Sunday, May 15, 2011

Write to Ike Leggett, today!


On April 28th, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett wrote a letter to Montgomery County Board of Education President Christopher Barclay, closing with:
"... I ... urge the Board of Education to undertake an aggressive community and public input process to ensure that resident concerns are discussed and addressed before action is taken."
Is that clear enough? "[R]esident concerns" are to be "discussed and addressed before action is taken".

In flagrant disregard of this instruction, the Board of Education voted later that same day to take Rock Creek Hills Park. The community had no reasonable opportunity to "discuss and address" any concerns – for example, the Kensington Park retirement community adjoining Rock Creek Hills Park (and built on much of the site of the former Kensington Junior High) received 3 hours notice that the Board would consider this resolution.

A deeply flawed and secretive process led up to the Board's hurried April 28th decision, which was clearly arbitrary and unreasonable, because, as a middle-school site, our small park fails all of the Board's stated site evaluation criteria. A school built on this site would be, on opening day, inadequate.

Write to County Executive Leggett today! Ask him to spare Rock Creek Hills Park. Ask him to instruct the Board to re-open the B-CC middle school site selection process as soon as possible, before our May 27th deadline for appeal to the state.


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