Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) is pushing back against community members’ criticism that it relied on flawed enrollment and student population growth projections in proposing to move Thomas S. Wootton High School from its Rockville building to the upcoming Crown High in Gaithersburg.

MCPS officials have pointed to declining enrollment and a need to address deteriorating as some reasons behind recommending the Wootton proposal and others concerning high school attendance zones as part of its ongoing boundary studies.

“We are showing that decline [in enrollment]. The numbers are getting us to that. And I know that that makes people nervous. They think our data is wrong,” MCPS Deputy Chief of Facilities Management Andrea Swiatocha told the county school board during a Tuesday meeting. “This is a big shift from where we have been over the last couple of decades. But based on all the information that we have and looking at the models, we think this is where we are headed.”

MCPS staff on Tuesday addressed concerns from those in the Wootton community who say that MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor’s Feb. 5  recommendation to permanently move Wootton High doesn’t incorporate growth planned for the area where the school is located.

The MCPS proposal calls for the school building at 2100 Wootton Parkway to be used as a holding school for other schools undergoing renovations or reconstruction if Wootton were to move. The school board is expected to vote March 26 on Taylor’s recommendation for Wootton and Crown as part of boundary studies to determine the attendance zones for Crown and the new Charles W. Woodward High School Rockville as well as other schools. The studies will also determine the attendance zone for Damascus High at 25921 Ridge Road, which is set to be expanded by 2031, according to MCPS staff.

Dozens of community members testified against the proposed move during school board hearings in recent weeks before Taylor presented his recommendation, including Rockville City Councilmember and Wootton parent Adam Van Grack. Members of the Wootton community have long advocated for renovations to the aging building that was erected in 1970.

Rockville City officials said in a Feb. 17 letter to MCPS that the district didn’t include two major planning documents adopted by the city in its growth projections.

“The first planning document that is missing is the Rockville 2040 Comprehensive Plan, adopted in 2021, and the Rockville Town Center Master Plan in 2025. Both documents reflect significant planned growth,” the letter said.

Others who have spoken publicly about their opposition include state Sen. Cheryl Kagan (D-17), who said during a Feb. 17 Senate Education, Energy, and the Environment (EEE) Committee meeting in Annapolis that Taylor’s recommendation was based on “bad data,” during a discussion about data and transparency, according to a video of the meeting.

During a Feb. 23 hearing on the boundary proposal, Van Grack said Kagan’s statement during the committee meeting “reflects a broader concern (and reputation) about MCPS’s projection accuracy and long-term forecasting.”

How does MCPS calculate student enrollment projections? 

The district uses a variety of data and estimates, including the number births in a given year and planning data concerning construction of new housing, according to the Tuesday meeting.

According to the Tuesday board meeting, the district considers a number of factors in calculating its projections, including the number of births in the county and the growth or decline of student enrollment from one grade to the next. Other data includes international student enrollment, the number of students participating in home schooling or private school and federal job losses.

The district also utilizes a “student generation rate,” defined by Montgomery Planning as “the average number of students living in a particular type of residential unit for a given geography. It is used to estimate the number of public school students expected to live in a residential development.”

“I think one of the misnomers and misunderstood pieces is that everything that is in development is … taken into our projections. Things take time. Development does not happen overnight,” Swiatocha told the board Tuesday. “ Without … either preliminary plan or site plan approval, we are unable to take [a development] into consideration.”

MCPS staff noted that construction of additional housing doesn’t always lead to increased enrollment in public schools. According to a staff presentation, the county added almost 16,000 housing units from 2019 to 2024, but saw MCPS enrollment drop by about 6,000 students.

“I think certainly the thing that we hear all the time is, like, well, more housing equals more students,” Swiatocha said. “That’s not always the case. And that’s certainly not what we are experiencing at this moment.”

Swiatocha said the district is aware that municipalities such as Rockville and Gaithersburg have created comprehensive master plans, but noted those plans are “visionary in nature” and don’t reflect approved development projects, limiting the amount of information about such factors as the number of planned housing units.

That means that MCPS enrollment projections don’t include housing that may be proposed but not approved by local governments, Swiatocha said.