MCPS suggests postponing Crown High School opening for use as holding school

Story in Bethesda Today, reporter Ashlyn Campbell. Full story here.

Declining enrollment cited as reason; boundary study change would be required

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is considering a plan to use the upcoming Crown High School in Gaithersburg, which is currently under construction, as a holding school rather than opening it in 2027 as scheduled, the district told the county school board Thursday. 

“We would like to explore the idea of potentially making Crown a holding school for a few years while we continue to assess our enrollment projections,” Taylor said, noting that the district’s enrollment is declining. “[To] make sure that we are fully utilizing our buildings to their highest and best value, this makes a lot of sense. That being said, it can make a lot of sense and still be a terrible idea.”

If the district moves ahead with the plan, the change would impact the district’s ongoing boundary study that is expected to determine which students would attend the new high school.

MCPS alternative learning centers have received poor facility ratings

...One problem with the FACT scores was it took more than a year to complete the facility assessments for all schools. The contractor Facility Engineering Associates (FEA), PC, which is in Fairfax, completed the assessments of all 206 schools within one year, as MCPS requested in the RFP. The Board of Education approved awarding FEA with a contract of $1,289,873 on June 12, 2018.

Another problem was that MCPS did not reassess and update the FACT scores for the facilities as they aged over time. As opposed to the assessments of the FACT score, according to the RFP, MCPS now wants the buildings to be assessed routinely over time.

On the KFI page on the MCPS website, schools are listed in alphabetical order, followed by a series of red, yellow and green circles, each assigned to a category the contractor assessed.

The learning centers and holding facilities together had the largest percentage of buildings with a poor rating for overall condition. “Green” means a part may need maintenance or repair, but not right now. “Yellow” means several parts of the item assessed may need to be repaired or replaced in the future. “Red” means the component may need “major repair, rehabilitation or replacement to the component-section as a whole,” in the future.

The learning centers used for alternative education, such as Northlake Center and Fairland Center, had more red dots for overall condition than elementary schools, middle schools or high schools...

https://mont.thesentinel.com/2019/06/06/mcps-alternative-learning-centers-have-received-poor-facility-ratings/?fbclid=IwAR0NLbjYyL-AgR-7hG7Twhae_Oopkeh3kvKW5WfSSKuQ6Dc44_vziEUtbVg

Gazette Letter: Broome Middle School site "plans make no sense"

The county is proceeding, against stiff community opposition, with plans for placing a $14 million boutique office building on the Broome Middle School site in Rockville.
What could possibly be more out of character than an office building placed precisely in the middle of a residential neighborhood?
This is even more misguided in that Broome will soon be reactivated as a holding school for middle school children from all over the upper county. The proposed office building cuts significant area out of an already small school site, so the revived Broome Middle School will already be sub-par even before it opens...

...We’ve asked repeatedly why this being planned for Broome? It appears because there is no active PTA at Broome to protect the best interests of Montgomery County schoolchildren. To make matters worse, there were at least two meetings where the county botched the required notifications.
One can’t help but wonder if the plan was that, sadly, the neighborhood would never have know about the building until the bulldozers arrived...

 http://www.gazette.net/article/20140305/OPINION/140309819/1014/broome-plans-make-no-sense&template=gazette