East Bethesda Elementary School update 2/12

said on February 19th, 2012 filed under: Bethesda

East Bethesda Elementary School update I attended a community meeting on Feb. 15 to address the new school assignments slated for the East Bethesda neighborhood over the next few years. Bruce Crispell, Director for the Division of Long-Range Planning for Montgomery County Public Schools was on hand to discuss the particulars.

Let’s start with a little bit of history. Back when they closed Lynbrook Elementary School, East Bethesda residents were offered up, as a concession, the opportunity to choose their elementary school as long as space was available. All of EB started at Rosemary Hills, and while the permanent school assignment come 3rd grade was Bethesda Elementary, residents could request a transfer to attend either Chevy Chase or North Chevy Chase Elementary schools.

Because of recent overcrowding in ALL of the schools, this formula is no longer working. In the last 5 years, student enrollment within the B-CC cluster at the elementary school level has increased by 800 students. Some of this is demographics- we live in a high density area where much of the new construction is high-rise apartment buildings or “McMansions”. We live in an excellent school district, so housing is always in demand for families. Finally, the financial downturn caused a number of former private school students to opt for a public education.

There are currently @ 100+ students residing in East Bethesda who will be assigned to Bethesda Elementary School. Come the 2013-14 school year the K-1 bunch will head to BE. Simultaneously, kids at BE who are being redirected toward Bradley Hills ES will be making the same transition. During the 2014-15 school year, the balance of RHPS students from East Bethesda will be transitioned to BE. From 2015 onward, all residents of East Bethesda will be assigned to Bethesda Elementary School for grades K-5. From there, Westland is slated for grades 6, 7 & 8.

Here are a couple of details:

If your child is in kindergarten this year (20011-12), they can still petition to transfer to Chevy Chase or North Chevy Chase Elementary School for the 3rd grade onward. This will be the last class that has the option to transfer (shy of a hardship). Once in a school, you are guaranteed the right to finish up at that particular school, and a bus will be provided.
If your kid opts to attend either CCES or NCC, it’s uncertain at this time if they will be allowed to join their classmates at the new middle school. The new middle school will have a student capacity of @ 900 students. The boundaries have yet to be determined- we’ll hear more about that in 2016. If BE goes to Westland and NCC and CCES go to the new middle school, it becomes muddled. Bruce Crispell has encouraged residents to just go with the new assignments, if at all possible, to avoid hard separations in the future.
Keeping siblings together during this transition is going to be difficult. The only exception, if I understand it correctly, might be if you have a younger child slated for BE, while the older child is slated to remain at RHPS- in that case, it should be possible to request an early transfer for the older child. The reverse cannot be accommodated (3rd+ grader at BE, younger sib at RHPS = unlikely early transfer to BE).
Rosemary Hills will try to place the East Bethesda kids in some of the same classrooms so they will know some of the other kids transitioning with them to BE. Roughly 25-30 East Bethesda kids per grade will be moving to BE.
We are not alone. The population explosion in the public schools is being played out all over Montgomery County.
Plans for an 8-room addition are in the works for BE. RHPS and NCC are due to add 6 additional classrooms. We are bursting at the seams.

The new middle school debacle has yet to be sorted out. And it will have some bearing on decisions parents make for their kids during this elementary school transition. I’ll be writing more about that as details emerge. And let’s not forget B-CC High School. Plans are underway for an addition as they are projected to be over capacity by 500 students.

Monica Hayes of the East Bethesda Citizens Association does a great job of keeping residents informed. For more details on schools, check out EBCA.org. Also, for more details on the current transfer options for East Bethesda Students read my East Bethesda School Guide.

posted by Marcie Sandalow

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 19th, 2012 at 7:09 am and is filed under Bethesda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

East Bethesda School Guide | BCCDC Real Estate by Marcie Sandalow said at November 14th, 2012 at 6:49 pm
[...] will attend Bethesda Elementary K-5, Westland Middle School 6-8, and BCC High School 9-12. Read my East Bethesda Elementary School Update for more details. Also, as of this writing, a new middle school for the BCC cluster will open in [...]