The Montgomery County (Maryland) school district plans to ask the county for $2.7 billion to address facility needs as part of its six-year capital improvements program.
Bethesda Today reports that the $2.7 billion proposal is about $2.5 billion less than the $5.15 billion the district needs to address all of its facility needs, Montgomery County Superintendent Thomas Taylor says.
“We have a lot of infrastructure work that has been left and been ignored … . It took us two decades to get into this mess,” Taylor says. “It is going to take us two decades to get out of this mess.”
Taylor says the proposal reflects several new strategies to address infrastructure needs. Those include using data to prioritize projects, growing investments over time, building more “modest” school buildings and rebuilding schools when needed instead of planning partial projects.
Many school communities have long complained about issues within buildings, including dead mice and crumbling auditorium ceilings at Col. Zadok Magruder High School in Rockville, extreme temperatures and mold at A. Mario Loiederman Middle School in Silver Spring, continuous delayed construction projects at Silver Spring International Middle and Highland View Elementary School in Silver Spring, and pests, mold and air quality concerns in the Carver Educational Services Center (CESC) in Rockville.
“Our facility condition is, in fact, declining,” Taylor says. “The sad part about this [is] it’s just not declining, but it’s getting worse and worse and worse every year, because the gap in resources we have to fill is continuing to widen each year.”
Taylor said the district has employed a strategy that includes postponing projects, “sprinkling” some short-term “fixes” or small renovations among schools instead of replacing them and reducing investment in capital projects over the past several years.
Instead, the superintendent suggested new strategies such as growing investments over time, rebuilding schools instead of adding on to them, prioritizing projects based on data, and creating more modest school buildings.
