The Montgomery County Council will consider two plans to relieve overcrowding and improve aging facilities in five elementary schools in Potomac.
The Education Committee voted 2-1 Tuesday to approve a new proposal by the School Board to rebuild a larger Bells Mill Elementary School by 2009, renovate and replace aging portables, and return the controversial Seven Locks Elementary School project to its original 2011 renovation schedule.
Community activists, however, favor a competing amendment by holdout committee member Howard Denis, R-1st District, to rebuild Seven Locks Elementary School on its current site and ahead of schedule.
“It’s just not going to go over,” civic leader Sandy Vogelgesang said of the board proposal. “We’ve been burned so many times.”
The new plan would move the reconstruction of Bells Mill forward by one year and give it a new $18.8 million facility. Another $1.8 million would pay for improvements and portable classrooms at Potomac and another elementary school. The modernization of Seven Locks would cost $12.2 million under the proposal — a figure council staffers called low — and would be pushed back to its original 2011 completion date, which was set in 1999.
All money for the plan has been allocated to the school system.
Committee member Nancy Floreen asked why the board abandoned plans to expand Seven Locks with a new facility on site: “What is so bad about resolving those capacity issues at Seven Locks?”
Facilities chief Dick Hawes said community representatives opposed any plans that would cut into playing fields and playgrounds on the existing site. Fitting a new school on the same square footage would cause design problems, he said.
The full council will vote on the recommendation today.
