Montgomery County Board of Education President Christopher Barclay's May 26th letter to Rock Creek Hills Citizens Association President John Robinson contains a shocking but not surprising error. Here it is, an example of the myth of "the former school site":
"An important consideration in the Board of Education's selection of the Rock Creek Hills Local Park site was the fact that this was the previous location of Kensington Junior High School. Kensington Junior High School was closed in 1979 and the property transferred to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission for redevelopment as the park that exists today."
That's wrong. Look:
[Photos: The Kensington Park retirement community stands on much of the former KJH site.]
The KJH site was broken up, with about the northern third deeded to the Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission, which financed with tax exempt bonds the building of what is now the Kensington Park retirement community, providing independent living, assisted living, and Alzheimer's care to over 200 senior citizens.
When that parcel was severed and deeded to the Housing Opportunities Commission for that purpose, it took one-third of the KJH site; took the road access to the North; and severed what had been a through road from South to North – all rendering Rock Creek Hills Park stunningly deficient as a potential middle school site, unless the Board's goal is to build a middle school that would be, county-wide, uniquely inadequate.
It is shocking to find such an important error in an official letter sent four weeks after the Board's vote to take the park. Shocking, but not surprising, because it is consistent with the Board's record of treating Kensington Park's elderly residents as if they do not exist.
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