The Montgomery County Board of Education will hold a hearing at 6 p.m. today to discuss a proposed site for the new Bethesda-Chevy Chase middle school.

A new middle school is needed to help alleviate overcrowding at Westland Middle School and to make it possible for all sixth graders in Chevy Chase to attend a middle school, rather than an elementary school, as many of them currently do, Bethesda Patch reported last week. 

"There's no doubt we're getting projections ... (that Westland Middle School is) certainly going to be over capacity ... and we've got to do something," says Alysa Emden, president of the Westland Middle School PTA.

"The second middle school is inevitable," she says. Westland Middle School cannot simply be expanded to meet higher capacity needs because the school's core spaces—library, cafeteria, gym—can only accommodate so many students.

And, Westland Middle School "is located at the far western edge of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster, so it's a long ride for some of the kids," she added.  

The site selection committee's proposed location for the new school is the Rosemary Hills-Lyttonsville Local Park in Silver Spring, Silver Spring Patch reported earlier this week.

Community opposition against this location has been mounting steadily in the past few days. The proposed location is currently a well-used park that many local residents do not want turned into a school. A vigil was held for the park last night, Silver Spring Patch reported.

But the site was carefully chosen by a committee of representatives from area schools, and which met about six times to evaluate close to 10 different sites, says Jenny Mitchell, president of the Chevy Chase Elementary School PTA.

The committee was "looking at the availability of the land, how large the sites were, what the traffic patterns of the area were, and, overall, what was the feasibility of building a middle school" on the different possible sites, Mitchell says.

"My understanding is that ... (The Gwendolyn E. Coffield Community Center that is currently part of the Rosemary Hills-Lyttonsville Local Park) is still going to be a part of that site," Mitchell adds.

And, people who use the park to play soccer would likely be able to rent out the school's fields for community soccer games, or could rent out fields at other county parks, Mitchell says.

(Renting soccer fields at Montgomery County Parks costs $125 an hour "plus other applicable fees" for nonprofit county organizations, according to the Montgomery County Parks website.)

"Some people obviously feel differently about the location," Emden says.

But, "the need for something is greater," she adds. 

Read the site selection committee’s full report here. The Board of Education’s meeting is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at the Carver Educational Services Center in Rockville, and the middle school site recommendation agenda item is slated for 7:30 p.m. Directions and information about watching the meeting online or on TV are available on the Board of Education’s website.