Site Selection Advisory Committee Minority Report of the Lyttonsville Civic Association Charlotte Coffield, President March 8, 2012

I appreciate the opportunity to offer additional views on the selection of a site for a new middle school in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster. The current enrollment and projected increases in student population indicate that additional capacity for middle school students is needed and determining an appropriate site is critical. We appreciate efforts by Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) to strengthen the selection process in response to community concerns, and the addition of members representing communities near candidate sites was an important improvement in the current site selection process. While the Site Selection Advisory Committee (SSAC) has worked diligently to execute its duties, there is still considerable room for improvement of MCPSs selection process. This report address three areas that should be addressed in future school site searches.

Improved factual basis for the site selection: Throughout the process, several SSAC representatives expressed frustration about the quality of the data presented for the various sites under consideration. MCPS planning staff did begin the SSAC process by detailing the basic features of the sites, such as the total acreage, but the fact sheets provided to the SSAC included errors. For example, the fact sheet for one of the local parks indicated that it was leased to a private school. Community members observing the meeting noticed this error and the fact sheet was corrected, but this oversight raises concerns about the accuracy of information that laypeople cannot verify. In addition, facts were often not disclosed in a timely manner or were provided by citizen representatives. For example, many key policy statements for use of park land with Program Open Space (POS) restrictions were uncovered by a neighborhood group that had corresponded with the Department of Natural Resources. Questions regarding POS restrictions arose during the first meeting, but because definitive answers to these questions were not provided, discussion of this topic took too long and prevented discussion of other issues. The fact that one site had been used as a defense site was uncovered by research conducted by another neighborhood organization. While the inclusion of information from the community is a laudable part of the SSAC process, it should not take the place of due diligence by MCPS staff and leaves neighborhoods that did not know they had to research sites in their community themselves at a real disadvantage during the discussion of candidate sites. In the future, MCPS should seek to ensure that accurate information is provided early in the process, and that policy or legal issues are identified and resolved before the SSAC is asked to review sites.

Improved transparency for private sites: Throughout the process, MCPS planning staff have claimed that private sites under consideration needed to be kept secret from the public. This makes discussions of the sites more difficult and is unnecessary. MCPS officials claim that keeping the sites secret makes it easier to secure a lower price. However, they must contact the owners to assess site availability and it is not clear that that secrecy about MCPSs interest during the SSAC meetings would secure a lower price. It appears that M-NCPPC Planning Board does not keep private sites secret from the public when they are face with site selection decisions, and they likely would not do so if they believed it created a material disadvantage in

negotiations. Keeping the private sites secret inhibits a full discussion of these sites, particularly since no observers are allowed and the public played a significant role in fact checking of the public sites during the current site selection process. This secrecy also damages the credibility of the process. While this may not be the intent, withholding the private sites from the public creates the perception that MCPS is attempting to control information and limit the options for public deliberation. Given that MCPS is a public institution, secrecy should be a last resort that is used only when necessary. Selection of a school site should be a community decision and limiting access to information about all the site alternatives could lead to suggestions that there is a conscious attempt to stifle public participation.

Improved conduct of the meetings: The rules for conducting the meeting should be chosen for the purpose of allowing a thorough and comprehensive discussion of the merits of each site so that the best site is selected. SSAC representatives should be permitted to engage in robust discussions. They should be free to respond to each other in a courteous and reasoned manner, to give their best arguments and top pursue a line of reasoning that may entail some back and forth between several individuals. In some cases, MCPS staff set inappropriate boundaries for discussion, for example not allowing discussion of combining two adjacent sites to produce a better single site. In other cases, MCPS staff cut off discussion to insist that a vote be taken before the committee had finished considering all their options. Staff also made procedural rulings that affected the ability of some representatives to speak freely. Some representatives voiced concerns that they were being led to a predetermined conclusion.

There is a clear need to expand the capacity of the middle school facilities in the Bethesda-Chevy cluster, and I hope that the work of the SSAC has been useful to MCPS. I appreciate that MCPS is working to address the enrollment challenges in my school cluster, and I look forward to future discussions as design, construction, and other start-up activities for the new middle school facility proceed. I also hope that MCPS will recognize the need to make further improvements to the school site selection process, and will give careful consideration to the improvements listed in this report.