Wootton High case moves to administrative judge 

Case argues that board’s decision to move Rockville school was ‘arbitrary, unreasonable and illegal’

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July 21, 2026 11:35 a.m.

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A case against the Montgomery County school board’s vote to move Rockville’s Thomas S. Wootton High School to Gaithersburg has moved forward to the Maryland Office of Administrative Hearings, according to a statement from the coalition of parents, who filed an appeal of the decision to move the school with the Maryland State Board of Education.  

“Earlier in the proceedings, MCPS sought to stop this appeal before the evidence could ever be heard,” the statement said. “The State Board refused to end the case at this preliminary stage, instead referring it to an independent Administrative Law Judge for further proceedings.”  

The alliance’s appeal and the consequential move to an administrative judge, follows the state education board’s denial of Community and Education Policy Alliance Inc.’s (CEPA) March 31 emergency request to the Maryland Department of Education.  That filing asked for a month-long halt to the implementation of the county school board’s decision to relocate Wootton. Sukhobok told Bethesda Today in April that the denial was based on the timing, as the boundary changes wouldn’t take effect until fall 2027 so an immediate intervention wasn’t needed.   

The county school board voted 7-1 on March 26 to create new school attendance zones and switch to a regional programming model for high schools – two moves that will result in sweeping changes for the district.   

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Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Thomas Taylor’s recommendation for the two changes was the culmination of the district’s two boundary studies required for the upcoming openings of Charles W. Woodward High School in Rockville and Crown High School in Gaithersburg and an analysis of high school programming. Board member Julie Yang, who is running for a County Council District 1 seat, opposed the decision.   

The county school board’s decision requires Wootton’s staff and students to move to the upcoming Crown High School building. Following the move, 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.  

The alliance’s appeal argued the county school board’s decision was “arbitrary, unreasonable and illegal,” according to the group’s press release. In addition, the alliance says the decision was based on faulty enrollment data, ignores the district’s school closure rules and doesn’t include proper approval from the state to change the intended use of Crown High – for which the district received state funding for its construction.   

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.    

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According to the April appeal, the alliance is challenging the logic behind what constitutes a school closure, arguing that “there is no authority that maintaining a name, mascot, or colors makes a new school identical to a prior one.”  

The appeal also argues that the board used improper vote structure by combining multiple distinct decisions – concerning the boundary studies and the programming changes — into a single vote and that the plan to move Wootton was never properly vetted or authorized with the boundary study process.   

In a Tuesday statement about the case moving forward, CEPA said the referral to an administrative hearing “move the case beyond preliminary motions and into an independent examination of the evidence surrounding MCPS’s decision to replace” Wootton. 

“We welcome discovery,” Sukhobok said. “The public has heard MCPS’s explanations. Discovery is where those explanations are tested against the contemporaneous record. We intend to pursue every discovery mechanism available because the question is no longer what MCPS says happened. The question is whether the evidence drove the decision—or whether the decision came first and the explanations followed.” 

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Originally published at Bethesdamagazine