The Montgomery County school board tabled a vote Thursday on a contract for a boundary study that would impact nearly all of the county’s public high schools.
The boundary study is a result of the expected completion of three Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) capital projects for the 2027-2028 school year: the Charles W. Woodward High School rebuild in Rockville, an expansion of Damascus High School and the construction of the new Crown High School in Gaithersburg.
Northwood High School students are using the Woodward building on Old Georgetown Road in Rockville, which is still under construction, as a holding facility while the Northwood building in Silver Spring is rebuilt.
The boundary study, according to school board documents, would determine the attendance boundaries for the three high schools and “provide an opportunity to alleviate space needs across the district.” The work will include an “analysis of distribution and equitable access to districtwide programs” as well as a boundary study. The contract has a base price of $605,677 with a $400,000 allowance.
According to school board documents, only one vendor submitted a proposal: FLO Analytics which has locations in Oregon, Washington and Massachusetts. According to its website, FLO Analytics is “an employee-owned consulting company” that uses Geographic Information Systems and data analytics to provide a variety of services including boundary analysis and adjustment, redistricting and environmental data management.
FLO Analytics has completed boundary studies for districts across the country and at least one study in Maryland, according to school board documents.
The documents said that a “diverse group of internal and external stakeholders” reviewed the proposal. The company also met with the review group and answered questions for roughly two hours. After the session, the review group made “minor” adjustments to the proposal and unanimously voted that FLO Analytics was qualified to perform the work.
The study will follow the board’s policies and regulations on educational facilities planning, which detail considerations and steps the district takes when addressing topics such as school boundaries. According to the documents, the study will also analyze special program placements at schools and incorporate goals for program access.
The boundary study will include 19 of the 25 high schools in Montgomery County and 31 middle schools.
The school board’s vote comes after the board postponed the deadline for receiving bids in October upon receiving community feedback, MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor said in October. The request for proposal (RFP) indicating the district was seeking bids from consultants to conduct the boundary review was released Sept. 9. The bid deadline originally scheduled for Oct. 9 was pushed back to Oct. 22 and then to Oct. 31, according to documents on the MCPS procurement website.
Divisive studies
Analyses of boundaries have divided the MCPS community in the past. In 2019, MCPS conducted a countywide boundary analysis. While district leaders said at the time the review wouldn’t result in changes, the analysis sparked debate over the value of school diversity versus students attending schools close to their homes. Hundreds of residents attended forums and community feedback meetings on the topic, with one forum resulting in jeers and yelling from attendees.
In a virtual townhall with the Bethesda Chevy Chase Democratic Breakfast Club on Oct. 15, Taylor said MCPS was evaluating the boundaries for two new high schools that will be opening, which will create a “very significant disruption to our boundaries for high schools and will create a lot of dominoes.”
According to documents included in the request for proposal prior to the Oct. 31 deadline, the latest boundary review was expected to follow a timeline beginning in November 2024 and ending with the adoption of boundaries in March 2026. Current school board documents related to the project don’t have a timeline, but MCPS Spokesperson Liliana Lopez told MoCo360 in October that the deadline couldn’t change due to the opening of the new schools in August 2027.
