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The Gazette DAMASCUS | CLARKSBURG
DAILY UPDATES ONLINE www.gazette.net
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Where to shoot? n
25 cents
Ten Mile battle moves to next phase on Thursday
Big win for Coyotes
Law requires training, doesn’t force ranges to accommodate
BY
KATE S. ALEXANDER STAFF WRITER
Maryland might require applicants for a new handgun license to shoot a gun first, but it does not require the many private ranges in the state to open their doors to those applicants. Maryland’s new law that went into effect Oct. 1 mandates those who apply for a handgun qualification license to complete a training course. Part of that course must include firing one live round. Where applicants will be able to meet that requirement in many parts of the state remains a mostly unanswered question. Of the 23 counties in Maryland, only 19 have ranges, according to a list published by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Baltimore city and Dorchester, Calvert, Howard and Somerset counties do not have a range. Nothing in the new law or regulations requires private ranges to open their facilities to nonmembers, said Shannon Alford, Maryland state liaison with the National Rifle Association. “Offering a firearms range is a wonderful thing to allow people to enjoy the sport of shooting, but it includes a lot of responsibility and a lot of liability,” Alford said. “It is to be expected that a number of them will not allow their facilities to be used by just anyone.” Montgomery County is home to only four gun ranges, all private. Currently, use of those ranges is limited. There are few parts of the county to fire a gun outside of a range. At the Bethesda-Chevy Chase chapter of the Izaak Walton League of America, only members and their guests can use the range, said James Hubbard, the chapter’s legislative chairman.
See SHOOT, Page A-12
Planning Board to recommend development levels to County Council n
BY
VIRGINIA TERHUNE STAFF WRITER
tion. The board debated the merits of various locations for more than an hour Monday, finally voting 3-2 to approve the list of nine that had been suggested. Elections board President Mary Ann Keeffe said she thought the sites that were chosen offered a good representation of the process used to choose them, and added
The county Planning Board shifted its support away from environmentalists and toward developers as it continues to its struggle to find middle ground in the battle over the future of the Ten Mile Creek watershed. The Ten Mile Creek watershed flows from Clarksburg and Boyds into Little Seneca Reservoir, a backup drinking water supply for the Washington, D.C., region. During an Oct. 10 work session, four of five Planning Board members supported allowing up to 656 of the 1,000 housing units Pulte Homes wants to build west of Interstate 270 in Boyds. That is a huge jump from the limit of 215 units that three of the five board members had previously supported based on an initial recommendation by county planners. On Thursday the Planning Board is expected to recommend to the County Council what it believes is an acceptable level of development in the watershed that straddles I-270 to include rural Boyds on the west and fast-growing Clarksburg on the east. The public board meeting is set to start at 6:15 p.m. in the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission building on Georgia Avenue in Silver Spring. Once the County Council receives the Planning Board’s recommendation, it will hold a hearing in December, followed by worksessions in January and February before taking a final vote. The Save Ten Mile Creek coalition made up of 16 environmental groups urged the Planning Board to reject the 656-unit cap. The issue is not about striking a balance between competing interests but instead to “put the public interest and resource protection at the forefront,” wrote the coalition to Planning Board Chairwoman Françoise Carrier in a letter Friday. “I feel that [the Planning Board] is just giving lip service to the importance of the reservoir,” said Diane Cameron with the Audubon Naturalist Society and leader of the coalition. “This is an issue that people care a lot about,” she said. “A lot of people are watching [what the Planning Board and County Council do].”
See VOTING, Page A-12
See TEN MILE, Page A-12
BILL RYAN/THE GAZETTE
Clarksburg High School quarterback Joe Nacci (right) hands off to Tyler Fenslau during their home game Friday against Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. The Coyotes rallied for a come-from-behind, 21-19 victory. See story, Page B-1.
County picks early voting sites Damascus Community Recreation Center chosen as second upcounty location n
BY
RYAN MARSHALL STAFF WRITER
Early voting proved to be a hit in Montgomery County during the 2012 election, and now the county will move from five such sites to nine after a vote by the county’s
Board of Elections on Monday. Chevy Chase, Damascus, Gaithersburg and Wheaton will get new sites to go along with the previously used sites in Burtonsville, Germantown, Rockville and Silver Spring. A second site was added in Silver Spring. The sites were chosen from a list of 16 from around the county that met various criteria, such as being close to major roadways and with access to public transporta-
Montgomery middle schoolers to be measured by MAP System using test until academic targets developed n
BY
LINDSAY A. POWERS STAFF WRITER
Middle school students’ performance will be tracked by the Measures of Academic Progress test as the county’s schools await data from new state assessments. Kimberly Statham — deputy superintendent of teaching, learning and programs for the school system — said
in a presentation to the school board Monday that the school system eventually will develop academic targets based on the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers. PARCC will be fully implemented in the school system next school year. “In the meantime, however, we need a high-quality instrument to assess the health of the school system,” she said. “We believe that that instrument is MAP.” The computer-based progress test that assesses math and reading performance already is in use in the school
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system. This year, however, will mark the first time the test is used to assess student progress systemwide, Statham said. Superintendent Joshua P. Starr said these measures are not the same as the “milestone” targets described in the strategic planning framework he announced in June. Starr said that Monday evening’s conversation marked the first of four the school board will have regarding the school system’s milestones. According to the strategic plan, students will be tracked through five mile-
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stones at grades three, five, eight and nine and graduation. The data from the progress test, Starr said, will rather serve as a placeholder of sorts. “Until we have PARCC, we don’t have targets,” he said. Using the test to create temporary progress measures will help schools understand how to improve their instruction, Starr said. “It makes sense for measuring our progress without imposing a whole new test or using tests that are going away,” he said.
Students will continue to take the Maryland School Assessments. Because the MAP test recently underwent significant change, the 20132014 school year will mark the school system’s baseline year for data, Starr said. The school system will determine baseline data based on the PARCC assessments during the 2014-2015 school year, according to Statham’s presentation. At the high school level, Starr said,
See MAP, Page A-12
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