Col. Zadok Magruder High School junior Caroline Rudmann said she was in the middle of a performance Saturday of the Rockville school’s spring musical Once Upon a Mattress in the school’s auditorium when she noticed something was wrong.
“We were in the middle of a song and all of a sudden everyone’s saying, ‘Oh my gosh the [ceiling] fell down,’” said Rudmann, who plays Princess Winnifred, one of the leads. “We kept going, but everyone was kind of shocked because we were like ‘What is going on?’”
Now, with one weekend of performances remaining, the ceiling issue is forcing Magruder theater students to take their show on the road to Shady Grove Middle School in Gaithersburg. Some parents have said the crumbling ceiling tiles combined with other structural issues are reflective of years of building neglect by Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS).
“We’ve been advocating for years about the disrepair of Magruder High School,” Cynthia Simonson, a parent of a Magruder student, told Bethesda Today on Wednesday. “Literally every year the last decade we’ve been talking about the issues in the school.”
Over the next several days, students, parents and community members are working together to move the musical’s theater sets from Magruder to Shady Grove as students become familiar with the new performance space ahead of their Friday and Saturday performances.
“It’s been very rough because these are things that people have worked really hard on for such a long time,” Rudmann said. “And now we have to take it apart and put it back together in a completely new location.”
In a letter to the school community on Tuesday, Magruder Principal Christopher Ascienzo said it became “necessary to address repairs in the ceiling” in the auditorium, making the space unusable for safety reasons.
When asked when the repairs would be completed, MCPS spokesperson Liliana López referred to the letter from Ascienzo, which said the school is awaiting a timeline for the repairs from the MCPS division of Maintenance and Operations.
“It is my expectation that these repairs will be scheduled and completed as quickly as possible,” Ascienzo said in the letter. “However, it seems clear that the repairs cannot be completed in time for this upcoming second weekend of the musical performances.”
In a Wednesday statement, López said MCPS understands “that ongoing maintenance is crucial for creating optimal learning environments,” noting that MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor has recommended additional funding for maintenance in the district’s budget for the upcoming fiscal year.
Concerns over CIP delays, building maintenance neglect
Magruder PTSA President Kim Glassman said the fact that students are not able to use their auditorium was an example of what happens when large-scale school renovations scheduled through the district’s Capital Improvements Program (CIP) are delayed.
MCPS has two annual budgets: the operating budget and the capital budget. The operating budget includes everything needed to operate schools, including pay for educators and staff and programming costs. The capital budget supports school construction and facilities projects alongside the district’s CIP, which is a six-year plan for facility projects.
Magruder was built in 1970, according to 2016 school board documents. In the fiscal year 2020 capital budget, Magruder was scheduled to have planning funds set aside for major renovations, with a “to be determined” completion date. In the fiscal year 2021-2026 CIP, the completion date for the project was listed as September 2027. That date was pushed back several times, and Magruder isn’t scheduled for renovations in the fiscal year 2026 capital budget, which the school board approved in November. Fiscal year 2026 begins July 1.
Glassman said students, staff and building services work hard to maintain the school building, but there are some issues that require bigger fixes.
Simonson, who is also the former Montgomery County Council of PTAs (MCCPTA) president, said maintenance has been delayed in the past due to expectations that major renovations would occur through the CIP. Students and parents alike advocated for Magruder to be included in the CIP and for building issues to be addressed at a Nov. 5 CIP hearing.
Major funding additions to the CIP didn’t occur this year due to the plan’s biennial schedule. This year is an “off year,” meaning the district can only make amendments, or minor adjustments, to the 2025-2030 CIP. Next year is an “on year,” meaning the district will review the CIP in full to address large-scale projects.
When asked about concerns about the delay in funding for Magruder in the CIP, López noted the CIP budget “focuses on significant, long-term capital projects related to facilities and infrastructure.” López noted that “issues like general school maintenance” are addressed through the operational budget and not the CIP.
Taylor’s recommended 2026 fiscal year operating budget includes $9 million for building maintenance. Of that, $2 million would go toward creating “facility task force teams,” which will include maintenance experts from a variety of fields to address a backlog of needed maintenance in district schools.
“I’m glad it’s finally being done, but I also know there’s a long way to go beyond just maintenance,” Rudmann said.
Brigid Howe, current president of the MCCPTA, said the issues at Magruder show why the maintenance funding in Taylor’s budget is needed.
Magruder theatre community navigates challenges
While the auditorium repairs have created challenges, Rudmann and Glassman said the Magruder community was coming together to help move the musical to its new location.
“People are pulling together to move the show, to make the magic happen,” Glassman said. “It’s really quite a community effort.”
Over the past two days, students and families have been using pickup trucks and other transportation methods to move the set.
In his Tuesday letter, Ascienzo said the school was appreciative of the support from Shady Grove Middle.
“This is a true example of springing into action during a time when all of our schools are staging their spring theatrical and musical performances,” Ascienzo said in the letter.
Still, Simonson said moving the show to another school is a heavy burden for the students and parents. And it’s one she wished MCPS had taken on. MCPS has offered to provide transportation, including trucks, to move equipment, but the help is coming too late, Simonson said.
“There’s lots of verbal support coming from all parts of MCPS,” Simonson said. “But when it comes to practical support, someone has to be the project manager. … It has to be somebody at [the district’s] central office that is calling those shots. In my opinion, that’s what’s not happening.”
Magruder is the second county high school to not have a useable auditorium, Howe noted. Woodward High School in Rockville, which Northwood High School students currently call home, lacks an auditorium as construction continues on the new building. Last November, Northwood students also were unable to mount their fall production because the black box theater at the school’s temporary home was still under construction.
Regarding the need to move the Magruder musical, Howe said it was unfortunate that during Theatre in Our Schools Month there was now an “entire group of students who have been working on this performance that are being displaced at the last minute.”
