The year-long battle over where to put a new middle school in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase area became more heated this week when the Montgomery County Parks Department petitioned the county’s Planning Board to reject a site the school board has chosen twice.
Rock Creek Hills Local Park in Kensington was chosen by the county’s school board in April 2011, after a five-month site selection process criticized by some of the park’s neighbors for lacking openness or community input. At the direction of new Superintendent Joshua Starr, the board rescinded its decision and started from scratch in November, convening a new panel to examine 38 potential sites.
But the 47-member Site Selection Advisory Committee again chose Rock Creek Hills last week, and the Parks Department is fighting back by telling the county that the committee again failed to examine its options.
“[T]he south central part of the county, which includes Bethesda and Chevy Chase, has the lowest level of overall parks and recreation services in the county, based on its population. Loss of these fields, even if a school proposed for a site includes recreation facilities, represents a significant loss of recreation opportunities, in addition to the environmental costs with loss of forest,” park officials told the county’s Planning Board in a letter by parks supervisor Brooke Farquhar and other officials, and approved by Director of Parks Mary Bradford.
Middle school enrollment in the cluster is projected to hit 1,600 — well above Westland Middle School’s 1,063-student capacity — as enrollment booms and the county plans to move sixth-grade students from elementary schools into middle schools. A new middle school, opening in 2017, would serve up to 944 students.
Instead of Rock Creek Hills, the Parks Department asked that Montgomery County Public Schools “take a harder look” at buying a private site or building at a former school site: Montgomery Hills Junior High, or Lynnbrook Elementary and an adjacent park.
Starr explained that Lynnbrook was rejected because the buildable area was 8.5 acres, less than the 10.1-acre minimum the school system set. The former Montgomery Hills Junior High site is also short at 8.67 acres and leased to a private school through 2020. The committee rejected private sites that were unavailable or too costly.
“Ms. Farquhar appears to completely dismiss the facts that made [the committee] eliminate them from consideration,” Starr wrote in a report detailing the Rock Creek Hills recommendation.
In their letter to the Planning Board, Farquhar and her colleagues say it’s possible to fit all the building and programming requirements of a middle school on both former school sites.
The Planning Board is scheduled to take up the issue at an April 9 meeting, while the school board is slated to vote on the recommendation April 17.
