Seven Locks community rejects options

Parents want a new school on current site to relieve burden on already overcrowded Potomac elementaries

Wednesday, May 3, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Laurie DeWitt⁄The Gazette Jenny Langerman, a first-grader at Seven Locks Elementary School, joins fellow students at a protest march at the Board of Education in Rockville Monday evening. The rally organized by the school’s PTA sent a message about keeping the existing school open despite a board plan to replace it at a site on Kendale Road.

‘‘Keep it, rebuild it, hear what the people say. Save Seven Locks, Seven Locks stays,” the 100 or more protesters chanted, including nearly 70 Seven Locks students who usually confine screaming to the playground.

‘‘We’re marching to save our school,” said Alta Markley, 10, a fifth-grader at the school that faces closure. ‘‘And if this doesn’t do it, at least we tried.”

The protests continued at the hearing via two-minute testimonies given by some 60 PTA members, neighborhood associations and coalitions in a packed hearing room.

The board intended the meeting to focus on two options it is considering: either building a replacement school for Seven Locks on Kendale Road or re-assigning Seven Locks students to four other elementary schools. Both options involve closing the existing school on Seven Locks Road.

But the vast majority of speakers rejected both options, and again and again used the phrase ‘‘strongly disappointed” to describe their reaction to the way school officials are handling the problem of overcrowding in Potomac elementary schools.

‘‘We wonder why, after going over the options, you picked the two worst options?” said Allie Giles, a Seven Locks PTA member.

The board is acting on the findings of a task force that looked at eight options, to include rebuilding Seven Locks at its current site. But on April 20, School Superintendent Jerry D. Weast said he favored the less costly option of building on Kendale Road. The board decided to focus on that plan, plus the option of reassigning Seven Locks students to Bells Mill, Potomac or Beverly Farms elementaries.

‘‘This threat to close Seven Locks is astonishing. This is designed to force us to accept what we do not want,” said Diana Conway, a Potomac Elementary School PTA member opposed to the Kendale site due to lack of sidewalks and street lighting and the environmental impact of removing trees and widening the road.

But school officials said construction at the Kendale site would cost $17.2 million, several million dollars less than building at Seven Locks. Neighborhood groups opposed to tearing Seven Locks down continued to question those numbers at the hearing.

But the board also heard equally strong testimony from Bells Mill parents frustrated by the fact that the task force did not suggest immediate relief for their school.

Mold in portable classrooms at Bells Mill is exacerbating the already crowded conditions at a school nearly 50 percent over capacity, they said.

Classes are being held in makeshift spaces, including the teacher’s lounge, hallways — and now the media center. Students continue to fall ill from mold, the parents said, and on top of that the annual spring book fair was canceled due to lack of space.

‘‘Our school is falling apart both physically and emotionally,” said parent Caroline Satchell, one of many parents calling for immediate relief by accelerating a six-room addition and modernization planned for 2010.

Dick Hawes, Montgomery County Public Schools facilities manager, said the problems at Bells Mill did not come under the purview of the task force.

‘‘There was no specific option to look at the overcrowding at Bells Mill,” he said, but added that the council could accelerate its expansion and renovation if it ‘‘was willing to do the funding.”

The board will forward its recommendation to the County Council on May 9. That same day, the council’s Education Committee will discuss whether to spend $3.3 million more to build at the Kendale site, a measure likely to be voted down. It is also considering a plan to rebuild the school at the Seven Locks Road site.

But before the board submits its recommendation, it may decide to broaden the scope beyond the two options now under consideration, said board member Patricia B. O’Neill (Dist. 3) of Bethesda in a later telephone interview.

‘‘It’s not wide open, but there may be some tweaking,” she said.

Since the council is on record opposing the Kendale site, however, the board recommendation to build there may lead to a ‘‘collision” when the council announces its final decision, she said.

The Montgomery County Council held a public hearing on the issue Tuesday night, too late for the Gazette deadline.

Just who has the final say on the decision is yet to be determined.

‘‘I think that would be a matter to be decided by the attorneys,” O’Neill said.