Middle School Siting Could Pit MCPS Against Parks

Montgomery County Public Schools now considers  to be an available site for a new middle school in the cramped Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster, but the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission may need to lend its stamp of approval if the site is chosen.

Officials discussed the potential school site Wednesday at a second meeting of the committee tasked with finding a site for a new Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster middle school. Rock Creek Hills Park is just  by the site-selection committee.

The Board of Education selected Rock Creek Hills, a Kensington park, in a site-selection process last year that lead neighbors and officials to question MCPS's transparency and civic engagement. After public concern with the process, the schools scrapped that decision and began a new siting process this winter, in part because officials weren't sure whether they could legally build a school there.

Now, however, MCPS believes there are no legal barriers to using Rock Creek Hills Park, should the site-selection committee choose it again, said Bruce Crispell, the schools' director of long-range planning.

The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, however, would need to approve the construction of an MCPS building on the park, as it has authority over projects that would remove trees, a Park and Planning official said Wednesday.

The availability of Rock Creek Hills Park first came into question in the fall, when MCPS found out that about $170,000 of state Program Open Space funds were used to develop the park, and that accepting those funds put limitations on future uses of the site.

However, Superintendent Joshua Starr said in a Jan. 20 memo to the Board of Education that because the state funds were used to develop the park and not to purchase it outright, the restrictions will expire in February.

Part of the park once housed the now-closed Kensington Junior High School, and the deed to the land contains a reclamation clause that allows MCPS to buy the space back if it needs to build a school.

But under the county's Forest Conservation Law, the Planning Board has the authority to approve or reject any project that would remove trees from a site, county planner Fred Boyd explained Wednesday. A school on the partially forested Rock Creek Hills Park would likely fall into that category, he said.

Any school construction on the site would be subject to mandatory referral, a Park and Planning advisory review.

Park and Planning has in the past maintained  for public schools, an opinion voiced by Planning Board Chairwoman Françoise Carrier in two letters to MCPS. 

At its last meeting,  from MCPS's list of 38 potential locations — leaving 12 public and 13 private sites on the table — and discussed the pros and cons of the remaining 12 public sites.

The group went into closed session Wednesday to discuss the 13 privately owned locations that could house the new school.

The committee is scheduled to meet two more times, . After the final meeting the group will send its recommended school to sites Starr in February, and he will issue a recommendation to the Board of Education for a March vote.

Starr has said all along that MCPS needs to open the new school by 2017 in order to deal with overcrowding at  and counteract the district's projected enrollment growth. He said the restarted site selection will not delay that goal.