Montgomery County continues to deal with school overcrowding

Montgomery County Public Schools, one of the largest school systems in the country, continues to combat school overcrowding, an issue that has affected the county notably in the past few years.

Of the 208 schools in the school district, 101 are currently overcapacity.

MCPS, which is the largest school system in the state of Maryland and 14th largest in the U.S., has added more than 30,000 students in the last 20 years according to MCPS Superintendent Jack Smith and been trying to catch up with increased student enrollment.

“We’ve added a school every single year since I’ve been here,” Smith said, who became superintendent in 2016. “We’re adding multiple additions every single year. There is no indication that growth is going to stop.”

In 2009, 141,777 students attended MCPS schools. For the 2019-2020 school year, the school system has 165,267 students enrolled. The past 10 years saw an increase of 23,490 students enrolled in MCPS schools and an increase of at least 2,200 students per year, minus the 2018-2019 school year, which saw an increased enrollment of 1,134 students, according to annual MCPS enrollment reports.

Among MCPS high schools, which are most affected by overcrowding, 13 of 25 schools are currently overcapacity. Projected enrollment numbers for the 2025-2026 school year show two more high schools will be overutilized, according to an MCPS report.

Richard Montgomery High School is one of the schools most affected by overcrowding and will continue to be so in the future. For the current school year, the Rockville-based school has 2,507 students enrolled but has a capacity of 2,241, making it 11 percent overcapacity. For the 2025-2026 school year, Richard Montgomery is expected to be at 126 percent capacity with 2,828 students enrolled.

Schools forming part of the Richard Montgomery cluster saw increased student enrollment over the past few years, requiring an addition to Julius West Middle School in the 2016-2017 school year and the opening of Bayard Rustin Elementary School in Sept. 2018.

Through capital improvement projects MCPS has proposed, however, the construction of a new school will ease the overcrowding problem not just for the high school but for the Richard Montgomery cluster as well. Crown High School, expected to open Sept. 2025 in Gaithersburg, will bring in at least 120 students from Richard Montgomery High School and at least 150 students from Quince Orchard High School.

To ensure the ever-growing student population is addressed adequately, the county’s Board of Education contracted WXY Architecture + Urban Design last August to conduct an analysis of school boundaries. The firm’s findings will provide MCPS with data showing how it can fully utilize its schools to accommodate all students.

Six boundary analysis meetings will be held throughout the county this month and January 2020, allowing parents and students to learn about the analysis’ objectives as well as providing feedback.

This analysis, however, has caused parents to be concerned as possible boundary changes could result from the review, meaning their children will attend schools further from their homes. In more extreme cases, the family might have to move to a different home to accommodate their children’s school change.

The Board of Education recently approved boundary changes on Nov. 26 to address projected overcrowding at Clarksburg and Northwest high schools. Currently, Clarksburg and Northwest high schools are 438 and 338 seats overcapacity, respectively. A group of students from both schools will be relocated to Seneca Valley High School, currently being rebuilt to accommodate 2,581 students, which will become the largest high school in the state of Maryland. The school is scheduled to open September 2020.

Superintendent Jack Smith said in a media briefing last month that families would need to expect the possibility of boundary changes given the considerable increase of student enrollment, a statement echoed by MCPS spokeswoman Gboyinde Onijala.

“There is this misunderstanding in the community that your boundary would never change,” Onijala said. “That’s just not the reality of the situation given that we live in a county of a million-plus residents and it’s growing every year.”

The first of six boundary analysis meetings took place last Wednesday, where MCPS parent Sheila Griffith wanted to learn more about the review but walked out hoping the process was explained in further detail.

“They gave a lot of history about Montgomery County schools and that kind of seemed like it was a little bit too much, more than we really needed,” Griffith said. “There was some history there but they didn’t really go into when and how things have been redrawn in the past.”

Griffith currently has a son enrolled at Watkins Mill High School, within two miles of her home, a school that is not overcapacity. If the school were overutilized, though, Griffith said she’d still want her son to stay in the same school to avoid a longer commute to a different school.

“As a parent and resident of Montgomery County, I’d be really disappointed,” Griffith said. “I would prefer to have long lines in the cafeteria at Watkins Mill, closer to my house, than I would to either transport my son to another school, or through a bus. If your school is further away from you and you’re on teams or in activities after school, it’d just be that much later when you get home and that much later when you go to sleep.”

Five more boundary analysis meetings are scheduled throughout the county for parents and students to attend before WXY presents the Board of Education with a final report in June 2020. The schedule is as follows:

• Dec. 11, 7-9 p.m., Julius West Middle School (Rockville)
• Dec. 14, 10 a.m.-12 p.m., White Oak Middle School (Silver Spring)
• Jan. 7, 2020, 7-9 p.m., Walter Johnson High School (Bethesda)
• Jan. 11, 2020, 10 a.m.-12 p.m., Blair High School (Silver Spring)
• Jan. 14, 2020, 7-9 p.m., Northwest High School (Germantown)