MoCo school board to discuss closures, new boundary study

Process likely to determine whether to close SSIMS, other county schools

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July 16, 2026 11:09 a.m.

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Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) staff is set to give a preview of its upcoming school closures and elementary school boundary study to the county school board on Thursday, starting the process for a study that will determine which middle and elementary schools may be closed or consolidated over the next several years.  

The study comes on the heels of the end of a middle and high school boundary study that resulted in the school board approving in March boundary lines that will permanently move Rockville’s Thomas S. Wootton High School into the upcoming Crown High in Gaithersburg — along with sweeping changes to the district’s programming model.   

According to school board documents, the elementary school boundary study will consist of two phases: the first includes determining recommendations for any elementary or middle school consolidations, closures or changes to programs such as “paired schools,” when K-2 and 3-5 grade students are split up between two schools. The second phase will be an elementary school boundary study that will take into account decisions made in the first phase. 

The study will likely include the decision on whether to close Silver Spring International Middle School (SSIMS) due to the building being “no longer tenable,” according to Superintendent Thomas Taylor. In December, the Montgomery County school board voted to suspend considering the school’s closure and decided to incorporate a decision into a future elementary school boundary study.  

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The SSIMS community pushed back against the proposal after Taylor introduced it in October.  

“I just feel like, again and again, this community is getting the short end of the stick,” Jill Clark, a Northwood High School teacher, told Bethesda Today in November. Clark’s children attended SSIMS and Northwood, the latter of which is being housed in the Charles W. Woodward High School building in Rockville while it’s Silver Spring campus is under construction. “I get that there are big picture planning priorities, but it seems like people keep trying to solve problems sort of on the backs of this community.” 

What other schools the board might consider closing is unclear. The board is set to discuss the study at its Thursday meeting. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 4 p.m. at 15 W. Gude Drive in Rockville. 

According to school board documents, the decision to close schools will rely on issues such as building conditions, enrollment and capacity and impacts to educational programs. 

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According to documents, the board is planning to hire the same company who did the high school boundary study, Flo Analytics. The most recent boundary study was focused on middle and high schools, but still had an impact on which schools elementary schools fed into.  

Phase one of the timeline is set to begin in August and end in May. Phase two is scheduled to begin in June and end in May 2028. The boundary study is set to be implemented for the 2029-2030 school year. 

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine