Reply to Will the Westbard redevelopment blow up the Whitman cluster?

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Reply to "Will the Westbard redevelopment blow up the Whitman cluster?"

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[quote=Anonymous]
The developer that bought the Westbard Giant shopping center and several surrounding parcels revealed plans last week to build 500 to 700 new housing units (condos and town houses) as part of a  new mixed-use development - http://www.bethesdanow.com/2015/02/04/westbard-property-owner-reveals-first-plans-for-new-look-community/.

A big question is where all the children whose families move to the new development will go to school. Wood Acres elementary, which is nearby, already has 800 kids and its students and teachers recently moved to a "holding" school off Goldsboro while MCPS adds 8 classrooms to Wood Acres over the next 18 months. Are we really going to expect Wood Acres to educate 1,000 + students in one elementary school?

If not there, then where? Westbrook, which also is close by, just finished an addition, and it doesn't have a lot of unused capacity. Somerset Elementary isn't far -- and also isn't hurting for students. There is talk of building a new elementary school, but the site they're talking about -- where the Little Falls library is on Massachusetts Ave -- is generally considered too small. And even if a new school is built, where are the children going to go to high school? (Westland Middle should have room after the new middle school opens in Kensington, but Whitman and BCC high schools are already pretty full.)

I'm under no illusion that the lack of space in the local public schools will stall the redevelopment of Westbard. Progress will not be denied.

So it seems that some kind of (potentially) significant redrawing of school attendance boundaries in Bethesda is coming -- certainly at the elementary school level, and potentially at the middle and high school levels, too.

It's impossible to know what will happen at this stage, but any guesses as to how this will all shake out?

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