DEADLINE BUMPED Companies have more time to bid on Purple Line. A-4
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GERMANTOWN | CLARKSBURG DA I LY U P DAT E S AT G A Z E T T E . N E T
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Budget counted on funding; projects might wait if bill fails n
Cold, snow create difficult conditions
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PEGGY MCEWAN
BY
STAFF WRITER
LINDSAY A. POWERS STAFF WRITER
February, the shortest month of the year, seems especially long this year because of cold, snow and ice. According to the National Weather Service, the month has seen temperatures 7.9 degrees below normal, with 30.6 degrees being the average temperature through Feb. 23. Andrew Snyder, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said normal February temperatures range between a low of 32 degrees and high of 49. Things are not looking up, either, even with March beginning Sunday. “The long-range outlook for the next two weeks shows continued below-normal temperatures,” Snyder said. The weather has made an impact beyond discomfort for county residents. Montgomery County Public Schools were closed Feb. 17 and had delayed openings on the 20th and 23rd. Seneca Valley High School students who walk to school had to climb piles of ice and snow at the intersection of Md. 118 and Middlebrook Drive on Monday, a concern for Ruthanne Stoltzfus, a Germantown resident. She and her husband were at the intersection Monday morning digging a path on the sidewalk so the students would have a safe path to school. “You see something that is wrong and you contribute for the good of the kids,” Stoltzfus said. She also emailed several county agencies, including County Executive Isiah Leggett, about who is responsible for shoveling sidewalks. She said she thinks the Leggett email got results. “Then the county cleared a corner,” she said. She said she would like everyone who is responsible for clearing sidewalks to do it. Most people, she said, only shovel the part immediately in front of their buildings or offices, but where the buildings end, the walks are not shoveled. Fortunately, Holy Cross Hospital in Germantown does not seem to be showing an increase in emergency room visits because of the cold and ice, but Yolanda Gaskins, director of media relations, said they do not keep statistics on things like that. Pepco said it has weathered the cold pretty well this month, with few power outages. pmcewan@gazette.net
BILL RYAN/THE GAZETTE
Poolesville High School juniors Suriya Kandaswamy of Germantown, Annie Bao of Boyds and Deepti Agnihotri of Boyds demonstrate their paper arranger. They are one of two Poolesville teams in the national finals of the Source America Design Challenge.
Poolesville students compete in national design challenge Two teams among top five in country
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BY
PEGGY MCEWAN STAFF WRITER
Students at Poolesville High School are again among the nation’s most creative, with two teams placing in the finals of the Source America Design Challenge, a competition to design workplace technology for people with disabilities. The students are in Washington D.C. this week competing against three other teams from across the country for the top prize in this year’s competition. One team, the Helping Hands, comprised of Amber Liu and Angela Zhou of Germantown and Lee Dodds of Poolesville, created a Shoelace Coiler, which allows workers to easily fit a pair of coiled shoelaces into
a box for sale. The team worked with Chimes, a nonprofit in Baltimore that provides jobs for people with intellectual developmental disabilities. “They had a project in mind because they had the possibility for a contract [to package the shoelaces] but only had two people who could use the device they had and that wasn’t enough of a work force,” Angela said. Helping Hands created a simple device that sits in the metal lace box, held in place by magnets. To use it, the operator places the end of the laces in a slit in a piece of PVC pipe and turns a crank that winds the laces. When the coiler is lifted from the box, the laces stay neatly in place and the worker moves on to the next set of laces. Chimes has already tested the Shoelace Coiler with its
workers and found it successful the team said. And they got the contract to do the work. “Their first shipment of shoe laces arrives in April,” Lee said. The other team, the Sunrise Solutions, made up of Suriya Kandaswamy of Germantown and Deepti Annihotri and Annie Bao of Boyds, created the Criss Crosser for ROI, Rehabilitation Opportunities Inc., in Germantown. Their invention helps workers who collate papers and stuff envelopes create neatly crisscrossed stacks of papers so each envelope gets all the papers it needs without duplicates, Annie said. The L-shaped device is color cued so workers know which stack they are working on and rotates so the crisscrossed stacks can build up before the
See DESIGN, Page A-9
Montgomery County could face difficult decisions if the state doesn’t help fulfill the school district’s funding request for capital projects, officials said Monday. Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett has recommended approving the county school board’s requested $1.74 billion fiscal 2015-20 Capital Improvements Program. Leggett’s recommendation banks on the success of a state bill to direct more school construction money to the county.
The county wants to secure an added stream of state aid within the six-year capital program time frame, said county spokesman Patrick Lacefield. There’s “no alternative” to the continued efforts to get additional revenue, he said. A meeting Monday between school officials and the County Council’s Education Committee was part of an ongoing push for more state funding. County leaders want Maryland legislators to ramp up school construction dollars to support Montgomery projects that would add space amid rising enrollment and repair aging buildings. County Councilman Craig L. Rice emphasized on Monday the county’s reliance on
See PLEA, Page A-9
Bowers takes school reins through June n
Former chief operating officer to lead district
BY
LINDSAY A. POWERS STAFF WRITER
On Larry Bowers’ first day as Montgomery County Public Schools’ interim superintendent on Feb. 17, the school system closed for a snow day. Onhissecondday,however, his new job heated up. Bowers was in Annapolis with school board President Patricia O’Neill, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett and county parent-teacher association leaders,
testifying on a bill to direct more school c o n struction money to MontgomBowers ery. Bowers was picked to temporarily lead the district after Joshua P. Starr resigned as superintendent Feb. 16. Starr and the school board agreed that he’d leave several
See BOWERS, Page A-9
Germantown woman sings praises of following dream Biologist becomes singer, songwriter
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BY
PEGGY MCEWAN STAFF WRITER
Just six years ago Michelle Lockey of Germantown sat in the sanctuary of Seneca Creek Church in Gaithersburg listening to the singers leading worship and wishing she could sing as well as they. Today, she is a full time singer-songwriter nominated for two Wammies, the Washington Area Music Association awards. She is nominated in the Songwriter of the Year and Folk-Contemporary Vocalist of the Year categories.
That is quite a journey for a former biology lab worker who always wanted to perform but just didn’t think she could. “I’ve wanted to do music all my life,” Lockey, 46, said. “I just didn’t feel I was good enough to do it.” Over the years, she said she did karaoke, sang at open mic nights, learned to play ukulele, keyboard and, finally, guitar. She also had a head start by learning to read music while taking piano lessons as a child, she said. In 2008, Lockey said she finally joined the church choir which gave her a start, allowing her to build her confidence. There she met a woman who wrote original songs, a re-
minder to Lockey that when she was young she too wrote songs and she started doing so again. “Of course the first songs you write are about any troubled past you’ve had,” she said. “It was a terrible song, but I didn’t realize that at first.” Lockey’s music career did not flow easily from desire to practice to success. Along the way she had help from counseling, a class at her church called “Search for Significance” and self help books. She also kept her day job and did music on the side. But she was learning as she went along, asking questions and following web-
PHOTO BY GREG DILLON
See SINGER, Page A-9
Singer-songwriter Michelle Lockey has been nominated for two Wammies.
Volume 28, No. 6, Two sections, 24 Pages Copyright © 2015 The Gazette
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