Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Gaithersburg resident, I am saddened by this entire thread. I am opposed to H but for completely different reasons.

This thread and the larger conversation is dominated by parents wealthy enough to sue vs. people who aren’t impacted by the decision, don’t have skin in the game, don’t live in the affected areas, etc.

No one cares about Gaithersburg.
No one cares that they are giving away a brand new school to a community that doesn’t even want it.
No one cares that there are kids in our community who are walkable to Crown, who can see Crown from their house, yet won’t be able to attend under H.
No one cares that H means not only do the kids referenced above lose access to Crown, but so does the entire region 5.

Has anyone considered how H impacts people in Gaithersburg, especially when we don’t have the resources to sue? Most of us can’t even attend BOE meetings because we are working families. A meeting at 12 PM or the upcoming 4 PM is ridiculous.

Why did the new options even come up? A-D were the only options that gave Gaithersburg a voice. Is it really because Churchill sued? If suing is the only way to get MCPS to listen, then I say have at it Wootton…go sue MCPS.

H does not benefit Gaithersburg, but again nobody cares about us.

Are you the one who guided kids to make that “They don’t really care about us” video?

No I was not personally involved in the making of the music video but I 100% agree with the video.

Anonymous wrote:It is easy to identify the outsiders who are claiming to be Wootton parents. Well they are either outsiders or naive to the real estate market. Nobody who knows real estate will deny that Option H will cost most Wootton neighborhoods potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity. Some may not let that drive their entire decision, but anyone who says they don't care about that is either pretending to be Wootton, a renter (very small percentage) , or is extremely wealthy (and many of these people go private anyway). Any reasonable homeowner will factor this into their equation and 95% do. Saying that you literally don't care about this or that the whole thing is about driving distance is hard to believe. No need for troll response. I realize you do not care nor does MCPS care. I am speaking to those in the Wootton cluster

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is easy to identify the outsiders who are claiming to be Wootton parents. Well they are either outsiders or naive to the real estate market. Nobody who knows real estate will deny that Option H will cost most Wootton neighborhoods potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity. Some may not let that drive their entire decision, but anyone who says they don't care about that is either pretending to be Wootton, a renter (very small percentage) , or is extremely wealthy (and many of these people go private anyway). Any reasonable homeowner will factor this into their equation and 95% do. Saying that you literally don't care about this or that the whole thing is about driving distance is hard to believe. No need for troll response. I realize you do not care nor does MCPS care. I am speaking to those in the Wootton cluster

Me again - in the Cold Spring, Cabin John, Wootton cluster and I DO NOT CARE!!!! Option H makes the most fiscal sense for the county as a whole. I cannot expect the county to think about my home value and you should not either. That is selfish.

I have lived in my house for over a decade and I am thankful for the equity built. If some of it disappears (which I do not think it will either way) so be it!

Horizon Hill families love RM and Cold Spring families will love Crown!

You are probably the only cold spring parent who is for H. I also live there. And Crown will be far below RM in performance if this passes. Why did you move to this area if you don’t care about the school rating? Might as well have moved to the GHS cluster if it wasn’t important to you.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I live in the Wootton cluster and I think Option H solves a lot of needs with minimal negative impacts. Those that live closest to Wootton will obviously feel the adverse impacts of the loss of walkability and new traffic patterns. But how can any objective person really says it's not worth it to move a few miles in order to give the students and staff a brand new facility that is desperately needed. Bringing the existing Wootton building up to safe modern standards would cost $$$$. There are so many other schools with repair needs around the county that could use that money.

Wootton families wanted their own building renovated but are willing to accept minor remediation for now. Crown was promised to GHS kids. Taking it away from them doesn’t solve anything and has a negative impact.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is easy to identify the outsiders who are claiming to be Wootton parents. Well they are either outsiders or naive to the real estate market. Nobody who knows real estate will deny that Option H will cost most Wootton neighborhoods potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity. Some may not let that drive their entire decision, but anyone who says they don't care about that is either pretending to be Wootton, a renter (very small percentage) , or is extremely wealthy (and many of these people go private anyway). Any reasonable homeowner will factor this into their equation and 95% do. Saying that you literally don't care about this or that the whole thing is about driving distance is hard to believe. No need for troll response. I realize you do not care nor does MCPS care. I am speaking to those in the Wootton cluster

Me again - in the Cold Spring, Cabin John, Wootton cluster and I DO NOT CARE!!!! Option H makes the most fiscal sense for the county as a whole. I cannot expect the county to think about my home value and you should not either. That is selfish.

I have lived in my house for over a decade and I am thankful for the equity built. If some of it disappears (which I do not think it will either way) so be it!

Horizon Hill families love RM and Cold Spring families will love Crown!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It is easy to identify the outsiders who are claiming to be Wootton parents. Well they are either outsiders or naive to the real estate market. Nobody who knows real estate will deny that Option H will cost most Wootton neighborhoods potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity. Some may not let that drive their entire decision, but anyone who says they don't care about that is either pretending to be Wootton, a renter (very small percentage) , or is extremely wealthy (and many of these people go private anyway). Any reasonable homeowner will factor this into their equation and 95% do. Saying that you literally don't care about this or that the whole thing is about driving distance is hard to believe. No need for troll response. I realize you do not care nor does MCPS care. I am speaking to those in the Wootton cluster

Me again - in the Cold Spring, Cabin John, Wootton cluster and I DO NOT CARE!!!! Option H makes the most fiscal sense for the county as a whole. I cannot expect the county to think about my home value and you should not either. That is selfish.

I have lived in my house for over a decade and I am thankful for the equity built. If some of it disappears (which I do not think it will either way) so be it!

Horizon Hill families love RM and Cold Spring families will love Crown!

Anonymous wrote:It is easy to identify the outsiders who are claiming to be Wootton parents. Well they are either outsiders or naive to the real estate market. Nobody who knows real estate will deny that Option H will cost most Wootton neighborhoods potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity. Some may not let that drive their entire decision, but anyone who says they don't care about that is either pretending to be Wootton, a renter (very small percentage) , or is extremely wealthy (and many of these people go private anyway). Any reasonable homeowner will factor this into their equation and 95% do. Saying that you literally don't care about this or that the whole thing is about driving distance is hard to believe. No need for troll response. I realize you do not care nor does MCPS care. I am speaking to those in the Wootton cluster

Anonymous wrote:I live in the Wootton cluster and I think Option H solves a lot of needs with minimal negative impacts. Those that live closest to Wootton will obviously feel the adverse impacts of the loss of walkability and new traffic patterns. But how can any objective person really says it's not worth it to move a few miles in order to give the students and staff a brand new facility that is desperately needed. Bringing the existing Wootton building up to safe modern standards would cost $$$$. There are so many other schools with repair needs around the county that could use that money.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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?

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?

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

By my read school closure under the regulations means the literal facility- "permanently ceasing to use it for educational purposes". It basically means a "negative one" facility for educational purposes. There aren't established facts to show that is happening here.

The currently empty Rock Terrace school in Rockville did not go through closure proceedings. Nor did any of the other buildings currently being used as holding schools.

Multiple school buildings stop being used over the years. Some reopened like Woodward and Northwood, others like Leland and became something else.

PP here. Thank you for adding additional examples. All of these, as far as my internet research can tell me, did not follow closure procedures, presumably because there was not a plan to permanently stop using them for educational purposes.

Can you cite to the statutory or regulatory definition of “closure”? Or are you making up that definition?

There is no definition in the statute or regulations. So here is how I got there:

1. I found implementing policies in Howard County, Baltimore County, and another that refer to "permanent closure of a school [i]building[u]. One of them clearly defines it as "The purpose of this policy is to direct the process of discontinuing school use when there is no plan to replace the school with another facility." MCPS' policy on the topic is under the heading of "Educational Facilities Planning"

This led me to conclude that it was about a physical facility, and there being one less of them.

2. I then thought of examples where I knew a school facility is no longer being used as a full-time regular school and did a search of MCPS records (admittedly I spent less than an hour) to see if there was evidence that they were categorized as a "school closure" and whether those procedures were followed. I found no such evidence.

We are talking Mcps, not other counties and of course they can move or close schools.

The law in question is a state law, which governs those counties the same way it governs MCPS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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?

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?

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

By my read school closure under the regulations means the literal facility- "permanently ceasing to use it for educational purposes". It basically means a "negative one" facility for educational purposes. There aren't established facts to show that is happening here.

The currently empty Rock Terrace school in Rockville did not go through closure proceedings. Nor did any of the other buildings currently being used as holding schools.

Multiple school buildings stop being used over the years. Some reopened like Woodward and Northwood, others like Leland and became something else.

PP here. Thank you for adding additional examples. All of these, as far as my internet research can tell me, did not follow closure procedures, presumably because there was not a plan to permanently stop using them for educational purposes.

And for the last time, no one in those cases cared enough to pursue it in court. In some of those cases (Blair) it was welcomed by the community.

If no one cares enough to pursue it in court, even if it’s illegal, it’s a harmless legal error.

Stop comparing Wootton to all these other schools on closure, because I can assure you Wootton will sue. They will be ready the moment H is passed.

Yep. And a judge will issue a TRO - and may even order MCPS to make immediate repairs to Wootton to maintain the status quo. Funnily enough, this is all Wootton families want. MCPS needs to figure out what to do with a school it should have never built, without closing the #3 school in Maryland. If it wants to move Wootton to Crown, then it can’t change the boundaries. Doing both under Option H is a closure.

No one cares about the rating of the school and its not what all Wootton families want. Its what you want. Wootton has some serious issues the past few years. A new start may be what they need.

People do care. You don’t care because you don’t live in Wootton. A judge will make this decision. The question is whether the BOE wants to roll the dice during an election year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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?

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?

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

By my read school closure under the regulations means the literal facility- "permanently ceasing to use it for educational purposes". It basically means a "negative one" facility for educational purposes. There aren't established facts to show that is happening here.

The currently empty Rock Terrace school in Rockville did not go through closure proceedings. Nor did any of the other buildings currently being used as holding schools.

Multiple school buildings stop being used over the years. Some reopened like Woodward and Northwood, others like Leland and became something else.

PP here. Thank you for adding additional examples. All of these, as far as my internet research can tell me, did not follow closure procedures, presumably because there was not a plan to permanently stop using them for educational purposes.

Can you cite to the statutory or regulatory definition of “closure”? Or are you making up that definition?

There is no definition in the statute or regulations. So here is how I got there:

1. I found implementing policies in Howard County, Baltimore County, and another that refer to "permanent closure of a school [i]building[u]. One of them clearly defines it as "The purpose of this policy is to direct the process of discontinuing school use when there is no plan to replace the school with another facility." MCPS' policy on the topic is under the heading of "Educational Facilities Planning"

This led me to conclude that it was about a physical facility, and there being one less of them.

2. I then thought of examples where I knew a school facility is no longer being used as a full-time regular school and did a search of MCPS records (admittedly I spent less than an hour) to see if there was evidence that they were categorized as a "school closure" and whether those procedures were followed. I found no such evidence.

We are talking Mcps, not other counties and of course they can move or close schools.

Anonymous wrote:It is easy to identify the outsiders who are claiming to be Wootton parents. Well they are either outsiders or naive to the real estate market. Nobody who knows real estate will deny that Option H will cost most Wootton neighborhoods potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity. Some may not let that drive their entire decision, but anyone who says they don't care about that is either pretending to be Wootton, a renter (very small percentage) , or is extremely wealthy (and many of these people go private anyway). Any reasonable homeowner will factor this into their equation and 95% do. Saying that you literally don't care about this or that the whole thing is about driving distance is hard to believe. No need for troll response. I realize you do not care nor does MCPS care. I am speaking to those in the Wootton cluster

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of these pro H. Here’s what’s to happen under H:

The W schools benefit even more.
Let’s stop pretending the Rosemont kids that H has Wootton merging with are some low-income families. Have you people looked at the houses around Crown that go to Rosemont? It’s like 800-900k for a freaking townhome. H doesn’t send all of Rosemont to Crown/Wootton, it literally sends the richest Rosemont kids at both Rosemont and the entire Gaithersburg cluster, to Crown.


These people on this thread think the only people who are anti-H are Wootton parents. No—many Gaithersburg families are also anti H but for very different reasons.

Think of H impacts on Gaithersburg please.

Good point made. We’re mixing socioeconomic status/house prices with demographics (yes, I know there is a connection so please don’t feel it needs to be pointed out). But, for the sake of argument - if the school combining with Wootton in crown was from a “good”neighborhood with similar demographics to the Wootton cluster but who had terrible behaviors and low test scores, would the anti H peeps feel the same? I think they would…?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

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?

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?

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

By my read school closure under the regulations means the literal facility- "permanently ceasing to use it for educational purposes". It basically means a "negative one" facility for educational purposes. There aren't established facts to show that is happening here.

The currently empty Rock Terrace school in Rockville did not go through closure proceedings. Nor did any of the other buildings currently being used as holding schools.

Multiple school buildings stop being used over the years. Some reopened like Woodward and Northwood, others like Leland and became something else.

PP here. Thank you for adding additional examples. All of these, as far as my internet research can tell me, did not follow closure procedures, presumably because there was not a plan to permanently stop using them for educational purposes.

Can you cite to the statutory or regulatory definition of “closure”? Or are you making up that definition?

There is no definition in the statute or regulations. So here is how I got there:

1. I found implementing policies in Howard County, Baltimore County, and another that refer to "permanent closure of a school [i]building[u]. One of them clearly defines it as "The purpose of this policy is to direct the process of discontinuing school use when there is no plan to replace the school with another facility." MCPS' policy on the topic is under the heading of "Educational Facilities Planning"

This led me to conclude that it was about a physical facility, and there being one less of them.

2. I then thought of examples where I knew a school facility is no longer being used as a full-time regular school and did a search of MCPS records (admittedly I spent less than an hour) to see if there was evidence that they were categorized as a "school closure" and whether those procedures were followed. I found no such evidence.