Second Middle School Location: Rock Creek Hills Park

After a contentious month around the neighborhood, the Board of Education voted last night to begin feasibility studies on a second middle school at the site of Rock Creek Hills Park.

This location was the second choice of the Site Selection Committee, due to its smaller size. The first choice was the Rosemary Hills/Lyttonsville Park.

However, after an outcry from many residents bordering the Rosemary Hills/Lyttonsville Park (commonly known as Coffield Center) and the concern of the Park and Planning Commission over the taking of RHL park, the BOE selected Rock Creek Hills.

While Rock Creek Hills is also currently a park, the land is owned by the Board of Education and loaned to the Park and Planning Commission with the right for the BOE to retake it, theoretically smoothing the way to building a new school.

The Feasibility Study will begin quickly and progress over the summer in order for the design funding to be included in the Capital Improvement Plan this fall and for construction to begin in approximately two years.

This process is very quick moving and will have huge implications for our school community. We will keep you posted on this as changes develop.

Talent Show and Arts Expo a Smash

The talent show and arts expo has just finished and it was a huge success. I am so impressed with the variety of performance!

In the art expo, there were paintings, photography, sculpture, origami, drawings, cartoons and more. Students were incredibly creative in their choice of materials and subjects!

The talent show simliarly did not disappoint. Students sang, danced, demonstrated karate and numerous other arts. As a parent, it was incredible to see. And as a bonus - there were a variety of songs chosen, although clearly Glee was a popular inspiration.

Thank you to all the volunteers who made this night possible, especially event chairs Heidi Armonda, Beth Colson, Jackie Pliskin and Suzanne Muro.

Wax Museum Proejct Teaches Research and Presentation Skills

The fourth graders have been busy over the last weeks researching a historic figure and developing a biography of that person.



All this research has culminated in the "Wax Museum" held this week. Each child dressed up, brought in a prop or otherwise represented their character.


Characters ranged from sports stars like Alexander Ovechkin, to writer Brian Jacques (above) to historical figures like Elizabeth Blackwell - the first female doctor in America.



Along the way, the fourth grade learned about researching a person, making a presenation and the elements of a biography.

New Middle School Site Selection Released

The board of education and Dr. Weast released yesterday the recommendation that a new middle school to serve the eastern half of the BCC cluster be built on the site of the current Coffield Center and park.

The site was identified by a group of parents who represented each of the PTAs in the cluster and MCPS staff as being the best available for a new school. Among the considerations used are the size of the lot, which is quite a hurdle in this very congested area. MCPS recommends that a middle school have 20 acres of land.

Neighbors have been very surprised to find out that the parkland they have grown accostomed to, and indeed purchased their homes for, may be in jeopardy. As is often the case, MCPS has done a terrible job explaining the process and has left these neighbors feeling like this recommendation is a done deal and the true process was hidden away.

These feelings have been compounded by the rush to bring this recommendation to a vote on Monday, March 28.

Having spent more time than I like on MCPS facilities issues, I am not surprised at the recommendation to try to locate the school at Coffield Center: Show me another parcel in the cluster that matches it for size, county ownership and accessibilty via Grubb Road/Lyttonsville.

However, I would like to see the Board of Education delay this vote and send the planning office out to meet with the community to explicitly explain the process of site selection and the process for feasibility studies going forward.

Neighbors are concerned that a new building will be dropped in their midst tomorrow and want to know what it will look like, where it will go, how many kids and buses, where the entrance will be and how much greenspace will remain.

MCPS has not figured any of these things out yet, but the process is so confusing that anyone who has not spent way too much time with the CIP would not know that all this recommendation is is the first step in a multi year process. Literally all the site selection committee does is point to the most likely piece of land and recommend it.

So, MCPS/BOE - delay this vote, take some time to explain the process to the neighborhood and then decide if this really is the best site.

New Budget Hurdles

Each day brings a new wrinkle to the ongoing budget discussions between the Board of Education, the County Executive, the County Council and the state. The latest budget released by the County Executive cuts MCPS by $82 million dollars.

The initial cuts planned for by Superintendent Weast are only $45 million (by the way, the mere fact that I can say ONLY $45 million should underscore the problem.)

The County Council needs to hear from YOU - today - that there is a limit to what we can absorb. Our system has taken in 3,300 new students, many poor and with additional needs. How can we adequately address their needs, if we don't fund the school system?

How can we address the needs of the kids currently in the system? And must we ALWAYS forget the kids in the middle -- the ones who are doing OK, not enough to need intervention, not enough to get into special programs? These kids make up the VAST majority of the system and are often the ones in the most over crowded classrooms.

How can we claim to be one of the best systems in the nation when everything that is not reading or math is on the chopping block? And even reading and math are taught in ever larger groups?

There has to be a limit, and I think I have reached mine.

To contact the County Council, use these email addresses (I haven't hyperlinked them, just copy and paste into your email):
councilmember.andrews@montgomerycountymd.gov; councilmember.berliner@montgomerycountymd.gov; councilmember.elrich@montgomerycountymd.gov; councilmember.ervin@montgomerycountymd.gov; councilmember.floreen@montgomerycountymd.gov; councilmember.rice@montgomerycountymd.gov; councilmember.riemer@montgomerycountymd.gov; councilmember.leventhal@montgomerycountymd.gov; councilmember.navarro@montgomerycountymd.gov;county.council@montgomerycountymd.gov;

To contact the Board of Education: BOE@mcpsmd.org

And don't forget County Executive Leggett: ocemail@montgomerycountymd.gov

New Middle School Moves Forward

Jane Ward, RCF/Westland Parent and member of the site selection committee for the proposed new BCC Cluster middle school reports that the committee has arrived at a recommendation and alternates. These recommendations will not be released to the public until they have been presented Superintendent. The Board of Education will consider the recommendation at their March 8 meeting. Remember, most meetings can be watched live on cable or online.

While assignments to the new school will occur later in the process, it is reasonable to assume that RCF would attend due to our geographic location within the cluster. On the one hand, a new building would be terrific. On the other, there are not many site that meet the size criteria for a middle school and at a minimum, it would be a few years before the new school could be certified as an International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (IB/MYP) school, if at all. Westland currently has a highly regarded IB/MYP. Further the new middle school will need to funded through the Capital Improvement Budget (CIP) around the same time as our modernization. In a period with tight budgets, this is very difficult.

To refresh your memories, the proposed new middle school has come about because Westland middle school is projected to become overcrowded in the near future. This situation will be exacerbated should the 6th grades currently at North Chevy Chase and Chevy Chase ES be moved to Westland. So why would the 6th grades move to Westland? Under the current budget constraints, it has been very hard for the county to provide an equivelant education to those students in a elementary school setting (in MCPS speak this is called "parity").

Issues with 6th grade at Elementary Schools:

1. The ES school day is 1/2 hour shorter.


2. The ES is not set up to provide daily PE (MS students have PE everyday).


3. Foreign language was cut last year in a budgetary move to save money. It was restored at the last budget meeting.