The Board of Education wants to Divest Lyttonsville of Their Open Space Land, Again. #AntiaircraftArtilleryBattalion

MCPS already designed a school for the Coffield Rec site.

Once again, the Board of Education has put the parkland next to the Coffield Recreation Center in Lyttonsville on a list of potential school sites.  

Back in April of 2011, the Board of Education was told by the Montgomery County Department of Parks that park land is not up for grabs for the placement of school buildings.  See the April 27, 2011, letter from Montgomery Parks to the Board of Education below. 

In 2011, the Board of Education was specifically told they could not have the land next to the Coffield Recreation Center for a public school, yet here that park is again on a list of potential school sites and the Board of Education has even gone so far as to pay for a possible building design for the proposed school.  See image from MCPS presentation. 

Not only is the Park land next to the Coffield Recreation Center the property of Montgomery Parks, but the land that became part of the fields at Rosemary Hills Local Park was probably the site for an Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion in the first half of the 1950s, as part of a group of such sites that ringed the Washington, DC region before the advent of Nike missile sites after the Korean War.

Because the land was purchased by Parks and Planning before there were federal and state environmental laws that mandated due diligence into toxic materials and other past land uses that could pose a threat to water quality or health and safety, the screening process to assess threats was very superficial, limited, for example, to noting whether a dump or other substandard structures were on site.

This site would need to be investigated thoroughly before any construction could commence and as the long time residents of Lyttonsville know, this past use of this land has prevented other construction projects from taking place on the existing fields. 

BOE Site Selection by Parents' Coalition of Montg... on Scribd