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Monocacy Elementary School will remain open for at least another year after the Montgomery County school board chose a different process for deciding whether to close the school than proposed by the superintendant.

The Board of Education unanimously voted Thursday night to adopt an alternate resolution proposed by board member Judy Docca to create a roundtable discussion group of representatives from the Poolesville, Clarksburg and Northwest clusters to come up with options for increasing enrollment at Monocacy and in the Poolesville cluster. Student member Tim Hwang could not vote but said he also supported the resolution.

The group will prepare a report by May or June and present it to the superintendant, who will make a recommendation on how to address declining enrollment, such as an open transfer policy, special program, boundary study or closure, to the board in the fall for action during the annual capital budget process. A boundary study, if approved, would follow the usual process with any changes implemented by August 2012 at the earliest.

"It's a great solution, that's what we've needed to do for several years and that's been what's missing from this process — that dialogue," Cluster Coordinator Sarah Defnet said. "We've had so many creative ideas in the process and we understand that those ideas will be limited by funding, but we've heard a lot of ideas that didn't have a price tag."

Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Jerry D. Weast announced Oct. 23 his recommendation to close the Dickerson school and consolidate it with Poolesville Elementary by August due to projected enrollment declines at both schools, a move he said would save $1 million per year.

The recommendation galvanized residents in the rural upcounty, who said the proposed timeframe denied them due process. Board members concurred, saying the proposed process was "short-sighted" and conflicted with the board's values of openness, honesty and transparency and that more discussion was needed to give "both sides time to come to a good decision."

"This is about community involvement and fair treatment," said board member Phil Kauffman. "[The community] felt that the superintendant's recommendation did not afford them appropriate respect, and I think they're right."

The county's Agricultural Advisory Committee reiterated the community's concerns in a Nov. 18 letter to County Executive Isiah Leggett noting that Monocacy is the only public school in the county's 93,000-acre Agricultural Reserve, where development is restricted to protect farming.

"The more the county takes away from these [farming] families the more it impacts their future, their livelihood and civic-social activities that are rooted at the school," the committee wrote. "The Agricultural Reserve encompasses a community and if we do not protect a school system that supports this community, we have failed."

Weast said there is no money for a special program at Monocacy and the only viable alternative to closure is a boundary study, which he said would likely be met with opposition from other clusters. He also said the board would have to find a way to make up the projected savings from closing the school and should "be careful about saying you want to follow a process that has forewarning because you might not get any forewarning" about future budget cuts.

"I am not adverse to the Poolesville cluster. We're trying to get students in this cluster. But I have to remind you that you have a severe budget problem," Weast said. "...We looked at the adjacent territories and there's not a lot of student population. I think we, again, have to be clear and honest that there isn't an easy answer to this issue and it's not going to be solved by a work group."

Busing students from Clarksburg is not feasible because they would travel more than seven miles and an increase in enrollment would require an addition to be built at Monocacy, Weast wrote in a Nov. 11 memo to the board. Some Monocacy students would have to travel more than 10 miles to attend Poolesville Elementary.