the feeder elementaries; many of the families whose kids will attend the new middle school are already in close proximity to one school or another. We don't try to prevent your kids from coming to school in our neighborhoods, and we thin it's reprehensible that a community that will benefit from the school has repeatedly sought to game the system and delay the process of getting our children out of overcrowded schools, simply due to some bizarre misguided concern that their property values will decline as a result of school buses in their neighborhood.

The behavior of some of the RCH reps and residents at the meetings was truly embarrassing, to the point that other RCH residents were trying to restrain their neighbors. I knew RCH residents who favored the school siting and were literally afraid of backlash from their neighbors. I attended those meetings and it was quite clear that no one other than the cabal of RCH NIMBYs believe the zoning issues "were ripe to be argued in court," certainly not anyone associated with the Country govt including the Parks department. I'm not sure why the PP thinks it's narcissistic to have an opinion on this but I'm guessing that the line about not living in RCH is inaccurate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm the PP who posted a sarcastic comment about RCH, and I stand by it. I live 2 blocks from one of the feeder elementaries; many of the families whose kids will attend the new middle school are already in close proximity to one school or another. We don't try to prevent your kids from coming to school in our neighborhoods, and we thin it's reprehensible that a community that will benefit from the school has repeatedly sought to game the system and delay the process of getting our children out of overcrowded schools, simply due to some bizarre misguided concern that their property values will decline as a result of school buses in their neighborhood.

The behavior of some of the RCH reps and residents at the meetings was truly embarrassing, to the point that other RCH residents were trying to restrain their neighbors. I knew RCH residents who favored the school siting and were literally afraid of backlash from their neighbors. I attended those meetings and it was quite clear that no one other than the cabal of RCH NIMBYs believe the zoning issues "were ripe to be argued in court," certainly not anyone associated with the Country govt including the Parks department. I'm not sure why the PP thinks it's narcissistic to have an opinion on this but I'm guessing that the line about not living in RCH is inaccurate.

OK, but then if it was so clear that it was just a small group of crazy people with a bad argument, let them go thru the process and lose. If you think the RCH reps don't represent the community, organize and takeover the RCH leadership or confront them at RCH meetings. It's a community association with ByLaws, etc. Use the democratic process to stop them. But, it's naive (and narcissistic) to think, "I know how this case is going to turn out, I know what's right, so I deserve to bully my peers into not filing or denigrate them for having done so."

Again, the site selection committee knew when it picked this site that there were problems related to zoning that were likely to be litigated, and chose it anyway. Maybe they believed that ultimately the litigation would fail, but they had to know that all that would take time. Starr even commented on this at the recent community town hall at WJ when he said that there will likely be appeals on this case and it will take awhile to get the new school built (not a quote, but the gist of what he said).

Agree with you that it's not OK that the two schools with 6th grades (NCC and CCES) will continue to have far sub-par educational opportunities. I have children at CCES (no, I don't live in RCH). We were clearly told several years ago that MCPS would not continue to support CCES' sixth grade at prior levels (which parents had considered to be reasonably equitable and any minor shortcomings were considered to be a minor trade-off for protecting kids for an extra year from the pressures of a large middle school). It was very clear from these meetings that MCPS was trying to squeeze the 6th grades out of NCC and CCES by under-resourcing them. Parents at the time had a choice (thru internal surveys) to fight for more resources or opt for a new middle school or send kids to Westland. Parents chose new middle school and never put up a serious fight for equitable resources for 6th grade (and still are not publicly fighting for this pending completion of the new school). But, the people to blame for this situation (under-resourced 6th grades) are not a small group of protesters who chose to pursue litigation in RCH -- it's MCPS administrators and the community reps/PTAs who weren't able (or didn't try) to marshal public opinion about the under-resourced 6th grades in order to get proper service -- neither for permanent 6th grades nor for 6th grades until the completion of the new school.

IMO, your anger for the situation is focused on the wrong people and, as a result, the problem with the 6th grade will continue for at least another 5+ years until the new MS opens.

IMO, the parents/community got rolled by MCPS. Communities and neighbors are now all focused on denigrating each other rather than creating pressure on the real perpetrators of the problem to fix it.

[Anonymous]

I agree that it is sad that communities and neighbors are denigrating each other. I also feel badly for any community that would lose its park, be it Norwood or Rock Creek Hills. The fact that RCH was the site of a demolished junior high school does not make the bitter pill any easier to take, especially because part of the site has senior housing on it. I do think that MCPS properties such as Lynnbrook, were not sufficiently considered. At one BOE meeting a board member chastised the Chairwoman Francois Carrier for stirring a hornets nest (his words for the East Bethesda community I suppose) by daring to suggest that Lynnbrook should be seriously considered for the middle school.

I agree with the above post that the RCH community will probably appeal, and that this is far from over over. Honestly, I don't blame them. If the MCPS wanted an easy cakewalk to building the school, they should stop looking at parks as prospective sites.

[Anonymous]

Everyone who has joined this discussion needs to read the whole thread if you haven't already. I was on the site selection committee. The Lynnbrook site was not big enough, period. Very few sites in the cluster are.

[Anonymous]

It is over folks, go away go find something else to whine about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone who has joined this discussion needs to read the whole thread if you haven't already. I was on the site selection committee. The Lynnbrook site was not big enough, period. Very few sites in the cluster are.

From the site selection advisory committee report, "Mr. Michael P. Shpur, architect, DOC, DFM, presented information regarding the minimum acreage needed to construct a middle school. Under optimal conditions, 10.1 buildable acres are needed. Site specific issues could result in more acreage being required. A number of the candidate sites have less than the 10.1 acres buildable acres. " Lynnbrook was 10.4 acres, 8.5 build able. Notes from the site selection indicate that discussion on the elimination of Lynbrook included the fact that using Lynbrook would result in the least loss of park land, but concern about the ability to program the fields for MS and HS and the neighborhoods concern to "keep" Lynbrook for a future ES. A number of minority reports filed as attachments to the site selection disagree with the RCH selection and explain why.

I think the issue is that many people didn't feel like the site selection committee looked at these issues very creatively. The normal template of requirements for a middle school (size, free space, etc.) was laid down and many pieces of land were rejected as being too small. BCC is now an urban area and it's time to start rethinking what middle schools look like in our cluster. Of course, MCPS would like to keep as close to the template process as possible, since it gives them economy of scale, but it doesn't actually fit our community. We can't keep building sprawling 1 and 2 story facilities with single use fields. At Lynnbrook, no consideration was given to ways in which a closely sited MS could actually work in synergy with the nearby high school. Nor was any consideration given to linking the Lynbrook site with the NCC site for paired athletic uses (field space being a primary criticism of the Lynbrook site).

I also think it hurt the process, and thus contributes to the current dissatisfaction and desire to litigate, that the selection was conducted and then had to be re-conducted due to failure to comply originally with Open Meetings Act. Many people perceived that the second go-round was just set up to rubber stamp the fact that initially, the BOE rejected the original site selection committee's selection of the RH park and chose by fiat RCH instead.

[Anonymous]

At Lynnbrook, no consideration was given to ways in which a closely sited MS could actually work in synergy with the nearby high school.

The nearby high school is already using fields at Lynnbrook, and at Rock Creek Hills Park, because B-CC is already overcrowded and its field space is already insufficient. I actually preferred NCC Park as the site and since that didn't fly, agreed with the conclusion that Park & Planning should construct more fields there since there is a local need for more rectangular fields.

[Anonymous]

1020/1544 PP: sure you're not an RCH resident. Right. And btw just because Starr predicted that RCH would sue doesn't mean that their suit was justified (obviously the judge didn't see it that way.) It just meant that it was clear some RCH residents are trying to delay the process as long as possible and penalize all our children as they do so. All because they don't want a school in their neighborhood. On a site that housed a school previously. What a lovely crowd.

You argue we should let them go through the process and lose if that's the way it's going to work out. Okay they did, and probably cost my kid and hundreds of others an extra year in a wildly overcrowded school. Now they want to appeal? And when they lose that, then what? How many years should all the kids of the BCC catchment have to wait until the crazy RCH NIMBYs are willing to let the County build a school on a school property?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everyone who has joined this discussion needs to read the whole thread if you haven't already. I was on the site selection committee. The Lynnbrook site was not big enough, period. Very few sites in the cluster are.

From the site selection advisory committee report, "Mr. Michael P. Shpur, architect, DOC, DFM, presented information regarding the minimum acreage needed to construct a middle school. Under optimal conditions, 10.1 buildable acres are needed. Site specific issues could result in more acreage being required. A number of the candidate sites have less than the 10.1 acres buildable acres. " Lynnbrook was 10.4 acres, 8.5 build able. Notes from the site selection indicate that discussion on the elimination of Lynbrook included the fact that using Lynbrook would result in the least loss of park land, but concern about the ability to program the fields for MS and HS and the neighborhoods concern to "keep" Lynbrook for a future ES. A number of minority reports filed as attachments to the site selection disagree with the RCH selection and explain why.

I think the issue is that many people didn't feel like the site selection committee looked at these issues very creatively. The normal template of requirements for a middle school (size, free space, etc.) was laid down and many pieces of land were rejected as being too small. BCC is now an urban area and it's time to start rethinking what middle schools look like in our cluster. Of course, MCPS would like to keep as close to the template process as possible, since it gives them economy of scale, but it doesn't actually fit our community. We can't keep building sprawling 1 and 2 story facilities with single use fields. At Lynnbrook, no consideration was given to ways in which a closely sited MS could actually work in synergy with the nearby high school. Nor was any consideration given to linking the Lynbrook site with the NCC site for paired athletic uses (field space being a primary criticism of the Lynbrook site).

I also think it hurt the process, and thus contributes to the current dissatisfaction and desire to litigate, that the selection was conducted and then had to be re-conducted due to failure to comply originally with Open Meetings Act. Many people perceived that the second go-round was just set up to rubber stamp the fact that initially, the BOE rejected the original site selection committee's selection of the RH park and chose by fiat RCH instead.

Excellent post. You said it all. The second process merely rubber stamped the first, without thorough and honest analyses. And to the poster who insists that anyone who feels badly for RCH community must be part of that small group of fanatics...You are wrong. And the sarcasm is really unnecessary. I just left a public meeting discussing the Silver Spring Transit Center where insults were being hurled by members of the audience, I even heard a "you shut the fuck up" comment traded by these same angry folks. Lack of civility does nothing to further any discussion. It was all downhill from there.

[Anonymous]

Well, honestly, if you had been through a whole site selection process and then someone said you had to do it again because some of the meetings weren't open to the public, would you expect to reach a different decision the second time?

[Anonymous]

Site selection committee member here. It was not at all a rubber stamp and the process was very thorough and at times contentious, and not just re Rock Creek Hills. You can read my earlier posts if you actually read the whole thread. There were more than 50 people at each meeting and the meetings ran long into the night. Just because the outcome wasn't what you wanted, doesn't mean that we halfassed it.