Patch: Rock Creek Hills Residents Blast New B-CC Middle School Site Selection Process

Patch: Residents appealed to the Board of Education to re-open the site selection process at a Monday meeting.

The Board of Education acknowledged Monday evening a “loss of trust” from the community following a site selection process for a new Bethesda-Chevy Chase Middle School that many have called flawed.
The board pointed to the need for more community involvement in future site selection processes, but nonetheless voted to move forward in appointing an architect that will lead a study to determine the feasibility of building the new school at the Rock Creek Hills Local Park in Kensington...

Agricultural Reserve & School Policy

Time for a Rural Schools Policy, says the Montgomery Countryside Alliance.

"Superintendent Weast last month decided to keep Monocacy open and revisit closure in 2 years. His rationale: they neglected to calculate the addition of two housing developments in Poolesville. The rationale employed seems to support the notion that to save services for rural communities...they should be developed - sort of a pave 'em to protect 'em logic. He denies that the Poolesville Cluster is located wholly within the Ag Reserve and offers none of the proposals carefully crafted by the Roundtable group. There is no acknowledgment of the need to press forward with a master plan based policy that will support no or low cost means to ensuring healthy rural schools enrollment. There is no acknowledgment of the regional value of the Reserve as a source of food and fibre or recreation or resource protection. Nothing. So we need to send a chorus of respectful but firm emails: Time for a Rural Schools Policy!"

Time for Rural School Policy that Supports the Ag Reserve! Montgomery County's rural public schools will "will never see the kind of increased enrollment that we see in neighborhoods that are planned for future growth" and are "also not served by the Recreation and County Services Centers that are located in other parts of Montgomery County; as a result, the local schools and libraries must provide the gathering places and meeting rooms that are otherwise unavailable." -Dr. Royce Hanson, chief architect of Reserve Letter to Superintendent Weast Nov. 18, 2009

 A few minutes of your time will matter greatly to the ongoing preservation of Montgomery County's Ag Reserve and its farming/rural communities. Whether you are a parent with children in the Poolesville or neighboring school cluster, or a Reserve resident or a County resident that supports the Reserve and the production of local food: We ask that you send a brief email to the Board of Education and the County Council by COB tomorrow, November 17th. (contact info below) Your email should:
 ~Thank the Board for their support of our rural schools by keeping Monocacy Elementary School in Barnesville open.
~Ask the Board to recognize the work of the Roundtable held last spring, and develop a policy for the four schools (Poolesville Cluster)located in the Agricultural Reserve that recognizes their special status and accepts lower enrollment levels at those schools than in other downcounty public schools.
 ~Ask the Board to keep in mind that the roundtable also recommended the liberal transfer of students into Monocacy, as the Board explores changes in the transfer policy.
~Ask the Board to act now, ask the County Council to press for the Board to establish the policy so that Montgomery County's rural communities do not continue to suffer from lingering questions about their schools' future.
Background and link to testimony and Rural Schools Policy position paper:

Thirty years ago the County took a vast portion of its geography and "placed" it in a Reserve for the purpose of farmland and open space preservation. Property owners were told they could not develop more than 1 home per 25 acres. Farming and agriculturally related uses were to be the primary uses in the zone. Reserve residents were also told that they would, by design, be outside the water sewer envelope - meaning that they would be served by limited groundwater and septic availability. This master plan and supporting public policy is considered a national model for farmland preservation and is cited in textbooks across the nation. All good right? Flash forward to 2009: Communities within the treasured Reserve face closure of schools and removal of services. Why? The communities are told that they don't have a large enough population. In the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain, in the historic rural community of Barnesville, the residents are told that their heart, Monocacy Elementary School will be closed. Although at over 80 % capacity and a routinely high performer, Monocacy is placed on the chopping block as a presumed cost saving measure. Down county enrollment standards are employed to justify closure. The Poolesville Cluster is sent into the kind of panic that results after a school is marked for closure. Board of Education staff also warn of enrollment decline at John Poole Middle School and, potentially, Poolesville Elementary School! The Board of Education rightly decides that they should enlist the counsel of a group of stakeholders to examine how to keep Monocacy open. Early this year, the "Roundtable," comprised of representatives from Poolesville, Barnesville, the Ag Reserve, District 2 school clusters and individual schools, carefully and collegially arrived at various ways to keep Monacacy and the Poolesville Cluster vital and open and respected. The most important and unanimous proposal of the groups was to have, finally, a policy established that recognizes that Montgomery County's Rural Schools are unique and central to their communities' well being. Such a policy has been verbally promised by various County Council members over the years. That approach coupled with other no or low cost measures,such as a liberal transfer policy, were sent to the Superintendent. A reprieve but without an eye on the big picture: Superintendent Weast last month decided to keep Monocacy open and revisit closure in 2 years. His rationale: they neglected to calculate the addition of two housing developments in Poolesville. The rationale employed seems to support the notion that to save services for rural communities...they should be developed - sort of a pave 'em to protect 'em logic. He denies that the Poolesville Cluster is located wholly within the Ag Reserve and offers none of the proposals carefully crafted by the Roundtable group. There is no acknowledgment of the need to press forward with a master plan based policy that will support no or low cost means to ensuring healthy rural schools enrollment. There is no acknowledgment of the regional value of the Reserve as a source of food and fibre or recreation or resource protection. Nothing. So we need to send a chorus of respectful but firm emails: Time for a Rural Schools Policy! Help give voice to our rural communities: Please send a quick email today! As always, We thank you for your continued support!
Please contact Members of the Montgomery County Board of Education and County Council by cutting and pasting the addresses below, please also cc any emails to info@mocoalliance.org: Board of Education Members- boe@mcpsmd.org County Council Members- county.council@montgomerycountymd.gov Join Our Mailing List! Montgomery Countryside Alliance PO Box 120 Boyds, Maryland 20841

You can help Save a Community School

It's been almost a year since Superintendent Jerry Weast's surprise announcement to close Monocacy Elementary School in Poolesville, Maryland. The planned closure is now a distant memory as the Superintendent's effort was quashed by community outcry that resulted in a unanimous Board of Education backing away from the Superintendent's decision.

But over in Fairfax County, at about the same time, a decision was made to close an elementary school with similarities to Monocacy Elementary. The school is Clifton Elementary. Clifton Elementary has been in operation for over 80 years in a historic part of Fairfax County and serves around 370 students.

Despite the pending decision to close Clifton Elementary, the community is still advocating to save the school. Included in the action plan for saving this community school is a new organization in the community called Friends of Community Schools.  The Friends of Community Schools group is in the running for a $25,000 grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation to help preserve this community school. 


You can help this community win this grant to help save their school by voting here.    

Here's an article on the decision to close Clifton Elementary School in Fairfax, Virginia:

Fairfax Station Connection: Clifton Gets Creative To Keep School Open
Community will pursue legal, political and historic preservation options.

The Fairfax County School Board may have voted to close Clifton Elementary on July 8 but the local community said the school fight is far from over.

A group of families directly affected by the decision filed a lawsuit against the school system Aug. 9. Approximately 100 people also gathered at the Town of Clifton’s Town Hall Aug. 2 to discuss alternative for keeping the school open, including starting a Clifton Elementary charter school.

Ideally, the community would like to see the School Board take another vote to reverse the Clifton closure. The school system plans to operate Clifton for at least the 2010-11 school year. If new construction is needed to accommodate the Clifton students at another campus, the school could remain open beyond next summer.

"That school is still open right now and, as long as that school is still open, it is not over. … This is going to play out over the next school year. Strap yourselves in for a year of working together to make it happen," said Clifton Mayor William Hollaway to the crowd at the town hall meeting...

Weast reveals $320,000 stash!

Remember when Superintendent Weast said he was going to close Monocacy Elementary School?

Remember the $205,259 for Media Assistants and the $342,240 in Building Maintenance positions that Superintendent Weast is cutting from the Operating Budget?

Remember when the students and parents from Einstein High School's Visual Art Center lobbied for the return of one of their two teachers?

Remember when Superintendent Jerry Weast said "We are broke"?

Would you be surprised to find out that all that time Superintendent Weast was holding on to a $320,000 pot of money?

Well don't be surprised.

On June 8, 2010, those funds were put on the Board of Education's "Consent Agenda" and the Board voted to spend those funds on . . . not classrooms, not maintenance, not media assistants.

No, instead of spending the funds on classroom teachers the Board approved Superintendent Weast's plan to spend the $320,000 to develop an Online Curriculum! You know, the one that is going to be sold by Pearson Education, Inc.

According to Superintendent Weast's memo to the Board, the $320,000 is needed to pay for "contractual services".

So where did this $320,000 stash come from? More on that here . . .

With Apologies to Roger Angell

The holidays are here and the year’s almost over;
We start to look back on a year filled with clover.

Happy Holidays to members of the Parents Coalition,
Here’s hoping for a better year-- we’ll be wishin’.

A Merry Christmas to Nancy Floreen, who bested the MoCo political machine,
Best wishes to her on her new presidency,
We’re sure she’ll keep faith with her constituency.

To Valerie Ervin and to Phil Andrews, we hope that your stockings are filled only with glad news. No coals only good things, to repair infrastructure; we need those new watermains before they all rupture.

In the upcoming year we’ll need all hands on deck to fix mold, leaky ceilings and bathrooms awreck. Our children need clean air with much less particulate and shiny new textbooks to make them articulate.

Here’s hoping we have transparency and less malice
For that we can look to Al Carr up in Annapolis.

For Duchy Trachtenberg, on a whim we’ll
hope the dreidel comes up -- gimel.

At this winter solstice its hard to believe its been one whole year since we met; to those new and old on the PCMC net.

And to our exceptional eagle eyes on development,
Donna Baron and Jim Humphrey, should be in their element
with master plans coming up by the score,
We hope the New Year brings less and not more.

And all good wishes to our hard-working Council,
Here’s hoping November elections don’t trounce you.

To Shirley Brandman, Board president past,
From all your friends who are pains in the ass.

To Kumar and Janis and kudos to Lyda,
Who all work so hard to make things all right-a.

For Louis who writes FOIAs with his mighty pen,
we hope you’ll keep at it in two thousand ten.

Merry Christmas Tim Hwang,
The youngest board member, we hope—
you get the vote!

A sweet and delicious bûche de noël for all of the citizens who make living here so swell.

To Diana Conway and all those who twitter, let’s make this a New Year that is all aglitter.

And fond Christmas wishes to kids at Monocacy,
You kept your school open by behaving so raucously,

A very good Christmas and Chanukah too to those hard-working ecokids – the Piney Branch crew.

And let’s not forget the county exec, Isiah Leggett who makes everything tick.

For Judy Docca and of course to Phil Kauffman let’s hope next year’s ‘retreats’ come none to often.

To Miranda Spivack and to Jen Beasley, keep writing your stories…
we wish you success and more news on the mores …
Of Dr. J. Weast and Rollin Stanley -- so please keep your pens and your notebooks quite handy.

And to Brad Pearson who uncovers the truth, thanks for your work, you are quite the sleuth.

We can’t forget friends Kate Ryan and Ms. Fabel, we wish for more stories when you are able.

And to newcomer Nelson hello to the fray,
We read your stories day after day.

To all those who participate in our democracy,
Here’s wishing a better 2010 than its s’posed to be.

We come to the last of our end-of-year doggerel,
With hopeful eyes forward to the New Year’s inaugural.

Goodbye to the old year and in with the new,
The Parents Coalition wishes you all fair adieu.

Happy Holidays and a Good New Year in 2010 from the Parents Coalition of Montgomery County.