| Maryland resident here. Our Montgomery County Board of Education and the Planning Board will be taking a trip to Baileys ES school in Faifax Co. They would like to introduce a similar concept of locating schools in empty offices in the Bethesda/Chevy Chase area. The County Council in MoCo is in a hurry to approve new development and needs to find a solution with regards to schools. What do you think of building "Baileys" in our area? Our County has always looked to Fairfax for ideas. This time is no different. |
| Given the poor options, Bailey's is not bad. |
| Not a bad idea, but I hope they use a better office. I used to work in that office building back when it was offices (and up until it became Baileys) and it was a hot mess. The elevators were always broken, there were homeless people living in the parking lot, etc. |
What do you mean? |
| If it's located near any residential neighborhoods, involve the neighbors early and often. This is something the FCPS did not do a good job of. |
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Bailey's was nicely done, but has no gym and no outdoor space, which I find unacceptable. The classrooms and other facilities are great.
More politically: I don't see how crowding kids into an office building with no gym and no outdoor space makes FCPS a pioneer in anything, but okay. They had to build Bailey's Upper elementary due to severe overcrowding. It was a crisis situation solution to families severely overcrowding the surrounding housing, not a forward-thinking solution in school design and build. Other solutions should have been considered, but weren't. The population around Bailey's elementary keeps increasing, even without any housing being added. FCPS and the county need to find a forward-thinking solution to curbing that, or they will have to seize every office in the area via eminent domain for schools. |
What do they do for PE? |
| As long as the apartments in the baileys area continue to turn a blind eye to 10 or 12 people in apartments in violation of their lease thy are going to continue to have the same issue and worse. |
| Why couldn't they build a gym? |
| Penny Gross should have been voted out more than a decade ago. |
They will be constructing a new play area and gymnasium at the rear of the school. http://www.fcps.edu/BaileysES/upper/index.html |
Bailey's Crossroads is a very overcrowded area (in part because of poorly enforced limits on tenants per household) that has very overcrowded schools (in part because FCPS has very outdated metrics for estimating how many aparment dwellers have children) and there just wasn't any space to build a traditional school. Glen Forest a neigbhoring school will also probably need to expand to an office building or something else soon |
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I've actually been to Bailey's. It's a pretty nice building. What baffles me is that FCPS is currently using the Alan Leis school building as office/meeting space. It would make more sense to use a school as a school and an office building for office work. On he other hand the Leis building was probably too far away to work as a neighborhood school for the Bailey's students.
Prepare for your kid to building up endurance walking up and down stairs. The school is 5 stories high and children are not allowed to use the elevator. (might be some exceptions if they had a medical need) I think for PE they have some larger rooms but they aren't the size of a gymnasium. |
You see stairs as a problem? Really? I guess that could make up for a gym. |
| Like it really matters for that area, they basically need childcare and esol |