In emergency legal filing, Wootton High activist group asks state to pause school’s move  

Latest concerns relate to procedures that led to decision to relocate to Gaithersburg

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April 14, 2026 11:28 a.m. | Updated: April 14, 2026 11:29 a.m.

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A coalition of Montgomery County parents filed an emergency request with the Maryland Department of Education urging a month-long halt to the county school board’s March 26 decision to move Thomas S. Wootton High School from Rockville to Gaithersburg while the state department reviews the legal procedures that led to the decision, according to a Monday statement from the group.  

“This issue isn’t just a Wootton issue right now,” said Elisa Sukhobok, a representative for local advocacy group Community and Education Policy Alliance, which was formed to fight against a decision to move Wootton. She told Bethesda Today on Monday the issue extends to the actions of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) “not being transparent, not being accountable, and not having the proper procedure that they should have had.” 

The Montgomery County school board voted 7-1 on March 26 to create new school attendance zones and switch to a regional programming for high schools – two moves that will result in sweeping changes for the district. MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor’s recommendation was the culmination of the district’s two boundary studies and an analysis of high school programming. Board member Julie Yang opposed the decision. 

The decision would move the population of Wootton to the upcoming Crown High School building in Gaithersburg. The Wootton building would likely be turned into a holding school, according to MCPS officials. The programming and attendance zone revisions are set to go into effect for the 2027-2028 school year. 

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• MCPS spokesperson Liliana Lopez on Tuesday said the district had not yet received the emergency filing from the state so would be reserving “comment until we have had the opportunity to review it.”  

Sukhobok said in the Monday statement that the alliance filed the emergency request on March 31 through attorneys Christopher Mincher and Patrick Seidel of Baltimore-based Silverman Thompson. The filing raises several questions including whether MCPS followed legally required procedures for closing a school and used flawed data to justify the board’s decision, according to the statement.  Other questions include whether the move would cause irreparable harm to affected students and whether the district would advance implementation before a legal review is complete.  

The alliance “is constrained by the position the [state has] taken that [state law] requires any stay be issued within five days of the date you or the State Board receives notice of a local board’s action,” The March 31 filing said. “This five-day window is arbitrary, unreasonable, and unenforceable because it is inherently incompatible with the four-factor legal test applied in determining whether to stay a local board’s decision.”  

While MCPS has stated that the decision to move Wootton doesn’t amount to a school closure and that its data is accurate, the alliance and other community groups have argued otherwise.  

“They can call this whatever they want to call it, but … they’re dismantling the school and they’re moving us to, or the remaining of us to, a different school in a different city,” Sukhobok told Bethesda Today on Monday. “We also have a lot of questions about how they’re actually projecting their enrollment data, because their data and what our analysis show just doesn’t make sense. And we’ve raised this question to be fair, that we’ve asked these questions to the board, questions to the board before the legal filing, and they don’t really give us straightforward answers.”  

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The filing argues that more harm would be caused by not pausing the decision than would be by granting the stay because Wootton families “are beginning to make permanent  educational decisions” and MCPS will be moving forward to prepare the Crown High building for students to attend.  

“Ensuring transparent, equitable, and data-driven school board decisions is unquestionably in the public interest,” the filing said. “If a high school that has been a community hub for decades is to be closed, Maryland families should have the assurance that the decision follows the law and the process guaranteed by State and County Board regulations.”  

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine