Reply to Emergency Legal Filing Seeks to Halt MCPS Plan to Close Wootton High School

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Reply to "Emergency Legal Filing Seeks to Halt MCPS Plan to Close Wootton High School"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Copilot says:

[quote]Under Maryland state law, the process for closing a public school involves several steps to ensure that the decision is made fairly and transparently. The local board of education must consider various factors before making a decision to close a school. These factors include student enrollment trends, the age or condition of school buildings, transportation, educational programs, racial composition of the student body, financial considerations, student relocation, and the impact on the community in the geographic attendance area for the school proposed to be closed and the schools to which students will be relocating.

The process includes a public hearing to allow citizens to submit their views, adequate notice to parents and guardians of students in attendance at all schools being considered for closure, and a final decision announced at a public session. The final decision must include the rationale for the school closing and address the impact on the factors set forth in the regulation. Additionally, the decision must be announced to the community in the geographic attendance area of the school proposed to be closed and the schools to which students will be relocating.[/quote]

It feels like they have done all this except they didn't use the word closure, which makes sense since they are opening the school in a different building.

The Save Wootton people are wasting their money but at least they are helping some lawyers make a nice living.

[/quote]

They haven’t done any of this, and certainly not with the intention of evaluating whether or not Wootton should close because MCPS won’t even call it a closure [/quote]

Because it's not a closure, it's a relocation (student body staying mostly the same, school administration and teachers staying the same, the only change is a change in building), unless you have a specific definition in the law that says this is actually a closure.

Otherwise, the filing wouldn't have to argue that it's a "de-facto" closure.[/quote]1 ES removed and 2 ES added in a different building with a different name in a different city with many new teachers and staff.  In other words, it's closing a school and opening a new one by any definition except the one used by people who desperately want to destroy the W schools.[/quote]

That was part of the boundary study.

Unless you want to argue that Northwest was closed because they had 2 new ES added.

Also, are you also arguing that because admins and teachers leave, that's somehow a closure? My ES has had 3 principals, is each time a closure?[/quote]I'm saying it's a different student body in a different building with a different name in a different city with many new teachers and staff.  Quite literally everything is changing.  The only people pretending it's not a closure are east county W school haters.[/quote]

I get that it makes your legal case stronger, but you don't actually believe this, do you?

Like, you are saying things here that are demonstrably false.  Same teachers and staff, same name, extremely similar student body.  The only difference is the location and a a shift of a small number of kids (just like everyone else is having their boundaries shift around a little.).

How could anyone call that a closure with a straight face? [/quote]

Similarly, I can't see how anyone can argue that planning on moving Wootton from the Parkway site to the Crown site in a year poses a "Risk of Irreversible Harm" with a straight face.

I understand filings and lawsuits need to throw every bit of spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks, but come on.[/quote]

They are making a legal argument and you are talking about your feelings. Please sit down.[/quote]

Things can be ill-advised in more than one way at the same time. They can be both legally tenuous at politically unwise.

Legally tenuous because:

- Irreparable harm can be challenging to demonstrate in a process case because the remedy isn’t for the legal/administrative system to weigh in on the decision. It’s for the process to be implemented correctly. In this case, MCPS could easily implement the process for a school closure before the boundary study went into effect or before CEPA families credibly had to make”academic decisions” that affect their families. 
- To prove MCPS is using flawed data, it won’t be sufficient to prove that they didn’t count all the housing developments in the Rockville plan or their enrollment numbers are slightly off for individual schools. The CEPA team will need to prove the larger trend of decreasing enrollment is wrong. This will be a challenge because MCPS trends mirror state (and nationwide) trends of precipitous declining enrollment. 
 Important to note these arguments come after conceding several points from the filing (this is a closure, this constitutes irreparable harm by legal definitions, MCPS is obligated to use development data in ways that differ from their current practice) that I think will also face significant uphill battles to demonstrate CEPA is likely to succeed on the merits.

Politically unwise because:
- Most people see “irreparable harm” and go immediately to assuming entitled Wootton families are complaining about getting a brand new building 3 miles up the street 
- They also see the student population changes listed in the justification for the de facto closure and go immediately to assuming there is an element of class and/or race to which the CEPA families object - even if this is in no way what any of the parents behind the lawsuit intend
- As these perceptions grow across the county, it makes it much harder for any credible BOE or County Council candidates, all of whom have more constituents outside of Wootton than within it, to support Save Wootton’s secondary goal of working the system through political means

Sometimes sound legal strategy comes with a political price and vice versa. But this is a rare case where the strategy is dubious on both fronts. [/quote]

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