MCPS Planned Crown High for a 1,838-Student Shortage. Now Wootton Is Moving In Instead.

When Montgomery County Public Schools planned a new high school on the Crown Farm site in Gaithersburg, it projected that the 11 high schools around it would be 1,838 students over capacity by August 2027, when the school was due to open. By last November, MCPS projected those 11 schools would have 957 empty seats that month. That count kept Wootton in its current building and included no seats at Crown. MCPS called it “a difference of 2,795 students from when Crown HS was being planned” in a presentation to the Board of Education.

The building, budgeted at $219.3 million, is still scheduled to open in August 2027, but not as a new high school. “Based on declining enrollment, a 27th high school is not needed to open at this time,” MCPS’s new capital plan says. Instead, Thomas S. Wootton High School will move into it, and the building will be nearly full. The plan projects Wootton will enroll 2,057 students there in 2027-28, in a building with a capacity of 2,096. The plan lists the building’s capacity as 2,096 in its Central Region table (page 4-29) and 2,200 in the Wootton cluster table (page 4-128), and an appendix table uses 2,220 for 2032-33 (page E-3). Earlier MCPS plans gave Crown 2,219 seats.

What the building was for

MCPS first put money for Crown in its capital plan in the fall of 2017. That plan said enrollment at Gaithersburg High School would “exceed capacity by 200 seats or more” and recommended spending “to open a new high school on the Crown Farm site to address overutilization in the mid-county region.” In December 2020, the Board accepted the 30.68-acre site from the City of Gaithersburg “at no cost,” with a memo saying “a new high school is needed in the mid-county region to address high school overutilization.”

The project’s budget grew from $136.3 million in the fall 2017 plan to $179.3 million in fall 2021, $194.3 million in fall 2022 and $219.3 million in fall 2024, when MCPS added $25 million to finish the auditorium, teaching spaces and site work. State funding for the project totals about $98 million, by our count from MCPS’s capital plans. The opening date moved from August 2025 to August 2026 and then to August 2027.

MCPS’s fall 2024 plan projected the 11 schools would be a net 314 students over capacity in 2028-29, the year after Crown was due to open with 2,219 seats.

MCPS’s countywide enrollment forecasts fell over the same years. Its fall 2022 plan projected 167,238 students for the 2028-29 school year. Its fall 2026 plan projects 149,829 for that year, and 146,221 for 2030-31, down from 151,967 students this fall.

Room countywide, tight in one region

Countywide, Montgomery Planning’s FY2027 School Utilization Report, which uses MCPS’s fall 2025 projections, shows 54,054 high school seats and 49,528 projected high school students in 2027, a surplus of 4,526 seats. The report projects 4,904 surplus high school seats in the 2031-32 school year.

Those totals already count Wootton at the Crown building instead of its old one. Montgomery Planning’s staff report lists 2,249 seats becoming available when Charles W. Woodward High School reopens in 2027, 736 more at Northwood High School and a 99-seat increase from Wootton’s move to the Crown Farm site.

The spare seats are not spread evenly. MCPS’s new capital plan projects its four Central Region high schools (Winston Churchill, Richard Montgomery, Rockville and Wootton) at 101% of capacity in 2030-31, with 7,838 students for 7,764 seats, using the 2,096-seat figure for Wootton’s new building (pages 4-29 and 4-31).

The land agreement

The site came from the developer of Crown Farm through the City of Gaithersburg under a 2006 annexation agreement. The agreement says the land is for “the use and construction of a public high school by Montgomery County Public Schools” and “for no other use” except as the agreement allows.

It also set a deadline, which Montgomery Perspective reported in June 2025. “In the event that MCPS does not move forward with the construction of a high school on the School Site within twenty (20) years of the ‘Effective Date of this Annexation,’ … Gaithersburg, at its sole discretion, may use the School Site for a public recreational amenity,” the agreement says.

The clause turns on starting construction, not on opening a school, and gives the city the option, not the obligation, to use the land for recreation. MCPS’s capital plans say construction funds were approved in fiscal 2024, before the November 2025 presentation that showed the 11 nearby high schools with room to spare in 2027.

Wootton moves in

On March 26, the Board approved the superintendent’s recommendation. The recommended resolution states that Wootton “is relocated to the Crown Farm site” and that the action “relocates, and does not close, the existing Thomas S. Wootton High School.” The full school moves in the 2027-28 school year, “with no grades remaining at the former site on Wootton Parkway.”

It says the move “increases utilization of a new facility,” addresses the condition of the existing Wootton building, lets MCPS “repurpose the existing Thomas S. Wootton High School for district priorities” and “significantly reduces overall capital investment needs.” County Council staff wrote in February that the Wootton Parkway building would be used as a holding school for secondary schools undergoing major construction.

In the same November presentation, MCPS estimated that a Wootton renewal would cost $453.4 million without a holding school and $297.6 million with one.

The decision remains contested. We have covered the appeal filed with the State Board of Education, the rejection of MCPS’s bid to dismiss it and the effect on the Rockshire redevelopment in Rockville.

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