Seven Locks battle erodes community’s trust

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Despite having won the battle to keep their neighborhood school open, the advocacy group that led the charge against replacing Seven Locks Elementary is unwilling to declare a truce.

Leaders of the Seven Locks Coalition, comprising eight neighborhood associations, said they are pleased — but not appeased — by last week’s decision by county officials to modernize the existing Seven Locks Elementary in lieu of constructing a replacement on nearby Kendale Road.

‘‘The coalition will stay intact until the doors open on the [modernized] school in 2011,” said Cyril Draffin, a coalition leader. ‘‘People will be tracking every step.”

Coalition leader Sandy Vogelgesang also points to the irony of coming full circle in six years, right back to the original year 2000 plan to modernize the school at its current site.

‘‘It does leave you open to questioning, can we trust this [latest decision]?” she said.

With the County Council leaning towards keeping the school at its current site and the school board insisting the Kendale Road site was best, the issue seemed headed towards court, Draffin said.

And in the process of deciding the fate of the Seven Locks school dilemma, all of the Potomac elementary schools became embroiled in the tug-of-war. Through twists of fate or the decision-making process, both Bells Mill and Potomac elementaries came out ahead.

At recent school board and council hearings, Bells Mill Elementary PTA leaders said they needed immediate relief after moldy portables exacerbated its already overcrowded conditions.

‘‘School officials had dug themselves into a deep hole, but they saved face by suddenly finding the Bells Mill problems changed things,” Draffin said.

Face saving or not, Bells Mills is feeling good about the decision to move up its modernization by one year to 2009.

‘‘Whether we get a modernization or a rebuild, we don’t care,” said Richard Rosenthal, PTA president. ‘‘We’re just happy the school board and County Council appreciated the seriousness of our situation.”

The decision to replace its aging portables was welcomed news at Potomac Elementary School. But its overcrowded classrooms will only see relief once Bells Mill and⁄or Seven Locks is modernized.

‘‘The feeling is, we’re just glad it’s over and a determination has been made,” said incoming PTA President Diana Conway.

Potomac Elementary parents report feeling optimistic about the decisions made by school officials, Conway said, but then they faced a different fate than the Seven Locks community.

‘‘We weren’t faced with having something torn out of our community,” she said. ‘‘Seven Locks was in the hot seat.”

But for Draffin, the confidence he once had in school officials evaporated during an estimated 1,500 hours he spent in challenging the Kendale Road plan over the past two years. The experience changed him from trusting in the school system, at least in construction matters, to viewing it as ‘‘ingrown, hidebound and defensive.”

The Montgomery County school board simply does not have the staff or expertise to fully evaluate the school construction recommendations presented by Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, he said.

‘‘It boils down to a lack of accountability, of transparency, in decision making,” he said. ‘‘So now there’s a new sensibility among county residents: You just can’t trust, you have to verify [those decisions].”

And public opinion appears to have no role in those decisions, Draffin said

It was only after the County Council held two public hearings in March that he felt the coalition’s side of the story was being heard.

‘‘This was the first time in two years that the public was listened to by an independent body that hadn’t made its mind up already,” Draffin said. ‘‘You had people with a political agenda, yes, but they listened, there was a dialogue.”