Why isn't MCPS redistricting Rachel Carlson
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Anonymous
What is Science City? As far as Crown it is ridiculous that they are not making the builders BUILD an elementary school there. Hey contractor? You want this? We want land and a school built. Nope, that is not how MC works. They hate businesses and schools but love those building contracting companies. They must have some serious political pull because all of this building without schools being built is insane. North Bethesda, Gaithersburg, Rockville, Bethesda. WE don't need more people here! And it also kills the resale value of all of homes when they keep building more and more new. So sick of it. |
Anonymous
MCPS buses kids across major roads WITHIN the walkable areas. That's not the fault of MCPS. It's the fault of the county transportation department, for refusing to make the streets safe for children to cross on foot. See here in Clarksburg: http://www.gazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20141001/NEWS/141009789/1261/parents-press-for-traffic-controls-on-snowden-farm-parkway-near-new&template=gazette And here in Bethesda: http://www.gazette.net/article/20140924/NEWS/140929715/1123&template=gazette |
Anonymous
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Science City is the planned development around Belward Farm. The official name is the Great Seneca Science Corridor.
There aren't going to be 6,000 residential units at Science City any time soon. MCPS has capacity needs that are far more immediate and urgent. |
Anonymous
But the question is, how are they preparing for it IN ADVANCE? By their history, my guess is nothing. Once schools hit 6+ portables they will look to "study" for an addition. |
Anonymous
What do you think that MCPS should be doing, to prepare for a residential development that may happen at some time in the future but will not happen any time soon? |
Anonymous
This seems to be par for the course for MCPS. The Westbard sector in Bethesda is being evaluated for redevelopment, and a large chunk of the area to be redeveloped is zoned for Wood Acres. Wood Acres' current capacity is 550, and the school's current enrollment is 789, or 143% of capacity. WAES will start an 18-month expansion this winter, after which the school's capacity will be 734. Still overcrowded on day one of the expanded building. http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02417.pdf The briefing book for the proposed amended sector plan notes that Pyle MS enrollment "will exceed capacity by up to 150 seats throughout the six-year CIP planning period. There are no plans to add capacity to the school. Enrollment at Walt Whitman High School student [sic] is projected to exceed capacity by more than 200 seats by the end of the six-year projection period. An FY 2014 appropriation was approved for facility planning funds for a feasibility study to determine the cost and scope of an addition. A request for CIP finding of an addition is anticipated in the future." The planning commission and the developers have made it clear that redevelopment in the Westbard sector (which is necessary...it's pretty run down) will only happen if they can earn enough profit from housing developments. So they want density to be as high as the community can bear. At a meeting last night, Bruce Crispell, MCPS's Director of Long Range Planning, said that MCPS will adopt a wait and see approach -- rather than do studies now to figure out where additional students from the redeveloped area would go, MCPS will wait to see what the developers plan for, wait to see if Wood Acres (which they admit can't be expanded any farther) becomes grossly overcrowded again, and by how much, and THEN -- and only then -- will they start doing studies to plan for a solution. A conservative estimate for the number of new housing units would be about 1,500-2,000. Assuming VERY conservatively that only 10% of those new units would be occupied by families, and each family has 1.5 school-age kids, we are talking at least 225-300 new students entering the already-overcrowded schools that Westbard feeds into. In reality, this number will be higher -- and this would be on top of the growth in enrollment already being experienced. Wood Acres is overcrowded already. Pyle and Whitman are too. But MCPS has no intention of pushing the developers to be part of a solution before they finalize their building plans. Nor is there any plan to do any modeling or planning concurrently with the redevelopment process. Rather, Crispell will wait to see how bad it gets before acting. At that point, of course, it is too late to involve the developers in a solution. Instead, he suggested that schools near Wood Acres could possibly be expanded, and then children would be redistricted here and there to even things out. But how long will that take? Someone at the meeting asked Crispell about why Rachel Carson wasn't being redistricted, and he pretty much dodged the question. So I don't have a lot of confidence in MCPS's handling of any of these issues. To be clear, I think Westbard is long overdue for redevelopment, and I am not against the development of more affordable housing options. But this can't be done without adequate preparation and consideration for the existing infrastructure (traffic and school capacity). MCPS's current approach is an abdication of responsibility. |
Anonymous
I think it makes a lot of sense for MCPS to wait to see what the developers plan for, and in fact even to wait to see what the developers build. There are lots of things in county master plans that never become reality, as well as lots of developer plans that never become reality. I don't think that MCPS should spend a lot of money to prepare for things that might well never happen, especially when MCPS is already so behind on capital funding for things that are currently happening right now. |
Anonymous
If you know that existing area schools are already overcrowded, it is irresponsible to sit by and do nothing when developers are planning to build thousands of new units and not consider either building a new school to receive the new residents, or to start planning for additions to existing schools. All of that takes a lot of time, and to put off any planning until the overcrowding is a overwhelming reality is incredibly shortsighted. How many "studies" are launched only to find that funding isn't there, or the planning and building itself takes so many years that kids literally age out of the school before relief comes? Maybe to planners and developers, 5-6 years is nothing, but that is an eternity for a kid. |
Anonymous
But the alternative is to spend limited capital funding to prepare for something that might happen 10 years in the future, or 20 years in the future, or never. If MCPS had enough capital funding to address current needs as well as potential future needs, it would be different. But MCPS doesn't. |
Anonymous
+1000. The developers should be responsible for the school buildings if they want to build 6000 new homes. It is done almost everywhere else in the country but for some reason MC has this strange desire to let the developers/contractors hold all the cards. If they have the money to build this and make a huge profit, part of those profits need to go building schools. Look at Rachel Carson. They actually built a school for the development and it is 70% over-capacity. What about Fallsgrove, King Farm, Rockville Town Center, Crown, all the new high rise condo buildings in Bethesda and the future Science City. NO schools built for them. None. Zero. The schools built for Clarksburg weren't enough. Brand new schools overcrowded and spending MORE money getting feasibility studies, additions, new schools etc... Tons of portables already up there. Poor planning - tons of money wasting away to now improve the poor projections. I have no idea how they do not built an unfinished 3rd floor in EVERY new school they built. Just another thing MANY other locations do with their schools. It is 10X cheaper to do this and close it off for future use than it is to build a school based on probable projections, find out it is overcrowded, do feasibility studies, look for funding, do the planning, bid the job, hire the people, possibly put the kids in holding schools to finish the job etc... I mean Richard Montgomery High School was JUST rebuilt from the ground up a few years ago and they are now looking at starting a feasibility study for an addition. College Gardens, brand new a few years ago has portables all over the blacktops. Building unfinished areas of schools ahead of time makes much more sense. |
Anonymous
YES. So many ways to address these problems ahead of time that would be way more efficient and responsive than this piecemeal, wait-and-see approach they take now, which is neither cost-effective nor best for the students. I don't even know why they are sending Crispell to these meetings if all he is going to say is that MCPS will do nada, nothing, zilch to prepare for these new developments that -- news flash -- DO get built. Just drive around the county and you can see hundreds and thousands of new units going up. The excuse of "sometimes things don't get built" just rings hollow. |
Anonymous
The schools at Clarksburg were never intended to be enough. The Clarksburg Master Plan calls for multiple schools. The capacity at Little Bennett is 673, the capacity at Wims is probably the same since it's basically the same building; and then there's another eventual school site at Cabin Branch. Do you think that MCPS should have built one elementary school in Clarksburg, with a capacity of 2,100, for all of the students who may eventually come? What's more, of course MCPS hasn't built any schools for Crown or Science City, given that building has just started at Crown, and there will not be any building for years at Science City. MCPS is already several hundred millions dollars short on capital funding to serve the needs of existing students. |
Anonymous
For example? |
Anonymous
You can build a larger building and then close off the excess capacity, as PP suggested. In DC, excess DCPS capacity is sometimes used by co-locating charters. Couldn't badly-needed childcare centers utilize excess space until the school needs more room? I see old elementary schools being used by nursery schools and daycares all the time. MCPS could take some of those schools back and have developers foot the cost of renovating them. In Bethesda, there are no large tracts of land to site a brand-new ES, although there's an old elementary school near Whitman being used as a nursery school, and another elementary school on Sangamore that is being leased by the Waldorf School. My understanding is that the Waldorf's lease was just extended for another 10 years. That lease should be on the table. There is otherwise little excess land in Bethesda for new school sites, but there is no reason why MCPS could not require developers to foot the bill for new/renovated schools or additions once new residential units hit a certain threshold. But if MCPS doesn't make any of this part of the development plan, the opportunity for cost-sharing is lost. It's not as if developers don't profit from having good schools nearby, so I don't understand MoCo's reluctance to push developers to do more, and MCPS's relative lack of interest in the entire process. Would it kill MCPS to do some advance modeling of different scenarios at some point before hundreds of new children have moved into a development, and provide some useful input into the planning process instead of being entirely reactionary? |
Anonymous
Well I guess they should stop building until they can remedy that situation, correct? If they can't handle the amount of kids they currently have, why is the county allowing for the continued building. Why aren't developers being told "no school, no building." I bet they have some deep pockets that could help change things. And sorry but yes, they should be building a school NOW for the Crown development. There are homes that are moved in, sold and for sale, more being built and it isn't like single couples deciding to have kids in 5yrs are the only ones moving in. Kids are already living there. By next year school year, 70% of the homes projected to be built will be lived in or sold. It takes 5yrs minimum to plan and build a school. They haven't even started planning. So what is going to happen to those surrounding schools? Over capacity, portables, awful lunch times, no room for recess. Then another round of studying for redistricting etc... It is never ending and never done right. |