Crown boundary study Option H

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If mcps is under enrolled, why do they need to open Crown HS as a permanent school? Some PP prefers the options of turning Crown HS as a holding school, which HS is on the CIP list in 2027 and needs to temporary move in Crown HS? I hear Damascus HS is the only one on the latest CIP list and they are mostly will be renovated/re-constructed on-site. It does not make sense to leave a new Crown HS as vacant for a few years when it is completed.

That would make the most sense. Why destroy Wootton and the neighborhoods around it to fill a school that shouldn't have been built in the first place? Seems like a recipe for making things worse, not better.

I hear it is almost 50 percent completed and the land is free. It is too late and too expensive to turn their back but mcps is obligated to proceed to complete the new Crown construction. Some kids have to move in to that new Crown HS building when it is expected to be completed in 2027.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If mcps is under enrolled, why do they need to open Crown HS as a permanent school? Some PP prefers the options of turning Crown HS as a holding school, which HS is on the CIP list in 2027 and needs to temporary move in Crown HS? I hear Damascus HS is the only one on the latest CIP list and they are mostly will be renovated/re-constructed on-site. It does not make sense to leave a new Crown HS as vacant for a few years when it is completed.

That would make the most sense. Why destroy Wootton and the neighborhoods around it to fill a school that shouldn't have been built in the first place? Seems like a recipe for making things worse, not better.

Because Gaithersburg says they were promised a real local school, not a holding school.

[Anonymous]

What is the date of the next step in this process?

[Anonymous]

The enrollment data was known, and the 11th hour under-enrollment "revelation" was obviously known as well. The originally presented options were a farce; all of the feedback was discarded and this new "option" will be rubber stamped. This process has been a rug-pull. MCPS will plow ahead with this option and bulldoze the Wootton community.

[Anonymous]

Wootton is Crown and Crown is Wootton!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the date of the next step in this process?

Late December?

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Anonymous wrote:Makes zero sense to fix up Wootton to be used as a regular HS AND have Crown when we have declining enrollment and a tight budget.

Exactly, and I get frustration, as Taylor said if the decision was made today to build Crown they would not have done so, that money could have gone towards Damascus Wootton and Magruder replacements. However the reason why Wootton has not been touched for 20-25 years (Churchill got a full renovation and major addition back in 2001 and was about 5 years older so Wootton theoretically should been due in 2006) is because its location and site do not allow for a new school to be built on the fields while students attend the current facility and thus needed a holding school. I don’t know what this was never explicitly stated vs constantly jerking the community along like Charlie Brown and the football. Wootton will never be renovated without a holding school period end of story. It’s also very different than Churchill which has a renovation while students were in side, in Churchills case a big addition was done first which allowed several huge sections of the school to be redone after the addition opened. This isn’t really practical at Wootton as there’s no suitable land to add a massive 600-800 seat addition. The site is too small and has problems.

Not only that but then you add the budget woes, how can you in good faith spend money to rebuild a high school when enrollment is declining and there is no need for Wootton and when one was constructed only a few miles away in Crown (I agree ill advised). There is no need for Woottons seats there will still be 3-4 thousand seats open at the high school level without it once Crown Woodward Northwood and Damascus are done (assuming Magruder gets redone too). Unfortunately with just three high schools over 40 years old the most logical one to close is the one pretty much next to Crown.

All the money could be better spent on renovating/replacing two middle schools or 5-6 elementary schools.

This county needs to rethink things in a big way and that’s inevitably going to mean closing more schools and reasoning students vs pooling money into a million schools that quite frankly are not needed.

Why would Wootton need addition? They have 2200 seats already. Not like other schools only have 1500 which need expansion

My comment on addition at Wootton was in regards to doing a renovation on site. The way the current school is sited and the rest of the land on which it sits, it doesn’t permit for a very large addition which would allow them to work on renovating the rest of the school a section at a time and eventually demolishing another area of the school to use as a field. I think when Churchill was renovated in like 1998-2001 they started with a very large addition which held a lot of students. This let them demolish another existing area of the school (became parking lot to replace the parking that existed where the addition was built) and then they worked on wings of the school renovating one section at a time while students used the new addition and other non-renovated areas of the school, then the newly renovated area opened and a non-renovated area closed to be renovated. What I’m saying is that process isn’t possible at Wootton which means a holding school is required in order to renovate the school. This is why it’s never been done.

Then the question becomes does it make sense to spend $400M on a high school nearby a brand new high school when the county wide excess seats will be more than 5000 at the HS level and there are so many other needs in the county. Closing Damascus isn’t an option given its location, Magruder would be a challenge too. So because of the poor decision to build Crown which was made at a time when it seemed it would be needed, unfortunately logically it makes the most sense to close Wootton and add some money to fix some key areas and use it as a holding school.

There are so many secondary schools that need renovations in the coming decade and having a holding school will be essential.

If we had unlimited money and were in a good economic situation sure rebuild Wootton but the reality is we are not.

Wootton had a large addition back in 2000 too. It’s just the original building part which never got any renovation.
You can’t treat Wootton differently from other schools. Damascus Magruder can have a rebuild but Wootton cannot because of economic situation. Why not moving the other two?

Magruder has some far more serious issues as do other schools.

Either way, I don’t think option H is viable for the such strong opposition from Wootton cluster. MCPS will most likely not push against the whole community and force them to relocate with a boundary process which doesn’t have even sound legal.
Let’s focus on other options.

Of course it is. They demanded a new building and are getting it.

They demanded a new building at the current Wootton site. You conveniently left out that part. As another poster mentioned, Wootton is important to the surrounding community. You might not think 3 miles makes a difference, but it does to parents whose kids walk to and from school. Bussing isn't the answer unless MCPS can guarantee busses for ALL after school and weekend activities to replace walk ability, which it can't.

But right now many current Wootton students are bussed from Dufief, Stone Mill and Travilah areas. I dont understand the difference it would just mean current walkers are no longer walkers.

So you want to go from 50% walkers to 0% walkers. Got it.

Are you dense? It will not be 0% walkers. It will be a new set of walkers - too bad if it isn't your neighborhood that gets to walk. That is the reality in other parts of the county.

Not dense at all. There aren't any walkers to Crown - because Crown doesn't yet exist. But you don't care about the kids who can currently walk to Wootton. I'll bet you don't even have kids that go there, but wish they did.

Why should the system prefer one neighborhood (the one right next to Wootton) with regard to walking over another (the one right next to Crown)?

So you don't care what a core neighborhood to Wootton thinks - one that has been there since Wootton opened its doors in 1970?

Incorrect -- I care about them the same amount that I care about those near Crown. Do you?

When/If Crown opens the neighborhoods right there will be going anyway-regardless of what happens to Wootton. If they aren’t sent there as soon as it opens-they will be eventually so it doesn’t really matter.

The choice appears to come down to making Wootton a holding school or making Crown a holding school. 10 years or so down the line, if there is a rebound in student population, they may convert whichever one is then a holding school into a proper HS. If that is the current Wootton facility, it would need a much more substantial/complete renovation than whatever they would do to make it ready to hold Damascus/Magruder/whichever projects come after, if not its own complete rebuild.

Of course, whichever other secondary facilities then are in line for capital improvement would need a different holding facility if the work could not be completed while students are on-site, and that would see similar overall consideration to that which we see, here, hopefully much farther in advance and with much greater attention to meaningful community engagement.

So, again, with that likely the choice, do you care about the neighborhoods around Wootton the same amount as you care about the neighborhoods around Crown?

Of course they don’t care about Wootton neighborhoods when they’re Wootton haters.

I understand your confusion, as one usually might ask, "Do you care about the neighborhoods around Crown the same as you care about the neighborhoods around Wootton?" when trying to encourage equal consideration from those seeming to favor the latter, while I, intentionally, framed it in reverse to parallel the earlier query that had gone unanswered. That was posed to someone who seemed not to be giving Crown-area residents equal consideration to Wootton-area residents when defending Wootton's walk zone in the discussion.

I guess if we want to maximize walk zone, the best is to make both schools open as permanent schools and not holding schools. If Wootton moves to crown, the walk zone is significantly smaller as crown is surrounded by major highways (basically only crown and Rio are possibly walkable). But Wootton has half of school as walk zone.

OK, assuming you are the same poster, clearly you feel uncomfortable answering the question. The answer should be that the decision-makers, here, should care exactly the same for each...even if those in one or other area naturally might care more about their own.

That said, walk zone isn't the only factor, even as it would tend to grade out evenly between those two options. Those not wanting Wootton to become the choice as a holding school, presuming one or other will, might pursue arguments along other lines.

I’m the not PP and don’t know what you are referring to. But just want to point out that walk zone will be much smaller if Wootton moves to crown.

Good enough, but it stands that there shouldn't be any more or any less care for one set of MoCo neighborhoods vs. another.

A smaller walk zone, as in geographically constrained (e.g., due to major roadways)? If that is what is meant, the more relevant test, again given the assumption that the choice to have both open as their own schools is not on the table, would be whether the one walk zone would encompass meaningfully more students than the other. Does the denser development in the Crown area offset the geographic constraint?

If there is denser development around Crown, then keep both schools open and move the Wootton boundary to encompass Horizon Hill (lessening overcrowding at RM) and to pull kids from Churchill (lessening overcrowding there). This will allow Crown to absorb more kids as denser development proceeds around it. Otherwise, we're just going to end up with an overcrowded Crown in a few years.

Sure, but that isn't the scenario/choice about which the discussion revolved. That choice was between using the newly built Crown as a holding school or moving Wootton to that facility and using the old Wootton campus as the holding school.

The reason for examining those two options was the massive savings and acceleration of currently expected renovation that MCPS would realize with a holding facility, and the happenstance of declining enrollment that would allow that instead of having both schools open.

Again, with that choice between the two locations, it does not appear that an appeal to support one walk zone over another should hold sway. An argument to make neither location used for holding and have both open with their own catchments, dual walk zones and other substantial community benefits included, would have to stand up against that expected cost savings and renovation schedule improvement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The enrollment data was known, and the 11th hour under-enrollment "revelation" was obviously known as well. The originally presented options were a farce; all of the feedback was discarded and this new "option" will be rubber stamped. This process has been a rug-pull. MCPS will plow ahead with this option and bulldoze the Wootton community.

The enrollment projections are done each year with the input of Montgomery Planning, and change from year to year, though MCPS does not use changed zoning capacity, but approved/started builds, so it may lag. (Or not -- there is a lot of under-utilized extant zoning, so much that one questions why Planning and the Council have pushed for all of the zoning densification involved in Thrive 2050, the corridors plans, etc.)

The timing of the underenrollment "reveal" was not immediate, but the extent of projection changes was not known until after the second set of options was commissioned. Option H was not even on the table for the third set (use of a holding school to accelerate renovations and realize overall savings) until late in that process, and the somewhat limited creativity with regard to boundaries seen in that option may have been the result of relatively rushed inclusion.

All of the options presented were to show possibilities for MCPS-internal and MCPS-BOE discussion, and to garner public comment. (Performative or not -- I'd say more performative than we would like it to be.) None of them, though, was presented to be an unalterable final recommendation candidate.

All that said -- yes, it has been a rug-pull. And, yes, MCPS is, unfortunately, likely to decide and go rather than engage to allow community agency.

And that said, I think we all know that, whether for schools or otherwise, some MoCo communities get that agency more than others...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The enrollment data was known, and the 11th hour under-enrollment "revelation" was obviously known as well. The originally presented options were a farce; all of the feedback was discarded and this new "option" will be rubber stamped. This process has been a rug-pull. MCPS will plow ahead with this option and bulldoze the Wootton community.

Of course it was. This is an indirect way around the boundary studies that were rejected by Wootton parents over the years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The enrollment data was known, and the 11th hour under-enrollment "revelation" was obviously known as well. The originally presented options were a farce; all of the feedback was discarded and this new "option" will be rubber stamped. This process has been a rug-pull. MCPS will plow ahead with this option and bulldoze the Wootton community.

The enrollment projections are done each year with the input of Montgomery Planning, and change from year to year, though MCPS does not use changed zoning capacity, but approved/started builds, so it may lag. (Or not -- there is a lot of under-utilized extant zoning, so much that one questions why Planning and the Council have pushed for all of the zoning densification involved in Thrive 2050, the corridors plans, etc.)

The timing of the underenrollment "reveal" was not immediate, but the extent of projection changes was not known until after the second set of options was commissioned. Option H was not even on the table for the third set (use of a holding school to accelerate renovations and realize overall savings) until late in that process, and the somewhat limited creativity with regard to boundaries seen in that option may have been the result of relatively rushed inclusion.

All of the options presented were to show possibilities for MCPS-internal and MCPS-BOE discussion, and to garner public comment. (Performative or not -- I'd say more performative than we would like it to be.) None of them, though, was presented to be an unalterable final recommendation candidate.

All that said -- yes, it has been a rug-pull. And, yes, MCPS is, unfortunately, likely to decide and go rather than engage to allow community agency.

And that said, I think we all know that, whether for schools or otherwise, some MoCo communities get that agency more than others...

There are also some political elements (often backed by developers) that get their way over those MoCo communities - assuming the political price at the ballot box isn't too high.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Makes zero sense to fix up Wootton to be used as a regular HS AND have Crown when we have declining enrollment and a tight budget.

Exactly, and I get frustration, as Taylor said if the decision was made today to build Crown they would not have done so, that money could have gone towards Damascus Wootton and Magruder replacements. However the reason why Wootton has not been touched for 20-25 years (Churchill got a full renovation and major addition back in 2001 and was about 5 years older so Wootton theoretically should been due in 2006) is because its location and site do not allow for a new school to be built on the fields while students attend the current facility and thus needed a holding school. I don’t know what this was never explicitly stated vs constantly jerking the community along like Charlie Brown and the football. Wootton will never be renovated without a holding school period end of story. It’s also very different than Churchill which has a renovation while students were in side, in Churchills case a big addition was done first which allowed several huge sections of the school to be redone after the addition opened. This isn’t really practical at Wootton as there’s no suitable land to add a massive 600-800 seat addition. The site is too small and has problems.

Not only that but then you add the budget woes, how can you in good faith spend money to rebuild a high school when enrollment is declining and there is no need for Wootton and when one was constructed only a few miles away in Crown (I agree ill advised). There is no need for Woottons seats there will still be 3-4 thousand seats open at the high school level without it once Crown Woodward Northwood and Damascus are done (assuming Magruder gets redone too). Unfortunately with just three high schools over 40 years old the most logical one to close is the one pretty much next to Crown.

All the money could be better spent on renovating/replacing two middle schools or 5-6 elementary schools.

This county needs to rethink things in a big way and that’s inevitably going to mean closing more schools and reasoning students vs pooling money into a million schools that quite frankly are not needed.

Why would Wootton need addition? They have 2200 seats already. Not like other schools only have 1500 which need expansion

My comment on addition at Wootton was in regards to doing a renovation on site. The way the current school is sited and the rest of the land on which it sits, it doesn’t permit for a very large addition which would allow them to work on renovating the rest of the school a section at a time and eventually demolishing another area of the school to use as a field. I think when Churchill was renovated in like 1998-2001 they started with a very large addition which held a lot of students. This let them demolish another existing area of the school (became parking lot to replace the parking that existed where the addition was built) and then they worked on wings of the school renovating one section at a time while students used the new addition and other non-renovated areas of the school, then the newly renovated area opened and a non-renovated area closed to be renovated. What I’m saying is that process isn’t possible at Wootton which means a holding school is required in order to renovate the school. This is why it’s never been done.

Then the question becomes does it make sense to spend $400M on a high school nearby a brand new high school when the county wide excess seats will be more than 5000 at the HS level and there are so many other needs in the county. Closing Damascus isn’t an option given its location, Magruder would be a challenge too. So because of the poor decision to build Crown which was made at a time when it seemed it would be needed, unfortunately logically it makes the most sense to close Wootton and add some money to fix some key areas and use it as a holding school.

There are so many secondary schools that need renovations in the coming decade and having a holding school will be essential.

If we had unlimited money and were in a good economic situation sure rebuild Wootton but the reality is we are not.

Wootton had a large addition back in 2000 too. It’s just the original building part which never got any renovation.
You can’t treat Wootton differently from other schools. Damascus Magruder can have a rebuild but Wootton cannot because of economic situation. Why not moving the other two?

Magruder has some far more serious issues as do other schools.

Either way, I don’t think option H is viable for the such strong opposition from Wootton cluster. MCPS will most likely not push against the whole community and force them to relocate with a boundary process which doesn’t have even sound legal.
Let’s focus on other options.

Of course it is. They demanded a new building and are getting it.

They demanded a new building at the current Wootton site. You conveniently left out that part. As another poster mentioned, Wootton is important to the surrounding community. You might not think 3 miles makes a difference, but it does to parents whose kids walk to and from school. Bussing isn't the answer unless MCPS can guarantee busses for ALL after school and weekend activities to replace walk ability, which it can't.

But right now many current Wootton students are bussed from Dufief, Stone Mill and Travilah areas. I dont understand the difference it would just mean current walkers are no longer walkers.

So you want to go from 50% walkers to 0% walkers. Got it.

Are you dense? It will not be 0% walkers. It will be a new set of walkers - too bad if it isn't your neighborhood that gets to walk. That is the reality in other parts of the county.

Not dense at all. There aren't any walkers to Crown - because Crown doesn't yet exist. But you don't care about the kids who can currently walk to Wootton. I'll bet you don't even have kids that go there, but wish they did.

Why should the system prefer one neighborhood (the one right next to Wootton) with regard to walking over another (the one right next to Crown)?

So you don't care what a core neighborhood to Wootton thinks - one that has been there since Wootton opened its doors in 1970?

Incorrect -- I care about them the same amount that I care about those near Crown. Do you?

When/If Crown opens the neighborhoods right there will be going anyway-regardless of what happens to Wootton. If they aren’t sent there as soon as it opens-they will be eventually so it doesn’t really matter.

The choice appears to come down to making Wootton a holding school or making Crown a holding school. 10 years or so down the line, if there is a rebound in student population, they may convert whichever one is then a holding school into a proper HS. If that is the current Wootton facility, it would need a much more substantial/complete renovation than whatever they would do to make it ready to hold Damascus/Magruder/whichever projects come after, if not its own complete rebuild.

Of course, whichever other secondary facilities then are in line for capital improvement would need a different holding facility if the work could not be completed while students are on-site, and that would see similar overall consideration to that which we see, here, hopefully much farther in advance and with much greater attention to meaningful community engagement.

So, again, with that likely the choice, do you care about the neighborhoods around Wootton the same amount as you care about the neighborhoods around Crown?

Of course they don’t care about Wootton neighborhoods when they’re Wootton haters.

I understand your confusion, as one usually might ask, "Do you care about the neighborhoods around Crown the same as you care about the neighborhoods around Wootton?" when trying to encourage equal consideration from those seeming to favor the latter, while I, intentionally, framed it in reverse to parallel the earlier query that had gone unanswered. That was posed to someone who seemed not to be giving Crown-area residents equal consideration to Wootton-area residents when defending Wootton's walk zone in the discussion.

I guess if we want to maximize walk zone, the best is to make both schools open as permanent schools and not holding schools. If Wootton moves to crown, the walk zone is significantly smaller as crown is surrounded by major highways (basically only crown and Rio are possibly walkable). But Wootton has half of school as walk zone.

OK, assuming you are the same poster, clearly you feel uncomfortable answering the question. The answer should be that the decision-makers, here, should care exactly the same for each...even if those in one or other area naturally might care more about their own.

That said, walk zone isn't the only factor, even as it would tend to grade out evenly between those two options. Those not wanting Wootton to become the choice as a holding school, presuming one or other will, might pursue arguments along other lines.

I’m the not PP and don’t know what you are referring to. But just want to point out that walk zone will be much smaller if Wootton moves to crown.

Good enough, but it stands that there shouldn't be any more or any less care for one set of MoCo neighborhoods vs. another.

A smaller walk zone, as in geographically constrained (e.g., due to major roadways)? If that is what is meant, the more relevant test, again given the assumption that the choice to have both open as their own schools is not on the table, would be whether the one walk zone would encompass meaningfully more students than the other. Does the denser development in the Crown area offset the geographic constraint?

If there is denser development around Crown, then keep both schools open and move the Wootton boundary to encompass Horizon Hill (lessening overcrowding at RM) and to pull kids from Churchill (lessening overcrowding there). This will allow Crown to absorb more kids as denser development proceeds around it. Otherwise, we're just going to end up with an overcrowded Crown in a few years.

Sure, but that isn't the scenario/choice about which the discussion revolved. That choice was between using the newly built Crown as a holding school or moving Wootton to that facility and using the old Wootton campus as the holding school.

The reason for examining those two options was the massive savings and acceleration of currently expected renovation that MCPS would realize with a holding facility, and the happenstance of declining enrollment that would allow that instead of having both schools open.

Again, with that choice between the two locations, it does not appear that an appeal to support one walk zone over another should hold sway. An argument to make neither location used for holding and have both open with their own catchments, dual walk zones and other substantial community benefits included, would have to stand up against that expected cost savings and renovation schedule improvement.

Those massive savings will never materialize. Money is fungible and will have been spent just in time for those savings to be realized. If there were a surplus or other significant savings on the books, MoCo families might question why taxes need to keep increasing....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If mcps is under enrolled, why do they need to open Crown HS as a permanent school? Some PP prefers the options of turning Crown HS as a holding school, which HS is on the CIP list in 2027 and needs to temporary move in Crown HS? I hear Damascus HS is the only one on the latest CIP list and they are mostly will be renovated/re-constructed on-site. It does not make sense to leave a new Crown HS as vacant for a few years when it is completed.

That would make the most sense. Why destroy Wootton and the neighborhoods around it to fill a school that shouldn't have been built in the first place? Seems like a recipe for making things worse, not better.

Because Gaithersburg says they were promised a real local school, not a holding school.

And Wootton families say they can have Crown all to themselves. Just remediate Wootton's issues and a full renovation can wait a while. Gaithersburg can have the school, which will be under enrolled, and then it can absorb more kids as a holding school for those schools on the CIP over the next 5+ years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If mcps is under enrolled, why do they need to open Crown HS as a permanent school? Some PP prefers the options of turning Crown HS as a holding school, which HS is on the CIP list in 2027 and needs to temporary move in Crown HS? I hear Damascus HS is the only one on the latest CIP list and they are mostly will be renovated/re-constructed on-site. It does not make sense to leave a new Crown HS as vacant for a few years when it is completed.

See slide 46

https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/DN4KQG52F8D6/$file/FY2027%20Cap%20Bdgt%20FY2027-2032%20CIP%20251104%20PPT.pdf

With a holding school, there are large cost savings and the schedule can accelerate. Magruder would be on the new CIP request -- the only reason it is not on the current one is because the prior thought, without a holding school, had the schedule such that Magruder planning funds wouldn't be expended until the year after the current CIP period.

Same goes for all the other high schools on the list -- the only reason we don't see them in the CIP is the 6-year window. Wootton would have been next after Magruder. If they move it to the Crown facility, then maybe Einstein would be next on the radar, instead?

There are plenty of schools in need, and Taylor laid out the reason that we have such decrepitude: capital underfunding over decades vs. the expected useful life of constructed facilities. MCPS needs to be renovating/rebuilding on a much more aggressive schedule to maintain equilibrium and even have a chance of improving environmentals/avoiding more costly operations associated with deteriorating conditions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The enrollment data was known, and the 11th hour under-enrollment "revelation" was obviously known as well. The originally presented options were a farce; all of the feedback was discarded and this new "option" will be rubber stamped. This process has been a rug-pull. MCPS will plow ahead with this option and bulldoze the Wootton community.

The enrollment projections are done each year with the input of Montgomery Planning, and change from year to year, though MCPS does not use changed zoning capacity, but approved/started builds, so it may lag. (Or not -- there is a lot of under-utilized extant zoning, so much that one questions why Planning and the Council have pushed for all of the zoning densification involved in Thrive 2050, the corridors plans, etc.)

The timing of the underenrollment "reveal" was not immediate, but the extent of projection changes was not known until after the second set of options was commissioned. Option H was not even on the table for the third set (use of a holding school to accelerate renovations and realize overall savings) until late in that process, and the somewhat limited creativity with regard to boundaries seen in that option may have been the result of relatively rushed inclusion.

All of the options presented were to show possibilities for MCPS-internal and MCPS-BOE discussion, and to garner public comment. (Performative or not -- I'd say more performative than we would like it to be.) None of them, though, was presented to be an unalterable final recommendation candidate.

All that said -- yes, it has been a rug-pull. And, yes, MCPS is, unfortunately, likely to decide and go rather than engage to allow community agency.

And that said, I think we all know that, whether for schools or otherwise, some MoCo communities get that agency more than others...

There are also some political elements (often backed by developers) that get their way over those MoCo communities - assuming the political price at the ballot box isn't too high.

I would not argue with that observation, but, even then, there are some MoCo communities on which developers and the county tend to tread much more lightly.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Makes zero sense to fix up Wootton to be used as a regular HS AND have Crown when we have declining enrollment and a tight budget.

Exactly, and I get frustration, as Taylor said if the decision was made today to build Crown they would not have done so, that money could have gone towards Damascus Wootton and Magruder replacements. However the reason why Wootton has not been touched for 20-25 years (Churchill got a full renovation and major addition back in 2001 and was about 5 years older so Wootton theoretically should been due in 2006) is because its location and site do not allow for a new school to be built on the fields while students attend the current facility and thus needed a holding school. I don’t know what this was never explicitly stated vs constantly jerking the community along like Charlie Brown and the football. Wootton will never be renovated without a holding school period end of story. It’s also very different than Churchill which has a renovation while students were in side, in Churchills case a big addition was done first which allowed several huge sections of the school to be redone after the addition opened. This isn’t really practical at Wootton as there’s no suitable land to add a massive 600-800 seat addition. The site is too small and has problems.

Not only that but then you add the budget woes, how can you in good faith spend money to rebuild a high school when enrollment is declining and there is no need for Wootton and when one was constructed only a few miles away in Crown (I agree ill advised). There is no need for Woottons seats there will still be 3-4 thousand seats open at the high school level without it once Crown Woodward Northwood and Damascus are done (assuming Magruder gets redone too). Unfortunately with just three high schools over 40 years old the most logical one to close is the one pretty much next to Crown.

All the money could be better spent on renovating/replacing two middle schools or 5-6 elementary schools.

This county needs to rethink things in a big way and that’s inevitably going to mean closing more schools and reasoning students vs pooling money into a million schools that quite frankly are not needed.

Why would Wootton need addition? They have 2200 seats already. Not like other schools only have 1500 which need expansion

My comment on addition at Wootton was in regards to doing a renovation on site. The way the current school is sited and the rest of the land on which it sits, it doesn’t permit for a very large addition which would allow them to work on renovating the rest of the school a section at a time and eventually demolishing another area of the school to use as a field. I think when Churchill was renovated in like 1998-2001 they started with a very large addition which held a lot of students. This let them demolish another existing area of the school (became parking lot to replace the parking that existed where the addition was built) and then they worked on wings of the school renovating one section at a time while students used the new addition and other non-renovated areas of the school, then the newly renovated area opened and a non-renovated area closed to be renovated. What I’m saying is that process isn’t possible at Wootton which means a holding school is required in order to renovate the school. This is why it’s never been done.

Then the question becomes does it make sense to spend $400M on a high school nearby a brand new high school when the county wide excess seats will be more than 5000 at the HS level and there are so many other needs in the county. Closing Damascus isn’t an option given its location, Magruder would be a challenge too. So because of the poor decision to build Crown which was made at a time when it seemed it would be needed, unfortunately logically it makes the most sense to close Wootton and add some money to fix some key areas and use it as a holding school.

There are so many secondary schools that need renovations in the coming decade and having a holding school will be essential.

If we had unlimited money and were in a good economic situation sure rebuild Wootton but the reality is we are not.

Wootton had a large addition back in 2000 too. It’s just the original building part which never got any renovation.
You can’t treat Wootton differently from other schools. Damascus Magruder can have a rebuild but Wootton cannot because of economic situation. Why not moving the other two?

Magruder has some far more serious issues as do other schools.

Either way, I don’t think option H is viable for the such strong opposition from Wootton cluster. MCPS will most likely not push against the whole community and force them to relocate with a boundary process which doesn’t have even sound legal.
Let’s focus on other options.

Of course it is. They demanded a new building and are getting it.

They demanded a new building at the current Wootton site. You conveniently left out that part. As another poster mentioned, Wootton is important to the surrounding community. You might not think 3 miles makes a difference, but it does to parents whose kids walk to and from school. Bussing isn't the answer unless MCPS can guarantee busses for ALL after school and weekend activities to replace walk ability, which it can't.

But right now many current Wootton students are bussed from Dufief, Stone Mill and Travilah areas. I dont understand the difference it would just mean current walkers are no longer walkers.

So you want to go from 50% walkers to 0% walkers. Got it.

Are you dense? It will not be 0% walkers. It will be a new set of walkers - too bad if it isn't your neighborhood that gets to walk. That is the reality in other parts of the county.

Not dense at all. There aren't any walkers to Crown - because Crown doesn't yet exist. But you don't care about the kids who can currently walk to Wootton. I'll bet you don't even have kids that go there, but wish they did.

Why should the system prefer one neighborhood (the one right next to Wootton) with regard to walking over another (the one right next to Crown)?

So you don't care what a core neighborhood to Wootton thinks - one that has been there since Wootton opened its doors in 1970?

Incorrect -- I care about them the same amount that I care about those near Crown. Do you?

When/If Crown opens the neighborhoods right there will be going anyway-regardless of what happens to Wootton. If they aren’t sent there as soon as it opens-they will be eventually so it doesn’t really matter.

The choice appears to come down to making Wootton a holding school or making Crown a holding school. 10 years or so down the line, if there is a rebound in student population, they may convert whichever one is then a holding school into a proper HS. If that is the current Wootton facility, it would need a much more substantial/complete renovation than whatever they would do to make it ready to hold Damascus/Magruder/whichever projects come after, if not its own complete rebuild.

Of course, whichever other secondary facilities then are in line for capital improvement would need a different holding facility if the work could not be completed while students are on-site, and that would see similar overall consideration to that which we see, here, hopefully much farther in advance and with much greater attention to meaningful community engagement.

So, again, with that likely the choice, do you care about the neighborhoods around Wootton the same amount as you care about the neighborhoods around Crown?

Of course they don’t care about Wootton neighborhoods when they’re Wootton haters.

I understand your confusion, as one usually might ask, "Do you care about the neighborhoods around Crown the same as you care about the neighborhoods around Wootton?" when trying to encourage equal consideration from those seeming to favor the latter, while I, intentionally, framed it in reverse to parallel the earlier query that had gone unanswered. That was posed to someone who seemed not to be giving Crown-area residents equal consideration to Wootton-area residents when defending Wootton's walk zone in the discussion.

I guess if we want to maximize walk zone, the best is to make both schools open as permanent schools and not holding schools. If Wootton moves to crown, the walk zone is significantly smaller as crown is surrounded by major highways (basically only crown and Rio are possibly walkable). But Wootton has half of school as walk zone.

OK, assuming you are the same poster, clearly you feel uncomfortable answering the question. The answer should be that the decision-makers, here, should care exactly the same for each...even if those in one or other area naturally might care more about their own.

That said, walk zone isn't the only factor, even as it would tend to grade out evenly between those two options. Those not wanting Wootton to become the choice as a holding school, presuming one or other will, might pursue arguments along other lines.

I’m the not PP and don’t know what you are referring to. But just want to point out that walk zone will be much smaller if Wootton moves to crown.

Good enough, but it stands that there shouldn't be any more or any less care for one set of MoCo neighborhoods vs. another.

A smaller walk zone, as in geographically constrained (e.g., due to major roadways)? If that is what is meant, the more relevant test, again given the assumption that the choice to have both open as their own schools is not on the table, would be whether the one walk zone would encompass meaningfully more students than the other. Does the denser development in the Crown area offset the geographic constraint?

If there is denser development around Crown, then keep both schools open and move the Wootton boundary to encompass Horizon Hill (lessening overcrowding at RM) and to pull kids from Churchill (lessening overcrowding there). This will allow Crown to absorb more kids as denser development proceeds around it. Otherwise, we're just going to end up with an overcrowded Crown in a few years.

Sure, but that isn't the scenario/choice about which the discussion revolved. That choice was between using the newly built Crown as a holding school or moving Wootton to that facility and using the old Wootton campus as the holding school.

The reason for examining those two options was the massive savings and acceleration of currently expected renovation that MCPS would realize with a holding facility, and the happenstance of declining enrollment that would allow that instead of having both schools open.

Again, with that choice between the two locations, it does not appear that an appeal to support one walk zone over another should hold sway. An argument to make neither location used for holding and have both open with their own catchments, dual walk zones and other substantial community benefits included, would have to stand up against that expected cost savings and renovation schedule improvement.

Those massive savings will never materialize. Money is fungible and will have been spent just in time for those savings to be realized. If there were a surplus or other significant savings on the books, MoCo families might question why taxes need to keep increasing....

DCUM: "Taxes are too high!"

Also DCUM: "I don't believe in that idea that would reduce county expenses!"