No plans for Seven Locks school site

Despite reassurances, new school still faces community opposition

Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005

In a bid to end speculation about the fate of Seven Locks Elementary School on Seven Locks Road once its replacement is built on nearby Kendale Road, school officials made known their plans for the 10-acre site.

The school site will remain a Montgomery County Public Schools property, at least as long as Superintendent Jerry D. Weast is at the helm.

In a Nov. 10 statement, Weast said, ‘‘...there are no plans to surplus the current Seven Locks school site now and, during my tenure as superintendent of schools, I will not recommend any surplussing of that school site.”

The statement did not address specific future uses for the building and site.

‘‘How it will be used is yet to be determined,” said Brian Edwards, MCPS spokesman. ‘‘I’m not going to create an additional furor by speculating [since] there is no decision on how the school is to be used.”

‘‘Furor” most aptly describes the response from certain community groups over the county’s decision to close the smaller, 294-student capacity school in favor of building a new, 740-student capacity school on nearby Kendale Road.

School officials said the new 68,000-square-foot school planned for the eight-acre Kendale site would cost less than renovating and expanding the old school as was originally planned. However, escalating construction costs have now made the two figures comparable at about $17 million. It would also house students from overcrowded Potomac Elementary School.

But several groups continue to oppose the plan, challenging the estimated cost savings and raising concerns that the new school is too large for the site and lacks sufficient parking and playing fields. Some residents are also concerned about the flooding along Kendale Road.

Weast’s comments have gone some way towards quelling the uppermost concern that building the new school automatically meant turning the old school site over to the county for affordable housing.

‘‘His statement was good news. Basically, it came about because we kept the pressure up,” said Sandy Vogelgesang of the Seven Locks Coalition, comprising six neighborhood associations.

The coalition plans to next voice its opposition to the new school at Thursday’s school board meeting when Weast presents his Fiscal Year 2007-2012 Capital Improvements Program.

At the same time, it wants to ‘‘lock in plans” for the existing school site, she said. Ideally, even if the new school is built, the old school would continue operating as a school for other over-capacity schools in the Potomac area.

‘‘This community has been burned in the past, and we need concrete agreements about what will happen at the [old] school and what will happen to its playing fields,” she said. ‘‘We don’t want to go through this again in five to 10 years.” Meanwhile, bids are coming into MCPS for the construction contract on the new school. The groundbreaking is scheduled late February or early March, said Richard Hawes, MCPS facilities manager.

Because of ‘‘rapidly rising” construction costs nationwide during the past year, the school is now estimated to come in at around $16 million to $17 million, he said.

The disposition of the old school will not even be considered until the new school opens, he said.

‘‘It’s be several years down the line before we look at that,” he said.