Montgomery County parents and residents are furious that the county school board picked a Kensington park as its top contender for a new school site just hours before the board voted on the location, leaving residents in the dark. The board voted 6-1 to explore using Rock Creek Hills Park as the site of a new middle school for the Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster, citing increasing enrollment and plans to shift sixth-graders out of the local middle schools.
Rock Creek Hills was originally the board’s runner-up choice, until the Department of Parks slammed the school board over its No. 1 choice, a Silver Spring park to which the school board had no claim. County Executive Ike Leggett urged the school board to go with Rock Creek Hills, a property that used to belong to the school system, and can be bought back.
At 2 p.m. – about six hours before the vote – the school board backpedaled and named Rock Creek Hills its top choice.
“The process of moving this site to the top of the list for consideration lacks honesty and transparency and seems to have been designed specifically to not include input, discussion or consideration from the community here,” Kensington resident Cathy Fink said in a letter to the council and Leggett. “The school board should be ashamed, and you should be ashamed with and for them. To call this a last-minute slight of hand is polite.”
In a letter to the council and school board, Lauren Itkowitz, a mother of three, said, “As a military family, we have lived in many places. …. To witness such an important matter moved through the system with disregard for input from the affected communities and stakeholders was surprising and disheartening.”
Many parents raised issues with the size of the lot, which at 13.4 acres is much smaller than the 20-acre standard. A retirement community now sits on part of the former school site, and it would remain if the school is built there.
Community members also noted that the park, located along the 3700 block of Saul Road and one of the few in the area, is often busy and accessible only by narrow residential streets.
School board President Christopher Barclay said the district had to make tough choices to deal with overcrowding.
“We just have way too many young people that are there,” he said. “There’s really no way out of it. We have to address this in the short term.”
At a recent meeting of the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee, “the committee unanimously expressed concern with the site selection process and conveyed an interest in taking up the matter,” George Leventhal, D-At large, wrote to a concerned parent. “The rush to build a new middle school should not supersede the community’s right to be properly informed and provide input.”
Staff Writer Brian Hughes contributed to this report.
