I was deeply concerned when the Montgomery County Board of Education voted on March 26, 2026 to close Wootton High School, and I repeatedly warned that the decision could have harmful consequences for Rockville and Gaithersburg. Now, less than five months later, we are seeing one of those consequences here in Rockville.

EYA has informed the City of Rockville that it has indefinitely suspended the Rockshire Village project (an approved 60-home redevelopment directly across from Wootton High School) specifically because interest in the project plummeted following the vote to close Wootton. EYA had already begun work on the Rockshire project last year; however, as of this past weekend, the sales trailer and development signage have been removed from the site.

This suspension is a serious setback for Rockville and the surrounding community. The Rockshire Project Plan, approved by the Rockville Mayor and Council on May 21, 2024, was designed to replace the long-vacant former Rockshire Village Center with 60 new homes, including affordable housing, neighborhood commercial space, a park, and other community amenities.

For the past year, before the Board of Education, I have repeatedly warned that school capacity, housing, infrastructure, and economic development cannot be planned independently of one another. Separately, the Maryland Building Industry Association warned MCPS that the Wootton closure decision could create uncertainty and delays for housing development.  And Senator Cheryl Kagan specifically identified this exact Rockshire redevelopment while questioning whether MCPS was adequately accounting for municipal growth and development in its enrollment and facility planning.

This development also highlights an important contradiction. Over the past year, MCPS has repeatedly pointed to its recent, limited enrollment decline when justifying decisions such as the Wootton closure. Yet, as evident from this Rockshire suspension, MCPS’s decisions themselves can influence whether Montgomery County attracts and retains families, whether new housing moves forward, and whether new students ultimately enter MCPS.

Rockville and Gaithersburg are working to add housing, attract families, and responsibly accommodate future growth. Yet we are simultaneously losing critically important long-term school capacity while now seeing consequences for housing and economic development.

The loss of these 60 homes also means the loss of additional property and income tax revenue that those new households could have generated for the County; revenue that could have helped support needed school infrastructure investments, including the rebuilding or comprehensive renovation of Wootton. Montgomery County will continue have problems investing in our school system’s infrastructure if we continue to ignore resident development.

The suspension of Rockshire Village should serve as a warning that decisions about community schools have real consequences. Rockville and Gaithersburg are trying to create housing and attract families. School decisions should support that growth, not make it harder.

I strongly support Gaithersburg’s Crown High School and want it to succeed. However, supporting Crown does not require accepting the permanent loss of Rockville’s comprehensive high school on Wootton Parkway.

Rockshire is now a real-world example of why school closure and school infrastructure decisions do not happen in isolation. We need housing. We need families. And we need schools with the capacity to serve them. We should be planning for all three.

For all of these reasons, I will continue advocating for MCPS and Montgomery County to establish and fund a path to rebuild or comprehensively renovate the Wootton facility as a permanent community high school. Rockville and Gaithersburg need Crown, and we also need a Wootton High School on Wootton Parkway for the future.

UPDATE: EYA’s public statement today and my earlier statement (above) are not mutually exclusive. EYA’s public statement explains what it intends to do next: attempt to transition the residential construction to another homebuilder while EYA continues its site-development and retail work. My statement addressed the current suspension and what led to this situation, based on information communicated directly by EYA to the City of Rockville.

Likewise, suspending its own residential construction because of declining buyer interest following the Wootton closure decision and negotiating a transition or sale to another builder are not mutually exclusive. One can logically lead to the other. The information I shared was not speculation. It came from information provided directly by EYA to the City, and I stand by the central point that the Wootton closure decision materially affected buyer interest in the development.

I truly hope that this possible transition during the construction suspension succeeds and Rockshire is ultimately built. However, finding a new builder does not erase what happened: the Wootton closure materially affected demand for this project. That should concern anyone who cares about housing, economic development, and school capacity in Rockville and Gaithersburg.