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 developers are being disingenuous when they suggest that the units they're building are just for empty nesters or single people.  Condos at Kenwood Place behind the current Giant are similarly set up, but there's a busload of kids (for Wood Acres) coming from just that development.  If single-family homes zoned for Whitman are running $1M and up, why wouldn't young families live in 2 BR condos and townhouses at $500K or so, especially when the kids are small?  As PP said, there isn't room for a single additional student at Wood Acres -- the school will still be overcrowded the moment it reopens in 18 months, and MCPS says the school cannot be expanded any further.

But it is not all the fault of the developers and the planning commission -- MCPS is sitting on its hands, and is not planning to do anything until additional children suddenly appear and want to go to school.  Bruce Crispell has some vague idea that there would be some redistricting of students to nearby schools with capacity (like Bannockburn), plus additions at other schools, but we all know that redistricting and necessary facility expansion at other schools will take 7 or more years to accomplish, during which a few classes worth of kids will have started and completed elementary school in horrifically overcrowded conditions at Wood Acres, where kids already eat lunch in something like 6 shifts starting at 10:45 am (the expansion does not increase the capacity of the cafeteria, so I understand the lunch crunch will continue post-expansion).  Redistricting is not something that will happen with a snap of the fingers, especially when the increase in students would be coming from Westbard, which straddles two clusters (BCC and Whitman), and both high schools are overcrowded already.

The planning commission and Equity One proposed moving Little Falls Library to the heart of the new development and setting aside the land for a new elementary school.  But they stressed that MCPS said it didn't need any new space, and so in the newest plans, it appears that there is no plan to set aside that space any longer.  The Little Falls site is not large enough for an elementary school under current MCPS guidelines, although under those guidelines, there is no site anywhere in the highly-developed Bethesda area that would fit the bill.  I would think that if MCPS were serious about relieving overcrowding in this cluster, it would consider an exception and allow some creative thinking about how to build a suitable elementary school for that space.  Lots of charters in DC manage to set up wonderful learning spaces in buildings with spare capacity, but it seems that MCPS is not looking for creative solutions for will inevitably happen in the Westbard area.  And the fact that MCPS won't engage in the process with the planning commission and Equity One right now seems to leave money on the table.  If future MCPS needs could be considered part of the redevelopment, some of the expense of setting aside land and getting it building-ready (or perhaps even the building itself) could be done by the developer...if I were a developer wanting to manage community opposition, I'd offer help with adding school capacity.  But that would require MCPS cooperation and engagement, which is not happening.  So now even the step of reserving land for future school development isn't going to happen.

Oh, and the new governor has no plans to let MCPS have additional money to deal with facility needs, so there's that too.[/quote]

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