Superintendent's Proposal Settles Wootton Lawsuit

In a bid to stem a lawsuit filed over the decision to close Rockville's Wootton High School and relocate students to Gaithersburg's Crown High School, MCPS Superintendent Thomas Taylor has announced a tentative agreement with community leaders on a settlement.

MCPS will purchase 8 Spirit Airlines airplanes at bankruptcy auction, including six 145-passenger Airbus A319s and two 235-passenger Airbus A321neos. Plans call for shuttles every 30 minutes during school days from the Falls Meade neighborhood to Crown.

"This time we crunched the numbers. The data from Spirit's bankruptcy filing show that avoiding a Wootton lawsuit with 10 daily round-trip flights is less expensive than suing electric school bus manufacturers," Taylor said.

MCPS flights will originate from Wootton Municipal Airport at the renovated school site. The airport's construction is a public-private partnership brokered by Montgomery County Councilmember Dawn Luedtke under a sole-source construction project awarded to W.M. Rickman Construction Co., LLC. The City of Gaithersburg will contribute $8.2 million toward the project along with a 5-to-1 matching grant from Total Wine & More.

"Spirit Option H is a win-win for the Wootton community," according to a Gaithersburg press release. "Falls Meade children can walk to the jetway, and Rockville finally gets a replacement for Congressional Airport after more than 75 years."

In a related development, Taylor announced that 8 “people mover” shuttles from the Spirit terminal at Dulles were purchased to transport Magruder students to a holding school set up in the MCPS Lincoln Center on N. Stonestreet Avenue in Rockville after the materials management division moves to a new state-of-the-art warehouse in 2028.