Council picks moves up Bells Mill modernization as solution to Seven Locks controversy

New, larger Bells Mill to relieve overcrowded schools in Churchill cluster; Seven Locks to get addition by 2011

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Bells Mill Elementary will be modernized by July 2009, a year earlier than planned, and Seven Locks, the school that became synonymous with the question of how to balance enrollment in Potomac’s Churchill school cluster, will be modernized by December 2011, under a compromise reached Wednesday by the County Council.

After three months of acrimonious debate between council members, the county school board and the community, the council voted unanimously for the plan.

The approved plan moves Seven Locks back to where it was on the school system’s modernization list in 1999, when the system began looking for a way to relieve overcrowding at Potomac Elementary.

Councilman Howard A. Denis proposed the compromise, which backed away from his longstanding proposal to rebuild Seven Locks for up to 640 students on its existing site. Denis had pushed that proposal since Feb. 15 when a report by the county’s inspector general questioned how the board had decided in 2004 to recommend building a Seven Locks replacement on Kendale Road. The council allocated $14 million for that plan, before rejecting Kendale as a school site last week.

On Wednesday, Denis proposed keeping Seven Locks on its existing site on Seven Locks Road with a four- to eight-classroom addition constructed and a modernization in fiscal 2010 and 2011. The size of Seven Locks addition will be determined by a feasibility study in 2007.

Denis’s compromise language followed a 2-1 vote by the council’s Education Committee on Tuesday to support modernizing Bells Mill using the design envisioned for Seven Locks at Kendale Road. Bells Mill would initially serve 618 students, with the ability to expand it to serve as many as 740. Denis was the vote in opposition to the plan.

Denis decided to back for the plan, he said, after language was added to budget documents calling for planning for the Seven Locks modernization and addition to begin in fiscal 2007, which begins July 1.

‘‘Overnight we moved the dollars and the years,” said Denis (R-Dist. 1) of Chevy Chase. ‘‘We made it immediate, so that in ’07 it gets locked down.”

The language, he said ‘‘is the life insurance the Seven Locks community needs that that will remain a school,” he said.

Council members characterized the compromise as a solution where not everyone received exactly what they wanted, but everyone received something.

The plan avoids a potentially ugly legal fight over whether the board could refuse to spend money funded for a project it did not agree to. Following the inspector general’s report the board held firm in its decision that Kendale Road was the best place for a Seven Locks replacement school.

The board reaffirmed that position last week in a 5-2 vote. On Thursday, the council rejected Kendale as a potential site.

Schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast on Wednesday said the compromise came about because ‘‘all [involved] legitimately care about children and the community. ... People of goodwill trying to solve a very complicated and complex situation, with everyone moving toward a solution rather than staking themselves out, can find compromises.”

Under the plan, this summer, the school system will replace any Potomac Elementary portable classrooms that have maintenance issues and will conduct a study to identify any other facility or maintenance needs. The school will also receive renovated bathrooms in summer 2007, a year early.

A boundary study will be conducted in spring 2008, involving the Seven Locks, Bells Mill and Potomac school communities. Part of the plan calls for no student to change schools more than once.

Bells Mill will move to the Grosvenor Center holding school in Bethesda in December 2007. Seven Locks will move to the Radnor holding school in Bethesda in July 2010.

Upon completion of a Bells Mill replacement, some students from Potomac Elementary would go to Bells Mill, relieving overcrowding at Potomac, which could be 110 students over capacity by the 2009-2010 school year.