New Middle School Concerns Persist at MCPS Public Meeting

Residents of Rock Creek Hills and the Bethesda-Chevy Chase school cluster continued to voice their concerns Wednesday night during the first facility advisory committee meeting for a proposed new middle school.

About 60 stakeholders—parents, residents and educators—attended the two-and-a-half hour meeting at , where they heard from the facilities designer, planner and architect.

“To date, this process has some … let’s just say, baggage, with it,” said Dennis Cross, senior facilities designer for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). “Our task is to develop a feasibility study for this site, for this school.” 

The “baggage” includes a process residents said lacks transparency, communication and adequate planning. The site selection committee for the school had recommended the school be built at in Silver Spring. But an April 28 school board vote to meant the only option was Kensington's , the second approved site.

The plan to build on the first approved site faced opposition not only from residents but also the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which would have had to approve any transaction at that site.

The feasibility study by the facility advisory committee is just one step in a process of securing capital funding for the project, which, if approved, would take up to four years to build. 

The plan to build at Rock Creek Hills Local Park is designed to ease overcrowding at and to ensure that every sixth-grader in Chevy Chase attends a middle school instead of an elementary school, as do some current students. MCPS representatives have said the new middle school is needed to serve an area where enrollment increases make it impossible to equally educate the 1,500 area students.

“What’s happened is our enrollment growth is unprecedented,” said Deborah “Debbie” Szyfer, senior facility planner for MCPS. “The trend has always been that enrollment follows the economy. This is the first time that we had an inverse relationship.”

The meeting came just a few days after the Rock Creek Hills Association filed an appeal with the Maryland State Board of Education, alleging the process of site selection was flawed by a lack of communication and notice to residents who would be adversely affected by the proposed school. Moreover, many residents said the size of the park did not meet the school board’s standards for acreage.

But Szyfer told residents that many of the requirements residents thought the site should have, such as acreage, were "preferred" but not required.

Nonetheless, residents continued to express trepidation about how a school building that could cost from $35 million to $40 million (according to estimates cited Wednesday) could fit on a site with a hill and a forested area—all while maintaining some of the green space for ball fields and mitigating the environmental footprint.

Architect Paul Falkenbury of Samaha Associates, PC, said the firm is committed to a collaborative process.

“We’d like input from the community because this is personal,” he said. “This is your neighborhood.”

And while one parent of a future middle-schooler said she still had concerns about the process, her fight now includes being a voice for the students.

“My major concern is that this school will not be on par with Westland,” said Teresa Murray, who lives in Rock Creek Hills and has a son who will start third grade in the fall.

“Parents really need to be involved to make sure children really are being represented. We want to make sure their interests and needs are being served—that should drive this, not site limitations or specs."