Parents: Don’t Delay Seneca Valley High School Upgrades

Trash bins were placed beneath patches of waterlogged ceiling panels at Seneca Valley High School, even in the library, because it was raining Wednesday.

But at least the math department hallway wasn’t freezing, since temperatures outside were tolerable. The same couldn’t be said for the rooms upstairs, where many of the science and English classes are taught. Those hallways and rooms were baking hot.

“I’ve given up on wearing jackets,” said principal Marc Cohen, as he gave Patch an informal tour of the school.

The leaking roof, the unreliable HVAC system, and the small, out-of-date windowless classrooms and tight hallways are only a few of the reasons why some Seneca Valley parents say the school is past due for an upgrade.

“It needs to be rebuilt from the ground up, and the old school torn down,” said Kevin David, a Seneca Valley cluster coordinator, as part of his testimony during a public hearing Monday.

The Montgomery Count Public School Board is expected to vote today on Superintendent Joshua P. Starr’s recommended capital budget for 2013 and for the 2013-18 capital improvements program.

But Starr’s $1.5 billion six-year proposal would delay plans to modernize Seneca Valley High School. Under Starr’s recommendation, construction at Seneca would end August 2017 instead of in 2016, with site work — the work around the school — wrapping up in 2018 instead of 2017.

Starr said his recommendations were based on a number of factors, such as legal compliance, capacity, modernization, infrastructure and capital maintenance.  What Starr proposes is $130 million (roughly 9 percent) more than the previously approved capital improvement plan. 

Modernizations would account for nearly half of the expenditures, at $684 million.

“I wish we didn't have to prioritize,” Starr said. “I wish we had all of the money we needed to do everything that we would like to do to provide the absolute best school buildings possible for our kids.”

Life at Seneca Valley

Seneca Valley was built in 1974 and has never been modernized, said Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Dana Tofig.

Building a brand new school was favored in a modernization feasibility study completed for Seneca Valley in October. But according to MCPS records, four other high schools ranked higher than Seneca Valley, when it came to modernization needs — Walter Johnson, Paint Branch, Gaithersburg and Wheaton.

Cohen said that Seneca Valley was desinged to be an open school, where multiple classrooms shared communal learning spaces. As a result, some classroom entrances are embedded within other classrooms, such that students have to cut through one class in order to gain access to another.

It is also plausible, due to the lack of windows Cohen said, for students to go an entire day without seeing natural daylight.

While enrollment at Seneca Valley is 1,344  — 46 students over capacity, according to MCPS figures — the need for classroom space has already encroached on the school's conference room. There is no teacher's lounge at Seneca Valley, Cohen said. 

During Monday’s hearing, David referenced the issue of lead in the water at Seneca Valley, as did an attendee who stood in the back of the room holding a poster that read “SVHS: Want to drink our water?”

Lead was found in the school’s water about 10 years ago, Cohen said, necessitating the use of filters ever since.

In January, Patch reported that faulty water filters , a problem school officials attributed to defective water filters. Cohen said the company that typically replaced the filters on the school’s water fountains was unavailable when the filters were replaced that day.

Tofig said there hadn’t been water problems at the school since.

“This issue has been around for a while,” Tofig said in an email to Patch. “A protocol was initiated and continues today in which the pipes are flushed to make sure Seneca Valley has healthy drinking water. We will continue this protocol until we are able to replace the pipes.”

'The building is not our kids'

As a school principal, Cohen said that his biggest concern is that people would make snap judgments about the school’s quality based on its appearance alone.

“The building is not our kids,” Cohen said. “We’ve got good kids.”

Cohen said he was optimistic things would change at Seneca and that he believed the issue of upgrading the school was a matter of “when” and not “if” it would happen.

But he said parents were pessimistic — sentiments that were echoed during Monday’s hearing.  

“We think our students, our families and our communities deserve much better,” said David in his closing remarks to the board.

Funding for school construction projects comes from a combination of certain tax revenues, and county and state funding. Starr has proposed $279 million in expenditures for 2013 and has requested $195 million in state aid for that year, according to his report.

What the school board approves today will be sent to the county executive and county council, eventually folding into the county’s CIP process.