Wootton parents vow continued fight over Montgomery Co. schools boundary changes
After Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Taylor announced at Thursday’s Board of Education meeting that he’s recommending closing Wootton High School, parents from the Rockville school vowed to fight the move.
“It’s not over. The changes won’t even take place until 2027,” Brian Rabin, president of the Wootton Parent Teacher Student Association, told WTOP on Friday.
A final vote on the boundary change won’t come until the Board of Education’s March 26 meeting.
“Our strategy is to keep on this until we don’t have a way forward — until it’s over,” Rabin said.
On Friday afternoon, the Wootton Parent Teacher Student Association issued a statement urging members of the Board of Education to reject the proposal and to direct staff to “develop a plan that actually serves students.”
The statement cited past plans to renovate Wootton by 2018: “Seventeen years later, that renovation has been removed from the Capital Improvement Plan entirely, with no future plan in place.”
The move to close Wootton High School, which opened in 1970, is just part of a much larger proposed boundary change by Taylor.
At Thursday’s meeting, Taylor said he has worked on boundary change plans at schools in other districts, and said it’s never easy.
“I know that change is hard,” Taylor said, addressing a school board hearing room packed with parents holding signs opposing a Wootton closure. “Critical family decisions are made about where people live, what they do and how they go about their lives, often tied to the schools their children attend.”
Taylor said he attempted to meet with as many parents and community groups as he could.
“Know that you were heard, even if there is disagreement. And we value your thoughts when prioritizing the feedback,” Taylor said.
Rabin said the Wootton community didn’t get a chance to meet with Taylor, because their scheduled meeting was canceled due to the latest snow event.
“We were unable to even have a conversation before this was announced. So there’s a lot of frustration in the Wootton community,” Rabin said.
Taylor said that meeting would be rescheduled, along with others. But he said he felt some of the public feedback crossed a line.
“From cyberattacks to direct physical threats, this has not been pleasant at every step along the way. There has been a whole lot that was just flat-out unacceptable,” he said.
Under the superintendent’s proposal, Wootton High School students would attend the new Crown High School in Rockville starting in the 2027-28 school year. Renovations at Wootton would then take place so that it could be used as a “holding facility,” or a temporary home for other schools when renovations at those facilities are underway.
Public comment at recent school board meetings often featured Wootton parents urging renovations, but not closure of the Rockville school. Thursday’s meeting was no different.
“The entire county is interpreting these boundary studies to mean if you don’t make noise or lawyer up, your voice will not be heard, because that is exactly what has happened over the last nine months,” parent Lauren Mahjoubi Clancy told the school board.
“If decades of deferred investment justify eliminating a school, rather than modernizing it, then no school, not (Silver Spring International Middle School), not Magruder, not Damascus, is safe,” Claire Matta, a Wootton High School graduate who is now a parent, said Thursday.
The plans also include proposed attendance zones for Charles Woodward High School, a new high school on Old Georgetown Road slated to open in the 2027-28 school year.
There are also plans to shift high school programs into a regional model for the upcoming 2027-28 school year in the superintendent’s proposal.
The next hearings on boundary changes are slated for Feb. 23 and 24. Work sessions on the plans will be held starting March 3. The final decision by the Board of Education is scheduled for a vote March 26.