Montgomery County considers closing schools as enrollment declines

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (7News) — Montgomery County Public Schools has announced that it will consider closing some elementary and middle schools in areas of the county with declining enrollment.

MCPS is the largest school system in Maryland, but its leaders said enrollment is falling for the first time in 40 years, which is why they will consider closing and consolidating some schools.

MCPS Acting Chief Operating Officer Andrea Swiatocha says the school system hit its highest enrollment numbers in 2019, when there were 165,000 students. Although final enrollment numbers for this school year aren’t expected to be made official until next week, Swiatocha estimates MCPS will have about 13,000 fewer students than it did in 2019.

“We don’t anticipate that those numbers are going to go back up for the foreseeable future,” she said.

“Some schools have more available space than they need, while other communities are still growing,” MCPS said in an announcement. “That means it’s time to take a thoughtful, countywide look at how we are using our schools and facilities, and plan for a better future for all students.”

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MCPS said after a series of public meetings, in February Superintendent Thomas Taylor plans to recommend which schools should close to the school board. The school board is then expected to make a final decision sometime next spring.

After the school board decides what to do, next school year MCPS plans to study the boundaries of elementary schools countywide and also study the boundaries of any middle schools affected by the potential closures.

Parents and community members who want to learn more and give opinions about possible elementary and middle school closures can do so at a series of meetings MCPS will hold starting next month. MCPS put out the following schedule for the meetings:

MCPS released a schedule of in-person and virtual meetings for parents to weigh in on plans for school consolidation in the district. (MCPS)

7News reached out to the Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County about the plan to potentially close middle and elementary schools, and they referred us to Angie Kronenberg with Save our Silver Spring Schools.

Kronenberg said she’s concerned about the social impact on students of closing schools, and she pointed to a Stanford University study released this year that found closing schools does not always actually help school districts save money.

“What tends to happen is that then you have to bus children to the schools where they have been placed, and that causes costs to increase for the school district,” she said. “In addition to that, there’s the financial impact of losing children who would have enrolled, but now the parents have decided to pull their kids because they don’t want them to go to the school where they’ve been placed.”

When enrollment drops, school systems lose funding.

“I think it’s really important for people to understand, there’s just a base cost for us to run a facility,” Swiatocha said when 7News asked whether closing schools would actually save MCPS money. “Not just the transportation piece, but the utility piece, the principal, the basic staff, building service, the maintenance.”

Swiatocha said there is no guarantee at this point that MCPS will close any elementary or middle schools.

“I think it’s too early to say. We need to go through this process, hear what the community has to say,” she said.