Reply to Woodward Auditorium Construction Advocacy Ahead of Monday County Council Meeting

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Reply to "Woodward Auditorium Construction Advocacy Ahead of Monday County Council Meeting"

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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]Since Einstein and Blair both also have music and arts academies, why can't DCCAPS allow affected Northwood students the option to transfer there for the next 2-3 years or until the auditorium is built? [/quote]

There is no space at Einstein and Blair.[/quote]

They added portables to Einstein.  They just have the schools overcrowded.  [b]There is a consortium so any kid who wants music/arts or anything else can lottery in.[/b][/quote]

Simplistic and inaccurate.

What about the kids who want music/arts who do not get a lottery spot?  What about the cost of relocating Northwood's performing arts program, presuming that would need to temporarily be at Einstein in this scenario (if there weren't facilities at Woodward)?  What about existing Einstein use of the necessary facilities?  Does that mean even greater overcrowding at those two schools than currently exists?  Do they forcibly remove some not in the performing arts at those two to make room? To where?  What about the discontinuities to student experience, teaching and administration?  Etc.[/quote]

All the DCC schools have music, theater and arts.  They may not have the same classes or teachers but they all have it.  [b]So, they can choose any of the DCC schools to lottery into.[/b]  Einstein doesn't use the auditorium every single night, so sure they could allow Northwood to borrow it for plays and other things.  However, like everything at Einstein, it's a dump and not very big or nice.  They don't practice in the auditorium.  [/quote]

What of current (and currently lotteried rising freshman) Northwood students?

What of Northwood's particular program?

Stage management can require exclusive use of the auditorium for periods of time.

Etc.

Again, it just isn't that simple.[/quote]

They can perform on the green like Shakespeare in the park. It will be awesome.[/quote]

I do not understand why one poster, or maybe two posters?, is so invested in insisting that Northwood doesn't need an auditorium while Northwood is at Woodward. Who benefits from the No Auditorium For Northwood While At Woodward position?[/quote]

[b]I don't think they're invested in conveying Northwood doesn't need an auditorium[/b], but that Northwood may not have access to one for a few years because of the construction scheduling and budgeting.  I guess MCPS could cut CO bloat to fund this stuff but they've never been willing before.[/quote]

Then why do they keep posting, over and over and over and over, that Northwood-at-Woodward doesn't need an auditorium?[/quote]

It's in the post.  They don't want to pay taxes for someone else's services, reasonable equivalence or not.  That's why they deflect to the only-if-we-cut-CO-bloat boogeyman (instead of, "well, yes, we should be ensuring those services, responding to the realities of related inflation, and not underfunding MCPS CIP needs year after year")...

...as if there's nothing else to do about it or as if the one is necessarily connected to the other and that it should be on the Northwood community to get any bloat eliminated.[/quote]

It is on all families to get rid of the bloat.  And, reelecting the same board members who have failed is is not a good place to start.[/quote]

OK.  All on [i]all[/i] families.  Not just on Northwood families.  And it shouldn't be with Northwood families bearing a differential brunt in the meantime.

Go for new BOE members, sure, but turnover of 3 out of 7 at the end of the year that is not a fix to the current problem.  It's the County Council's hold on purse-strings for present projects placed on top of their decades of underfunding that set the stage for this in the first place.[/quote]

The BOE has the money to do what's important to them.  That is the issue.  They moved into new offices last year that they had remodeled and new furniture when the space was being used by another group and very nice already.[/quote]

Misuse of funds, perceived or real, does not counter the facts that:

Northwood students are being put in an inequitable situation that families were promised would not occur, without an option presented that reasonably would mitigate that inequity.

The County Council has underfunded school facility needs for decades, with ongoing deficits in condition and capacity the result, and the Northwood holding situation is among them.

If the funds need to be better managed (and I'm not saying no, there), the County needs to get better oversight, which will require its own funding.  Holding students' equitable treatment hostage to the resolution of that, however, is unconscionable.[/quote]
Do you have a source for what "families were promised"?[/quote]

Short demands for proof are overused rhetorical ploys.  If you would like to research, yourself, the meetings that were attended by MCPS over the years, be my guest.  Do you have a comprehensive list of links to detailed notes from all of the MCPS meetings (not just BOE meetings and the little they leave on the construction project page) on the subject that shows no indication to the community that there would be an auditorium in place for Northwood occupancy?  No?  Because the earlier version of the project detailed the fields as unavailable during that occupancy, but did not detail a missing auditorium.

You can claim, "But that's not a [i]promise[/i]," but you would be wrong in any meaningful sense.  In gaining grudging assent for the plan, Northwood stakeholders were given an authoritative impression that MCPS then, after BOE approval that relied on that grudging assent, changed to their detriment.  And there does not appear to be an equitable and workable plan to address the shortcoming.  Whatever the underlying causes of the change, inflation, underfunding, fiscal mismanagement or otherwise, that lack of proper mitigation is a failure that should be rectified.

And the note about the County Council's fiscal responsibility in this whole mess stands, in any case.[/quote]
I attended many meetings. There was always a plan for some of the building to be finished while Northwood was in residence.[/quote]

Yes, but not exactly relevant.  A second part of the building was envisioned once they decided to go for a two-phased approach with Northwood holding occupancy.  However, the nature of that space (aimed at visions of a possible magnet program) was not fully determined at the time of gathering community assent, and, while it was noted (typically by community members rather than MCPS until pressed) that the fields would not be available during that occupancy, the MCPS assertions were that Phase 1 would provide an otherwise fully functional (if encumbered by construction noise, etc.) facility.[/quote]
From before 2019, it was a two phase project:

https://inte.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/departments/facilities/construction/project/charles-w-woodward-hs-reopening-update-190729-ppt.pdf

with the arts wing in phase 2:

https://inte.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/departments/facilities/construction/project/woodward-hs-community-engagement-meeting-09.24.19-updated.pdf

"Phase 2 includes at minimum, a second gymnasium, auditorium, and athletic site amenities based on continuing conversations with communities and all stakeholders."[/quote]

You do realize that the first presentation, where they indicate Phase I would hold Northwood, is from the summer of 2019 -- after they sold the idea to the Northwood community (with some of the FY2020 CIP amendment action beginning in late 2018) and got BOE approval (that March, as noted in the presentation).  At that earlier point, "Phase I" was just about Northwood occupancy as a holding school, with Phase II being the reopening of Woodward, proper.

This over-the-summer presentation, again, after the BOE approval, was where we [i]started[/i] to get the nuance that there would be [i]significant[/i] ongoing construction, but it was all referenced as extras -- things that might support an arts magnet program or the like -- not (relative) essentials ("core academic facility elements," again from the presentation, itself).  There's no mention in the presentation that an auditorium is not considered core, and the community's focus was, then, on the significant disruption that the larger-than-anticipated ongoing construction might cause to learning and the possible lack of athletic facilities.

That brings us to the second presentation, from later that fall, where an auditorium is first mentioned as part of Phase II.  This (or a slighly modified version of this) was from a meeting, mosly advertised to the WJ community (and almost exclusively attended by them) at Tilden MS (where Woodward was to be reconstructed) in preparation for the next presentation to the BOE.  The questioning, there, unsurprisingly, was almost exclusively about what the post-Phase II condition would be, along with neighbors with concerns about taking of strips of wooded parkland required to fit everything in.  More Northwood folks became aware as the same was presented to the BOE a month later, to their significant consternation (though, again, it was mostly about the extent of ongoing construction and lack of fields -- the mention of [i]an[/i] auditorium as part of an arts-program-focused extra space didn't sink in for everyone that it would be the [i]only[/i] such space).

Though I see the exigencies ($) that caused them to go this way, it was, effectively, a bait and switch vis-a-vis the near-year-prior engagement with the Northwood community that had garnered some reasonable amount of assent (along with promises that it would all be figured out, of course).[/quote]
Do you have an older source?[/quote]

Do you?  They scrubbed older docs from the public-facing project site.  I've got me.  And the docs they do have, with the timeline notations [i]from those documents[/i], as described above.

What is it with people demanding links, as though the absence of such indicates a falsehood, when there already is evidence with clear explanations?  Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.[/quote]

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