‘No longer tenable’: MCPS to recommend closure of aging Silver Spring International Middle by 2031

 In Bethesda Today, reporter Ashlyn Campbell. Full story here. Yellow highlights my own.

Plan calls for students to be divided between rebuilt Eastern, Sligo middle schools

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) will recommend the closure of the aging Silver Spring International Middle School by 2031 as part of its proposed six-year capital improvements program, Superintendent Thomas Taylor announced Monday. 

In a 15-minute Zoom meeting Monday afternoon, Taylor told the Silver Spring International Middle School (SSIMS) community that he is planning to recommend the closure when he presents a preview of the district’s proposed 2027-2032 Capital Improvements Program (CIP) to community members on Tuesday.  

Instead of replacing the middle school, MCPS will recommend the renovation of Eastern and Sligo middle schools in Silver Spring and then divide the SSIMS community between the updated facilities, Taylor told the group of about 70 in the online meeting.  

“Eventually, five years down the road, we would like to move to a place where SSIMS … can become a holding school for the school district and no longer be a school that’s [operating] in its current state,” Taylor said during the meeting. “Now that’s dramatic news. It is probably different than what you expect, but it is in response to a lot of what we have heard from our parents and from our students and from our teachers, which is that the learning environment at SSIMS is no longer tenable.”