A few years from now Wayside Elementary School will have a sparkling new two-story addition built onto the current school. A few years after that the whole school will be built anew, a shining example of modern technology and social consciousness. It will also be a painful reminder to some Potomac residents of a promise long since broken and forgotten.
The new, two-story, 18,351-square foot addition to the school will allow the school’s capacity to increase to 675, providing relief for a building that currently has 604 students in a space designed for 575, according to Montgomery County Public Schools statistics. The addition will be built with the latest, environmentally sound building techniques and will hold 10 classrooms and a computer cluster, said Mary O’Quinn of the Montgomery County Planning Board’s Development Review team. O’Quinn spoke during a hearing before the Planning Board on Thursday, July 19. The proposed extension will also serve as an anchor for the future modernization of the school, slated to be built in 2014, said O’Quinn.
The Planning Board approved the expansion plans at Thursday’s hearing, but not before it reflected on past events that have led to the overcrowding that exists in the school today.
“I REALIZE that what I’m about to tell you isn’t going to affect your decision, but it’s a story that needs to be told,” said Ginny Barnes, president of the West Montgomery County Citizens Association.
Barnes recounted that in the late 1980s, plans for the Willows of Potomac development near Travilah Road proposed to widen Glen Mill Road and the bridge on Glen Road. That plan also included busing the elementary school-aged children who lived in Willows of Potomac across the Glen to Wayside. The combined effect of widening the roads and of busing students across the Glen to Wayside would have been to make the Glen a shortcut between Travilah and Falls roads, Barnes said.
The West Montgomery County Citizens Association successfully sued the Planning Board to prevent that from happening, Barnes said. The group also made a presentation to the board that debunked the studies that the board’s staff had made to show the necessity of widening the roads through the Glen.
As a result of the group’s efforts, developers donated property to the county to be used as a future site of an elementary school on the north side of the Glen and prevent the need to bus students to Wayside.
“Then the school system decides to redistrict,” Barnes said. The redistricting made the area north of the Glen a part of the Wayside district, rendering the efforts of West Montgomery and Glen residents obsolete. The proposed school was never built, school buses began to traverse the Glen on a daily basis, and the effect can be seen every morning and afternoon during the school year, Barnes said.
“Now [traffic in] the Glen is horrible during the school season. If you want to go out at three in the afternoon, find another way because you can’t use Glen Road,” said Barnes, who lives on Glen Road.
“I WANT to say that Mrs. Barnes is completely correct,” said Jean Cryor a commissioner on the board and a resident of the Glen. Cryor described the scene at the intersection of Glen, South Glen, and Glen Mill roads as a “perfect storm” where buses squeeze across the narrow bridge and many drivers refuse to slow down to let them onto South Glen Road from Glen Road.
“It is a time of great courtesy and sensible responsibility,” Cryor said. “School buses don’t belong there, but where else can they go?”
Recollecting the history and venting her frustrations with the traffic situation in the Glen led Cryor to question if she could look at the matter objectively.
“Do I feel a sense of frustration? Yes, I certainly do,” Cryor said. “I don’t even know if I should vote on this, maybe I shouldn’t,” she said. Ultimately, Cryor voted with the rest of the board to approve the Wayside plans, and to send what Planning Board chairman Royce Hanson termed “a strong letter” to MCPS to look at ways to stop busing through the Glen.
“The school system needs to look at this,” said Planning Board commissioner Gene Lynch.
“I love my community and I love the Wayside school,” Cryor said. “I’m not against Wayside Elementary. What we’re talking about is the impact of this school’s growth on the area around it.”