Council Members to Push for New Elementary School

Rockville City Council members John F. Hall Jr. and Tom Moore are scheduled to testify Thursday in support of building a new elementary school in the Richard Montgomery cluster ahead of a schedule proposed by County Executive Isiah Leggett.

The council members will take a “good cop-bad cop” approach, Moore said Monday. Moore will thank the county for funding some of the cluster’s priorities, such expanding core capacity at , and Hall will stress “what we need built right now," Moore said.

Thursday’s hearing, which will mainly focus on school construction, begins at 7 p.m. at the . It will be carried live on County Cable Montgomery (Channel 6 on Comcast and RCN; Channel 30 on Verizon).

at the former Hungerford Park Elementary School site. The new school is needed to relieve overcrowding in other elementary schools in the cluster.

Moore said that the he and Hall would testify that “a two-year delay is not what we want, that these schools are incredibly crowded, and that we want [a new school] built as soon as possible.”

Leggett's plan cites a $3.45 million cost saving from the delay, which would buy the county time to relocate the from the West Edmonston Drive site to the former Broome School on Twinbrook Parkway without first finding a temporary home for the center.

“That’s our struggle,” Moore said. “It’s ‘We can understand why you want to save the $3.4 million, but we’re not happy about the delay.’”

The county would spend $14.8 million to build a new 40,500-square-foot building for the center and a 20,000-square-foot parking garage at Broome. Construction would begin this summer.

City Council members discussed the testimony at a Jan. 30 meeting.

The delay is a by-product of the cluster’s request not to co-locate the elementary school with the resource center, Councilman Mark Pierzchala said.

“On one hand, we asked them to take on an additional expense, additional trouble by not putting these two purposes together—and I believe that was proper,” Pierzchala said. “On the other hand, that had a consequence of, well now they have to do something with this resource center and that takes time and money to do that.”

Gov. Martin O’Malley has called for $370 million in state aid for school construction statewide. In order for the county to make a bid for a share of that aid, it must show that it has school projects in the pipeline as part of the county’s adopted fiscal 2013 construction budget.

while conceding that the county will get much less.

“Montgomery County Public Schools is hoping that they’ll be getting in the ballpark of about $40 million,” said Linda Moran, who manages inter-governmental affairs for the city.

Still, “There’s much more need than what’s available,” Moran said on Jan. 30.

The focus needs to be on the city’s need, Mayor Phyllis Marcuccio said during the Jan. 30 meeting.

“We really need to keep the posture, keep the pressure, that that school is so important to us, and not let up,” Marcuccio said, adding that “if you give [the county] a little bit of leeway, they’ll push it another year.”

Hall, who once served as a Richard Montgomery cluster coordinator, said he intends “to make this a very enthusiastic appeal—energetic.”

Hall said that while he doesn’t expect “everybody to do what I ask,” he also would not “shrug my shoulders about it and say ‘Well, you know what? There’s probably other stuff [on the county’s priorities list].’ For me, in the context of this particular part of the budget, there’s not.”

The council must “stay with our support that we gave to the Board of Education," Marcuccio said. The mayor and council discussed priorities with school officials at a Jan. 9 meeting.

“We made it very clear that we would stand up for their needs," Marcucio said. "My golly, do that.”