Reply to Option H is permanent and the old Wootton HS campus will be closed for good?

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Reply to "Option H is permanent and the old Wootton HS campus will be closed for good?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]All you Wootton crazies - just shut up

I'm more concerned about the Regional magnets and looks like this thread keeps getting longer and longer and bumped so the rest of us will forget about that.[/quote]

Actually I have questions about H and regional magnets. Under any other option A-F, Crown (with its state-of-the-art labs) is in region 5. Under H, Crown/Wootton (whatever you call it) is under region 4.

How do we feel about option H handing a brand new amazing STEM centric school to a region that is already well-resourced over the under-resourced Gaithersburg community that is also overcrowded.

Do we care that Option H completely screws over Gaithersburg?[/quote]

For all the people who say they are pro H to diversify Wootton, please do tell—how can you support an option that “steals” a school meant for a community of lower income and less resourced and hands it over to the privileged folks of Rockville and Potomac? 
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The cognitive dissonance doesn't make sense.  Either Wootton is rich and privileged - doesn't deserve a new building, or Wootton is being given a "gift" that it should be forced to take for the good of MCPS.  Which is it?[/quote]

It's really not that complicated once you stop being deliberately obtuse. While people might disagree on relative priority, most would agree Wootton is nearing the end of its functional lifespan and will soon need a major renovation or to be rebuilt.

The people opposed to H don't want to stick with current Wootton building. They instead want MCPS to build them a school that the district doesn't actually need because they think it will help their property values.[/quote]

So let’s say we give Wootton this brand new school. Again for the countless time: do we care or don’t care that H moves Crown/Wootton to region 4? Do we care or don’t care that this would give all the brand new, state of art labs and resources to Rockville and Potomac residents (Wootton, Churchill, RM) when this was supposed to be for under-resourced yet over populated Gaithersburg?

PP, by your own logic, MCPS is giving H to “privileged” parents of Wootton. How do you feel about the entire Gaithersburg community losing access to Crown, when every other option A-G gives Crown to Region 5?[/quote]

Longer-term, it isn't good for Region 5 to have MCPS paying for a high school that it doesn't need.[/quote]

Even longer term, it isn’t good for anyone in the school system for MCPS to spend money breaking ground on a new school it doesn’t need, use faulty enrollment numbers, not renovate another school that they have neglected for decades, and then instead of fixing the neglected school, punishes it by closing it altogether.

If we’re talking about the long term, pretty sure setting an unlawful precedent is worse. [/quote]

Strongly disagree. Circumstances and data change. When a previous decision is no longer justified by the current situation and data, or (gasp!) if that decision was made in error, and there is still an opportunity to make a better decision, we should take it.  Blindly continuing down a wasteful path due to a decision made 20 years ago would be the awful precedent.

It's absurd to characterize option H as "punishing" people in the Wootton zone. We know in the short-to-moderate term we would need a new building for Wootton. And we just so happen to have an available building just 2.3 miles away.[/quote]

So you’re suggesting that Wootton get 100% of the former Crown and Taylor agrees not to move 500+ GHS kids into the new Wootton?  This would make sense if MCPS is correct that the numbers don’t support a new high school at Crown anymore. However, I wonder how GHS parents would feel about MCPS “stealing” their new school and giving it to Wootton. Oh wait, we already know this from the hearings last week.

If you’re saying that Wootton has to move AND has to absorb kids through a boundary change, then you’re creating a new school and closing the old Wootton.

You can play with semantics all you like, but a judge is unlikely to agree, at least in the short term due to irreparable harm to Wootton families. MCPS doesn’t want this situation anywhere near a courtroom because it would be forced to open Crown with only 500 GHS kids. Any more kids than that and MCPS can’t close Wootton and move it to Crown.[/quote]

As you seem to understand, changing buildings is not closing a school. And while boundary changes are often controversial, they also are not considered closing a school and creating a new one. It is ridiculous to claim a combination of those things is closing a school.[/quote]

Adding to that, when there's ambiguity in law, courts defer to the agency, and they consider legislative intent. Both side with MCPS. The legislative intent is to provide notice and community input. That was obviously done here.
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Are you a lawyer?  Have you litigated cases like this one?  I have and can tell you it’s nowhere near as simple and straightforward as you describe. As noted in this thread, there is no definition as to what constitutes a school closure. A court will want evidence and extensive briefing before it makes a decision that could affect thousands of families and have multiple millions of dollars in potential impact. There is also the backing off of Options A-D and the curious timing of the release of Option H.  These raise questions as to whether an MCPS is acting illegally or arbitrarily and capriciously. In the meantime, the court may grant a preliminary injunction to maintain the status quo.[/quote]

You're also clearly not a lawyer. There's no chance for Wootton parents to prevail in a verdict.  The most they could do would be to drag it out, but the massive cost of operating an extra high school, combined with the massive cost of renovating/rebuilding Wootton, provides a rather strong incentive for MCPS to wait them out.

Though, I think they would be very unlikely to get an injunction if their best argument is calling this a school closure.[/quote]

Wait them out has different options and closing Wootton doesn’t have to be the solution. They definitely use crown as holding school and achieve the same result. 
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MCPS doesn’t really want that because it will expose their ineptitude in building Crown in the first place. [/quote]

This is a weird take. If you agree the school isn't needed based on current projections, then how could you ever justify rebuilding another school just 2 miles away? Wouldn't you expect any rational facilities planning process to conclude with Option H?[/quote]

No. Why not use Crown as a holding school?[/quote]

Then what? There are only so many schools close enough to Crown to make that viable, and even fewer when you exclude the schools with enough space to build replacements on-site.[/quote]

Ok but then how do you explain their plan to use Wootton as a holding school? Isn’t that the same issue? And Wootton is even further out than Crown is from the other schools that need renovation. [/quote]

MCPS is saying the school needs repairs and will eventually get them. Parents are saying that's not good enough and they want an imediate fix.  So, they were offered Crown and still complaining.

What is your solution?  Parents are complaining, don't like the options provided but refuse to offer better ideas.[/quote]

I'd be skeptical of those future promises, too. More likely, Wootton would just get closed and the students redistributed. Unless people in that part of the county start supporting higher density redevelopment, but that seems incredibly unlikely.

Option H is pretty much the only long-term path for keeping the Wootton community intact.[/quote]

This is just wrong. The reason why Wootton cluster hate H is because they see the writing on the wall. H right now keeps us in tact but what happens in the future?

Federal jobs will come back, immigration will come back, international students will come back, new developments in Rockville and Rio are popping up.

In the long term, one of two things will happen: Wootton is demolished. The properties that used to be walkable to Wootton—that many families like my ow bought because of rumblings of boundary studies in 2017-2018—will be the first one to be reassigned. Fallsmead and Cold Spring will be moved to RM the moment Crown gets too big with Wootton gone.

Or the other option is:
Wootton is rebuild after its status as a holding school. When they move kids back on Wootton Parkway from Crown, do we seriously think Dufief is being moved back?

The writing is on the wall. H, sooner or later, will result in the cluster breaking  apart.

You can argue whether or not people should care about the cluster breaking apart. And maybe some people don’t care 🤷🏻‍♀️. But you cannot argue that H keeps Wootton cluster intact in the long term. It’ll keep it intact at best for 6 years…then Wootton will either have to be demolished or rebuild, and another boundary study will happen.
[/quote]

Play out your desired scenario: The Wootton facility limps along until student enrollment projections in that area increase. Wootton is rebuilt, and when that happens, MCPS redraws boundaries to based on the capacity at the area schools.

Option H is no worse than your best-case scenario, and much better than the scenarios that don't involve large numbers of students magically appearing in an area that actively fights higher-density redevelopment.[/quote]

No that scenario is much better to me. Like I said, I bought right across from Wootton in an effort to avoid boundary changes because of the 2017-2018 rumblings. I would never be redistricted from Wootton but for the unprecedented idea to literally close Wootton. I’ve been in MoCo for over 30 years. I went to Wootton. I knew about Crown (the area) before the first store even appeared at Crown. I knew about Crown HS before it was ever built. I knew Dufief, Stone Mill, etc. were subject to being redistricted to Crown.

The only thing I didn’t anticipate was MCPS would screw up so bad that they would build a school no one asked for or wanted and shut down the school that is literally right across from me.[/quote]

You think no one asked for Crown HS?!?![/quote]

Then how come it doesn’t have enough students to fill it 
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