SPRAWL’S IMPACT: FROM CORNFIELDS TO CLASSROOMS

By Chuck Young

Typically when most people think of the impacts of sprawl and breakneck growth, they think of the loss of open spaces, from forests and streams to cornfields and cow’s barns. Or they may think of the pollution which more cars and more development will spew into our air, bringing more asthma and code red days.

Add to these critical quality of life issues another quality of life issue that doesn’t get enough attention when it comes to sprawl: the impact on education.

Many people move to Montgomery County or stay in Montgomery County because of the excellent school system we enjoy here. Even for those without children in the schools, the value of their home is frequently related to how much value potential buyers place in each neighborhood’s public schools.

But without fighting to protect it, that excellent school system can disappear as quickly as an open field. And our schools are definitely feeling the pressure.

Montgomery County now has the 11^th fastest-growing school district in the nation. And while some of that is driven by the birthrate, it is also driven by more and more residential development with little planning for how many children we will ultimately pack into our classrooms.

The Planning Board and County Council approve new plans, zone changes, and regional master plans with a new residential development here, and another one there, and no one is adequately tallying up how many children will live in all these new developments together. No one tallies the impact on each particular school from TOTAL development in one school cluster. And all this is happening at the same time the system faces a budget crisis and cannot handle the current student population.

Before we even consider the future, look at the present: 600 portable classrooms – essentially trailers – warehousing children all over the county because we don’t have the space for them. The situation has gotten so bad the County Council last year even approved money for porta-potties to go with some of these trailers.

And the county annual growth policy – the one that is supposed to limit growth when a school cluster is overcrowded – has loopholes big enough to drive some of these trailers through. It essentially allows one school cluster, if it becomes overcrowded, to “borrow” space from a neighboring cluster. The theory is lines will be redrawn to accommodate new growth. The reality is parents don’t want their kids reshuffled every time a new development goes up. Who can blame them? So we just keep building more developments and packing more children in.

This might be fine if we were also putting money into capital construction costs for the schools to keep up with the growth. But in fact, capital plans keep getting postponed and the capital budget is the first to be targeted in tough economic times. Montgomery County identified $18.5 million in school construction projects money needed this year from the state. It got just $2 million.

The Superintendent has been implementing great programs to reduce class size and have all-day kindergarten. But to fully implement such programs you also need the teachers and the physical space to hold classes – putting even more pressure on the need to invest in school infrastructure.

Some argue this school population growth is driven more by multiple families living in single-family dwellings, mostly down-county, and not new development. Tell it to the people in Germantown! That is where some of our worst school overcrowding exists and one can merely drive through the area to see that it is the new developments that are driving this increase.

In fact, were we to have a stricter annual growth policy rather than the current loophole-ridden one, the school clusters which would be forced to limit growth would be largely up-county.

Under the “Go Montgomery” plan, millions in new revenue - from gas taxes, to property taxes, to a new car tax - would be raised in the coming years, but 100% of the money would be used for transportation and not a dime of it for education. If the schools continue to be ignored, people will be driving on those new roads right out of Montgomery County -- and seeking a better quality of life elsewhere.