Reply to BCC Middle School Site Selction number 2

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm the PP who posted a sarcastic comment about RCH, and I stand by it. I live 2 blocks from one of the feeder elementaries; many of the families whose kids will attend the new middle school are already in close proximity to one school or another. We don't try to prevent your kids from coming to school in our neighborhoods, and we thin it's reprehensible that a community that will benefit from the school has repeatedly sought to game the system and delay the process of getting our children out of overcrowded schools, simply due to some bizarre misguided concern that their property values will decline as a result of school buses in their neighborhood.

The behavior of some of the RCH reps and residents at the meetings was truly embarrassing, to the point that other RCH residents were trying to restrain their neighbors. I knew RCH residents who favored the school siting and were literally afraid of backlash from their neighbors. I attended those meetings and it was quite clear that no one other than the cabal of RCH NIMBYs believe the zoning issues "were ripe to be argued in court," certainly not anyone associated with the Country govt including the Parks department. I'm not sure why the PP thinks it's narcissistic to have an opinion on this but I'm guessing that the line about not living in RCH is inaccurate.[/quote]

OK, but then if it was so clear that it was just a small group of crazy people with a bad argument, let them go thru the process and lose.  If you think the RCH reps don't represent the community, organize and takeover the RCH leadership or confront them at RCH meetings.  It's a community association with ByLaws, etc.  Use the democratic process to stop them.  But, it's naive (and narcissistic) to think, "I know how this case is going to turn out, I know what's right, so I deserve to bully my peers into not filing or denigrate them for having done so."

Again, the site selection committee knew when it picked this site that there were problems related to zoning that were likely to be litigated, and chose it anyway.  Maybe they believed that ultimately the litigation would fail, but they had to know that all that would take time.  Starr even commented on this at the recent community town hall at WJ when he said that there will likely be appeals on this case and it will take awhile to get the new school built (not a quote, but the gist of what he said).

Agree with you that it's not OK that the two schools with 6th grades (NCC and CCES) will continue to have far sub-par educational opportunities.  I have children at CCES (no, I don't live in RCH).  We were clearly told several years ago that MCPS would not continue to support CCES' sixth grade at prior levels (which parents had considered to be reasonably equitable and any minor shortcomings were considered to be a minor trade-off for protecting kids for an extra year from the pressures of a large middle school).  It was very clear from these meetings that MCPS was trying to squeeze the 6th grades out of NCC and CCES by under-resourcing them.  Parents at the time had a choice (thru internal surveys) to fight for more resources or opt for a new middle school or send kids to Westland.  Parents chose new middle school and never put up a serious fight for equitable resources for 6th grade (and still are not publicly fighting for this pending completion of the new school).  But, the people to blame for this situation (under-resourced 6th grades) are not a small group of protesters who chose to pursue litigation in RCH -- it's MCPS administrators and the community reps/PTAs who weren't able (or didn't try) to marshal public opinion about the under-resourced 6th grades in order to get proper service -- neither for permanent 6th grades nor for 6th grades until the completion of the new school.

IMO, your anger for the situation is focused on the wrong people and, as a result, the problem with the 6th grade will continue for at least another 5+ years until the new MS opens.

IMO, the parents/community got rolled by MCPS.  Communities and neighbors are now all focused on denigrating each other rather than creating pressure on the real perpetrators of the problem to fix it. [/quote]

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