Rock Spring and White Flint II Master Plan Meeting Sept 17

This is a reminder about the September 17 meeting at WJHS for the Rock Spring and White Flint 2 master plan efforts.  The Planning Department staff and staff from MCPS will spend the first part of the meeting describing how their agencies address schools in the planning process.  They will then take comments for thirty minutes before transitioning to smaller table discussions as show below:

 

I.             Welcome and Introductions (Casey Anderson, Roger Berliner)- 10 minutes

II.           Purpose of Tonight’s Meeting (Gwen Wright, Glenn Kreger)-5 minutes

III.          Comprehensive (Master) Planning (Nkosi Yearwood)- 10 minutes

IV.          School Facility Planning (Bruce Crispell)- 20 minutes

V.           APFO and the Regulatory Environment (Pam Dunn)- 15 minutes

VI.          Comment Period-30 minutes

VII.         Individual Conversations with Staff @ 4 tables- 30 minutes

∙             Rock Spring (Don Zeigler, Nancy Sturgeon)

∙             White Flint 2 (Nkosi Yearwood, Andrea Gilles)

∙             MCPS (Bruce Crispell)

∙             APFO/Regulatory (Pam Dunn)

VIII.        Wrap-Up/Next Steps (Glenn Kreger)- 5 minutes

 

The Planning staff is well aware of how important this issue is to the community.  That’s why we have begun the schools discussion early in the Rock Spring and White Flint 2 master plan efforts. Some in the community are already familiar with the process and have been actively engaged.  Other community members are not, however, and it is important for everyone to have a basic understanding of the process in order to provide effective input.  We hope that all attendees will be patient while we try to explain the process.

 

 

Andrea Gilles

Area 2 Planning Division

Montgomery County Planning Department

Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission

8787 Georgia Avenue │Silver Spring, MD 20910

Direct: 301.495.4541│Web: www.montgomeryplanning.org

Parent Responds: MCPS is Bureaucratic at best, but almost insulting to our intelligence. #construction

To: Craig Rice <craig.rice@montgomerycountymd.gov>
Cc: Marc Elrich <marc.elrich@montgomerycountymd.gov>; Nancy Navarro <nancy.navarro@montgomerycountymd.gov>; "boe@mcpsmd.org" <boe@mcpsmd.org>; Joan Kleinman <joan.kleinman@mail.house.gov>
Sent: Monday, August 17, 2015 3:25 PM
Subject: BCC Middle School #2 - URGENT for Thursday BOE meeting

 

Dear Mr. Rice –

Thank you for your 23 July letter [click here] to Ms. O’Neill regarding BCC Middle School #2.  Since we last met in June, other Rock Creek Hills parents and I have had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Zuckerman three separate times.  He listened to our concerns, engaged his staff and visited the site personally.  Although he continuously indicated a commitment to listen and make change, his response(attached -click here) received last week was wholly disappointing.  Through a screen of lists of meetings, standards and codes, he basically ignored the concerns of both the community and other County officials.  Bureaucratic at best, but almost insulting to our intelligence.  Yes – we know there were many meetings.  But were they effective?  Did they actually address concerns raised, or simply document, nod and ignore?  Add green roofs and architecturally appropriate surfaces for retaining walls to your list of broken promises and missed opportunities to improve the project.

In the meantime, MCPS has received construction bids and has notified Maryland Department of the Environment that they intend to commence with the plans as they currently stand.  

This Thursday, “construction contracts” is a topic on the Board of Education meeting that would result in approval for this project to go forward.   Before that happens, however, I encourage you to question the status of the project and the resolution of all the issues at hand.   Two additional issues are of particular concern that I would like to highlight:  traffic safety, and budget authority and conformance.

Traffic Safety

Many traffic and safety issues are generated by an (total future) influx of 1,200 students to the area.  Although a traffic study was conducted, it only addressed the capacity of Connecticut Avenue and its intersections.  It did not examine other roads leading to, or immediately connecting to, the proposed site.  Attached [click here] is a graphic synopsis of the issues impacting the closest intersections.  To our knowledge, there is no similar circumstance in Montgomery County that has a school of this size served by a local road network that has:

• similar volume of extant commuter traffic (upon which the school traffic will be overlaid),
• winding and hilly roads that are narrower than required,
• insufficient queuing capability,
• intersections with limited site lines,
• bridges with limited load capacity, and sidewalks that are not to code
• non-existant neighborhood sidewalks. 

This is truly an “accident” waiting to happen, when frustrated parents and anxious kids try to navigate this labyrinth before the first bell.  Additionally, at the Feasibility Study presentation, it was noted (but not highlighted) that although parking is sufficient for the initial student load, it is not for the full future student capacity.  The same phenomenon will also occur with traffic…it may only be “bad” the day the school opens, but will become irreversible once the school is fully loaded.  Because none of these problems can be resolved by MCPS planners or budgets, they have stated that these are not their concern.  I contend that it is incumbent upon MCPS and its leadership as the proponents of the project to ensure that these issues are addressed, budgeted, funded and resolved within Montgomery County government and budgets.  Anything less than this should be considered to be turning a blind eye on safety, and perhaps negligence.

Budget Authority

Based upon analysis of bids received to date (see attached), it appears that the project is already dangerously close to, if not over,  its approved budget of $52.3M (CIP 2015-2020).  This assumes that only the lowest bids are awarded, as requested, which typically commits the owner to quality and cost issues during construction.  No construction awards have yet been made, more bids for components of the construction are yet to be received, and construction has not begun.  There is no place for cost to go but up.  Fundamentally, it appears that this project is destined to exceed its approved funding [click here], at the same time MCPS has bid options to build out (un-budgeted, unapproved) expansion space by constructing almost $2M in additional “shell” space with the base construction bid.  Constructing this space now, although tempting, is tantamount to committing to a future of increased traffic problems and pressure on school common spaces which remain inadequate for the full 1,200 student population.    

While I wholeheartedly agree with the intent of your letter, it is focused the future of MCPS school planning, using BCC MS #2 as example.  Without immediate action, Montgomery County is committing to build a school that even you describe as being “disappointing”, still having known and acknowledged deficiencies.  The concerns of both the community and the Planning staff still exist – they are not past tense.  They have not been resolved. 

Rather than this being known as the last school planned, designed and built with a process that is neither collegial nor constructive, it should be seen as the turning point in legacy thinking, with deficiencies corrected in a collaborative fashion.  Does Montgomery County want to be known for knowingly spending more than $52M for a school that its own staff considers to be "disappointing"?  Is this the new “standard” for our County?

Prior to awarding construction, and heading down an irreversible path, MCPS should be made responsible to:  

1. investigate, find solutions and manage execution of traffic issues, both on and “off-site”,
2. provide a true budget lay down of total project costs to the County, including construction contingency for this project, roads and traffic improvements, land acquisition (to replace lost park space), and all “soft costs” indirectly associated with project completion,
3. justify additional cost, and gain CIP approval, for additional unbudgeted “shell space”, 
4. provide an accurate construction timeline (the project is already 2 months behind approved schedule, and not yet awarded) and
5. explain the short and long term (25 year aggregate) impact of any schedule delay.    

Although it is late in the game, there is still time to make a difference.  I hope that you have the ability to make a difference for our students, your taxpayers and the reputation of our County.

 

Thank you for your consideration,

Rick

Richard L. Bond, AIA

[MCPS] ranking system is based on outdated information, marred by factual errors and favors total reconstruction over renovation, according to the July report by...County Council.

The Montgomery County school system plans to rethink its list of which schools are next in line for modernization, after a report that strongly criticized the way those decisions are made.

The ranking system is based on outdated information, marred by factual errors and favors total reconstruction over renovation, according to the July report by the county’s Office of Legislative Oversight, the research arm of the County Council.

Until the report’s release, the school system had intended to keep its list unchanged until at least 2031. But the oversight office found that other large school systems, including Baltimore County, Fairfax County and Dallas, regularly revisit and adjust their construction priorities.

“It’s definitely disturbing,” said council member Tom Hucker (D-Silver Spring). “This doesn’t inspire public confidence.”...

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/report-prompts-montgomery-to-rethink-its-school-modernization-list/2015/08/09/9af05240-3ac5-11e5-9c2d-ed991d848c48_story.html?hpid=z3

Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton said she has said for years that Montgomery County Public Schools was incorrectly calculating school capacity

Rockville looks at changes to school rules

Rockville eyes changes to help get more money for schools

...The standards guide how the city determines whether potential development projects would overcrowd its schools.

But the standards have failed to either control school growth or draw funding from the county for school projects, Councilman Tom Moore said.

Moore wants the city to follow the county’s guidelines of allowing development that causes enrollment to hit 120 percent of a school’s programmed capacity, rather than Rockville’s standard of 110 percent.

The 110 percent threshold was designed to allow the city to request county money before a school’s enrollment hits 120 percent of capacity, with the money allocated to that school’s cluster more quickly, but it hasn’t worked, he said.

Moore suggested other changes. He wants developers to pay a fee for projects when a school’s enrollment reaches 105 percent to 120 percent of capacity. He wants the city to assess the average of all schools in a cluster rather than each school’s capacity. Also, the city should calculate a project’s impact on enrollment when a developer applies for approval, not when it’s approved, as is done now.

Older residents are moving out of Rockville and being replaced by younger families with schoolchildren, with 85 percent of the city’s enrollment growth coming from existing homes rather than new development, Moore said.

Mayor Bridget Donnell Newton said she has said for years that Montgomery County Public Schools was incorrectly calculating school capacity and that more students would come from existing homes.

But before any changes are made, officials must make sure parents and other stakeholders are aware of them before January’s public hearing...

 

SCHOOL RAGE: RESIDENTS QUESTION HIGH-DENSITY WESTBARD PLAN, NEW ES SITES NOT LARGE ENOUGH

From Robert Dyer,
Robert Dyer @ Bethesda Row Posted Nov 15, 2014. 
For the full post go here.

"This is crazy!"

Friday brought one of the most contentious meetings of the Westbard Sector Plan charrette, and not surprisingly, the topic was schools. Current and future public school parents in the Wood Acres-Pyle-Whitman cluster acutely aware of existing overcrowding questioned how Montgomery County planners could recommend a high-density growth plan for Westbard in that context.

Concept 1 - all of the red
structures are new apartment
buildings

Planners released their first projections for total housing units, and students to be generated by the plan, at the meeting. Those numbers were met with skepticism. Under a full build-out of Concept 1, Westbard residents would find 2529 apartments dropped into their community. That would, under the current U.S. census bureau statistic of 2.58 persons per housing unit, bring 6525 new residents (and 12724 additional cars!) to the 153 acres that comprise the Westbard Sector. In other words, 43 people per acre, which is quite a change from the area's single-family-home suburban character.

The Planning Department projection calculated Friday predicts 306 new students, with 153 of them being elementary school students. Those numbers generated some grumbling among the crowd of residents at the meeting. If one has been on Westbard Avenue when the school buses stop there in the morning, you know there are quite a few students coming from those few buildings now. In fact, Park Bethesda alone has 59 students, and Westwood Tower adds 65. Unfortunately, the chart shown did not have the numbers for the Kenwood Place condominium, which is also in the Walt Whitman HS cluster.

MCPS' infamous forecaster Bruce Crispell made a late arrival to the meeting, but tried to generate some numbers more in line with what we've seen in the Westbard area. Crispell's calculator gave him a projection of 750 students, more than double what planners forecast - and equal to the size of the entire Wood Acres ES population, one resident noted. In the context of 6525 people coming under Concept 1, 750 still sounds a bit low.

Proposed White Flint Elementary School Meeting 7pm Nov 20

White Flint Elementary School

7:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 20

Garrett Park Elementary School

4810 Oxford Street

Kensington, MD

Planners from the Montgomery County Planning Department  will participate in a general meeting of the Garrett Park Estates/White Flint Park Citizen's Association at the Garrett Park Elementary School on Wednesday, November 20 at 7:00 p.m. Up for discussion is the  proposed White Flint elementary school on the White Flint Mall site. The meeting is open to the public.

A total of approximately 9,800 new residential units are expected as the White Flint District develops.  MCPS had estimated approximately 450 new elementary school age children, and, as follows,

The Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Division of Long-Range Planning

estimates that the 9800 residential units will generate-

- 321 High school students for Walter Johnson HS

- 380 Middle school students for Tilden MS

- 410 Elementary school students for Garrett Park ES and Luxmanor ES.

Ashman wanted to know why Rachel Carson Elementary School (RCES), which has been over capacity for years, is not part of a feasibility study...

The Town Courier:  MCPS Offers Gaithersburg Update

According to Craig Shuman Jr., director of the MCPS Division of Construction, the Gaithersburg High School renovation project is on schedule. The stadium field AstroTurf was installed in late July and is ready for use. Whether Gaithersburg can play its football home opener is still undecided due to parking and other construction-related matters... 

...RCES OvercrowdingFollowing an overview through 2017 from Bruce Crispell, the MCPS director of the Division of Long-range Planning, gave an overview of Gaithersburg schools through 2017, Council member Jud Ashman asked if overcrowding was the main factor in whether or not a facility would be considered for school additions. Specifically, Ashman wanted to know why Rachel Carson Elementary School (RCES), which has been over capacity for years, is not part of a feasibility study. RCES was built for 668 students and, according to MCPS senior planner Debbie Szyfer, enrollment for the upcoming school year was projected at 914 students.
As of Aug. 7, however, Szyfer said the school’s enrollment was already over projection estimates by 19 students. (At press time, Principal Larry Chep said RCES has 944 students enrolled for the upcoming school year.)
Crispell said he understood the overcrowding situation at the school but that, in this situation, there is not much that could be done...

How does MCPS predict school populations?

Tomorrow morning the Montgomery County Planning Board will be taking up the issue of "the methodology used to administer the annual school test as required by the county's Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance."  The discussion is Agenda Item #3.  Coincidentally today's Gazette published an article entitled, "Montgomery school system to use more relocatable Classrooms."  You can read that article here.  Ever wonder why your child attending class in a portable trailer?  Ever wonder why, if you live in Clarksburg, one year after the new public elementary school opened, a portable trailer was required?  For those answers and more, read the Planning Board report, here, or below.  Better yet, comment on the report.  To comment, email the Chair, Ms. Françoise Carrier, at mcp-chairman@mncppc-mc.org.

20120426_BriefingonSchoolsTestMethodology_000

MCPS Misleads Board of Ed and Public in Site Selection report

The Parents' Coalition has obtained an April 20, 2011 e-mail (see image below) from the Montgomery County Department of Recreation to Montgomery County Public Schools' Director of Long Range Planning that contradicts the composition of the BCC Site Selection Advisory Committee (SSAC) as described in the report that now appears on the MCPS website.

The e-mail is from the Chief of the Division of Facilities and Capital Programs for the Montgomery County Department of Recreation, Jeffrey Bourne. 


In the e-mail Mr. Bourne tells MCPS to remove his name and the name of his Department from the list of site selection committee participants. 


Did MCPS comply with his request?

The April 20, 2011 e-mail from Mr. Bourne was explicit about what was to be removed from BOTH the text and Exhibit B of the March 8, 2011 report (link goes to original March 8th report). The report was apparently changed AFTER March 8, 2011 to remove Mr. Bourne's name from Exhibit B's list of names of members of the site selection advisory committee, but the report was NOT changed to remove a reference to the Department of Recreation from the list of participating agencies in the text of the report (Page 1). 


The fact that a MCPS report with a date of March 8th was revised after March 8th without indicating the date of the revision (e.g. by an errata sheet) raises questions in itself. 


The fact that the explicitly requested revision wasn't made to the text of the report when a revision was made to Exhibit B raises even more questions.

Relevant excerpts from report and e-mail:

Page 2 of the report dated March 8, 2011 states:

"The SSAC for Bethesda-Chevy Chase Middle School #2 met on December 14, 2010 and on January 25, 2011."

The April 20, 2011 email from Jeffrey Bourne states:

"For the record, neither I nor the Department of Recreation were a member of any Site Selection Committee for any MCPS project nor did we participate in any evaluation of any sites related to BCC MS #2. ...Prior to publication of this report (or in case of publication) remove any reference to the Department of Recreation or my participation in any Site Selection Committee activities other than to indicate that I was present at the announcement meeting in January, 2011."

The April 20, 2011 email from Mr. Bourne notes that:

"...the text of the report indicates that the Department of Recreation was a participating agency in the site selection process. ...In Exhibit B it lists my name as a member of this same committee." 

Page 1 of the report dated March 8, 2011 currently posted on the MCPS website (August 16, 2011) states:

"The SSAC was comprised of staff from the Montgomery County Office of Management and Budget, the Montgomery County Department of Transportation, the Montgomery County Department of General Services, the Montgomery County Department of Recreation..."

However, Exhibit B of the report dated March 8, 2011 currently posted on the MCPS website does not list Mr. Bourne's name as a member of the Site Selection Advisory Committee.

Is your Cluster Overcrowded?

Here is the report by Bruce Crispell of Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools (MCPS) to be presented to the MoCo Planning Board for approval on June 17. 

Is your school overcrowded?  Check the table in this document to find out. The measure of over-capacity, according to the County Growth Policy, is 105% (portables not included).  If the cluster exceeds 120% a moratorium on development in that cluster must be in force.  Eight school clusters exceed the 105% ceiling; one school cluster, Richard Montgomery, exceeds the 120% ceiling.

Our new Planning Board chair is Ms. Francoise Carrier.  Planning Board members are: Norman Dreyfuss, Joseph Alfandre, Amy Presley, and Marye Wells-Harley.

To contact the Planning Board, send an email to MCP-Chairman@mncppc-mc.org.  Better yet, attend the meeting yourself! The Planning Board meets at 8787 Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring.  Read the June 17 agenda here.  The School Test will be discussed and voted on as part of the discussion on the Adequate Public Facilities Discussion, Agenda Item #8.

Growth Policy School Test for FY2011 PB 6-17-10[1]

MCPS Math and the Monocacy Madness

Our friends in the Gifted and Talented Association have agonized about Montgomery County School Superintendent Dr. Weast and math for years, stating that MCPS math is shallow on teaching arithmetic concepts needed to prepare our children to take their place in society.

Here is another demonstration of Dr. Weast's failure in math.

Dr. Weast announced he plans to close Monocacy Elementary School at the end of this school year because of declining enrollment.  

Wait - don't we have over 400 portables next to schools across the county?   Three portables are currently sited at Monocacy.  Are we hearing that the school population is rising?

So why close Monocacy now?  According to Dr. Weast, this will save $1 million dollars.  How?  He doesn't say.  Won't the kids still need to be in a classroom somewhere in the county?  Won't the teachers and staff  be placed elsewhere and paid?  And school buses?  What about that new roof?  Don't forget, we still need to keep a vacant building heated, so the pipes don't freeze.

Sorry, but the capacity is needed elsewhere - down the road in Clarksburg, where Dr. Weast plans on building two new elementary schools.  And yes, MCPS can always add on to Poolesville, with more portables in the short term and an addition at an estimated cost of $14 million - oops, that's not in the current plan.

Are Dr. Weast's projections all that accurate?  You need to look no further than Matsunaga ES, an overcapacity school that was supposed to be relieved by the opening of Little Bennett.  Matsunaga still has portables - so what happened there?

And Wootton High School with its mega additions a few years back is still over capacity.  Wootton manages by running College Institute classes in cooperation with Montgomery College and sending a signficant portion of its kids out on internships, so they get the staffing allocations without having the kids in the building.   Don't forget the monster development called Science City coming to the Wootton cluster with no new schools on the table.

I would be remiss to not mention the White Flint buildup.  Again, more building without more school capacity.

Dr. Weast doesn't get the math or the big picture.  Saving $1 million dollars in operating budget costs by closing Monocacy and then spending $14 million in capital costs for an addition to Poolesville ES does not make sense.  Given the Balkanization of our county by individual clusters, the budget makes even less sense - robbing from Poolesville cluster to satisfy new MoCo residents in Clarskburg doesn't make sense,  especially when the rest of the county has unmet needs too.

Closing any school in MoCo doesn't make sense, especially when we can't accomodate the students we currently have without the extensive use of portable learning cottages.  Dr. Weast's proposal is more than foolish  - it is almost unconscionable to continue to look at the cluster model as individual units without even considering the movement of programs or boundaries.

To repeat the mantra from the elementary school teachers across the county, its time to reteach and relearn the budget math.

Overcrowded Schools Coming Your Way Part 2

Good government doesn't mean a bad reputation
by Jim Humphrey, Chair, Montgomery County Civic Federation Planning and Land Use Committee

Each June, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) submits to the Planning Board a set of student enrollment and school capacity projections for five years in the future, broken down by elementary, middle and high school level for each school cluster in the county. If any cluster is predicted to have an enrollment exceeding 120% of capacity on any grade level then, according to the county growth policy, the Planning Board must not approve any more residential development projects in that area until more classroom capacity is provided--and not those trailers either, but brick-and-mortar classrooms.

This year MCPS submitted data to the Planning Board for the school year beginning September 2014, and the Seneca Valley and Bethesda-Chevy Chase clusters were both projected to exceed 120% of capacity on the elementary level. So starting July 1, the Board imposed a temporary halt on approval of new housing projects in both cluster areas. They joined the Clarksburg area, which was already in moratorium for new residential project approvals due to insufficient middle school capacity.

This turn of events seemed to those of us in the civic community to be a sign of a well-functioning county government which was enforcing its Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance, a law enacted in 1973 that requires the Planning Board to find there is adequate roads, transit and school capacity to serve a new development before approving the project.

The county growth policy is reexamined every two years, in odd-numbered years. And on June 22 the Planning Board held a public hearing on proposed changes to the growth policy being recommended by the Planning Department staff. It was at this hearing that I first heard a phrase that was new to me.

A land use lawyer who represents development industry clients stated the moratorium would "damage Montgomery County 's national reputation" as a place that is friendly to business, and restrain the ability of the county government to attract new companies to locate here. This seemed to me to be an odd claim, since the moratorium in the Clarksburg , Seneca Valley and Bethesda-Chevy Chase school cluster areas only prevents approval of new residential projects. Commercial projects containing office and retail space can still be approved and built. And residential projects that have already received approval can also still be built.

A week or so later, I heard a high-ranking county official assert that a way must be found to lift the moratorium, as it will "damage the national reputation of the county" and impact the government's ability to attract new business to Montgomery County. Again, this seemed to me to be an odd claim, since I thought businesses might view the moratorium favorably as a firm commitment on the part of the county to providing adequate school facilities to their employees' children, should the companies move here.

Then, just last week I had a conversation with a realtor who handles single-unit home sales in my neighborhood, not commercial properties or undeveloped acreage. And I asked what they thought of the moratorium on new residential project approvals that now affects three of the twenty-five school clusters in the county. Again I heard the now familiar claim that "it will damage the county's national reputation" as a place that is welcoming of new businesses. I wondered how a temporary halt in approval of new residential projects, which affects a total land area less than one-eighth of the county in size, could possibly be a deal breaker for companies looking to locate here.

There are commercial development projects located throughout the county that are already approved but unbuilt, totaling four million square feet of space. Any company looking to move here has a long list of options to choose from--location, building size, price, and even the developer--all for approved projects ready to be built. The only thing I could see which might prevent businesses from locating here is, in fact, the county's national reputation.

If companies are thinking of locating to Montgomery County , the government will guarantee their employees' property taxes will increase ten percent each year, doubling every eight-and-a-half years.

The county is home to some of the worst traffic congestion in the nation which, coupled with inadequate public transit and ever increasing levels of planned growth, is guaranteed to get worse with each passing year.

Montgomery County has one of the widest income disparities in the U.S. At the same time the county ranks near the highest per capita income nationally, 25.8% of our public school students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches based on low household income.

And Montgomery can boast of poor water quality in several stream watersheds, with perhaps the most serious offense requiring signs posted along Rock Creek near the Gude Landfill cautioning children and pets not to wade in the polluted water.

But the county getting a bad reputation for strict enforcement of a law requiring there be adequate school capacity to accommodate new housing projects before they can be approved...I just don't see it.

The views expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect formal positions adopted by the Federation. To submit an 800-1000 word column for consideration, send as an email attachment to theelms518@earthlink.net

Portable classrooms expanding in Montgomery | Washington Examiner

Portable classrooms expanding in Montgomery | Washington Examiner

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Another school year, and another year of overcrowded school facilities. Portables are still populating the Montgomery County Public School landscape. Will MCPS ever be able to accurately predict classroom needs?