In a democracy, the majority rules, but does that mean the minority shouldn’t get a vote? That may be what happened in the process of selecting an architect for the new Kendale Road Elementary School.
According to Board of Education rules, an architecture selection committee must be convened before an architect is commissioned to do a job. A firm, Walton, Madden, Cooper, Robinson, Poness Inc. had been selected by such a committee in July 2001 to perform design duties for a 10-room addition to the Seven Locks Elementary school, said James Song, director of the Division of Construction for MCPS.
The committee was made up of seven members, six of whom were MCPS employees (one has since left the school system) and one member who was in the Seven Locks PTA. (See Correction, This Week in Potomac)
Since then, the addition project has been scrapped and a new school is now in the works for what is currently a wooded site on Kendale Road, and the same architect has been appointed for that project.
Board of Education staff say that the new project is just something that the old project has changed into. "We don’t need another architect selection committee to extend the contract," said Joe Lavorgna, director of the MCPS Department of Planning and Capital Programming. "If a project changes scope, we don’t necessarily have to change architects. … As long as the professional is qualified to do either."
However, Song’s office did go through the process of contacting four members of the committee to gain approval to continue to use the same architect. All four members contacted were employees of MCPS. "Since it’s majority rules, we didn’t contact the others," Song said.
Throughout the planning process thus far, residents have complained that they have not had sufficient input into the various stages of the project. Members of the Board of Education and its staff point to the public hearings which have been held at both the Board of Education and the County Council and the numerous comments received at many board meeting as evidence that the community has had a voice.
Some community members say that the PTA member (who declined to comment for this story) should have been contacted, even if her vote could not have changed the outcome. It would have, at least, been a gauge. "In this situation, it would have served to alert us to where we were in the process," said Janis Sartucci, co-coordinator of the Churchill PTA.
ANOTHER STUDY also has some community members upset. During the planning process for any major school construction, a feasibility study is conducted. These studies assess whether or not it is possible, physically, to build the proposed structure in the allotted space. "An architect takes the site, looks at the topography. Is there [public] water? Is there sewer [service]? Is it possible?" said Lavorgna.
"There was a feasibility study done to see if it is feasible to put a school on the Kendale site," Lavorgna said. Many of the aspects of the Seven Locks study, such as the "Scope of Educational Program," are possible to transfer from the old site to the new one," said Lavorgna.
Feasibility studies also have committees, and the PTA representatives on the Seven Locks feasibility study were also not contacted during the Kendale study. No one at Potomac Elementary, which will send 150-200 of its students to the new school, was contacted either. "I’m going to call it a feasibility study without community input," Sartucci said.
Sartucci does not expect everyone involved in the project to reach consensus on the issue, she would just like to see the give and take which happens in a debate, and to ask some questions about the process. "We’re past the stage where we can ask these questions," she said. "I’m not saying it will make everybody happy, but that’s what a democracy is all about."