Parents are now going to the State Board of Education to challenge the decision to move Rockville’s Wootton High School population to the new Crown High in Gaithersburg.
With signed affidavits from more than 300 families, the group filed an appeal against the Montgomery County Board of Education as the Community Education and Policy Alliance, Inc. The appeal says the boundary decision was made using faulty data and ignored school closure requirements by calling it a relocation. According to the filing, these parents want the State Board to require Montgomery County Public Schools to reconsider the decision.
The appeal comes after this group of parents filed an emergency request with the State Department of Education.
MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor’s now-approved boundary plan will relocate students and staff from the aging campus at Wootton — which has maintenance issues like heating, cooling and plumbing problems — to Gaithersburg’s new Crown High School. The Wootton building will be converted into a holding school for campuses under renovation.
The school system states the move to Crown is a strategic one that “addresses both immediate safety and infrastructure concerns, and long-term fiscal health.” MCPS claims it is not a closure of Wootton, rather a move of the school into a new building, one that MCPS calls “a state-of-the-art facility.”
The school board voted 7-1 to approve the plan in March.
The move to Crown High is set to take effect in fall 2027.
Comments are closed.