Oakland Terrace Elementary students campaign for healthy food

Gazette:  School to offer salad bar for next year

Crossway Community's Proposed Charter School

Last summer,in July 2010, I visited the Crossway Community in Kensington, MD. Prior to the Board of Education’s rejection of Crossway’s application for a charter school, I was unfamiliar with their work. A representative from Crossway took me on a tour of their spacious facility, and explained their existing program components: a residential program for young mothers seeking to turn their lives around, a Montessori preschool program that serves their children as well as children from the community, and a program to bring cultural and civic events to their facility, in order to foster intergenerational learning.

Crossway applied to form a charter school serving young, elementary age children, using a Montessori methodology. The BOE rejected their application, calling it "not ready for prime time." But the classrooms I visited were spacious, structured, and organized. The facility is large enough to accommodate increased numbers of children. My tour guide explained that children who originally may have come from a chaotic home environment were found to thrive in the order, exploration, and skills development inherent in the Montessori program. There was even an outdoor vegetable garden, where the children assist in growing tomatoes and peppers.

I walked away saddened that Shirley Brandman, Pat O'Neill, Mike Durso, Judy Docca, and the other Board members voted to deny the children of Montgomery County the chance to participate in this type of rich educational experience. It did not escape my notice that Crossway was a short distance away from Oakland Terrace Elementary School: a school that is so overcrowded that MCPS is sending kindergarten children to the basement of a middle school for their education. Families in Montgomery County who believe their children need a nurturing, developmentally based school program deserve the opportunity to choose this educational alternative.

Crossway Community's second charter school application is up for another MCPS review on May 23. Is the MCPS review team actually visiting Crossways? If not, why not? And as long as Josh Starr is in town, he should make a visit as well.

Weast's Legacy: More Silver Spring Trees Coming Down

From the Friends of Sligo Creek website we learn that Superintendent Jerry Weast's plan to build a cell tower compound on the Sligo Middle School/Oakland Terrace kindergarten playground will require the removal of established trees. 


More established trees coming down on a public school site in Silver Spring.


From the plans for the construction of the cell phone tower at Sligo Middle School we learn:

Forest clearing for this telecommunications facility is approximately 3,567 square feet...

This is not forest clearing to build a school, this is forest clearing so that a commercial for-profit company can use public school land. 


Here are images of the types of trees that will be taken down at Sligo Middle School to make way for this commercial use of public school land. 

 

T-Mobile Presentation on Playground Cell Tower Installation

Date: Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Time: 7 pm
Place: Sligo Middle School Media Center

Representatives from T-Mobile will be in attendance to address the cell phone tower that may be installed on the playground at the site of Sligo Middle School and the Oakland Terrace kindergarten. They will also be available to take questions related to this. This meeting is open to the community so please feel free to pass along this invitation to your neighborhood list servs.

TBD News: Cell Tower for Sligo Middle School and Oakland Terrace Kingergarten

http://www.tbd.com/articles/2011/02/silver-spring-residents-concerned-about-proposed-t-mobile-cell-tower-55472.html

$38,570 Report Trashed - Community Tricked

3/2/11 UPDATE: MCPS' Public Relations Department has now confirmed via a press release that the new McKenney Hills Elementary School will open with space for 640 students, not the 550 planned for in the Feasibility Study below (See page 1. Core capacity refers to the size of the gym and cafeteria to support student use at a future date. The future is now for this elementary school! 640 is the MCPS number, but under State capacity guidelines the new building will be able to support upwards of 700 students.) 


Classrooms that were shown as empty shells on the Feasibility Study below will now be built out under the new plans, thus increasing the classroom capacity of the new school building. Thanks to the MCPS PR Department for confirming that the Feasibility Study plans have been changed.


What's $38,570? Nothing to the Board of Education.


$38,570 is what the Board of Education spent on the June 2009 Feasibility Study shown below for the McKenney Hills Elementary School site.  (The document is in three parts, it's a big document! This document is not available on the MCPS website but was obtained via a Maryland Public Information Act request.)


The Feasibility Study that the Board of Education ordered called for an elementary school for 552 students and a 57,035 sq. ft.* building. Architecture, Inc. was to be paid $38,570 for this study. Meetings were held. (See the list of PTAs, neighbors, parents, community members and a Maryland State Department of Education official that met to plan this building in the Feasibility Study below.)  All those people were given Educational Specifications for the site that showed that the Board of Education was building a school with a student capacity of 550 for the McKenney Hills site. 


But they aren't. 


The Feasibility Study plans for the McKenney Hills site were tossed in the trash. 


A new architect was brought in and the elementary school was super-sized to hold upwards of 734 students in a 95,475 sq. ft. building!


The $38,570 Feasibility Study and the months of meetings and plans that went in to creating this report were discarded without a word from the Board of Education. 


The original McKenney Hills school building was 29,278 sq. ft. 


The Feasibility Study for this site called for planning for a school of 57,035 sq. ft.*


But the Board of Education is actually building a school that will be 95,475 sq. ft.


You can bet some trees are going to pay the price for these changes to the original school site, and that it will be quite a surprise for the neighbors that attended meetings to plan a 57,035 sq. ft.* school building for 550 students. 



*Per page A-6 of Feasibility Study under Educational Specifications for this project.


McKenney Hills Traffic Study (March 3, 2010) stated that the school will serve 640 students.


McKenneyHillsJune2009


Part 2 of McKenney Hills discarded Feasibility Study

Part 3 of McKenney Hills discarded Feasibility Study

Cell tower for Silver Spring Kindergarteners!

Superintendent Jerry Weast is installing a cell phone tower right next to the current location of the Oakland Terrace Elementary School kindergarteners. The school building on Dennis Avenue also houses Sligo Middle School and a MCPS Infants and Toddlers Program. 


Here's what this school playground has to look forward to: click here!


Does it seem like Silver Spring and Wheaton schools get more cell towers than other parts of the County? Dont' Blair HS, Northwood HS, Einstein HS, Springbrook HS, Kennedy HS and Wheaton HS all have cell towers? And then there is Daly Elementary School where the PTA and the community were opposed to the placement but Superintendent Jerry Weast signed the lease anyway. 


How is it that Whitman HS, Pyle Middle School and Julius West Middle School were all able to successfully oppose the placement of a cell tower on those school sites? 


Cell phone tower for Sligo Creek Middle School and Oakland Terrace Elementary School Kindergarteners

"Significant Retaining Walls" at McKenney Hills school site

The Environmental Planning Division of the Montgomery County Planning Board has released their report on the McKenney Hills Elementary School site. On page 9 of the report is the following statement about the development of the site:

"Use of significant retaining walls to prevent grading from

 extending unnecessarily into forested lands."

Significant retaining walls? What does that mean? How many? Height? Length? How did the Planning Division come to this conclusion? Retaining walls aren't shown on the artist's renderings of the new school that were shown to the Board of Education.  

How is MCPS addressing the potential issues of safety, security and graffiti that come with "significant" retaining walls on a school site? 

Tonight - October 19, 2010 at the Sligo Middle School media center at 7 PM MCPS will be making a presentation about the McKenney Hills school site. Will the details of the "significant" retaining walls at this school site be revealed? 

Stay tuned.  A "significant" retaining wall could be coming to a school near you!

Weast moving 5 yr olds to Middle School

Superintendent Jerry Weast has decided to move kindergarteners from Oakland Terrace Elementary School to Sligo Middle School for the next two years.
His full decision is here.

(No mention in the decision of using the closer Stephen Knolls school facility as an overflow for Oakland Terrace ES.)

Weast Takes Toilets from Tots

If you have been around Montgomery County Public Schools for decades you would have noticed that the standard MCPS kindergarten classroom has changed under Superintendent Jerry Weast. 

Prior to Weast's arrival in MCPS, the specifications for kindergarten classrooms included a bathroom and water fountain within the room.  Educational specifications from 1993 for a MCPS kindgergarten classroom are shown to the left.

Makes sense doesn't it? A classroom with a bathroom and water fountain keeps the kindergarteners under the watchful eye of the teacher at all times.  Not only was there to be a bathroom in the classroom, but the fixtures were to be child sized with everything accessible to a small child.  

But that was the way things were before Jerry "blur the lines" Weast arrived. 

Now kindergarteners are no longer given learning environments that meet their needs, in fact, it is now fine to place them in a school built for middle school students with adult sized bathrooms down the hall. 

Well, it's fine with Superintendent Weast, but for parents, kindergarteners are still small children just starting out in public school. They still need guidance, and supervision, along with lower water fountains, lower toilets, lower sinks, lower soap dispensers and lower paper towel holders.  And don't forget the bathroom doors "easily accessible from the outside". There was a reason for that educational specification!

Just Up the Pike: Kindergarteners to go to Middle School in back room deal

At a November 11, 2009, Board of Education meeting two Oakland Terrace parents presented public comment about the state of the overcrowding at their school. Superintendent Jerry Weast responded that he would work on an arrangement for them. 

Board of Education President Shirley Brandman introduced a resolution on November 19th with regard to Oakland Terrace Elementary School, but as Board member Laura Berthiaume began to discuss and ask questions about the details of what was being contemplated, she was cut off by Board President Brandman. 

The blog Just Up the Pike reports on what the Oakland Terrace ES community is now learning about what was obviously planned last month.

Friday, December 11, 2009

kindergartners at overcrowded elementary could be sent to middle school

Call it an early promotion: kindergarteners at the notoriously-overcrowded Oakland Terrace Elementary School in Wheaton will soon be bused to empty classrooms at Sligo Middle School due to a lack of space. Both on and off the blog, I've heard from concerned parents who say Montgomery County Public Schools' latest proposal could put their kids at risk...