Residents of Rock Creek Hills turned turned out in large numbers last night to vote overwhelmingly to oppose the Board of Ed's arbitrary & unreasonable grab for Rock Creek Hills Park.
Early in the meeting, RCHCA members received a briefing by staff members of the Montgomery County Public Schools. Here is a slide from the MCPS briefing, showing that, according to the Board's criteria for evaluation of middle school sites, Rock Creek Hills Park is deficient in size, topography, and access:
The briefing by MCPS Construction Director Joyce Jessell contained a bombshell! Ms. Jessell announced plans to sign a contract with an architect on the 23rd of May, even before our May 27th deadline for appeal to the State!
A deeply flawed and secretive process with no transparency or community involvement led to the Board's hurried April 28th resolution and now to a rush to spend taxpayer money on plans to build an inadequate school on a small inadequate site that today serves as cherished multi-purpose outdoor recreational space: neighborhood park with playgrounds, county-wide soccer park with two regulation fields, and park setting for the Kensington Park retirement community, which was built on much of the site of the former Kensington Junior High School.
Our County's children, seniors, and taxpayers deserve better. The County Council can stop this! The Board of Education has an old piece of paper in a drawer that seems to say that they can take the park site if they decide they need it to build a school. But to build a school, they have to ask the County Council to pay for it. Contact the Montgomery County Council today, to tell them to spare Rock Creek Hills Park, by saying no to this frantic scheme to cram a 20 acre middle school complex onto an 8 acre soccer field and steep creek-side hills. The Council should advise the Board of Ed that they will not pay to destroy our park. The Council should advise the Board of Ed to re-open the B-CC middle school site selection process.
Our County's children, seniors, and taxpayers deserve better. Tell the County Council to spare Rock Creek Hills Park!
1 comment:
Not sure who is writing the appeal, but I would reference this: http://nowaringstationschool.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/its-time-to-file-your-appeal/
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