Churchill coordinator: 'It's not a coincidence'

"It's not a coincidence" that the the same day the Board of Education approved preliminary designs for the controversial and unpopular Seven Locks Replacement School on Kendale Road, it voted to abolish the policy for community and PTA input into school demolition and construction decisions.

That's what Winston Churchill High School Cluster coordinator Janis Sartucci told the Potomac Almanac, explaining, "What better way to wipe out any controversy than wiping out all the policy?"

After weathering a year of stiff resistance to its secretive plans for multimillion-dollar Seven Locks demolition and construction project, the school board faces further opposition to its "as-yet-undefined plans for a new mid-county high school," according to the Almanac.

"They didn't like what's happened in the last year, and they know that they're not really doing this new high school plan in the right way. This is a way that they don't have to follow the policies," said Rosanne Hurwitz, an area vice president for the Montgomery County Council of PTAs. "What better way not to have to adhere to a 20-acre site than to get rid of the policy?"