Around this time last year, students participating in Northwood High School’s academy of music, theater and dance were completing the final performances of their fall play in the Silver Spring school’s auditorium.
This November, Northwood students were unable to mount their fall production because the black box theater at the school’s temporary home, Charles W. Woodward High School in Rockville, is still under construction. Instead, the students are rehearsing for their spring musical, which will be performed in December this year at Wheaton High School because the newly constructed Woodward also lacks an auditorium.
In many ways, students say the new building at 11211 Old Georgetown Road is a massive upgrade from the nearly 70-year-old Northwood High building in Silver Spring, which is expected to undergo a complete rebuild over the next three years. But months after Northwood students and staff moved in, the unfinished projects at Woodward continue to impact the students’ high school experience.
With issues including a delay in finishing performance spaces, tennis courts that were installed incorrectly and missing teaching materials, some Northwood community members say the school isn’t what they were promised.
Laura Nichols, a Northwood parent and PTSA vice president, listed her concerns during the county school board’s Nov. 4 public hearing on district facilities, noting Woodward’s front and back entrances are unfinished, the black box theater is delayed and the tennis courts were incorrectly laid. Also, there’s a lack of working lighting in the staff parking lot and no outdoor sign indicate Northwood is occupying the school, she said.
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) “has asked our kids and our whole community at Northwood to make do without a lot throughout these next three years,” Nichols told the board. “It seems reasonable that the items that are to be completed are actually done correctly and on time.”
The building: more space, better bathrooms
Construction for Woodward High School began in August 2021 after MCPS decided to rebuild and reopen the school due to overcrowding at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda and Downcounty Consortium high schools. The Woodward building was originally built in 1966 and stopped being used as a high school in 1987 due to declining enrollment. The building was used as a holding school for Tilden Middle School until it was demolished in 2021.
The project has been delayed due to budget shortfalls, supply chain issues and increases in material costs, according to a school board resolution. In March, the school board voted to delay the construction of the auditorium for Woodward. The delayed project also included a second gymnasium and athletic amenities such as a stadium and fields.
Northwood High moved into Woodward in the late summer while construction continued. Woodward will act as Northwood’s holding school until August 2027. The four-story building can accommodate 2,160 students; Northwood’s current population is roughly 1,700 students.
Though it’s been more than two months since the Northwood community moved into Woodward, the Rockville building doesn’t yet feel like a place where students roam the halls. While a few classroom doors are decorated, most of the school’s pristine walls were noticeably bare during a recent tour by MoCo360 with Northwood Principal Jonathan Garrick and MCPS spokesperson Liliana Lopez.
The only exception are small signs with street names from Northwood High’s previous locale – such as “Loxford to Caddington” — at the entrance to some hallways, marking the building as the temporary home of the Silver Spring high school.
Garrick told MoCo360 that Northwood isn’t allowed to put anything on the walls until MCPS staff examine the building. Lopez said in an email Thursday the district’s facilities department temporarily requested that walls and surfaces remain free of decoration so staff can see potential leaks or flaws. Northwood can decorate the walls after MCPS staff check the building for warranty acceptance, she said.
The main entrance to the school where students are dropped off by parents and where visitors enter is on the left side of the building, which faces Old Georgetown Road. The entrance opens up to what Garrick calls a “main street” hallway, where performing arts classes are held. Northwood has several academies offering classes in specific subjects, including the academy of music, theater and dance.
“Sometimes you have a reputation of putting performing arts down in the basement or somewhere,” Garrick said. “It’s front and center at this school.”
On the right side of the building, students enter the school from the bus loop. Inside, stairs lead down to the cafeteria, which faces a courtyard on a hill.
“No, they have not rolled down the hill yet,” Garrick said of his students. “I am curious if it ever snows, if they’re gonna try to go down.”
The building isn’t separated into spaces for specific grades – for the most part. There is the “ninth grade corner” as Garrick called it, where many ninth-grade classes are held. But the building is designed to be interdepartmental, he said.
Throughout the hallways are “collaboration spaces,” or areas where classes can work together outside of a traditional classroom. The art department uses one collaboration space as a gallery. Students also have access to activities rooms, where student clubs can meet during lunch.
Garrick notes one big improvement the school offers when compared to Northwood’s former home – more bathrooms with more stalls.
“We’d have like three stalls and two bathrooms on a floor at [Northwood],” Garrick said. At Woodward, there are “no lines. And, in fact, I’ve even told them, I said, ‘There’s no reason to say you’re late for class because [you] needed the bathroom.’ ”
Senior Joshua Maokhamphiou told MoCo360 the bathrooms have been one of the biggest upgrades, “especially when in the old Northwood it would just start randomly flooding.”
The building also has plenty of room.
The extra space has been helpful – fewer traffic jams occur in the hallways, there’s more staff lounge space, and teachers aren’t required to leave their classrooms due to a lack of space for all staff, Garrick said.
“They’ve gone from [a] very tight, small school to they can flap down the hallways and not touch each other. It’s great,” Garrick said. “The kids are feeling the love from having this building.”
Brigid Howe, president of the Montgomery County Council of PTAs, said she’s heard students talk about how nice the building is.
“As a parent, I went there for one of the [Downcounty Consortium] open houses, and it’s a beautiful facility,” Howe said.
Still, the school’s layout over four floors can be slightly confusing, students said. Northwood sophomore Sidney Walter said it took time to adjust.
“The biggest issue for a lot of people was figuring out where their classes are and getting to class on time,” Walter said. “The way they organized the building sort of takes a minute to wrap your head around.”
Maokhamphiou also said getting adjusted to the new building took time, but it’s been a positive change for the most part. Student Government Association President Chesna Foster told MoCo360 that overall the transition has gone well, and the new building is less “depressing” than Northwood’s former home.
“[The best part is] the amount of windows and natural lighting. It’s definitely been a big improvement,” Foster said.
Senior Madison Riggs, however, said she’s seen a decline in student morale because of the bare walls and the long commute time from Silver Spring that can be exacerbated by traffic. The distance from Northwood to Woodward is 9 miles.
“People are clearly struggling in a lot of ways, like certain classes weren’t prepped with materials when they moved in … but sometimes it feels like it’s not giving as much as we were promised,” Riggs said.
Although Garrick said during the tour with MoCo360 that staff received materials that are available, some teachers such as social studies and set design teacher Adam Boorstein said there are still issues with some classrooms not having what’s needed.
Boorstein said the theater department doesn’t have the tools requested this summer for set designing, and so far, he’s had to use his own to teach his students.
“it’s unfortunate that our students have to be put through this, to be moved to a new location and not have the things they need to succeed,” Boorstein said. “I feel that it has a lot to do with the demographics of our building, and we get told all the time, ‘That’s not it, that’s not it, that’s not it.’ But it sure feels that way.”
According to the MCPS profile for Northwood, the school’s population was 57.7% Hispanic, 23.7% Black and 11.1% white in the 2022-2023 school year, and 62.9% of Northwood students participated in the free and reduced-price meals (FARMS) program, a measure of poverty.
But Walter notes the school is starting to feel like home, though she’s still getting used to climbing up and down the many staircases.
“It’s super cool getting to be in a new space and getting to discover all these new things,” Walter said.
Lack of performance spaces, incorrectly installed tennis courts
Garrick, a former theater student, said one of the school’s offerings that most excites him is the “fabrication lab” — a classroom with equipment to construct sets.
But though the lab is a welcome addition, the school has a lack of performance spaces.
Construction of the auditorium and other spaces continues as students attend classes. And the black box theater, a smaller performance space, hasn’t been completed. Garrick told MoCo360 in mid-October that it was expected to be done by then.
Lopez, the MCPS spokesperson, said there have been “significant delays” in obtaining the audiovisual equipment needed to complete the black box.
Without the theater, Walter said finding a way to hold performances has been “tricky” although students have been trying to be positive about the situation.
The original plan was to hold the school’s traditional fall play in the black box theater and to stage its spring musical in another county high school auditorium. Without the black box, Northwood is now planning to hold its musical, RENT, on Dec. 4 at Wheaton High while the play will be scheduled for the spring, hopefully in the black box, Walter said. Wheaton is about 6 miles from Woodward and about 4 miles from Northwood. Without a black box theater, students are rehearsing in a regular classroom.
Walter, a student in the music, theater and dance academy, said many students were told the theater would be ready by the beginning of the school year, and when it wasn’t, they were told it would be ready by October.
Lopez said Thursday night that the black box is anticipated to be ready in time for the school’s spring production.
Riggs, another student in the music, theater and dance academy, said that having just the black box theater available was already a compromise because the school doesn’t have an auditorium.
“Disappointing, I guess, is the word a lot of people have been using,” Riggs said. “It also made a lot of people realize that there was less of a priority for the arts … less than people thought.”
Howe said it was a “shame” that the black box theater wasn’t completed yet but gave MCPS credit for allowing Northwood to use the Wheaton High auditorium.
“But again, that’s not ideal,” Howe said. “It’s not the same as having a theater in your own school.”
In light of the challenges facing theater students, Walter started a student arts advocacy program to “make sure we’re not forgotten about.”
“It feels like at this point, we’re the only ones concerned about it,” Walter said. “Everyone has sort of moved on, and so as a student who’s barely able to do anything and knowing that my teachers can’t do anything about it, it really bums a lot of us out.”
The tennis courts are also facing issues. Lopez said due to “a technical issue” with paving equipment, the tennis court surface didn’t meet required flatness standards for coating. A portion of the asphalt has been replaced, Lopez said, and the remaining repairs are expected to be finished by the end of the year. However, applying the coating has been delayed until the spring due to the need for temperatures to be above 55 degrees.
Maokhamphiou, a member of the tennis team, said the issues with the tennis courts are disappointing, but he hopes the courts will be fixed for the spring tennis season.
Nichols, the PTA vice president, noted that the issue with the courts means that the only outdoor sport that was going to be available at the new building does not have a suitable playing surface. Lopez said temporary striping will be applied so physical education classes can use the courts and the facilities department will coordinate with the school and the district’s athletics department to accommodate spring sports teams that rely on the tennis courts.
Funding, communication challenges
The Woodward project is also facing a $39.3 million shortfall in funding after the school district found errors in its state aid calculation that also impacted other projects, MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor announced at the end of October.
“I want to make it clear that this issue was entirely MCPS’ fault,” Taylor said at a school board work session in October. “We are working to correct it, and though this will not have a net negative impact on state construction revenues over the long run, it does have an impact on these projects and I’m sorry for that.”
To fill in the funding gap, Taylor recommended transferring $17.7 million in unspent funding from several district projects. Taylor also recommended the district ask the County Council for $21.6 million in local revenue to cover the remainder of the $39.3 million shortfall.
Though the district faces a gap this year due to the error, it will continue to accrue the same amount in state aid over time, according to MCPS officials.
The Woodward project was also facing a roughly $20 million deficit — the money needed to complete the auditorium and athletic facilities, according to an Oct. 9 community meeting. To fill in the gap, Taylor is recommending an additional $28 million for the project.
While funding the construction has been a challenge, Nichols also said there’s been a lack of transparency and communication about the project, a sentiment Boorstein echoed.
Boorstein said he’s notified building management about issues within the building without much response, such as when a piece of an exterior garage door in the fabrication lab fell out, making it so the door wasn’t working properly. Though he filled out a form in August noting the door needed to be fixed, Boorstein said it was finally repaired this week. Boorstein said Garrick responds to emails listing concerns, but others in charge of managing the building don’t.
Howe, the MCCPTA president, said teachers deserve a lot of credit for moving their classrooms and helping students navigate a change in schools.
“It is so hard to teach … next to an active construction site,” Howe said. “In an ideal world, everything would have been ready as promised, so hopefully MCPS can move forward in addressing some of those unmet needs quickly.”
Nichols noted the construction representative for the project hasn’t attended meetings with the Northwood School Construction Impact Team, which meets with several stakeholders to discuss challenges and solutions facing the construction.
The Hess project manager for Woodward didn’t respond to calls from MoCo360 for comment, but Lopez said representatives didn’t attend the meetings because they were “more about the relocation and operations relative to athletics, performing arts and transportation,” but will attend the meetings going forward.
“The lack of transparency and follow-through in the process reflects poorly on all the parties and is detrimental to our community,” Nichols told the school board Nov. 4. “We’re just asking you to look, take a hard and immediate look at what’s happening at Woodward right now.”
