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Friday, October 9, 2015

"Supersizing the school is unneeded, unwise, and unsafe."

 Testimony before the Montgomery County Council, October 6, 2015:
...It is unsafe, because hazards identified by our County’s Planning Board remain unaddressed, as was recently noted in the letter to Mrs. O’Neill from County Planning Board Chair Mr. Anderson and Councilmember Rice. Over a one-hour period every school morning, over 800 vehicle trips (on top of high levels of commuter traffic) will access this school via narrow, hilly, curving, neighborhood streets. Restricted visibility for pedestrians and cars will increase accident risk for children accessing the site. A single steep driveway, plagued with blind spots and low visibility, must be shared by all student drop-offs, crosswalks, deliveries, parking, and emergency vehicles. Interactions between walkers and vehicles would inevitably create hazards. While many MCPS schools are embedded in neighborhoods, few, if any, have such a combination of traffic and site challenges, which would be exacerbated by expansion to 1200.

For context, Rock Creek Hills Park is significantly reduced from the former site of Kensington Junior High School. After the old school was torn down, an elder-care facility was built on much of its footprint, taking a third of the land and a vehicle entrance. The remainder fails to meet almost all official County site standards, including size, topography, and access. Once built, this will be the only middle school with less than the new 15-acre requirement without an adjacent park to provide additional space. Due to this critical lack of space, this school will have no regulation soccer field, no large playing field, and just 2 of the 4 softball fields, 4 of the 6 tennis courts and 2 of the 3 basketball courts required by standards approved by the Board of Education. The soccer and softball fields are “overlaid” meaning just one athletic activity at a time. Classrooms are below standard size. If expanded to 1200 students, cafeteria and auditorium seating will be 25% undersized, necessitating “operational” solutions, such as staggering lunch throughout the day. Despite additional costs for retaining walls up to 22 feet high to maximize useable space, the site will not have a separated student drop off, and, if expanded to 1200 students, would be short almost 25% of car and bus parking required by MCPS...

 http://savekensingtonpark.blogspot.com/2015/10/supersizing-school-is-unneeded-unwise.html

3 comments:

  1. The testimony, though thoughtful and rational, will fall on deaf ears. This site represented the easiest site for the BOE to choose, not the best, as evidenced by the fact that the BOE chose to forgo a site that was more twice the size of this park and that abutted a four-lane road.

    What’s interesting is that the arrows in the pictures detract from a complete view of the impact of the decision. In the 1979 photo, although the arrows point to the school building, it needs to be recognized that, to the left of those arrows, there is a curved road running from Saul Road to Littledale Road (you can see the circle in the middle of that road). It allowed buses to enter and exit the site, and it allowed for parking (two challenges associated with the site now). The current photo shows that, in addition to encompassing all the area north and northwest of the soccer field, the elder care facility also sites on ½ of that access road, blocking the entrance and egress to the site (look southwest of the arrow that is furthest to the left in the picture).

    Net-net: The BOE is asking the Council to double-down on its stupidity. Having selected a site that is barely 2/3 the size it was and lacks the separate access road that once existed, it now seeks to house more students than were housed on the prior larger site. Single party Montgomery County is an autocrat’s dream and a taxpayer’s nightmare.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The testimony, though thoughtful and rational, will fall on deaf ears. This site represented the easiest site for the BOE to choose, not the best, as evidenced by the fact that the BOE chose to forgo a site that was more twice the size of this park and that abutted a four-lane road.

    What’s interesting is that the arrows in the pictures detract from a complete view of the impact of the decision. In the 1979 photo, although the arrows point to the school building, it needs to be recognized that, to the left of those arrows, there is a curved road running from Saul Road to Littledale Road (you can see the circle in the middle of that road). It allowed buses to enter and exit the site, and it allowed for parking (two challenges associated with the site now). The current photo shows that, in addition to encompassing all the area north and northwest of the soccer field, the elder care facility also sites on ½ of that access road, blocking the entrance and egress to the site (look southwest of the arrow that is furthest to the left in the picture).

    Net-net: The BOE is asking the Council to double-down on its stupidity. Having selected a site that is barely 2/3 the size it was and lacks the separate access road that once existed, it now seeks to house more students than were housed on the prior larger site. Single party Montgomery County is an autocrat’s dream and a taxpayer’s nightmare.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Single party Montgomery County is an autocrat’s dream and a taxpayer’s nightmare."
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMLNq5PKFrI

      Delete

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