Join us tonight! Be heard!

Join friends of Rock Creek Hills Park tonight, at the Board of Ed meeting, where the Board is scheduled to vote to spend $$$ on a site plan to destroy our park. Everyone should have a voice. Let them hear ours!

That's TODAY, Monday, May 23rd, at 6:30 PM, in the Carver Educational Services Center, 850 Hungerford Drive, Rockville, MD 20850 (across the street from Montgomery College). Let's go!

Would you like to speak at the meeting? You may sign up this morning. Public comments begin at 6:45 p.m. Call the Board at 301-279-3617 this morning, if you want to speak. Call between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m. if you wish to speak to address issues relating to the day’s agenda; call between 11:00 and 11:30 a.m. if you wish to speak to address other issues. [The Board's agenda this evening includes this for 7:30 PM: "3.2.2 Architectural Appointment — New Bethesda-Chevy Chase MS #2 Feasibility Study".]

We expect to see all sorts of signs:

GOOD GOVERNMENT = GOOD SCHOOLS

BUILD SMART, NOT STUPID

ROCK CREEK HILLS PARK = THE GREATER GOOD

RESPECT THE ELDERLY

KIDS NEED PARKS

PARKS ARE BLESSED NOT VACANT

We plan to request permission to speak to address an agenda item, as we wish to ask the Board to table the motion to fund the site plan. If we receive permission to speak, then, in the two minutes alloted, we would not talk about creekside slopes, retaining walls, or parking garages; about acreage, street access, or pedestrian safety; or about playgrounds, trees, or soccer. What we want to talk about are values, or as we Americans call them, rights:

• The right of children to good, safe, equitable schools.
• The right of citizens not to be deprived of liberty without due process.
• The right of communities to have input into local decisions, rather than having them made by people from other communities.
• The right of citizens to have government decisions made with integrity, rather than via an arbitrary, secretive, and inaccurate process.
• The right of taxpayers to have past investments (in parkland) stewarded wisely.
• The right of taxpayers to have new investments (in schools) made wisely.

The Board should table the motion to hire an architect. They should re-open the middle school site selection process, by conducting a proper evaluation of legitimate sites with public consultation.

Join us tonight!