Johnson Property Community Workshop Today! at 6:30 p.m. at QOHS (will potentially affect Travilah)
李淑红 Shuhong Li
Dear parents,
I got this message from a previous Travilah parent, Vivian Lam. The annexation of the Johnson Property will potentially affect Travilah ES and our Wootton cluster as quoted below.
The
biggest impact of these approaches on the Wootton cluster would occur
with 6 and potentially with 7—that is, lopping off portions of the
Gaithersburg cluster (Belward, Crown and Decoverly) and redirecting them
to the Wootton Cluster. It has been—and will continue to be—noted that
the elementary schools with the most space available in the Wootton
cluster (Travilah and Cold Spring) are not the ones adjacent to those
areas (Stone Mill, Lakewood and Fallsmead), requiring busing further
away. It has also been noted that we would adamantly oppose a domino
shuffling of kids among the Wootton elementary schools to accommodate
the added students. We’ve also talked at length about the long-term
planned development already within our cluster boundaries (literally
over 5000 residential units) and how students tend to come to the
cluster in the higher grades. Finally, we’ve talked about how the
Wootton HS location is not conducive to being built much larger than it
currently is and the middle schools don’t have the space, not to mention
the kids that are already planned to be added to DuFief from Rachel
Carson (albeit, not sure yet if they will stay within Wootton or split
articulate back to QO).
Please attend the workshop if you have time tonight.
Best regards,
Shuhong Li
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Johnson Property Community Workshop Feb. 23 at 6:30 p.m.
(From Russell Johnson) On behalf of the Johnson family, we would like to invite you to a Community Workshop on Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 6:30 p.m. at Quince Orchard High School to share your thoughts on the proposed annexation of our 23-acre property. The property is located at the northwest corner of Darnestown Road and Quince Orchard Road, just north of Quince Orchard High School, as reflected here on this map.
We will hold small group discussions at the Workshop on issues such as schools and roads. You can also email your questions and comments to us at johnsonprope...@gmail.com or through the contact form on our website, johnsonpropertyannexation.net.
The thoughts of our neighbors are very important to us as we seek to annex our property into the City of Gaithersburg. Our family has been part of the Gaithersburg community for generations. Understandably, our proposal has attracted interest and questions from neighbors, parents and community members. We are committed to working with residents throughout this entire process. Neighbors raised various questions at our meeting last October, so we are taking a step back to gain more feedback from the community before we move forward.
Need Cluster Input on Roundtable Approaches to Gaithersburg Cluster overcrowding
Dear Wootton Cluster:
We’ve had four meetings of the roundtable and a final one on Feb. 24. We thank those of you who came out to the cluster meeting a couple of weeks ago to give us feedback on the approaches to date. We did relay the thoughts of the group at subsequent meetings and the approaches have been refined somewhat based on that and other feedback received from all three clusters. The final approaches can be found at:
http://gis.mcpsmd.org/roundtablepdfs/TriCluster_ApproachesEnglish.pdf
The approaches most affecting the Wootton Cluster are the 3, 3a, 6 and 7. Approaches 3 and 3a affect DuFief ES as they would delay the currently planned rev/ex for 6 months as the holding school wouldn’t be available until then. We are told that the Rachel Carson kids will not be moved to DuFief until that rev/ex is completed. Of course, this is assuming the current CIP timeline remains intact through the legislative season this spring….
The biggest impact of these approaches on the Wootton cluster would occur with 6 and potentially with 7—that is, lopping off portions of the Gaithersburg cluster (Belward, Crown and Decoverly) and redirecting them to the Wootton Cluster. It has been—and will continue to be—noted that the elementary schools with the most space available in the Wootton cluster (Travilah and Cold Spring) are not the ones adjacent to those areas (Stone Mill, Lakewood and Fallsmead), requiring busing further away. It has also been noted that we would adamantly oppose a domino shuffling of kids among the Wootton elementary schools to accommodate the added students. We’ve also talked at length about the long-term planned development already within our cluster boundaries (literally over 5000 residential units) and how students tend to come to the cluster in the higher grades. Finally, we’ve talked about how the Wootton HS location is not conducive to being built much larger than it currently is and the middle schools don’t have the space, not to mention the kids that are already planned to be added to DuFief from Rachel Carson (albeit, not sure yet if they will stay within Wootton or split articulate back to QO).
An important factor here is the fact that the Gaithersburg Cluster apparently favors the approaches that keep their students within their cluster—they do NOT want them to move; however, I personally get the feeling that the MCPS looks favorably on 5, 6 and/or 7 (why Magruder and Wootton were brought into the roundtable).
The Wootton roundtable representatives will be getting together the night before the last meeting on February 24 to compare notes and synthesize any input you feed us. We will tentatively be meeting at Not Your Average Joe’s at 7pm (on Tuesday, Feb. 23—yes we’re skipping the Delegates Assembly—couldn’t be helped). Anyone is welcome to join us if you’re interested.
Roundtable reps—please chime in if I’ve missed something.
All of the information related to the Tri-Cluster roundtable can be found at: http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/planning/roundtable.aspx
Thanks everyone in advance for any thoughts you have.
Please
share with your communities that there will be a public information
meeting about the Tri-Cluster Roundtable in the Gaithersburg High School
Media Center on Monday, 2/29 at 7:30. Bruce Crispell, Director,
Division of Long-Range Planning with MCPS will discuss the approaches
and share next steps.
For more information or questions, contact:
Karen Collishaw, Wootton Cluster Coordinator, 240-404-8767