By Adam Pagnucco.
School boundary discussions always turn into dynamite blast zones. It happened in 2020, when a proposed MCPS boundary study turned into a major school board election issue. And it’s happening now as MCPS considers redrawing the boundaries of three quarters of its middle and high schools along with restructuring its high school clusters into academic program regions.
Whether necessary or not, such actions are never easy.
Hot remarks tend to proliferate in such circumstances. Last month, one Wootton High School parent declared this at a public meeting: “Though our HVAC is poor and our plumbing is shoddy, if you come to close Wootton, it’s over my dead body!” Superintendent Thomas Taylor made this joke in an email to a parent: “What’s the worst that could happen? They fire me?” Accusations of racism, classism, political pandering and the like fly as freely as beer bottles at a bar fight.
But not every concern is based in naked parochialism or politics. Consider the testimony of the Richard Montgomery Cluster PTAs at last night’s school board hearing on the Crown/Damascus boundary study. This cluster (comprised of PTAs from Richard Montgomery High School, Julius West Middle School, Bayard Rustin Elementary School, Beall Elementary School, College Gardens Elementary School, Ritchie Park Elementary School, and Twinbrook Elementary School) has not generated as much heat as those in Silver Spring and around Wootton High School. So far, the most publicly visible issue around Richard Montgomery has been the future of its unique elementary-middle-high school international baccalaureate program, which parents have been fighting to protect since last June. Otherwise, they don’t have the level of boundary objections as other places around MCPS.
Accordingly, these folks are not the “over my dead body” crowd. Their testimony offers a more thoughtful critique of MCPS’s processes that reflects a lot of what I have been hearing in recent months. Whether they are right or wrong, such concerns are worth considering as MCPS proceeds on its most consequential restructuring in decades.
The cluster’s testimony is reprinted below.
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Testimony of the Richard Montgomery Cluster PTAs
Delivered by Rodney Peele, Cluster Coordinator
February 23, 2026
The Richard Montgomery Cluster — composed of Richard Montgomery High School, Julius West Middle School, and our five elementary schools — appreciates the opportunity to testify today about the Superintendent’s recommendation for the boundary study for Crown High School. I am cluster coordinator Rodney Peele. My fellow cluster coordinators Jenny Hardesty and Jonathan Thessin and I have children who, collectively, have attended five of our cluster’s seven schools. I have had children in our cluster’s schools for the last 16 years.
Thank you for recommending boundaries for Richard Montgomery HS that on their face seem to reflect our cluster priorities: efficient utilization of schools, especially RM; coherent articulation pathways that support lifelong relationships and international baccalaureate from elementary to middle to high; reasonable geographic proximity to our schools as well as to the other high schools assigned to our future region; and maintaining the incredible diversity of our cluster, located in one of the most diverse cities in America not just in terms of race, but also socioeconomics, national origin, religion, gender, and more.
However, we are skeptical about MCPS and this boundary process and Programs Analysis.
We do not understand how you project Richard Montgomery HS — which is over capacity necessitating 9 portable classrooms, i.e. trailers — will experience a decline in student population from 107% of capacity to 89.3%. Your projection appears to be based on “resident” students and disregards existing and planned development. As our Rockville Mayor and City Council have aptly noted, our city has approved 2,330 new housing units by 2030. Will you be able to remove the portables you predict we will no longer need?
We also object to MCPS’s practice for the past several years of overstating building capacities, which result in schools looking underutilized on paper but needing every inch of available space to adequately serve students’ basic educational needs as well as the needs of special education students, emerging multilingual learners, mental health and wellness, physical education, the arts, and music.
Further, MCPS has yet to provide and explain its predictions for the scope of student migration to new and altered programs and schools within its new regional concept. Nor has MCPS adequately explained the criteria and expectations for adjusting program seat counts in the future. We are alarmed that Richard Montgomery’s 40-year-old flagship IB program might be downsized up to 75% from its current successful format that serves as many as 600 of the county’s most highly able students. We continue to dispute MCPS’s contention that the only way to provide more access and opportunity to programs such as RM’s countywide IB magnet is to restrict them from 84% of county high school students. Downsizing the RM IB magnet program and/or lowering its standards undermines quality and student outcomes, including access to robust course offerings for the rest of RM’s student population not enrolled in the full IB curriculum. You risk a long-term downward spiral in results and desirability for students, the program, the school and, eventually, MCPS.
You still have not come to our cluster to have a discussion about what our programs and schools really need. When is the Board going to hold a hearing on the Programs Analysis as it has done multiple times for boundaries, such as tonight? MCCPTA resolved that you should provide multiple options and several rounds of public feedback on programs rather than the propaganda exercise you conducted instead. When the PTAs and teachers have no confidence you can deliver what you are promising, you have a problem.
We also question whether MCPS is following its own rules, and whether the superintendent’s recommendations adequately allow for and consider community input. We empathize with our Rockville friends and neighbors in the Wootton HS cluster, and also in the City of Gaithersburg – – specifically the neighborhood that’s home to Crown HS. Our cluster borders these communities, and we understand why they feel the rug was pulled out from under them with these major shifts in proposals. We also border communities likely to be assigned to Woodward, even though we were not part of that boundary study, they have concerns too. We worry you will arbitrarily conduct the planned elementary school boundary review, too.
I ask Superintendent Taylor and each member of the Board of Education: Why do so many of us PTA leaders feel that MCPS seeks to impose its will on communities across the county rather than work with communities to make changes that we readily seek and support? Why do so many of us continue to feel that MCPS makes decisions behind closed doors, rather than an open process? We need leadership, not dictates from on high. We need engagement, not check-the-box exercises. We need transparency, not propaganda. We need accountability from the BOE, not a rubber stamp.
Before you finalize the Crown Boundary Study, we ask you to better explain your short- and long- term enrollment projections for RMHS. We also implore you to come to our cluster to explain how your Programs Analysis will preserve the outstanding IB program we have at Richard Montgomery and provide access to deserving students countywide.