The Bethesda Downtown Plan area is geographically within the Bethesda-Chevy Chase school cluster service area, which is served by Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School and its feeder schools, primarily Westland Middle School and Bethesda, Somerset, and Westbrook Elementary Schools. A small commercial area in the southeastern portion of the Plan Area on the southeast quadrant is served by Silver Creek Middle School and the paired Rosemary Hills (K-2) and Chevy Chase (3-5) Elementary Schools.
As a process of monitoring the adequacy of school facilities in relation to the Bethesda Downtown Plan, this information reviews the latest enrollment and capacity data of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase (B-CC) Cluster collectively at each school level. For the 2024 Monitoring Report, the actual enrollment and capacity reported for the 2023-2024 school year and the projections for six years into the future (2028-2029) are analyzed. The projections for the cluster’s middle schools and high school, however, are subject to change following the results of the Charles W. Woodward High School reopening boundary study.
2024 Cluster Adequacy Review
In the 2023-2024 school year, the cluster saw a decline in its total enrollment compared to the previous year. At the elementary school level, enrollment dropped by 89 students, a 2.6% decrease, while the middle schools saw a nominal increase of 8 students, a 0.5% growth rate, and the high school saw an increase of 33 students, a 1.4% growth rate. As a result, the cluster-wide utilization rate of elementary schools decreased to 81.1%. The cluster-wide middle school utilization rate also decreased to 82.4%, mostly due to a collective increase in the program capacity. The high school’s utilization rate on the other hand increased to 95.7%.
MCPS projects that the elementary school enrollment will partially rebound by 2029, bringing the cluster-wide utilization rate to 84.7%. The middle school and high school enrollments are expected to remain at a similar level throughout the next six years, keeping the cluster’s utilization rates for each level at 81.2% and 94.6% respectively.
Shifting Trend: Enrollment Decline Leads to Abundance of Surplus Capacity
The Bethesda-Chevy Chase Cluster experienced a strong wave of enrollment growth that started at the elementary school level around 2008 and subsequently progressed through the middle school and high school levels. In response to the overcrowding that was occurring in many of the schools, the cluster was able to receive significant capital investment throughout the past fifteen years. As a result, the cluster’s total capacity increased by more than 1,400 seats at the elementary school level, more than 1,000 seats at the middle school level, and more than 750 seats at the high school level.
The enrollment for elementary school students peaked in 2016, and even with the additional students coming from new development in the Plan Area, the cluster’s total number of elementary school students has since declined by 15%. As a result, the cluster now has a considerable amount of surplus capacity available. However, Bethesda Elementary School is starting to see a seat deficit again despite a recent boundary change. Nevertheless, it is important to understand the overall enrollment trend of the broader area, especially given the cluster-wide and countywide decline in elementary school enrollment. In the 2023-2024 school year, the cluster’s total surplus of elementary school capacity exceeded 750 seats, which is more than the number of students enrolled at Bethesda Elementary School or any of the cluster’s feeder elementary schools. Projections indicate that there will still be over 600 surplus seats cluster-wide in the 2029-2030 school year. Enrollment in the middle schools also peaked in 2019 and the amount of surplus capacity, which was approximately 350 seats in the 2023-2024 school year, is expected to increase throughout the next few years. High school enrollment has continued to grow steadily since 2014. However, projections indicate that the rate of growth is slowing down and expected to plateau, especially considering that the elementary and middle school enrollments have already peaked. There were more than 100 surplus high school seats in the 2023-2024 school year, and that number is expected to increase.
The following table shows the capacity, enrollment, and surplus capacity available at each individual school and the cluster-wide total for each school level for the 2023-2024 school year and the 2029-2030 school year projections.
Surplus Capacity of Bethesda-Chevy Chase Cluster and Feeder Schools
| 2023-2024 Capacity | 2023-2024 Enrollment | 2023-2024 Surplus Capacity | 2029-2030 Capacity | 2029-2030 Enrollment | 2029-2030 Surplus Capacity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS | 2,475 | 2,368 | 107 | 2,475 | 2,342 | 133 |
| Cluster Total – MS | 1,979 | 1,631 | 348 | 1,979 | 1,606 | 373 |
| Silver Creek MS | 915 | 766 | 149 | 915 | 736 | 179 |
| Westland MS | 1,064 | 865 | 199 | 1,064 | 870 | 194 |
| Cluster Total – ES | 4,036 | 3,272 | 764 | 4,036 | 3,420 | 616 |
| Bethesda ES | 561 | 584 | -23 | 561 | 584 | -23 |
| Chevy Chase ES | 483 | 427 | 56 | 483 | 476 | 7 |
| North Chevy Chase ES | 374 | 243 | 131 | 374 | 237 | 137 |
| Rock Creek Forest ES | 771 | 669 | 102 | 771 | 678 | 93 |
| Rosemary Hills ES | 650 | 533 | 117 | 650 | 551 | 99 |
| Somerset ES | 549 | 303 | 246 | 549 | 369 | 180 |
| Westbrook ES | 648 | 513 | 135 | 648 | 525 | 123 |
During the Bethesda Downtown Plan development stage, a build-out enrollment estimate of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster was calculated under a hypothetical scenario in which the residential capacities allowed in all recently adopted plan areas would be built out to their maximums. This estimate included impacts of the Bethesda Downtown Plan, the Greater Lyttonsville Plan, Chevy Chase Lake, Friendship Heights Master Plan, and Westbard Sector Plans, and assumed that the enrollment from existing residential areas will remain stable throughout the life of the Plan. However, the cluster’s declining enrollment has invalidated that assumption, undermining the approach of using max build-out enrollment estimates to gauge the long-term adequacy of school capacity. For example, when the build-out enrollment estimate was calculated in 2018, the cluster’s total elementary school enrollment was projected to be 3,690 students for the 2023-2024 school year. The actual enrollment that was reported in the 2023-2024 school year however was only 3,272 students, 418 students less than what was projected. This is in spite of development and approvals in the Bethesda Overlay Zone reaching the 30.4 million square feet threshold in September 2023.
Scheduled Capital Projects and Solutions Impacting the Cluster
On March 28, 2023, the Board of Education decided on the scope of a boundary study to establish the service area for the reopening of Charles W. Woodward High School. The scope includes the high school and middle schools serving the Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster, in addition to those serving the Downcounty Consortium, Walter Johnson, and Walt Whitman clusters. The scope, however, does not include any of the elementary schools.
Once Woodward High School reopens with its new facility on 11211 Old Georgetown Road, which is currently scheduled for the 2027-2028 school year, a student reassignment process will start taking effect. This will likely alter the enrollment and utilization projections of the Bethesda-Chevy Chase cluster high school and middle schools. The current enrollment projections, however, do not reflect any of this potential change – the boundary study options have not been developed and the extent of each option’s impact on the cluster is yet unknown. MCPS’s projections will typically start reflecting any change to boundaries once the decisions are made by the Board of Education.
Recommendations
The enrollment trends of the schools that serve the Bethesda Downtown Plan Area should continue to be monitored as recommended by the Sector Plan. However, given the increasing amount of surplus capacity becoming available within the cluster and across the County, if an individual school, e.g. Bethesda Elementary School, is projected to reach a level of overutilization that warrants relief, reassigning students to adjacent schools with surplus capacity available should be considered.