Proposal to close SSIMS in 2031
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Anonymous
Nope, he says it's just fine as a holding school because there are no walkers at holding schools, but doesn't work as a regular school because there are walkers who I guess he thinks will be hit by trains or abducted by commuters. |
Anonymous
Yet they’ve redone the front of the school. Brand new dance studio. Fix the rest. Done. MCPS has the money. |
Anonymous
Holding schools are spaces you could probably tolerate being in on a temporary basis, especially knowing you have a new school to go back to, but they're not spaces you want a school to inhabit permanently. That's SSIMS. |
Anonymous
Which's school's project do you want to cancel in order to pay for it? |
Anonymous
So fix SSIMS!! That is the best and most reasonable solution. They have the money and it makes a whole lot more sense than bussing all the kids nearby to Eastern or Sligo. |
Anonymous
Yes, I see that in the proposed CIP, but the building that was proposed in the feasibility study that was released just last month is for 1,097 kids. There had been an option for a 3-story building earlier on that wasn’t included in the final feasibility study. I guess that work all needs to be redone. The street this new school building will back up to us already down a hill/slope from the current playing fields, so a 3 story building is going to tower over that neighborhood. The other thing I worry about is pedestrian safety: Eastern and Franklin is already a pretty tough intersection with poor traffic controls (turns from Franklin to University are not protected), and that signal is the last signal/major road before the Beltway entrances on University, so there’s already a ton of throughput. |
Anonymous
How do you know, and how do you know how much it would cost to do a true fix for all of SSIMS's many, many problems? |
Anonymous
If there is mold, electrical, plumbing hvac, etc. its often cheaper to tear it down and rebuild vs. just fix it. |
Anonymous
Fine, then tear it down and rebuild it. Whatever. Just keep that property as a community school. |
Anonymous
Due to MCPS and BOE mismanagement of money, they don't have enough and how much is the county council going to raise our taxes vs. holding them accountable with the money they have given they are one of the highest funded school systems? |
Anonymous
| Kids in DTSS should not have to pay the price for Mcps mismanagement of money. This is absurd. |
Anonymous
| I hope the council objects. It’s so lovely to have a neighborhood school close to downtown silver spring. |
Anonymous
Even "the rest" that they had looked at back in 2014/15 was not nearly enough to bring the school up to standards, much less make it comparable to other MCPS middle schools after their own reno's. They then shelved that before revisiting it with lesser scope 5 years later when they were forced to by Purple Line considerations. And then that scope, itself, got decimated during planning/bidding. And then again as latter phases were dropped during construction, with time & cost overruns. The new gym project at the front just replaced use of the old, separate Blair field house for the most part. There'd be a pretty big lift remaining to get it "done." |
Anonymous
LOL Start with an audit of current CIP. The findings would amaze you. |
Anonymous
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There are 3 reasons:
1) The facility condition and the cost to address the long-standing problems associated with a very old and neglected facility. They've been avoiding this since the 90s when they decided to reopen the then-moving Blair HS as a combined ES (Sligo Creek ES) and MS (SSIMS) in one building, where they reconditioned, to a degree, the third that became SCES but did the absolute minimum reconditioning on the SSIMS side. They will have to do some work to make it habitable as a holding facility, but not as much as they should have done (long ago, and should be doing now) for the local school. 2) The Purple Line -- they don't want combo ES & MS kids in direct proximity for a variety of safety considerations. As a secondary-level holding school, there would be no walkers, and that seems to be enough of a safety mitigator for them. 3) The only secondary-level facility they have is Woodward, and that's going to be its own school shortly. They need a place to put an entire HS when that ends up under construction, and the combination of SSIMS and SCES, with some build-out but compromising some HS facility provisions (e.g., no real auditorium beyond the gym, limited athletics, etc.), is what they see as their best option. |