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

The Board of Education acknowledged Monday evening a “loss of trust” from the community following a hat 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.

Residents of the Rock Creek Hills neighborhood, which surrounds the proposed site, lobbied the board Monday to re-open the site selection process.  They said residents weren’t notified that the park was on the table as a possible location for a new middle school and the site selection process wasn’t inclusive of the community. A community association there 

“I’m shocked and saddened by the process used by the Board of Education to select Rock Creek Hills,” said neighbor Tom D’Agostino. "There is a need for a middle school, but I was not notified this park was even being considered.”

School board officials noted the community’s concern, but also said that options for land on which to build new schools in the highly developed downcounty were scarce, and that in the cramped Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster, a new school was needed “yesterday.” The school board is aiming to complete the feasibility study by July 1, leaving time to request capital improvement funds to be allocated for the new school in the fiscal 2013 budget.

“If you can show me another site in this cluster that will cost us less, and be equivalent in size, and that will not delay our CIP, show it to me,” said board member Laura Berthiaume (Dist. 2).

A site selection committee reviewed ten sites as possible locations for the new middle school, which was recommended last year by schools superintendent Jerry D. Weast as a way to combat overcrowding in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster. Initially, the committee recommended a park site in the Rosemary Hills/Lytonsville Community in Silver Spring. But the selection was met with heat from the community, which advocated to keep their park. The selection also met strong opposition from the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, which opposed using park sites for schools.

The board voted instead to move forward with the feasibility study at Rock Creek Hills, where, as the former site of the Kensington Junior High School, the school system is able to reclaim the property from the parks department as part of a “recall rights” provision.

However, several of the options considered during the site selection process were parks sites, and schools officials noted they may be left with few options in the future to build schools is parkland is off the table.

County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) weighed in on the dispute in an April 28 letter to the board, urging schools officials to consider co-locating parks facilities on a potential new schools site at Rock Creek Hills.

At the meeting, the board approved architects Samaha Associates to lead the feasibility study for a $67,500 fee. But board members urged school construction officials to make sure the community was included in the study.

“I would be upset too if I got four hours notice that that park I didn’t know had a right of recall to it was going to be turned into a school – we do need to very much look into the process and include neighborhood impact,” Berthiaume said.

Berthiaume asked staff to be “extra sensitive” to the needs of the Rock Creek Hills community. “We do have an actual loss of trust here, certainly not by any intention, but whatever we can do in terms of …trying to be sympathetic and open minded to their input, whether it’s on access or ways to mitigate the impacts…whatever we need to do, I really hope that we do it."