School Roundtable Will Seek Solutions to Overcrowding
A new MCPS group will discuss potential ways to relieve overcrowding at schools in and around Gaithersburg, possibly including Rachel Carson Elementary School (RCES), as the city’s mayor and council continue to criticize what they feel are short-sighted solutions to the problem.On Dec. 17, MCPS will host a public information session about a roundtable discussion group that will explore potential options for absorbing projected enrollment increases at Gaithersburg schools. The roundtable will include five representatives each from the Gaithersburg, Col. Zadok Magruder and Thomas S. Wooton high school clusters, as well as potentially from Latino and African-American advocacy groups in those communities.
The roundtable’s recommendations, which they will send to MCPS Interim Superintendent Larry A. Bowers in March, could include new ideas for RCES...
http://towncourier.com/school-roundtable-will-seek-solutions-to-overcrowding/
Gaithersburg... School overcrowding? What a joke. In September, the Gaithersburg Mayor and City Council voted to massively overcrowd schools by raising school capacity levels in their APFO to 150% (County levels are at 120%). This move was done solely to help their developer friends continue with the unabated development of Gaithersburg at the expensive of children and taxpayers.
ReplyDeleteMCPS certainly has it's issues, but Gaithersburg is building much faster than their school capacity can handle it and should know better than to blame this problem totally on MCPS. In the past several years they added thousands of housing units and annexed more land to increase the size of their city and student population. Now they want to annex more land near Quince Orchard to allow more development, but MCPS isn't moving fast enough for their plans.
ReplyDeleteYou're right... and 150% of capacity is absurd. Ultimately, due to cluster borrowing, etc, many Gaithersburg schools will be at capacities exceeding 200% This is insane. How do the Gaithersburg Mayor and City Councilmembers sleep at night knowing that they are hurting our children?
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