Guest column by Angie Kronenberg.
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) has launched a study that could lead to the consolidation and closure of elementary and middle schools across the county. The district says the effort is driven by enrollment decline and the need for efficiency. But as MCPS quietly builds the analytical framework that will determine which schools are recommended for closure, families are raising urgent questions about transparency, methodology, and the long‑term impact on children and communities.
Parents and community members believe the process must move deliberately, with public visibility and meaningful input into the assumptions and factors that will shape life‑changing decisions for thousands of students and communities across the county.
Here are five reasons MCPS’s consolidation plan needs refinement, and why MCPS should slow down, modernize the factors it will consider, and provide more details about those factors before irreversible decisions are made.
1. MCPS is building the closure criteria right now without public transparency.
The most consequential part of the closure study is happening before the public engagement sessions even begin on October 19.
MCPS has not published:
- The factors it will use to evaluate schools
- The weighting of those factors
- The methodology behind its enrollment projections
- The datasets its contractor, FLO Analytics, is building
- How community feedback will be collected, analyzed, or reported
The October 8 Board of Education work session may lock in the analytical framework before the public can review or correct the assumptions behind closure recommendations. Once the criteria are set, every analysis flows from them, so if they’re flawed, the entire study will be distorted. Yet families are being asked to participate without knowing what MCPS is measuring or how their input will matter. MCPS must be more transparent.
2. MCPS’s enrollment projections are a black box.
MCPS has not released:
- The formulas used to generate enrollment projections
- The assumptions behind those formulas
- Why projections differ from Maryland state data
- How projections will be validated or updated
Families cannot verify whether MCPS’s projections are accurate or contain errors. MCPS has focused on recent demographic shifts, but without transparency, the public cannot understand how MCPS is modeling those shifting trends—and whether they justify closures. Enrollment projections are the foundation of the entire study. If the foundation is opaque, how can we trust the recommendations?
3. Closures rarely save money because 90% of MCPS’ operating costs are staffing.
MCPS leadership has acknowledged that 90% of the district’s operating costs are staffing, not building operations. This matters because:
- Closing a school does not eliminate most of the staff. Teachers and other support staff typically move to receiving schools.
- MCPS usually keeps closed buildings, which still require utilities, maintenance, security, and insurance.
- Transportation costs increase when students need to be bused or are bused farther.
- Enrollment loss accelerates when families leave the district—reducing state aid.
National research, including Stanford University’s landmark study, shows that closures often worsen district finances, not improve them, and closures lead to further enrollment decline. MCPS must show how its financial analysis accounts for these realities or risk overstating savings and understating long‑term costs.
4. Closures have well‑documented negative impacts on children and communities.
Decades of research show that school closures:
- Disrupt academic progress
- Break peer networks
- Increase absenteeism
- Reduce engagement
- Harm social‑emotional stability
- Disproportionately affect diverse, high‑need communities
MCPS’s criteria must account for these academic, social‑emotional, and community harms when evaluating any potential closure.
Walkable schools like Silver Spring International Middle School (SSIMS) and Sligo Creek Elementary School in downtown Silver Spring anchor neighborhoods, support safety, and stabilize enrollment. These are exactly the kinds of schools closures tend to harm most. MCPS’s current criteria should include walkability, transportation burden, and community cohesion.
Absent modernized criteria, MCPS risks producing decisions that harm children and communities and diminish the county’s competitive position.
5. Community engagement must be meaningful—not scripted, and must consider long-range goals.
MCPS has announced two rounds of engagement sessions, but has not explained:
- How feedback will be collected
- How feedback will be analyzed
- How feedback will be reported to the public
- How feedback will influence the criteria or recommendations
Families deserve a process where:
- Feedback is documented
- Themes are published
- Mistakes are corrected
- Criteria are adjusted based on public input
- Weighting is explained and adjusted
- Recommendations reflect community engagement
The Montgomery County Planning Department’s Community Engagement for the Eastern Silver Spring Communities Plan demonstrates what meaningful engagement and input look like: multi‑phase workshops, surveys, small‑group discussions, and publicly reported themes and revisions. MCPS should meet or exceed this standard when making decisions that could close neighborhood schools.
MCPS is also moving toward a 20‑year lifecycle approach for school facilities, with renovation, renewal, and replacement benchmarks on 25‑ to 50‑year timelines. If closures are on the table, MCPS should publish its short‑, medium‑, and long‑term plans for every facility—including those it may close—so families understand how consolidation fits into the district’s broader capital strategy.
At the same time, Montgomery County is engaged in long‑range planning in four regions. For example, the Eastern Silver Spring Communities Plan (ESSCP), now in public review, identifies significant new housing capacity, increased density near transit, and major investments in walkability and public facilities in the neighborhoods south of the Beltway, north of Takoma Park, and northeast of downtown Silver Spring. This area is already the most densely populated part of the county—over 10,000 people per square mile—and one of its most racially and ethnically diverse areas. The plan’s growth projections and land‑use recommendations must be incorporated into MCPS’s enrollment modeling and closure criteria.
The plan also includes recommendations about schools and public facilities, meaning MCPS must coordinate its consolidation analysis with the county’s long‑range planning rather than treat closures as isolated operational decisions. While ESSCP projects modest student growth—approximately 350 elementary, 130 middle, and 200 high school students—these estimates are based on zoning capacity under the plan’s recommended land‑use changes, not on market‑driven growth or redevelopment beyond the plan’s zoning recommendations—for example, new accessory dwelling units or turnover in older housing stock. More importantly, ESSCP emphasizes walkability, transit access, and complete communities. In dense, diverse communities like East Silver Spring, walkable, transit‑connected neighborhoods depend on strong local schools. Closing schools like SSIMS and Sligo Creek would undermine the very goals the county is advancing for East Silver Spring: walkability, safety, transit access, and community cohesion. Moreover, the county’s Thrive Montgomery 2050 framework calls for equitable, sustainable, walkable communities with strong transit access and complete neighborhoods.
MCPS’s own Future Ready Strategic Plan includes Objective 10, committing the district to reduce carbon emissions through green infrastructure. Any consolidation plan must show how MCPS’s decisions support—not undermine—county goals for density, equity, sustainability, walkability, and long‑term planning.
Closures are not easily reversible. If MCPS determines closures are necessary, the community should feel confident that the process was thorough, accurate, and grounded in meaningful public participation and conforms to the long-range plans for the county and its communities.
A better path forward
Community members are asking MCPS to:
- Publish the criteria and factors
- Publish the weighting of the factors
- Publish the enrollment projection methodology
- Modernize the factors using national best practices
- Ensure community engagement is meaningful and transparent
- Protect children and neighborhoods from unnecessary disruption and long‑term harm
Montgomery County families want a process that reflects the values of our communities: transparency, equity, walkability, stability, and long‑term planning grounded in evidence—not expediency.
MCPS has an opportunity to build trust by making the process transparent, evidence‑based, and responsive to community input. But that requires slowing down, opening the black box, and ensuring the October 8 work session does not lock in outdated or incomplete assumptions.
MCPS should demonstrate how any proposed closures align with the county’s long‑range plans for density, transit, walkability, and public facilities.
The stakes are too high for anything less.
Angie Kronenberg, a resident of downtown Silver Spring, advocates on behalf of Save Our Silver Spring Schools, a grassroots advocacy organization consisting of parents, teachers, business owners, and community members who are focused on supporting local students in our community who attend Silver Spring International Middle School (SSIMS) and Sligo Creek Elementary School (SCES). Her young adult children attended SSIMS and SCES from 2007-2019.