The effort to stop the creation of a school bus depot at the Carver Center in Rockville continues to grow with community meetings, presentations at City Council meetings, collecting more than 1,700 signatures on petitions, and hiring an attorney. Montgomery County Public Schools wants to consolidate several bus depots around the county that provide parking, equipment storage, and maintenance for school busses to one central location in Rockville. It doesn’t make sense considering the size of the county—should 100+ busses come and go from Rockville to transport students in Poolesville and Silver Spring?
If you’d like to learn more:
- Visit the Carver Coalition web site at CarverCoalition.org
- Attend the Community Meeting on the plans for the depot hosted by Montgomery County Public Schools on Wednesday, May 11 at 7:30 pm at College Gardens Elementary School
- Attend the Carver Coalition meeting on Tuesday, May 17 at 7:00 pm at the Rockville Unitarian Universalist Church at 100 Welsh Park Drive.
- Read the latest flyer from the Carver Coalition.
There’s a bigger issue that continues to gnaw at me, however. MCPS is one of the largest school districts in the country with a billion-dollar budget. It’s considered one of the best in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, but does that mean it’s also well governed? The school board seems to be continually tone-deaf when it comes to local issues, such as the bus depot, and the County Council seems to be unable to have any influence, despite being the major funder. Is it time to split the school district into manageable parts and have more local control?
Max for Rockville 
Max,
Your question about breaking up the school system, begs the larger question of the County’ form of government. Before changing over to our current Executive/ Council form in the 1970’s, the county was structured like Rockville with a County Manager and Council. This is a corporate form of governance; the buck stops at one person’s desk for action: the County Manager. If the CEO does not perform, that person is held accountable. This is the most prevalent form of local government across the country yet Montgomery went in the opposite direction and look what has happened since the 1970’s.
Our County today has become unaccountable and poorly managed. We function like the Federal Government where each branch blames the other with poor accountability. Having a separate elected school Board just extends this lack of accountability. It is a very questionable way to run a public corporation.
Unfortunately, most citizens, who want better, don’t understand how our form of government negatively impacts their ability to get things done and to hold our officials accountable.
Thanks for this piece!
FYI, this would be one of at least four locations, replacing a central depot, and would serve the north county, not Silver Spring.
The bigger issues must wait.
We don’t want the the stink of diesel fouling neighbors’ air, the heavy vehicles decimating the foundations of homes along the yet-unidentified traffic routes and degrading our quality of life with trips beginning at dawn, the poisoning of the headwaters of Watts branch, the threatening of fragile, old growth forests at Montgomery college and the desecrating of an historic site (Carver is on the city’s list of historic places).
The list is almost endless as to why this is a bad idea. And why is that? Because no studies were done in selecting this site.
The county had 10 years minimum to figure out where those buses were going to go. Looking out your window isn’t the way to choose a site (MCPS headquarters share the land).
Neighbors shouldn’t have to pay the price for the county’s failure to plan. Smart Growth? Please.
Bus depots belong in industrial zones.
No Bus Depots In Neighborhoods.