MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. (7News) — Parents at Wayside Elementary School in Potomac, Maryland, tell 7News right now their kids are assigned to Churchill High, which is about two and a half miles from the elementary school.
The parents said Montgomery County Public Schools' (MCPS) boundary proposals for the 2027-28 school year would have Wayside students attending Wootton High School, which is four miles away.
7News took a closer look at an online petition that has more than 2,000 signatures. The petition urges the MCPS Board of Education to reject the proposed boundary reassignment.
Petition organizers emphasize that Wayside students can currently bike or walk to Churchill, but if Wootton becomes their high school, it would create bottlenecks and longer commutes.
The petition asserts the boundary plan threatens student stability and emotional well-being by separating children from the peers they've had in elementary and middle school.
Here's what two Wayside parents told 7News:
"Of the four options, Wayside was really not given options. All four had our Wayside community switching high schools and I think the correct word really is shocked because we did not expect to see that coming out," said Incoming PTA President Kristen Lavender.
Parent Melissa Raggi stated, "This would mean when my son is in middle school, my daughter would be at Wootton, which is thirteen minutes away in a completely different direction."
The Wayside PTA is analyzing data to better understand how MCPS reached its recommendation.
"The reason we have a task force sorting through all this data is because we want to be able to intelligently ask questions back to MCPS in a respectful way to understanding why some of these decisions may be getting made," Lavender told us.
Organizers of the petition also want to know how MCPS arrived at "Churchill's so-called overcapacity figures."
They point out that due to federal government layoffs, the school system's assumptions may no longer hold.
7News emailed MCPS about the parents' concerns and asked if the school system would consider doing a reassessment.
MCPS did not answer most of our questions, but did tell 7News that Churchill is more than 12% over capacity.
One of the goals of the boundary study is to relieve overcrowding.
"Wayside wants to stay together as a community. We want to be where we've been slated to be. We don't appreciate that we weren't even given an option in this first boundary analysis and we hope that in the second round, there will be more options," Raggi said.
MCPS plans to refine boundary options in July and August and conduct community meeting sessions in September.