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Rockville officials, parents urge board to keep Wootton on CIP and oppose superintendent’s relocation plan
Summary
Local officials, parents and students told the Montgomery County Board of Education the superintendent’s plan to relocate Wootton High School (described by some as a closure) would harm neighborhood stability and equity; speakers urged using Crown Farm as a temporary holding school and asked the board to delay any vote until enrollment and funding projections are verified.
Rockville City Council member Izola Shaw told the Montgomery County Board of Education that the superintendent’s recommendation to relocate Wootton High School does not live up to equity commitments and would destabilize neighborhood families, urging the board to adopt Rockville’s modified recommendation to keep Wootton in the capital improvement program (CIP) and to use Crown Farm as a temporary holding school.
The argument recurred across multiple speakers: Wootton parents, student advocates and community cluster coordinators said closing or relocating the school would lengthen students’ commutes, increase transportation costs, and break neighborhood ties. “Closing a neighborhood school in such a short time frame destabilizes communities,” Izola Shaw said, urging the board to “choose stability over displacement” and to “adopt the modified recommendation and please put Wooton back on the CIP.”
Why it matters: Wootton’s proposed relocation is tied to broader boundary and CIP decisions that will affect where students are assigned and which facilities are prioritized for renovation. Multiple speakers said the superintendent’s option (referred to in public materials as option H or the modified option H) received limited public support in surveys and that county pipeline data and enrollment projections were not being consistently applied.
Parents and advocates requested three primary actions: delay the board’s final vote until the county’s funding picture and enrollment projections are reconciled; restore Wootton to the CIP as a comprehensive high school; and use Crown Farm High School as a temporary holding school while aging campuses are modernized. Kyle Ferioli asked the board to release scoring evaluations used under FAA policy and to pause the March 26 vote pending verification of the data underpinning the recommendation.
Speakers raised specific planning and safety concerns. Jun Hua Liu said the plan anticipates 718 Crown Farm “walkers” but that nearly 500 of those students would need to cross multi-lane highways; she argued the walk zone is not always walkable. Several speakers emphasized that Wootton functions as a community anchor and said moving the entire student population would amount to a closure rather than a temporary transfer.
MCPS staff and speakers acknowledged the planning constraints and data questions in the public discussion. Board members asked staff to enumerate which pipeline housing developments are included in projections and which are not; staff said they track unbuilt units and factor a subset of pipeline projects into cluster projections but that some projects remain in pipeline categories and are not yet counted as absorbed enrollment. Staff also confirmed that several CIP projects remain contingent on county council approval.
What’s next: Advocates asked the board to slow the process, increase transparency about which developments are included in enrollment forecasts, and consider Rockville’s amendment as a way to keep Wootton’s community intact while addressing capacity elsewhere. The board’s work session on the CIP and boundaries was scheduled for Thursday; the public hearing record and written testimonies will be available on BoardDocs.
