Board of Education - Joint Meeting with the Montgomery County Planning Board - 3/5/26

001We got to do that. >> Okay, we're going to get >> Good evening. Can you hear me? Okay. Okay. Yeah. Good evening everyone and welcome to the joint planning board of education meeting. We're so delighted to have everyone this evening. I'm Arty Harris and I'm chair of the Montgomery County Planning Board. Uh for those that may not be so familiar with the planning board. The board is a five member body established to manage physical growth, plan communities, and protect the and steward natural, cultural, and historic resources. Personally, I'm a longtime resident of McGomery County over 25 years and my family has had the opportunity to benefit from the amazing opportunities provided by McGomery County Public Schools, including our kids going to Rolling Terrace, Piner Crest, Tacoma Middle, and Blair. And I wanted just to take

002a moment to thank all the teachers, staff, administrators, and the board for your commitment to our youth. It's a long-standing tradition for our two boards to meet on an annual basis to collaborate and coordinate together. I know our teams have prepared a full agenda for this evening and I look forward to hearing their updates and highlighting opportunities. Let me pass the mic to the school board president Grace Rivera oven to share some opening remarks. Thank you. >> Thank you so much Arty. Can you hear me? Okay. Um it's really a pleasure. We actually look forward to this meeting. Uh thank you so much for the nice dinner before that and and just the friendship you know as these are very heavy times with work. We appreciate when we can actually get together with colleagues. So

003um I also like Arty uh have a very local connection. I grew up in the city of Gaseesburg and uh my kids are also you know graduates of MCPS and I hope that my grandchildren one day uh like Mitra's grandchildren will be part of MCPS. So as we um so as we continue to navigate this um everchanging world of us um I really appreciate the ongoing collaboration uh between the Montgomery County uh planning board. Uh it's more critical than ever to be able to do that and we truly value this opportunity um to work with all of you. Uh tonight's presentation highlights how deeply our work is connected. The infrastructure work group which includes staff from MCPS and the county planning board speaks to that. It also underscores that MCPS faces unique operational challenges that

004require tailor solutions. While MCPS has a distinct responsibility to serve our students um of Montgomery County, we also recognize the fulfilling that responsibility requires very strong friendly ongoing collaboration between our um both agencies. So with that, I just want to say again, thank you and I look forward to our discussion tonight. And I just want to thank your members for being here and the members from um from my board uh my colleagues for being here as well and for Dr. Taylor for being here. So thank you. >> So I I turn it over to Lisa Gavoni. I think we're next is a uh infrastructure work group update. >> Thank you. Good evening everyone. My name is Lisa Gooni. I'm the policy supervisor with our design placemaking and policy division. I want to give a very

005brief update on the infrastructure funding work group. It's a really exciting uh unique work group that I'm joined by MCPS staff Andrea as well as our parks colleagues who have we've been meeting since the summer and I'm here to give you know a very brief update but I look forward to next year when we can talk about the recommendations from the infrastructure funding work group. So in March of 2025, the council adopted a resolution to create an infrastructure funding work group. The idea for the resolution came out of the growth and infrastructure policy and the subsequent go committee recommendations from the county council which acknowledge a need to identify stable reliable funding sources for schools, transportations and parks. The current impact tax system provides funding for schools and transportation, but raises concerns about the effects

006on growth, economic development, and how those funds are utilized. The work group is tasked with proposing new funding mechanisms that address infrastructure needs in the county, including a review of equity, predictability, and sustainability for recommended funding mechanisms. And this is all done with the hope of not undermining other county priorities such as housing, climate resiliencies, and economic development. The group has already started to conduct stakeholder outreach and will continue to do so and must submit a report to the council by June 30th of 2026. So just a brief summary of what we've been doing since August. So we've developed an approach for outreach and conducted stakeholder outreach. We've gathered and discussed the stakeholder input. We've collected, refined, and reviewed infrastructure costs and needs. Discussed and drafted categorization for infrastructure costs. Reviewed and discussed other jurisdictions

007approach to funding. Held initial discussing discussions on funding mechanisms. And last week, there was a briefing on the go committee of progress up to date. So just very briefly some of the discussions that we've been having with the work group. Um there's been a lot of discussion about the county's infrastructure funding is now focused a lot on plan life cycle asset replacement, maintenance and renovations and upgrades. This largely has to do with slowing population and enrollment growth, competing policy decisions, the reality of infill and green field development, the results of growing and building for many decades. We've also talked a lot about the county's capital budget and how it's composed of multiple funding sources and this and having a variety of sources helps stabilize the capital budget. External funding, especially from federal or state levels,

008plays a key role in supporting new capacity projects. The funding for the capital budget is affected by economic factors like impact and recordation taxes as well as policy choices related to current revenue. And then of course, as we all know well, the construction costs in the in the county as sorry and as well as the country are rising annually. Both inflation and market forces are driving up costs and expenses related to planning, design, and oversight contribute to higher total project costs. Infield development, which is what the county is primarily seeing, tends to be more costly overall than greenfield development, which is when you're developing on things like farms and uh it's the more easier type of development. And so some of the initial funding sources that we've been talking about um and again, these are

009just things that we've been talking about. We have no recommendations yet, but we've talked a lot about using, you know, current revenue to help fund infrastructure, paying for infrastructure projects out of money the government already collects a year. There's also the current impact tax system. The current system is a it's a one-time charge imposed by the county on new development to help pay for the infrastructure needed for needed because of that growth. We've also talked about an excise tax on square footage. Um this is closely similar to impact taxes but it would be based on square footage instead of a flat fee. We've talked about at Lauriam real property tax um is which is would be a reoccurring annual tax on land and buildings calculated as a percentage of property's assessed value. Um, we've talked

010about special taxing districts, which is, you know, a defined geographic area that can levy additional tax to pay for specific infrastructure improvements. Development districts, you may have heard, um, the county had passed a tax increment financing district last week in Viva White Oak. So, something similar to that could also be something that utilized. And then sales tax, which is not something the county has an authority for right now, but we could dedicate if given the authority by the state, we could dedicate some sales tax revenue to help fund for public infrastructure. And so the next steps for the infrastructure funding work group is we need to finalize the findings to help uh finish the report um and discuss and finalize these recommendations on revenue options including the impacts to equity, predictability and sustainability. Solicit feedback

011from stakeholders both public and the private sector about finding and recommendations on revenue options. And then also incorporate this feedback and finalize the report by June 30th, 2026. I'm going to turn it over to Miss Becky. Oh, >> are there any questions? I'm sorry. >> Is this how this works? Yeah. >> Yes. >> Questions? >> I noticed you did not mention um income tax. Would that be under current revenue? I don't Andrea, do you I don't I don't I don't think we've talked about income tax, but that's something that I could take back to the group that we could discuss. >> I was just curious because that is a another revenue source. So if there are no um other questions, we'll move on to the next um part of our agenda um which is um

012enrollment projections and student generation rates. Um so on the planning side, we've created a few slides that are meant to be an addition to um a basic package of MCPS's slides that were shown at the board work session um this past Tuesday. Um but our slides have gotten in front of MCPS's slides. So I'll try my best to sort of con you know put it in context before seeing um the main part of the presentation. But um so I mean to begin with um >> I think I think yeah yeah >> okay so um to begin with um you know one one thing that um becomes pretty important in understanding enrollment projections that um MCPS would be going over pretty soon is um what is called student generation rates. Um it seems to be a

013very mystical term for many people causes a lot of misunderstandings of um you know what is being said what is going on but um to put it basically a student generation rate is the average number of students living in a housing unit and it's calculated by dividing the number of students in a certain group by the number of residential units in that certain group. There are multiple different ways to calculate it. Although there's one formula because you can group these students and housing units in different ways. Um but um before we go into that um in Montgomery County um since 20 14 um we have been um collaborating together with um planning has been collaborating with MCPS to share data. Um, and so we are not using samples to estimate student generation rates based on

014how we perceive, you know, how many students would be or should be coming from um, a certain housing type. We use MCPS's actual enrollment data with the grade level um, school and address of every MCPS student enrolled um, in their official enrollment. and we um match those addresses um to a housing database that planning has. And when we match that, we are able to determine what type of housing unit each student is tied to. Um from there on, we're able to calculate a countywide average of students living in single family detached homes, single family attached homes, multif family lowrises, and multif family highrises. um to um the illustration here shows a good example. Let's say we um got the address of three students and when we um put them down to a address that we

015have on our housing database, it tied them to two single family detached units of a group that we have four units of. So we'll then calculate, okay, we have three students living in single family detached homes and we have four single family homes. we simply divide three by four and get a student generation rate of 0.75. This is a completely hypothetical number created to um illustrate this. Um so if that is understood um to go to the next level of understanding of how student generation rates can be used um when we have hundreds of thousands of addresses, hundreds of thousand over a 100,000 um students um we rarely use the countywide numbers for different purposes. we group them into different geographies. So we will have student generation rates of different geographies. Um to I mean

016a basic example could be um I guess to get everyone's attention here. Um earlier you know we had I' I've heard some people saying I have this many um MCPS students. Let's say um each person sitting here, let's just assume is a single family home and the number of students in the system that each person has is the students tied to a single family home address. Um if we we will have one number for everyone sitting here. But we can group these numbers differently. So everyone sitting on that table is one group. So we'll divide the number of students that people in that table have by the number of people there. And we can divide the number of people the number of students that people have on this side of the table with the number

017of people we have here. And then we can divide the number of students that people have over there with the number of people over there. That will give us different numbers than the countywide average. Um and depending on how we cut and split this the numbers can be drastically different. So that is to um go on to say that currently Montgomery planning calculates two different sets of student generation rates. The first one is the Montgomery planning what we call official student generation rates. Um we are required to calculate these this every other year to um calculate impact tax rates but we use those same rates to estimate the enrollment impact from development applications and master plan recommendations um for the geography. So the geographies are usually what we use as groups. I exemplified that by

018tables here, but you know for for our official rates, we divide the county into different areas. Our growth and infrastructure policy determines which area is what. We have the county classified into infill impact areas and turnover impact areas. An infill impact area is um where we are seeing high growth in residential units but mostly in multif family um structures. A turnover impact area is where we are seeing low growth in residential units and the housing context is mostly single family. We do have a category for green field impact areas. We where we um are expecting high um I'll have to I'll have to um add in. So high growth means high growth potential because this is we are um looking at the future. Um but so green field impact areas is where there is high

019growth potential mostly in single family units. Currently the GIP does not classify any of the areas as green field. We only have infill impact areas and um turnover impact areas. So for the planning department's official student generation rates, we group students the addresses into infill impact area and turnover impact area. And then we um use the four different housing types. One thing to um make clear here is that for the planning's official student generation rates, we exclude multif family structures, multif family units and structures that were built before 1990 because after um thorough analysis um across several years, we have seen that there is a substantial difference in the um student generation rates of structures built before and after 1990. Um there are slight variations in the student generation rates itself over time that we've

020seen but the substantial difference has still remained around 1990. So we are monitoring the cutoff year but for for now we are excluding any structure built before 1990. Um there's another set of student generation rates that planning calculates. Um this is purely for MCPS um to use for the enrollment projections. Their geography the way they group students is high school clusters and for their enrollment projections they um use all housing units which includes multif family units built before 1990. Um so we will have drastically we will see drastically different um student generation rates across the different sets that we calculate. On planning side we have eight rates, two different geographies, four different housing types. For MCPS it's a lot more because each each high school service area has their own student generation rate per housing

021type. for MCPS student generation rate. Uh the formula you use uh how often do you update it or is it annually by annually or or every other year or how often do you update it? >> I am able to calculate it every year. I rely on MCPS's request. Um so it had it's um every other year. Andrea is saying um I mean one thing to clarify the MCPS student generation rates are calculated at the planning department partially because we already have to do it to calculate our official student generation rates but this is done for MCPS at their request in their preferred method. Um so it is best answered um from MCPS um staff. >> Historically we've done it every other year. That is certainly something we can look at as Jesu was saying like

022we could do it every year. Not a lot has changed from every other year. Um but that's something we can certainly look at if we want to change the frequency of it. >> Okay, understand. >> Okay. So this next slide shows a more concrete example of the rates that we were just talking about. the map on the left um if you look at the brown versus blue areas shows plannings two different impact areas. Everything in blue is an infill impact area which um includes downtown Bethesda, downtown Silver Spring, the more urban areas where you know we we see a lot of um multif family housing growth um going on. And then the blue, I'm sorry, the black outlines are showing MCPS's high school cluster service areas. Um, and there are a couple highlighted, one in

023um, pink hatches um, that are a bit sparer than the other and one in purple hatches that are pretty close to each other. That is just to um, show the example that um, we've pulled out to explain. So if you go to the right side um from Montgomery planning's student generation rates um again we only calculate um for structures built 1990 or later if you look at the multif family high highrise infill impact area rate for high school students it is 020 we can compare that to um Bethesda Chvy Chase high school cluster service area under the orange line um picked Bethesa Chvy Chase because more than 50% of their multif family high-rise stock was built um 1990 and later. So it is closer to planning's official rates. Their rate for high school students is

0240.027 slightly higher but not too far off. Um we'll also look at multif family lowrise turnover impact areas for Montgomery County um official rates. Um this was calculated based on all the multif family units built 1990 or later in the brown areas and the rate is 083 quite much higher than the multif family high-rise units in infill impact areas. So there is a difference. Planning would often interpret the difference. Um and sometimes people may misunderstand that as planning decided to use this number because that is what they think. It is the opposite. We calculate the numbers and then usually try to find reasons behind that. >> If if I could uh Jason Sartorii, planning director for the record. Um I just for people who are watching at home too I just want to put this

025into terms that everyone can understand that 002 means two students on average generated per 100 units in a multif family high-rise in the infill impact area. So two per 100 units. The 083 means that you see 8.3 students on average for every 100. So just to kind of put it in terms of what what those numbers actually mean. And that's again on average for the type of unit and the geography that was identified. >> Thank you. Yeah. And one more. >> Can I ask a quick question on that? So then if I if I may, when you do the calculator for MCPS all units regardless of year the 0027 like can can you give us an example? So I mean like if you have 5,000 units or five, you know, 5,000 homes built in that

026area, you divide by >> by one. >> Well, so yeah. So actually to keep it simple, we'll do 1,000 units. >> Okay. Let's do that. I just >> So with Yeah. with with that what you're seeing here and I I don't want to steal Jesus's thunder, but essentially what what we're looking at there uh is multif family high-rise in the BCC cluster. And keeping in mind that that at MCPS's request, this includes all >> apartments high-rise, so even those built before 1990. >> Okay. >> Um so what you're seeing is 027. That means on average 1,000 units of high-rise in the BCC cluster generate 27 students. >> 1,000 units 27. And and this is not an I want to clarify again, this is not an estimate. It's not a guess. This is based on actual

027enrollment data that we've pinpointed every single student to a structure. And in the BCC cluster, on average, there are 27 students coming out of every 10,00 units in multif family highrises. >> And across from the 13th grades, like it could be from preK through 12th grade. >> Yes. That is >> this currently is showing high school. Just the high school. >> Just high school. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> That particular one. Okay. Yeah. I just thank you for for and then if we look at this map, could it be safe to say that a lot of the growth in this map is mainly to the east? >> H >> East of 270. Sorry. >> No, it's about >> the question of the growth where the growth is. Is it mainly to the east of 270?

028I'm looking at at that map. >> It's more blue, >> right? >> So, what is this area? What's this area? >> That's Gaithersburg. >> Yeah. >> And then the higher blue would be German Town. >> Oh. Uh, one one um thing, the big blue um circle in the middle is the city of Gaithersburg. Okay. Uh they have requested to be placed in one um impact area together. Okay. >> But so this is not showing growth. It's just showing like >> right this is not just showing growth but it's showing >> why don't you talk about >> where the building is >> but where their buildings are. So >> they so is it valuable for us to understand why there is a 1990 >> cut off? Question. We have um so planning has been analyzing the

029student generation rates of multif family homes by the decade they were have been built. Um and we have continuously seen a substantial difference between this units and structures that were built before 1990 and 1990 and later. We will often provide our best judgment on why that might be the case. But I think that often turns into a misunderstanding of planning thinks this is why students are aren't coming from units built 1990 or later. That is not the case. We are seeing the ch difference in numbers and using that as a cutoff again only for the multi Montgomery planning's official rates because our rates are the main purpose of our rates is to determine how much impact tax each developer should pay based on their pro rata share of um school infrastructure that would be needed

030to accommodate the project. So using that um logic, we're saying newer units being built since 1990 are pretty much a different housing species than units built before. But for M Montgomery County, I mean MCPS at their request, we are including all units. >> So actually W projection is low. >> Correct. sell. >> So, so in another word because we include the 1990s building prior and then we I we are projection is generous is like projecting a little >> correct. We are being more conservative and likely overestimating. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> And the last example that I haven't reached to yet will um show that um drastic difference. Um, one thing to just um, make clear before we go over is that the um, MCPS rates were um, last year based on last year's um,

031enrollment um, the newer rates um, haven't been calculated yet. Um, but um, if we look at the multif family lowrise um, student generation rates for Springbrook High School um, if you look at the um, cluster service area, it is entirely in a turnover impact area. I mean considered a turnover impact area and 90% of their multif family low-rise units have been built before 1990. Only 10. >> Can you say that again? Can you just say that again? >> 90% of the multif family low-rise units that we find in the Spring Brook High School cluster area were built before 1990. So when we look at their student generation rate, it is multiple multiple multiple times higher >> than the other rates we are looking at. So that explains a um that explains partially why Montgomery County

032does not include that those structures in our rates cuz newer buildings new newly built buildings are less likely to produce the same number of students. We can't say they would never do which is why we keep monitoring. So older buildings before 1990 produce more students, >> a lot more students most of the time. >> It's true. >> Okay. And >> part of Yeah. Part of why we've seen that. So I will say when we were updating the growth and infrastructure policy, our adequate public facilities ordinance in in 2020, we wanted to get a a firm understanding of what was generating students. And so we did a bunch of different analyses. We looked at it by year, by different housing types. We looked at it um how in neighborhoods uh how long it's been since uh

033the average age of the since the last transaction of sales. You know, like we looked at a bunch of different ways. And one of the interesting things we found was that the multif family rates were significantly higher pre in in units that were built pre190. And what we've you've given some thoughts why might that be? A lot of those are tend to be more garden style apartments. They're are larger apartments. They have fewer amenities, so they're more affordable. You know, when you get to around 1990, we started seeing smaller units that were maybe a little bit less familyfriendly, uh, and have more amenities. They're more expensive, and that is more consistent with the type of development we're still seeing today. And so for our purposes where again, we use these our student generation rates for

034generally two reasons. One is to estimate the impact of a new development application. How many students do we think this project to build x number of units is going to generate and to estimate the impact of the recommendations that we put into our master plans. And so when we're trying to estimate new development, we wanted to use numbers that were most consistent with what we're currently seeing. So that's why we chose to not include the pre990. >> So I have a follow-up question to that. So in your calculation we know that we have a lot of senior living communities and and that is the fastest growing uh population. So in your calculation of our areas student generation rate do you exclude senior living communities? >> Correct. So senior housing units um are completely excluded from

035our student generation rate housing database. So that doesn't mean there aren't any students living in these senior house housing units, but the housing unit itself is excluded. So those students are excluded as well. Sometimes you will see student addresses tied to commercial um properties. Those um are again excluded um because we do not calculate student generation rates for commercial properties. It's also I would think it's the most the smallest percentage you probably have, >> right? Because the apartments that we're talking about are bigger and more affordable. So, it makes >> at least it makes sense. That's >> Yes. And and if we included those because we do have a significant number of senior housing in the county and if we ones that are age restricted, I don't just if you're a senior living in a

036house, we're not checking that. Yeah. Um >> what I'm Yeah. Right. Yes. >> I would be very concerned if we have students and then we would be doing something wrong if they still enroll. >> No. So if but if we included those thousands and thousands of units it would bring all of the numbers down in a way. So we've said we're not going to include we're only looking at the you know the ones that we need to use student generation rates for which if we have a senior housing project that comes before us we're not estimating students for that one anyway. Yeah. >> Yes. Um just to um add a bit more um to um I guess verify the data that I'm data I usually look at the number of students that are being excluded

037um and it is you know I don't verify exactly why they were excluded excluded I see you they have been excluded and the number is very small. >> Thank you. Okay. So next we're moving on to a slightly different topic. Um this is the um student generation rate analysis. This will consider an alternative student generation analysis because we do not use these rates um in itself for any purpose. We were just trying to understand um different trends going on in the county. Um so we decided to look at um what is often overlooked but existing homes, existing single family homes and what the sales of that might be doing to our to our enrollment. We have um about 400,000 exist existing um residential units in the county. Um over 250,000 of them are single family

038homes. Um and in most people's mind the enrollment coming from those units are constant. So we did um an analysis of single family home student generation rates of existing homes single family detached unattached homes based on the year they were last sold. So if you look at the graph up here um the blue bars show the student generation rate. So the average number of students coming from single family homes sold by the number of years it has been since it was last sold. The first bar shows less than one year and then it's one year, two year, all the way out to 24 years. There are more bars, but we're only showing up to 24 years. The red bar running through the middle shows the average rate of every single family home. So, it in

039it includes all the homes shown in these blue bars and the homes that we cut off because they were sold more than 25 24 25 years ago. So the average countywide rate for every single family home is 0452 was 0452 when we did this. This is this is slightly you know outdated. It's been a few years ago but again these rates in themselves we are not using it. It's just to illustrate um what we're seeing. But when we look at each blue bar, starting at year one since the home was last sold, those homes are already producing more students than the countywide average. And it keeps increasing up until the seventh or eighth year since the home was last sold. Up until maybe the 15th year, we are still producing a lot more students. Um

040and then it suddenly starts dipping down pretty rapidly way below with the countywide average. So this is the power of the existing single family homes. The 250 over 250,000 single family homes are not producing the same amount of students every year based on how many homes have been sold. especially when it comes down to a smaller um smaller geography that we're looking at. There could be a lot of wild things that might seem to be happening if we're only looking at enrollment from development. If the pattern is going the same way as development growth, then the power from the existing housing sales is going to augment the enrollment growth that people are experiencing and they will be looking at the development and thinking there's too much development going on in this area. A lot of

041times it can be explained by the amount of houses, existing homes that have been sold near the development that is happening. But at the same time, if you wait a few more years, you can see a perfectly fine neighborhood suddenly losing um students in the system. What is likely happening is the turnover has been slowing down and students are graduating. Um so if we look at a um example of that um we found the average housing distribution of an MCPS elementary school service area turned out to be um 22 about 2200 multif family units a mix of low-rise high-rise um and built before 1990 or after 1990. Regardless, when we um used the student generation rates we know of those housing unit types, we could say there's going to be about 200 elementary school students

042from multif family units. The one thing about multif family student generation rates, they don't fluctuate as much as single family homes based on the number of years it was sold or built. Um the planning's interpretation of that is probably because the turnover of households and families within a multif family unit which are mostly rental is probably more frequent frequent. So when a student a family with a student moves in and then leaves the property, it's probably followed by another family with a student. So, we're probably not seeing fluctuating title patterns um based on based on years um since a unit was sold or built. But single family homes again has that and an average MCPS elementary school service area again has about 2,000 single family units. If we use the countywide average um of student

043generation rates for single family units, we can say there's about 380 students that would be coming from those 2,000 units in an average year throughout the life of those units of that service area. And this is the logic that planning uses um to apply to development um applications. We're not um we're not charging based on a certain year, not five years later, not 10 years later. We're saying throughout the average year of the life of the unit, this is how many students that the unit should be um producing. Um, but when we follow the title pattern of the student generation rates we just saw, we could say, let's assume that all 2,000 single family units were built within were sold within a 10-year time frame. The first 10 years, students are going to continue increasing.

044The number of students are going to continue increasing from those single family homes to reach about 650 students. Um, and that number will stay steady for about another five years. Um, one example of where we're see where MCPS is seeing this right now is Cabin Branch Elementary School. A lot of new development. A lot of homes are still being sold. Their their enrollment is still increasing rapidly. But if you wait just five more years, we saw the title pattern dipping. then the enrollment will start dipping as well. So if we apply those student generation rates we saw in the graph in the next five years. So maybe in 20 years um the enrollment can drop to 370 from 650 students. In another 5 years that number can come down to 200. So, in the same

045neighborhood that had 650 students coming from 2,000 units, the same neighborhood can only have 200 students with no other explanation than this pattern. Um this is happening as well in the Clarksburg area um in Snowden Farm and Wilson Women's Elementary School service areas where most of the service areas were built most of the homes in the service areas were built around the same time frame and sold around the same time frame >> and the students are graduating >> and the enrollment is um dropping. I question uh one one number you mentioned at the beginning of this uh portion you talk about what is the total number of housing units and what is the number of the single family housing unit. Can you repeat those two numbers >> the countywide? Yeah. >> So about 400,000 units

046are in our student generation housing database. >> Okay. >> Which again excludes senior units. >> Um >> Okay. and I'm basing off my memory. 256,000 plus of those were single family units. >> Okay. Thank you. >> My question is on um something you said about development and turnover happening at the same time. So you have this extra bump, right? And sometimes people assume it's just development, but it's actually turnover as well. Um, how often does that scenario happen? Um, does that happen more often or less often? Do you ever have >> I can show you the next slide that >> Okay, thank you. So every year um planning when planning staff brings the annual school test to the planning board um we complement um this test with what's called a school utilization report and we

047include a housing analysis um of school service areas. One of that um is the high school service areas. We do it from middle school and elementary school too. But just for illustrative purposes, just to explain what, you know, we can see might be explaining things that are often overlooked, I brought in the 2024 housing analysis. And if you look at the far left, um, it says Walter Johnson High School. So the graphs on the top, we we're seeing three different bar graphs here. This is not a weird type of graph. It's three different bar graphs. So the top bar graph shows the number of housing units that were sold, the number of single family housing units that were sold in each high school cluster area. The middle bar is showing the number of new units,

048the number of housing units. The dark, the brown is showing multif family units. The yellow on the bottom that shows up on some cluster areas are showing the single family units, which includes tear down rebuilds. So those are debatable whether they're new units or not, but when they're captured as new units, they're captured in the housing analysis. Um, and the bottom graph is showing the total number of dwelling units. Again, dark the brown is multif family units. Um, the dark yellow is um, single family units. And we have lined them up by the number of units sold in each cluster area. And Walter Johnson tops the list with the most housing units sold. Someone could be thinking, well, they have a lot of development going on, so they're selling a lot of homes, too. But

049if you look at the numbers, um, it's okay. I think Walter Johnson at the single family um, sales is over 500 units sold. If you come, these are single family detached unattached units. If you com compare that to the middle graph just underneath the yellow part of it, the yellow part is showing the number of those that are considered new units whether it was a tear down or truly a new single family development. That is maybe 50 at the most. So the five over 500 um sales of single family homes we could pretty safely say is unlikely to be all new homes developed in the cluster area. So people are feeling the enrollment growth and looking at the development there is a large number they do have the largest number of multif family units built

050at the same time. If you look at the brown bar, that is the most in the county as well. But what is not as obvious is the number of housing sales that is going on there >> that is overthrowing the numbers um in the enrollment change. Mhm. >> So I'm I'm trying to understand all this but um recently one of the things that um we are constantly thinking is about about is municipal datas, >> right? We have the county data and then we have municipality that have data. How do you incorporate or uh municipal data or prepare municipal data? Uh can you enuminate? >> Uh for the housing data, I guess one thing to um make note of is we use um the state as the base data set. We rely on the state department

051of assessment and taxations property records um which does a pretty regular update on it but the um data is not always perfect for our purposes. So, we QC them through multiple different sources um including Co-Star, um DHCA, um sometimes even rental retail real estate listings like apartments.com um to to clean up the data. So whether it's part of a municipality or the county, it's going through the same process cuz we're getting our base data from the state and the other data sources we're relying on does does not differ for um they're treating they're they're giving the same data to us. >> Okay. But they all incorporated they all included in >> correct correct >> projections. Okay. >> Correct. Well, just to to clarify in everything that we've seen so far, so these housing sales, the

052housing counts, the calculation of the student generation rates, that includes the complete housing set for the entire county, the municipalities and the unincorporated parts of the county as well. Yeah. >> Great. Good evening everyone. I'm going to take us through sort of a complimentary set of this. These are very familiar slides to our board of education as they are repeat slides from a very long work session with them on Tuesday. Um so I think partially also for the the planning board for you all. Um I have a clicker. Hey Sue, sorry. Thank you. And this is just a subset. We did several more slides and they're posted on our board docs um for the public to see. So I just took a few of those. One of the things that we have been sharing with

053our board and our community as we have been undergoing two big boundary studies right now which I will share an update on in the next section. Um we've been talking a lot about you know how is enrollment projected? Um and Jesu I think set a wonderful stage to sort of understand specifically the student generation rates and we appreciate the collaboration constantly with planning. Um wanted to just sort of walk everyone through a three-step process. We start with cohort survival and I'll explain a little bit more about what some of this means. We consider resident live births, student generation rates, everything we just discussed. Um, and also take into account economic and migration factors. Then we also layer in data from Montgomery planning which includes, as we just talked about, the municipalities and the housing pipeline

054data. And then finally, really specific to MCPS, we consider impacts on special programming. Um, so that's sort of the three-step process that we do. it's very much integrated and layered in with the planning information. That's an integral part um of our process. So, wanted to just highlight some of the enrollment factors that we are seeing um and that we're really starting to impact us. We are starting to to feel the decline in resident live births and this too is data from the state that we uh receive. This is one of the primary drivers for us as we look at our enrollment factors. And you know, we're starting to see that decline. It's been declining across the nation since 2007. Um, and I have a couple images that will show that here. Um, but there's been

055a really significant shift since 2014 where it was still over 13,000 live first for the year and the county to now under 11,000 in 2023. That's the latest year from the state. Uh there's other impacts as well. we are seeing an impact uh to our international student enrollment where between July and September of 2019 you know we had almost 2,800 students that same time period for 2025 we dropped to 1,200 students um and then just other factors you know taking into account housing affordability um and also exactly what Jes walked us through the enrollment uh you know change due to turnover housing um honestly you know impacts it um significantly Definitely more. So, I want to start with the resident uh live burst. This starts from 2000 shows that we were on and certainly prior

056and into the '9s on a very steady increase like everyone else in this country. Uh and then we get to 2007 where we hit the peak of 13,843 live births in the county. And since then there's been, you know, a slight increase um in 2014, but we've been on a a slow decline. and it was slower for a few years. Um, and then we have seen a more dramatic drop over the last several years and that we are really starting, you know, it takes a little bit for those students to come in, right, for our kindergarteners to hit 5 years later, but we are really starting to see that in our enrollment. A few other factors uh that we take into consideration are the net withdrawal for students to homeschooling and to private school. And

057I want to be clear that this um table is representing the net withdrawal. There are more students, you know, we receive students from homeschooling uh students leave as well, but this just shows the last uh four fiscal years and what that overall impact is from both homeschool and private. Um and then certainly, you know, like many other school districts in this area, feeling the overall impact of the federal job loss and relocation cohort survival. Um, this is a well-known uh term when it comes to school enrollment planning. It is what a lot of school districts use to help produce their enrollment projections. Sort of in basic terms, the cohort survival is an average growth or decline from one grade to the next over a period of time. Uh, so we put together a sample table

058to really show an elementary school. And the diagonals as you walk through it, you know, let's start with the light pink or peach color. um you know they show we show the 85 students in kindergarten and as they work their way through first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade um we might see a slight increase, a slight decrease. We are constantly looking at a three-year average is the most common that we use, but we also track a 5-year average and a 10-year average uh just today just because a lot of our staffing numbers have come out for our schools and so we are kneedeep in projections with those schools and talking. uh there's a particular elementary that has on average a nine over b the last three, five and 10 years because we have

059all of that data they lose uh on average across all three of those nine students between second and third grade. So there are some trends that we just see and we build in uh to that model. We also tend to see, you know, when there's a large fourth and fifth grade class that are being reduced by smaller classes, you're naturally going to see a decline in enrollment. So, let's talk about that, what that means a little bit. On the left hand side, when we have a larger kindergarten enrollment, which is what that blue is showing, right? and you're working your way that large kindergarten cohort and it works its way up, you're going to have a natural increase for your enrollment projections. If we have a smaller kindergarten enrollment, which is what we are starting

060to see, and you'll see that in the next slide, we're going to start to see a natural decrease uh of the overall enrollment for us. And I'm going to show you that in this example. So, this is comparing data from 2019 to 2025. So in September on our September 30th data for 2019, we basically had the same amount of students in kindergarten and 12th grade. The two blue bars are equal. You know, it might go up and down a little bit across the grades, but on average, we were pretty steady across all grades. And today, what we're seeing in September 30th of 2025, we have not quite 3,000 students between kindergarten and 12th grade. And it is a very steady just slowly working its way down decline and that overall is starting to have that

061significant impact on just the overall students in the entire school district. Um this is something you know that we think will continue based on the projections and the live bursts that we're seeing uh will continue to work its way through MCPS for the foreseeable future. Um I won't touch on this one as much. We spent time with the board on Tuesday as well about student generation rates. Um the one thing I wanted to share with with this group and with the public um as well, but uh on our board docs as of Tuesday, we shared all the student generation rates that Jesu was talking about for each high school cluster. So that is available for the public and for you all to view. It's not something um we have always uh shared and we think

062it's important where we are with our enrollment projections and our boundary studies that everyone is available and has that information. So that's an available PDF. Um and again it's by the 25 uh current high school clusters. Um wanted to just talk a little bit about the middle layer of what we think about. So, we've talked about the cohort survival, the resident life first, the student generation rates. Layering into that is the additional information that we receive from Montgomery Planning that includes the municipalities and that housing pipeline data. And I appreciate the staff that are here who have taken a lot of calls from us uh constantly and really work closely with us to make sure that the data we're receiving and we have questions about you know that we are constantly checking to make sure

063um we're you know understanding all the data that is shared. Um so wanted to just talk about housing units uh that have been and that have come online from 2019 to 2024 versus our enrollment. Uh so this slide shows you that since uh our enrollment was a a peaked at 165,000 students and there were 390 or excuse me 389,000 units. So just like Casey was talking about close to that 400,000. Um since then an additional almost 16,000 units have been added but MCPS has lost 6,000 students. So I think part of our um understanding in all of this is really that just because there are new units being built does not always mean we are going to have new students right we are that resident live birth is dramatically impacting our overall enrollment right now

064not necessarily the new development that is happening it will have an impact and it's something we have to keep a very close eye on it you know I asked Jesuit to actually call out cabin branch because that's one we've publicly talked a lot about we are showing that as continuing to go up in our projections that's shown in the CIP right now and they are really feeling it because there are still families moving in um as those families settle in and they move and they'll move out of elementary and into our middle schools, right? And so we will start to see exactly probably what Sue presented on that previous slide. >> Can I ask one quick question on this? Um, >> it sounds like you mentioned that the birth rate is has been declining for

065at least a couple of decades. U, maybe longer than that, but I'm not sure if the if the decline has been kind of even or if it's dropped off more recently. Um, but I'm wondering considering that it seems like enrollment peaked somewhere within that time frame. Um, do do does is does the data suggest that other factors like obviously international enrollment has been decreasing too, but I'm wondering if given what we just talked about with turnover, is is turnover less maybe frequent than it used to be as well. Maybe this is more for planning staff too, but I'm wondering kind of how the turnover because it, you know, we looked at the data that showed the distribution of like how long folks have owned their their homes. So I guess I'm wondering part of this

066is like do we think people are owning their homes for longer periods of time than they used to? So the turnover is less than it used to be. Is that kind of in the mix here? >> Sure. On average, Montgomery County sells about 12,000 housing units per year. But as interest rates have risen, we've seen less turnover. So it's actually been something that has been declining. Yes. >> Okay. >> Question. And that's what I was trying to reconcile too. Your your data about this the the when the house is sold and the number of students that are generated doesn't match what you're saying Andrea because if I'm understanding your point correctly when once a house gets sold it tends to have more students come to that neighborhood. >> Right. But >> so it does match

067exactly. So Snowden Farm is a really good example of that. It's not necessarily housing turnover, but it was brand new housing, so you could sort of make it equal to housing turnover, right? It was all built at the same time. So, all these families came in and we just saw this massive peak and now they've been there a while and we're seeing the slow enrollment that has significantly gone down. >> But in other parts of the county, are you seeing >> the FEEP is actually another one where it used to be a much larger elementary school. Um, again, a lot of it's anecdotal, so it's we're making assumptions, but there has been less housing turnover there, and Def is a much smaller elementary than it used to be a decade ago. >> Does that make

068sense? >> No. >> Okay. So, my question, first one is um go to Hiu. uh in your um data projection calculation. Do you sounds like you are doing it based on the student actual enrollment data that that you have seen right every year. Do you include or the is is it your practice to include that housing that's already in development like it's already being built on Wisconsin Avenue or is it already being built uh uh on the Rockview PI is that in your calculation? So okay um projection day of completion is being built is 2027. So in your student projection, do you include that building or you don't include that building? >> We do not. We rely we rely on housing new housing data from for from what shows up on the s um estat

069property records. So housing that has not been completed >> will not show up in their database. >> Sometimes there's a lag. We'll show them pop up maybe a couple months later. Okay. Um, >> okay. So, in development doesn't show, approved project doesn't show. Then >> if they do show up, it would again most likely pull the student generation rates down if they're not occupied. >> And and I I just want to make sure we're clear here, too. So, I you've used the term projections. What what we are calculating are student generation rates. So that is looking at >> what Jes was walking through >> today existing units, existing students. It's not projections about what we think. It is just what are we seeing where students are enrolled, what type of house they're in. And so

070if the house doesn't exist because it's been approved, but it hasn't been built yet. It's not part of our data set. There's no no one living there yet either. >> But you're doing the actual the actual numbers as of today >> for for the student generation, >> right? There are additional data that we provide which was in the middle section of what Andrea was showing which is on the uh the pipeline information which is so that there's information about what projects have been approved and what units might come on in the future might >> and that's what this slide is. So these are you know the 32,000 you know the 32,000 you know the 32,000 you know generation rates though >> we take these into account >> we do take this into consideration correct okay

071okay >> cuz we're building a cushion just in case right >> so we're planning ahead >> and they told us ex the same thing they told us on Monday right they're planning they're planning ahead >> but it doesn't And you tell me if I'm wrong. I'll use wife lane. So that has been an approved. >> Yeah. >> Right. By you guys, right? You guys approve that. Correct. And so so we will take that into will we take those numbers into account like if we or not? >> Yep. Okay. Well, so I'm going to I don't want to I don't want to speak for MCPS. What you include is >> no no what we include I know what we include but I'm saying but but you guys for example when you're doing your data you would

072not include that because >> there has nothing been built it's just a parking >> there are no students there's no units >> in the future there might be something built there or not >> right we don't yeah >> so we cannot then make assumptions >> what I'm trying to to understand and so I think we're having a really hard time with reality numbers these say it's about enrollment going down. There's a lot of people aging at home, so they're not, you know, it's also for young people very expensive, >> which is I think half half the folks in McGomery County probably rent, right? So there's a lot of mobility with that. So there's a lot of factors. So I'm just trying to for us to kind of really really get an understanding. I know it's

073hard. I know it's it's it's hard to face reality sometimes, but >> help us out. Sure. And I just want to make sure that you know you are so certain about this data. I want to hear Yes, Grace. We're really really sure about this data. >> I I can tell you that. So we I I will admit here I think that we have the much easier task uh at planning in that we take current actual enrollment data we take current actual housing data and we just match the two and say it's one number divided by another number. It is a it's a fact. It's I can say the the student generation rates are factual. You know where they could get different is how you look at different geographies for those or different types of units

074that you might look at. the much harder task is trying to understand what's going to happen in the future right which really is MCPS's unfortunately very difficult task of you know calculating projections of what the future will look like uh based on how many units might be built um they might not be built uh based on the the the live births based on immigration there are a bunch of different factors that come into play. We're not dealing with that here. We have the easy task of taking two numbers and dividing them and it's facts. Yeah. >> Well, and I was just thinking about what actually what you just said, what what uh was exactly coming to my mind that from all of these numbers and things that I'm hearing, I just get one thing that

075our students enrollment is decreasing. And I I could see it in my own community what is happening that people with children they want to be in a larger houses. Okay. They want to be in the single family. We the trend right now is that we are making them more to multifamily because the single family is expensive. They cannot afford. And so what is happening is that people are aging in place. So, and this is exactly happening in my community. I have been there for 20 years. It used to be that because that it's the Wuton cluster and they were coming with one bus just feeling in my community one bus and right now I go and hardly I see kids standing at the corner. Uh it's not and everybody in the community is older age.

076So what is happening the younger age that we uh they can afford the multif family there are smaller spaces and they cannot have that many children. It just not uh you know easy to have two children and two dogs or cats or whatever in a 100 square foot space. So I I just look at it and I see that all of these trend that you it's saying completely matches with that trend. I don't know. >> So can we go back one slide because I am trying to wrap my head around the blue bars. >> So 2021 we have 1273 units built here in Montgomery County. Yet on 2022, we built 12,740 units. That that year, our production uh in this county times 10 times. >> So, we build more housing during the pandemic >> 2022.

077I >> right after can we can we I I I I I'm trying to understand this this number. >> Well, like they said like they told us at at our meeting what I got at least what they told us is >> we had a lot of buildup where we but we had less students coming to school. That's what I got from that's what I got from >> that part I understand but I just want to understand is it this this data Um could there have been some adjustment in how we calculate the unit? I don't know but it just for me to be very surprised to look at it. That's my reaction that in one year we uh we like 10 times more and then after that >> I'm telling you it's not surprising enough

078county we had a lot of development in the Bucksburg area in the Baskus area and and the walking mill area. So we used 2019 as our baseline. So there was no data on the planning's website on how many units were built um in 2020. They uh the county built 1,273 units in 2021. Then it's a cumulative. So 12,740 minus 1273. So what what is that? 11,000 units the next year. Then 2,700 the next year. and then so on and so forth. So it's a cumulative from 2019 to 2024 there were 15,925 units built throughout the county. Using the 2019 enrollment data in 2020 it dipped 4,700 compared to 2019 and 2021 it dipped 7,000 students. So that's how you read this chart. So the units may have gone up, but we didn't see an incline

079in our enrollment year by year. So the bottom line is enrollment yearbyear compared to 2019, and the blue bars are cumulative units built throughout the county since 2019. >> You you you were trying to say something. No, I was also trying to get my head around but this how far do you project ahead? How how much time do you need >> the crystal ball? >> We do we do six we do our sixyear CIP planning >> for secondary we do 10 and 15 year planning and that's pretty much because of cohort survival. So if they enter the kindergarten year we can project that secondary 10 and 15 years. So they would metriculate up into the middle and high school level. Mhm. >> And just to clarify, when we do bake in uh pipeline development data,

080um we typically see, you know, 18 months to build a high-rise or whatever the case may be. So, we actually bake in that third year in that planning cycle that allows the units to be built, people to buy them, to bring children in, and to enter our school system. So, we do bake it in, and it's typically baked in sort of in a few years, not while the building is going up. So, I want to clarify that just because a unit is going like if this building right here was being brought up from a parking lot, we wouldn't project students coming the next year. It would be three, four, five, maybe six years into our planning cycle. It gets distributed with um our student generation rates, which um Jesuit brought up. We were using last

081year's 2024, the school year 2024. So, the most up-to-date numbers that we could. And then Jesu also uses that for impact tax to try to get the school system some extra dollars for construction. >> And then Scott, I had to plug that in. I'm sorry. >> No, no, no. Okay. And in the pipeline you showed, when do you use that data? Like um I mean or how do you factor that that data just out of curiosity? Yeah. >> So this is included every year when we update our enrollment projections and we add the out fiscal year, right? the sixth year out, we include these in there. And like DJ was describing, if a new development is coming online, you know, we might not assume that kids are coming in that first year. We might add

082them in that third, fourth, and fifth year. Um, but these numbers, these 32,000 are baked into our student projections right now. >> Yeah. >> Somewhere across the six years. >> Okay. So, because I was thinking maybe we can talk offline, maybe you're over you could be over estimating because the 30 We have been honestly >> yeah so so maybe maybe the you know >> and I didn't include that slide in here that is a slide we presented on Tuesday we have been over projected for the last several years um and so we are you know we're trying to be mindful of that um >> your thought because uh you know we just finished the pipeline study and we we said that really the 31000's in various stages of but only around 13,000 had all their

083approvals to move to the building permit portion and then and then they have to go through their process too. So maybe a could be just throwing out a better indicator was just maybe not looking at our pipeline so much but per se but look once it actually does go to to the building permits. So then I think you would be less overestimating your >> no uh Arty is spot on um because what actually has ended up happening is less than half of this number but we're baking this number in is a very conservative number to prepare for what school capacities could be if everything gets built out and we are being very sensitive to that. Now our fail safe to that is two things that we can almost use to triangulate uh our enrollments and

084to refine the projections is tracking the state's live birth rate information and then who actually shows up 5 years later in kindergarten and monitoring them by cohorts. And that cohort survival uh ratio going from year to year, whether you're growing or you're shrinking, does inform quite a bit in terms of like that cohort management from year to year to year. in conjunction with this planning information and in conjunction with using the student generation uh uh ratios to to uh rates to to then project out for for future development. So, it's really all of it together, not any one thing that says we're doing this, we're doing that, but it is in in our recommendation and in the board's uh best interest to think of what could happen >> on a long enough time horizon to

085make sense and then to have those reality checks at regular intervals with our CIP process because that six-year window, it moves every two years in a really meaningful way. That six-year window, think of it like your reality check that tracks your your 10 year and your 15 year and your 20 year planning bubbles to say what's actually real. And so that six-year window is the critical data triangulation to say this is where we should be refining our projections and where we shouldn't based on the the data that's actually materialized from what could be. So this is the widest aperture lens that you have and then it will progressively tighten to a narrower lens as you have more data points introduced. I know we have three more sections. May we keep moving? I'm gonna move us

086to the next section. Um, so I think everyone in this room well understands that uh MCPS has been engaged in two big boundary studies and I also want to share a potential third one that is in front of the board for consideration as well. Um so I want to start with sort of the need and you know we developed this slide as we presented some information to the board to consider potentially yet another boundary study for elementary school but sort of why do we do boundary studies? Why is this important um process um you know certainly we need to be and ensure that we are fiscally responsible and where we are investing. Um, we need to take into consideration things like facility condition, utilization, where we have, you know, hundreds of relocatable classrooms across the

087county. We certainly need to address things as enrollment goes up or or it goes down like we are facing right now, right? This is very a very different climate for us. Um, we reference our policy a lot because that is what drives a lot of our decisions. um working closely with our board of education. And those four factors uh include geographic proximity, demographics, utilization, and stability of student assignment over time. And I really want to emphasize that one. Um these are all incredibly important. Um but boundaries really impact our students and our families. And so this is an important avenue for us to use as we experience pockets um or dramatic shifts in utilization. We also have to be mindful of how frequent we use them and how we use them. Uh to take into

088consideration just impact to overall students. Um and then we you know we're always want to be mindful of the serving our special education students and the ability to serve them closest to home when possible. Um we have quite a few non-ontiguous boundaries whether that's at the elementary level uh or the middle school level. Our board has seen a lot of that over the last couple months and those are boundaries give us the opportunity to reconsider that when that makes sense. Um and then to revisit for us a paired school model. We have several of them where we have two elementary schools and they might have K our K to2 students and three to five. They're completely physically separate buildings. We have a separate principal at each of them but they're sort of paired as an

089elementary school together. um they have worked really well for us over the county, but uh sometimes those also bring challenges. And so this is also an opportunity for us to confirm that that's the right uh thing for us to be doing. So wanted to update everyone on where we are with our two current boundary studies. uh since December of 2024. So we are on about a I guess 16-month uh process. We have been working through uh sort of two parallel boundary studies that have been happening in different parts of the county. We hired a consultant. We've been working to develop various options last summer and through the fall. We've seek a lot of community engagement and feedback from the community in numerous ways. And then in February of this year, the superintendent made his recommendation

090to the board of education on what those boundaries uh what his recommendation is. And we are currently in the public hearing and work session process with the board of education and the public uh with the goal of finalizing those boundaries by the end of this month. And just at a very high level, you know, I mentioned the the four board policies uh uh previously with the demographic, the geography and the stability of school assignment over time and utilization that is really driving every single decision uh that is in front of the board and us as staff as we worked with the superintendent and the consultant to come up with numerous options throughout this process. Um so I'm just going to start with the first one. uh we call uh one of the boundaries Woodward and

091Northwood. It includes 14 middle schools and eight uh high schools. The elementary schools are included such that they might articulate to a different middle school and high school but the actual boundary of the elementary school is not changing in this study. So they might be reassigned again at the secondary level but not their immediate boundary. Um we have developed you know numerous options over the last uh 9 to 10 months and all of those are still publicly available on our website in case anyone is interested. Um about a month ago we presented the superintendent's recommendation and this is just a very high level. Um we have all the details available online but to give you a sense the image on the left is the high school map. Uh the white is the new Woodward proposed

092Woodward boundary. You can see Weaten there in red, Kennedy there in green just to kind of orient yourself. So it's just a you know sort of the central and southern part of the county. And then the right is the middle school map. The second boundary study that we have been working on um is the crown and Damascus boundary study. This includes 17 of our middle schools and 11 high schools. So it is important to note that not every high school and not every middle school are in either of these. there's a small portion of the county that's not impacted um by this. And then similar to the last one, on the left is the current proposed uh recommendation for the high school boundaries and on the right are the middle school uh boundaries as well.

093Um an important part of this is in addition to the boundaries, we've also been uh engaging in a program that has really helped inform and collaborated with this. And so there's a recommendation in front of the board to divide the county into six regions. Um that's taken into account into this facilities as well as making sure we have uh adequate programming in all of the high schools and middle schools within those six regions. Uh and then just sharing some of the upcoming work sessions. We have uh had a work session this week. We have two public hearings and a final work session next week with the board and the public. And then layered in uh as if that was not enough, we do have another proposal for boundaries, um you know, after a lot of

094uh discussion and back and forth on these two, we've been talking a lot about both school consolidation and elementaryaries. And so we have uh proposed to the board to consider um another boundary that would include the possibility to look at school consolidation both at the middle school and elementary level. And it' be sort of a two-step process. We would start with that first uh make any determination there and then move in to the elementary boundary studies uh and any middle school that would be included in that consolidation would then have to be a part of that boundary um study and we just outlined a few of the process and scope. Um so this is a long runway in front of us. Uh this hasn't been determined that we will do this yet. Um but just

095a consideration you know I think as we've gone through the other boundary studies you know we've seen a lot of uh island assignments again we've seen different schools in the elementary school that are overcrowded and some that are significantly underutilized and this would be an opportunity um you know to solve some of that and really try to balance some of the utilization that is happening at the elementary schools. Again, trying to be mindful though of the disruption to our students and our staff and our families is really important in this process. Um, and these are a couple of the timelines again that are in front of the board for consideration. So, this will definitely uh take us a couple years to undergo given the consideration for the consolidation. And I will pause there and pass

096it to Bridget. >> Great. Thanks. wanted to talk just briefly about a very exciting project um we're so pleased to talk to both boards about. Um it's the community planning academy and um it's free, it's online, it's an ondemand course covering 10 modules including planning fundamentals, master planning, zoning development, permitting, environment and climate transportation planning and school planning. And the goal of the of the program is to provide a 101 level of understanding about the planning process. We're so pleased to have partnered with MCPS over the summer to create a planning for schools module as part of the academy. This module is part of the 10 modules of the program and here's the headline. We have 461 learners in the system right now. Um we launched officially December 1st. So just want to explain a

097little bit more about it. Um the program was developed to demystify the pro uh the planning process and to ensure that Oh yeah, thank you. to ensure that we uh have greater transparency, accessibility, and public participation in planning especially from underserved communities. And so it's mobile friendly. It includes interactive elements and learning checks. And the whole program is available in English, Spanish, and Chinese. Uh we looked at a lot of different models before we decided to go with this one. Uh we looked at Howard County, Baltimore City, City of Philadelphia, our sister department, Prince George's planning, and they were all classroombased models and they were very successful. But we wanted to have a program where people could learn about the planning process on their own time. So, it's all online based. You can do it

098on your phone, but we do have built-in in-person opportunities. And I'll talk a little bit more about uh the beta cohort we had over the summer where we were able to get great feedback before we launched countywide. And so really the hope is that um we have people who more people are signing up to testify in front of the planning board. Uh more people are showing up at community cherettes and they have greater confidence in the process. Oh, thank you. So here are the modules as I mentioned everything from master planning and permitting to planning for schools. Um there's 10 right now. If we get more funding from the county council, we hope to build a planning for parks module, historic preservation, a design module. We have we have a whole list. And I have

099to tell you, as we've been uh doing a bit of a road show with the regional services centers, it always comes up that someone asks, can you do a junior planning academy? And I said, I need to talk to MCPS about that. Um and so, uh okay, so uh we need to talk to the council about that, too. but it it always comes up. And so the the content right now is built for 18 and above. If you're 16 or 15, you can certainly do it. But that's really the content level. Uh and we're taking pretty complicated terms and concepts. And like I said, it's a 101 level of understanding. But we also had some um interest from McGomery College on could we flip this into an elective course? Could we do something curriculum based?

100you. We defer to you on all of that and and the council, but um certainly there's been a lot of interest. I I'll just mention when we did our beta cohort over the summer, we were looking for 50 residents who had never touched the planning process to to join and give us feedback. We had 648 people apply for those 50 spots. And so that told us right there there's there's a need, there's a gap. People want to learn. And so we're happy to provide that. So it's online now. It's anybody can access that. I put in front of the board of education members uh the hard copy textbook that's available now. You don't have to take the course to access that on the website. Um and you don't have to go through the whole academy.

101If you're interested just in permitting or just in planning for schools, you can do it alakart. Um and so some of the topics that um our great MCPS partners uh helped us with for their module include schools facilities planning, prioritizing improvements, mandatory referral process, the growth and infrastructure policy, and then overall coordination between MCPS and Montgomery planning. Thank you. And I'll just also mention we've been really lucky to partner with other county agencies including MC DOT, uh, DPS, MCPS, Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice, and our sister department in Prince George's. Um, so happy to answer any questions about it, but just wanted to give that brief overview and thank you again to our MCPS partners on this one. Okay, this should work now. So, uh I recognize I'm the last thing standing between

102you and the comfort of your homes. And I promise I will not throw any math or numbers around because I think we've had a lot of that. Uh but we did want to take this opportunity to shine a light on the very close collaboration MCPS and planning staff have been doing over the past two or 3 years and wanted to share some sort of uh success stories here. And before I do that, I just want to mention that, you know, a lot of this has come to be because of the collaboration that the two boards themselves did a couple of years ago when you all instructed us as staff to go and develop anou that both the agencies adopted and signed and from planning's perspective and also from parks perspective and MCPS's perspective that really

103sort of raised the standard of expectation all around that when we do our master planning work and when we do our um mandatory referral projects with MCPS CIP projects that we start to talk a lot more earlier in the process and we have deeper and tougher conversations in a more frank and honest way. Um so I'll touch a little bit on the master plans first and then talk a little bit about mandatory referrals CIP projects that have been uh successful from our perspective. Our master planning process is a multi-year very intentional process where we start with figuring out the scope uh listening to the community for long periods of time. Uh creating a vision and then finally getting that vision approved and adopted by our board as well as the council. Uh and while a

104master plan looks at a number of things, there are many things that are discovered and explored in the master planning process that relate directly to schools. Uh these include things like how to make access to schools within the geography of the master plan better for all modes of transportation, all students. How to make the design of these schools better and to the highest quality. How to make sure that whatever are the recommendations that the plan is putting forth take into account uh the need to have adequate public facilities for schools and also to make sure that the long-term sort of vision of these master plans takes into account constraints that MCPS might have in delivering infrastructure and facilities and how uh growth or decline will impact sort of these facilities over a horizon of 20

105to So um given that we've been talking a lot more frequently, a lot more earlier, uh we think the past three or five ongoing and recently approved plans have had a lot of solid collaboration. uh we are on almost weekly calls it feels like with DJ and Andrea and Shiho uh trying to figure out okay if we put these recommendations in the in the master plan will this work for MCPS's six-year CIP their 10 year and 15ear projections uh if we recommend that a school be cited a certain way on a specific site do you have the ability to have a holding school to move students in or out and what does that mean for you so I think those are some very real and meaningful conversations that we are having earlier and on the

106planning and the park side we're able to put those recommendations into these master plans which we think will sort of move the needle further for all the agencies involved. Um on the flip side, we also do the regulatory review of mandatory referrals, especially major additions, renovations, and new projects. And in this again, theou has outlined these shared goals of safety and vision zero, making sure our schools are built to be civic institutions and to the highest quality of sustainability and design and and the and ensuring that they make efficient use of of the land and the infrastructure that is needed to support them. Um and again here while historically we may have only reviewed and commented on these projects when the mandatory referrals were filed which is a very quick timeline. It's a 60-day review

107that we have to finish and take to our board. Now we are talking literally sometimes years in advance. I think 12 to 15 months before a mandatory referral is being filed. DJ, Andrea, Sheho, Jesu, Lisa, myself, and many others in the parks team too. We are getting on on regular meetings. We're talking about um these projects when they're in the pre-planning and the feasibility stage. We are staying connected as MCPS goes out into the community and here's all the concerns from the community during their schematic design. We follow through with them once a concept plan is filed so that by the time a mandatory referral is actually filed, it becomes an exercise in crossing tees and dotting eyes and that everybody is sort of in alignment as to what the purpose and the goals for

108these major uh capital improvement projects is. Uh and similarly there's a long list here and I'll um sort of invite Andrea to add her thoughts too. But we've had a lot of good success. We all saw a very successful streamlined mandatory referral approval by the planning board for the Burtonville Elementary School. We continue to talk to MCPS staff about ongoing projects like Eastern Middle School, Burning Tree Elementary School, and pretty much everything that's on this list here, but I also want to see Andrea or DJ if you want to add anything to to this discussion. This is the last slide, so we should all be excited about that. I think the only thing I would add is the six that are listed on the right are the ones that we have in front of county

109council right now as part of our CIP. So just like parks, you know, we're going through that process and we'll know more. But I think just to double down on what Atul said, you know, we've already started Eastern and Damascus are our top priorities and we've shared that with council followed by the elementary schools. Um, but we've already started having conversations about what those could potentially look like. you know, we have a feasibility study that we did over the summer for Eastern and have had many conversations on that and so sort of waiting for our funding to be approved and then uh hopefully excited and ready to kick off that design project. >> So, um let me uh just say thank you to everyone for uh coming tonight. You know, it's been our pleasure on

110behalf of the board. I want to say it's been our pleasure to host you and we look forward to this every year. It's a very collaborative process. We want to grow in our relationship because we're all we all want to make the county the best it can be, right? And so we really appreciate support. I'd like to appreciate the staff um with the school board and and our planning staff for working together to help put this together. I'd like to thank my staff to who helped put all of this together and the legal staff and the communication staff. So, thank you everyone for coming. Uh yeah, this is I learned a lot tonight about your work and and we like to keep this going. So um I don't know if anyone Grace, thank thank you.

111>> I I just want to say thank you to everyone and everyone who's watching at home. Um but thank you to both of you know the wonderful people from both sides from um our staff who has worked so hard and your staff and um you know these are these these conversations are never easy when you when you see changes and some drastic changes in the community. But I think everybody around this table and and parents and teachers and so on, I think the the the most important priority are our kids and to ensure that they are learning and thriving and turning out to be as wonderful adults around this table as we are. Um so thank you Ari for for the collaboration and and looking forward to to continuing that. >> Great. and and and

112Tom, thank you for your great work and you know in in improving our our schools and thank you for the people. We have several people in the audience tonight that came out. So, thank you and those are online. So, this ends our our joint planning board meeting for this evening and everyone have a safe trip home. Thank you. >> Thank you.