Community calls for reconsideration of site for new Bethesda-area elementary school

Some want Grosvenor Elementary School to remain in the running

March 9, 2020 3:13 p.m.

Representatives of the Walter Johnson and Bethesda-Chevy Chase high school clusters are opposed to cutting one of the sites previously considered for a new elementary school.

They urged the school board on Thursday night to keep a holding school in the running.

For the past year, Montgomery County Public Schools has been exploring an array of sites for a new elementary school to ease crowding in the two clusters. Last month, MCPS staff members proposed cutting a list of six possibilities to three. All would be on the same property as other building projects.

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Among the sites cut from consideration was Grosvenor Elementary School, which now serves as a temporary home for schools undergoing major additions or renovation projects.

“[Grosvenor] has a history as an elementary school, and a local community that supports its reopening and reassignment of their children to Grosvenor,” Walter Johnson High School cluster coordinator Emily Beckman said.

The Grosvenor site has many benefits, primarily that it is large and is centrally located to where crowding problems are, Beckman said.

Wendy Calhoun, a former Walter Johnson cluster coordinator, highlighted that the school board has voted three times to undergo a site selection process for a new elementary school since 2016. Once, the process never started. Other times, it was never finished.

This time, Calhoun said, the school district is not listening to the community’s input.

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“Please honor the request this community has made repeatedly, and again consider the Grosvenor site,” Calhoun said. “If you choose not to do that, we ask that you make very clear why not, and transparently convey the rationale behind rejecting what had been a viable option.”

At a school board meeting last week, MCPS staff members said the three development sites they prefer would allow the school district to take an innovative approach to building on smaller sites.

“The reality is we’re going to have smaller school sites in the future as there’s more development in the county,” Seth Adams, director of the MCPS Department of Facilities Management, said at the meeting. “… Selecting one of these sites allows us to be able to adapt.”

Another major topic discussed at Thursday’s public hearing was a proposal to reassign all students at Clarksburg Elementary School to a new nearby school when it opens in 2022.

The idea received significant pushback from community members on Thursday, with many raising concerns about the accuracy of MCPS enrollment projections and their impact on construction decisions.

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MCPS officials last month said Clarksburg Elementary would instead be used for early childhood education programs, and could reopen if enrollment growth demanded. If the school remains open, it and the new facility would be severely underenrolled, staff members said.

Kim Haden, the Clarksburg High School cluster coordinator, told the school board she believes the enrollment projections MCPS is using to guide the decision to close Clarksburg Elementary are inaccurate. Projections show the school will have an enrollment of 722 students in six years, Haden said, but its enrollment is already nearing that total this year.

“There is cause for concern,” Haden said. “You need a plan that will accommodate projections that are much higher than what has been presented.”

Adam Longo, an anchor and reporter for news station WUSA, testifying in his personal capacity as a parent of students in Clarksburg, also questioned MCPS’ enrollment projections.

“It’s clear to me the MCPS administration doesn’t have the right vision,” Longo said. “There’s no vision on how to address the current overcrowding situation at Clarksburg Elementary School. There’s no vision about opening a new [school] in two-and-a-half years that, if you close Clarksburg Elementary, will be over capacity the minute it opens its doors.”

Longo went on to criticize the school board’s recent decision to redistrict students in Clarksburg and Germantown. The school board made the decision, he said, despite “enormous public outcry.”

“Not cool,” Longo said. “… Perhaps I’ve been jaded into thinking it’s a waste of my time and it won’t do any good [to testify about the Clarksburg Elementary project]. Please prove me wrong.”

Caitlynn Peetz can be reached at caitlynn.peetz@moco360.media

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