GETTING A ‘HANDEL’ ON HUNGER Concert will raise funds for Manna Food Center. A-4
NEWS: Students use strategy, critical thinking to solve math mazes. A-12
The Gazette GERMANTOWN | CLARKSBURG
SPORTS: University of Virginia recruit leads Clarksburg softball team into playoffs. B-1
DA I LY U P DAT E S AT G A Z E T T E . N E T
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
25 cents
Rockwell students share their world Clarksburg: No
time to waste on sewage solution
International Night expanded, includes heritage
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PEGGY MCEWAN STAFF WRITER
Staff and PTA members of Rockwell Elementary School in Damascus made major changes to their spring schedule and, on Friday, hosted the school’s first Community International and Heritage Festival. “This is our biggest event of the Year,” said PTA president Shannon Fleischer. “We wanted to keep it and celebrate our diversity.” Last year, though, Fleischer said, more than 500 people came to International Night and it was too many people for the school’s gym and all-purpose room. “We moved it back to later in the year so we could have it outdoors, too,” she said. Changing the focus of the festival also allowed students without first-, second- or thirdgeneration connections to their [international] heritage to celebrate their U.S. roots, Fleischer said. Third-grader Bryce Mitchell, 8, did just that. He created a display about the state of Virginia
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Former pastor goes from growing churches to nurturing plants BY
PEGGY MCEWAN STAFF WRITER
David Kinderdine believes there are many factors leading to success in business and he is enjoying the fruits of one of them. “My idea about business is, find a niche, become an expert in it and learn how to market it effectively,” he said. Kinderdine is owner and chief plant tender for Velvet Touch Rose Care, based on his 5-acre home site in Clarksburg. “Our focus is I’ll help a client pick out an area [for roses],”
TOM FEDOR/THE GAZETTE
Sydney Hicks, 6 (left), and Hillary Bernal, 8, participate in Polynesian dance instruction during the Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School international heritage festival on Friday in Damascus. and displayed a family tree going back to the early 1700s. “[Virginia] was really important in U.S. history,” he said. “A lot of leaders came from there.” Three students worked to-
gether to create a poster for Missouri, complete with a large aluminum foil representation of the St. Louis Gateway Arch. It actually is called The Jefferson National Expansion Memo-
rial, said third-grader Gabrielle Evans, 9. Gabrielle’s mother is from St. Louis and she has visited there, she said, even going up the arch.
See INTERNATIONAL, Page A-10
Kinderdine said. “I’m not an architectural designer [but] I’ll work with other landscape companies.” He also helps clients select the variety or varieties of roses they want planted, orders them and gets to work planting them. But that is not the end of the business, it’s really the beginning. “The unique thing is I service them,” Kinderdine said. “I visit their garden every 10 days.” At Velvet Touch Rose Care, Kinderdine said they fertilize, spray, prune and winterize their clients’ rose bushes. “Everything roses need,” he said. Kinderdine started the
See ROSES, Page A-10
Neither possible spending plan matches school board’s request BY
LINDSAY A. POWERS STAFF WRITER
The Montgomery County Council Education Committee has recommended operating and capital budgets for Montgomery County Public Schools below what the county school board had requested. For the school system’s fiscal
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2016 operating budget, the committee recommended a budget plan that sits about $39.7 million under the board’s proposal of $2.39 billion dollars. Interim Superintendent Larry Bowers said after the committee’s April 29 meeting that his decision to withhold allocating about 400 positions for the next school year could become permanent if the district needs to reconcile the roughly $40 million gap. Bowers withheld the positions in March to address uncertain funding with the idea that all
Bethesda-Chevy Chase sophomore motivated to serve, empower peers
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LINDSAY A. POWERS STAFF WRITER
PEGGY MCEWAN/THE GAZETTE
David Kinderdine of Clarksburg shows off three varieties of roses he will plant for clients in May. Kinderdine owns and operates Velvet Touch Rose Care, which specializes in design, installation and service of rose gardens.
or some of the positions might be allocated later. About 250 teaching positions could be reduced, about 150 of which would affect class sizes. The district could receive about $17.5 million in Geographic Cost of Education Index funding from the state, a decision that sits with Gov. Larry Hogan (R). The index provides additional money to school systems where the cost of education is higher. “We’re still hopeful that that $17 million’s going to come through and that will help us to
be able to restore some of those positions,” Bowers said. Even if the district gets the GCEI money, it would still need to address a “problematic” funding gap in the scenario the Education Committee approved, school board President Patricia O’Neill said after the meeting. “It’s all going to be painful,” she said. “Options are not pretty.” Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett had proposed $2.31 billion for the school sys-
See BUDGETS, Page A-10
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Much of the planned development in the Clarksburg area of Upper Montgomery County is stopped up because of sewers, where to put them, which way they should flow and what kind to use. Representatives from the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission and the Citizens Advisory Council met Thursday at the Upcounty Regional Services Center in Germantown to discuss new proposals for a working infrastructure plan. At the center of the discussion about what would work best for the area is the Ten Mile Creek Limited Master Plan, adopted to limit the effects of development on the water quality of the creek. Ten Mile Creek is the most pristine waterway in Montgomery County, according to Cathy Wiss, water quality program coordinator for the Audubon Naturalist
Society, who has been monitoring the creek since 1997. It flows into Little Seneca Lake, which is the principal emergency water supply for the Washington, D.C., region. On the other end, the Ten Mile Creek watershed includes the area around the Clarksburg Historic District. Delays in sewer construction mean delays in construction of the planned Clarksburg Town Center, said Bette Buffington, a business owner in the Historic District. Both women are members of the Citizens Advisory Committee, which has been meeting monthly since February to help work out a solution acceptable to environmentally concerned county residents and those who feel business concerns should be equally important in the future of Clarksburg. “Somehow we were supposed to get sewer in the Historic District in 2014,” Buffington said. “But the friends of Ten Mile Creek, the Audubon Society and the Montgomery Countryside Alliance get it restricted. They don’t want any central sewer system.” Not true, said Anne James,
See SEWAGE, Page A-10
County elects student school board member
Committee calls for lower MCPS budgets n
PEGGY MCEWAN STAFF WRITER
Clarksburg business coming up roses n
Ten Mile Creek plan sends options down the drain
SHIRLEY, YOU JEST Star of stage, screen, and stories has plenty more to say Saturday at the Strathmore.
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Volume 28, No. 16, Two sections, 28 Pages Copyright © 2015 The Gazette
Please
RECYCLE
In a nail-biter election, Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School’s Eric Guerci secured enough votes to become the next student at Montgomery County’s school board table. Guerci, a sophomore at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, was elected by his fellow students to become the 38th student member of the board, or SMOB. The victory, he said, left him “shocked” and “honored.” “I really couldn’t believe it at first, but it’s starting to hit me now,” he said Thursday, the day after the election. Guerci garnered 33,046 votes, or 52 percent. The other contender — Rachit Agarwal, a junior from Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville — had 30,679 votes, or 48 percent. Guerci will take office in July, replacing current student board member Dahlia Huh of Clarksburg High School, who is graduating.
T h e voter pool included Montgomery County P u b l i c Schools students from middle Guerci schools, high schools, alternative programs, Rock Terrace School and the John L. Gildner Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents. Of the school district’s roughly 78,800 eligible student voters, about 64,300 cast votes, including some ballots that were blank, according to the school system’s website. Guerci, currently vice president of the Montgomery County Regional Student Government Association, said he was motivated to run for the board position to serve and empower students. The role continues his work in student advocacy, efforts he is passionate about, he said. He also is a member of his high school’s class of 2017 student government. Guerci is familiar with the
See STUDENT, Page A-10