There is absolutely no new building going on in Potomac to affect Churchill. If the district was stricter on COSA you wouldn’t even be overcrowded. And even now, it is slight. All other school districts have a lot of new residences and more overcrowding to deal with. I have no fight in this. My kids go to Rockville. But Ritchie Park is 7min to Wootton. Half of Ritchie Park would be walkers. Wayside is 15min (without morning traffic) and there would be zero walkers. It makes no sense to pull all of Wayside. They pass 3 other ES that go to Churchill or RM on the way to Wootton. If anything, it makes much more sense to pull the closest neighborhoods of both of those schools. This needs to be a long term plan and not re-arranging and split articulations. It really isn’t that hard, but MCPS worries so much on SES and diversity that the map looks absolutely ridiculous. And the fact that Magruder or Rockville weren’t even considered in all of this means they truly don’t care about SES and diversity anyway. So at least make these boundaries clean and walkable |
| I just hope they don't redistrict QO with any striver schools. Purposely avoided buying in Wootton and Walter Johnson because of all the tiger moms and academic culture. Football, D1 sports, and parents who like to hang out at the beach and tanning salons for fun is the vibe. I think everyone chose their school and neighborhood because it matched their vibe, and they should be allowed to say. |
While I agree that we bought where we did because of these factors and don't want to change that, if it ultimately MAKES SENSE to change, then it needs to. The problem is that these options operate under the improper constraint that ES boundaries cannot change. |
You mean like the 10 million dollars and 2 years they spent researching a later start time for high schoolers only to increase it by 20min lol. MCPS is full of bloat and wastefulness. We could get the top 10 kids in every high school to come together and make up better boundary options than whoever they paid to do this checkerboard. |
I’m in Wayside and am in the part that has gone to Churchill for as long as I can remember, probably since 70s. Think near Potomac Community Center. The designated walk zone is right across Falls Rd yet our side isn’t considered walkable? I agree big chunk of Potomac ES and Wayside are closer to Wootton or QO or equidistant. Think they should have redistributed elementary schools as then it’d make far more sense. Part of Wayside moves to Beverly Farms, Wayside could pull in Coldspring and then no need to spend money to build a new ES there. All of the Churchill ES are 100-200 students under capacity and none of that is changing anytime soon. There’s no new development in Churchill. Lastly I’ll add that a big chunk of Wayside was meant to go to Travilah and Frost/Wootton but the BOE redistricted them to Wayside/Churchill due to overcrowding in Wootton. That’s what’s likely led to this result and it’s frustrating because parents at the time expressed concerns over this and were told there’d be no issues. |
Also thanks for your insight into the capacity, as someone who graduated Churchill 20 years ago it’s not much larger today than it was then and no capacity problems then. |
🙏 |
Yes let’s go to RM, where it is “interesting and poor enough” to have incidents and fights daily on top of the locked bathrooms. Are you for real?!? Wootton doesn’t care about anything but academics and a few sports. It is not entitled, basic MC/UMC and has no daily issues. That’s why home prices right next to the RM district that look identical are 100K more expensive. Families will pay to get into a decent school that prefers academics over scandals. I mean your post is just laughable. I think you proved the PP point about RM. |
AMEN |
This is my biggest concern with the change as one who lives a 3 minute walk from the Potomac Community Center, I’d have been fine with a Wayside split since the bridges are a natural dividing line which is honestly where things become far and a pain and cause congestion etc. |
Where’s Tobytown? And do they currently go to Potomac? If so I’m assuming that’s the area that should go to Travilah! |
| Does anyone remember when RM builders wanted a skeleton unfinished 3rd floor when they were rebuilding and the board denied it saying they expected RM to stay below capacity. And I believe it reached capacity in 3 years and went over in 5 years. A bunch of CLOWNS |
YES! Passion project for a few HS kids - will get them into college! And be free to the taxpayers. Win-Win. |
Yes this is the issue I have with moving Wayside as I’m at the edge right near Potomac Community Centet. Right now we’re literally a 5 minute drive to about 60% of Churchill. 10 minutes would cover almost 100%. However with the switch I’d be maybe 5 minutes to only about 10-15% of the Wootton cluster which would be the part of Wayside before the one lane bridges. 10 mins would maybe expand that to about 35% of the district. Probably would be 20 minutes to get to 100% of the district, and make that 25 in rush hour. redistricting elementary schools both here and everywhere would have been the ideal solution. In lieu of that, I feel a split articulation so half of wayside stays together with half going to MS with others going to Wootton and the rest going to MS with Churchill would be ideal |
Yup there was a lot of uproar and concern among ALL of Wayside and Churchill at the time that it’d lead to overcrowding. It was done to alleviate crowding at Wootton at the time. I mentioned this to a neighbor recently who reminded me of that and that at a community meeting the Board assured the schools that this wouldn’t impact them or crowding and that if it did they’d look into an addition at Churchill. Shame on the BOE. See page 11 here: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/boe/meetings/minutes/1990/minutes.112690.pdf |