On February 5, 2026, Superintendent Thomas Taylor formally recommended the permanent closure of Thomas S. Wootton High School — a plan to send all of Wootton’s students to the new Crown High School in Gaithersburg. The Wootton building would become a “holding school” for other high schools during their renovations.
On March 26, 2026, the Board of Education voted 7-1 to approve Modified Option H. CEPA has retained legal counsel to challenge this decision.
Hear from our community: Parents, students, and elected officials are speaking out against this plan. Watch their testimony →
How This Began
In December 2025, Montgomery County Public Schools released four new boundary study options for the new “Crown High School” under construction in Gaithersburg. “Option H“, a plan to permanently close Thomas S. Wootton High School, was one of these new options. This new option came as a complete surprise to the Wootton community and most elected officials.
To date, MCPS officials have failed to meet with our community in the months since this option was made public. A growing coalition has mobilized against both the recommendation to close Wootton AND the heavy-handed, rushed, dismissive, discriminatory and inequitable process used by Superintendent Taylor and many on the Board of Education to roll it out.
Why This Matters
Wootton High School is more than a building — it’s a central civic anchor for surrounding Rockville neighborhoods. The campus hosts:
- Community meetings and youth organizations
- Environmental programs and religious gatherings
- Polling for state and federal elections
- Decades of collaboration with adjacent Frost Middle School — peer tutoring, mentoring, athletics, and joint service events
Closing Wootton would sever the Wootton–Frost feeder pipeline, disrupt deeply rooted community relationships, and upend a neighborhood identity that cannot be recreated 3 miles away.
The Superintendent’s Rationale
According to Superintendent Taylor, closing Wootton would:
- Allow MCPS to use Wootton’s building as a holding school while other campuses undergo needed renovations
- Place students in a brand-new facility rather than an aging building
- Help balance demographic composition across campuses
- Address overcrowding at some schools
None of these rationales have been supported by a formal study, cost-benefit analysis, or community impact assessment. The superintendent has offered a conclusion without showing the work.
Flawed Data, Flawed Decisions
The data MCPS presented to the Board of Education to justify this closure has been publicly exposed as misleading by an independent expert. On March 3, 2026, Rob Mulla — a Data Scientist at Google and educator whose YouTube channel has over 230,000 subscribers and 15 million views — sent a detailed letter to every Board member and Superintendent Taylor identifying what he called “a textbook example of intentional data manipulation.”
His analysis identified four critical problems with the chart MCPS repeatedly cited as “strong justification” for the closure:
- A phantom housing boom: The chart shows 11,000+ new housing units in a single year (2022) — nearly 4x the annual average. This was actually a one-time Census correction, not real construction. Using it to claim a “decoupling” from enrollment is deceptive.
- Comparing apples to oranges: Housing is plotted as a cumulative gain while enrollment is plotted as a net loss — two different mathematical concepts on the same chart without a shared scale. This visual trick creates a false divergence.
- A rigged baseline: Enrollment numbers are deliberately anchored to 2019 (pre-COVID) to ensure every bar appears negative.
- Cherry-picked years: The chart isolates only pandemic-era data despite the official source going back to 2010. Plotting trend lines across years with missing data is inexcusable.
When Mulla corrected for these manipulations and examined the 35-year history of Montgomery County, housing and enrollment have moved in near-perfect structural lockstep for decades. Basing a permanent school closure on a short window of outlier pandemic data is, in his words, “statistically irresponsible.”
Watch the full analysis:
Sen. Kagan has also publicly criticized MCPS for “really bad estimates.” Read the Montgomery Perspective coverage →
Why We Oppose It
This decision placed an inequitable burden on the Wootton cluster in a misguided attempt to make up for years of compounding mistakes, poor leadership, and broken promises at MCPS.
- Last-minute proposal: Options A–D were released in June 2025 with a 5-month comment period. “Option H” (later Modified Option H) was introduced December 1 with no extension — giving families just 5 weeks during the holidays to respond before the Superintendent made his recommendation.
- No community dialogue: MCPS has never met with our community to discuss this proposal. A meeting with Superintendent Taylor scheduled for late January was canceled due to a snow day and never rescheduled. We have not been consulted in any meaningful way.
- No meaningful study: The community, financial, transportation, and operational impacts of closing an entire high school have not been adequately analyzed.
- A closure disguised as a boundary change: This is not a routine boundary adjustment — it is the elimination of a community high school.
- Increased commutes: Students would travel 3 miles further from their neighborhood school, increasing transportation costs and commute times.
- Community destruction: A tight-knit school community built over decades would be uprooted and scattered.
- Civil rights and equity concerns: Wootton is Montgomery County’s only Asian-plurality high school. Closing it — while leaving every other high school intact — raises serious questions about discriminatory impact and whether MCPS has met its obligations under civil rights law.
- Fiscally irresponsible: Closing a high school in a designated growth area reduces long-term capacity precisely where the county’s own planning documents say it will be needed most. As the Maryland Building Industry Association has stated, this is “inconsistent with sound planning principles.”
- Rushed through crisis: MCPS continues to push this accelerated timeline even as the Wootton community processes the trauma of a recent on-campus shooting — an incident that placed elementary, middle, and high school families in lockdown and shook the entire cluster. This is not the moment to ram through the closure of a community school.
The Rejected Alternative: Rockville’s Modified Recommendation
On February 13, 2026, the City of Rockville Mayor and Council introduced and endorsed a “Modified Recommendation” – a formal suggested amendment that preserves the core of the Superintendent’s boundary plan while keeping Wootton High School open on its current campus.
Under the Modified Recommendation, the Superintendent’s plan would be amended so that:
- Wootton students attend the new Crown Farm High School temporarily – only during Wootton’s renovation or rebuild period, not permanently.
- Magruder students also use Crown Farm temporarily – during their school’s renovation, at a separate time from Wootton.
- Crown area students still attend Crown Farm – the same local students proposed in the current recommendation would attend Crown as their walkable neighborhood school, fulfilling what they were promised by MCPS.
- Wootton returns to its Rockville campus – after renovation, students come home. The school is not permanently closed.
- A future boundary study for Crown – after temporary use, MCPS would conduct a proper study to determine how best to fill Crown Farm High School long-term.
Why This Is Better
- Preserves walkability for BOTH communities: Wootton remains a neighborhood school for Fallsmead, Fallsbend, Scott Drive, Rockshire, Lakewood, and Hurley families. Crown Farm High School also remains a walkable campus for nearby students and families.
- Preserves stability: No school community is permanently uprooted. Students know they are coming back.
- Addresses renovation needs: MCPS has stated that, due to cost efficiencies, they strongly desire the use of a holding school during major high school renovations. This amendment achieves this goal without the permanent closure of Wootton OR the permanent departure from what the Crown Farm community have been promised.
- Maintains school capacity: Keeps an existing high school open in a designated growth area where planners from multiple local and state agencies project thousands of new housing units to come online in the coming years.
- City partnership: Rockville has offered to partner with MCPS to fund improvements at the existing Wootton campus.
The City has also urged MCPS to advocate through the County Council CIP process to add funding for a Wootton High School Major Capital Project in the FY27-FY32 CIP.
Timeline
- June 2025: Options A–D released with 5-month comment period
- December 1, 2025: Options E–H introduced with no extension
- January 2026: Community opposition grows; petition reaches 5,000+ signatures
- February 5, 2026: Superintendent Taylor formally recommends permanent closure of Wootton High School
- February 12, 2026: Deadline to register for BOE testimony
- February 13, 2026: City of Rockville Mayor and Council introduce and endorse the “Modified Recommendation”
- February 23, 2026: Public hearing at 5:00 PM (Virtual, due to MCPS “code red” snow day)
- March 3, 2026: Work Session #2 at 10:00 AM
- March 9, 2026: Public Hearing #3 (CIP) at 5:00 PM
- March 10, 2026: Public Hearing #4 (CIP) at 5:00 PM
- March 12, 2026: Work Session #3 at 10:00 AM
- March 26, 2026: Board of Education votes 7-1 to approve Modified Option H
- March 26, 2026: CEPA retains Silverman Thompson to explore legal challenge
- March 31, 2026: CEPA files formal request for stay with Maryland State Superintendent
- Pending: If stay denied, appeal to Maryland State Board of Education
- 2027-2028: Implementation scheduled to begin
What You Can Do
The Board of Education voted 7-1 to approve Modified Option H. The fight is not over — we are challenging this decision in court and organizing to elect leaders who will bring accountability to MCPS.