Trying to find MECCA without a compass
Montgomery County's planned charter school is finding it difficult to come up with a building that actually meets standards.
As I said in the introduction to this series, the supposedly forthcoming MECCA Business Leadership Institute (MBLI) charter school in Montgomery County, MD is having issues. As far as I can tell, they have no staff, an unspecified curriculum, and a building that will not be ready to open on the first day of school in August.
If I had a hammer…
One of the first, and most obvious, questions that most people have when talking about a school is its location. Unfortunately, MBLI cannot even answer that question adequately right now. It has purchased 20261 Goldenrod Lane in Germantown, a single-story office building, to house its educational pursuits. However, it’s an office building, not a school, meaning that extensive work needs to be done in order to make it ready. As of the writing of this article, MBLI is still waiting on approval for whatever upgrades need to be made to the fire alarm system and electrical wiring.
Unfortunately, starting a school from scratch requires a team of individuals with diverse backgrounds and abilities… not just educators.1
Montgomery County Department of Permitting Services finally approved a permit to do work to convert the Goldenrod Lane location from a “Commercial Building” to an “Educational Building” on May 21, 2025. I do not know what work needs to be done, specifically, but I would assume that if it is anything like a standard office building and needs to be converted into anything approaching a school, it will need things like a cafeteria, gym, and auditorium (or at least a multipurpose room with an industrial kitchen). It probably also needs work on having security measures upgraded to meet current COMAR standards. I also know that several permit applications submitted since January, 2025 are still listed on MCDPS’s website as “in process” and that the Fire Alarm Code Review was denied on May 21, 2025.
So what does that mean in terms of readiness to open in August? Bethesda Today reported back in April that opening day 1 in August on Goldenrod Lane was looking unlikely, and that MBLI has been working to secure alternate facilities, including Radnor Elementary School site in Bethesda, which is apparently in horrendous shape itself and would require a significant amount of work to be appropriate and functional.
The bus ride is how long?
Not having the Goldenrod Lane site ready by August would be bad enough, but having students go to Bethesda is not a better choice. I would assume that most of the families who have applied to MBLI are in the Gaithersburg/Germantown/Clarksburg area. MBLI has promised yellow MCPS bus service, but it will likely function the way that magnet bus service works now: centralized bus stops around the county for people who don’t live nearby.
But let’s say that you are a family planning on sending your child to MBLI in the fall. If the Goldenrod Lane site is ready to go, then what follows is irrelevant. However, since the permitting is still in flux and construction and remodeling still needs to be completed, let’s take a look at what your child would go through if you live relatively close to the Goldenrod Lane site. Google Maps tells me that to arrive by 8:15am on a weekday (the typical start time for MCPS middle schools), the trip will take anywhere from 35 to 60 minutes. Of course, as a charter, they can set their own bell schedule, but if they are planning on using MCPS buses (as their plan lays out), they have to make sure that the buses are available to start at their preferred time. That’s just logistics, and I’m sure that MBLI would be able to figure that out.
What concerns me the most is the potential amount of time a child might have to spend on the bus getting to and from school. A 2022 study,2 for example, found that students with “long” bus rides (45-60 minutes) and “very long” bus rides (over 60 minutes) are much more likely to suffer from chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism (defined as missing 10% or more of the total number of school days) is already a huge problem in the post-Pandemic world, and Montgomery County is no exception.
Leaving Germantown at 7:00AM to arrive at 8:00AM for school does not feel like a winning proposition to me. If MBLI cannot get its Goldenrod Lane site up and running by the school “preview” day, August 25, or at least find a site closer to Goldenrod Lane, I foresee a painful year of commutes for many middle schoolers next year.
All of this, of course, assumes that MBLI will actually provide yellow bus service that they are promising. From their 2018 application (p. 309):
Should it be determined that a substantial financial burden is created from yellow bus transportation of students, MBLI reserves the right to forego yellow bus transportation for students until it is determined that it is fiscally feasible to implement.
The application goes on to talk about public transportation, walking, carpooling, or biking as alternatives to yellow bus service. If a student lives close enough to the Goldenrod Lane site and if the school actually opens in Germantown (and not Bethesda), then these are reasonable possibilities. However, for a student not living near the school—or worse, if the school doesn’t open in Germantown as promised—yellow bus service may be vital for some students. This wasn’t lost on the MCPS Board of Education, who rejected MBLI’s 2018 and 2021 applications on this factor.
MBLI’s most recent—and eventually accepted—proposal has promised that yellow bus service will be available to all students (publicly stating so repeatedly). However, this late-in-the-day acceptance of the need for yellow bus service for all students makes me wonder if their funding will actually allow for bus service from Germantown to Bethesda, if indeed the population is located primarily upcounty or mid-county.
If a building is ready to open in August and if students are actually able to get to the school without having to endure long bus rides, MBLI is only part way there. In the next installment of this series, we will take a look at the very different school culture MBLI is proposing and whether or not they will actually have a staff to, you know, teach.
This is something I learned firsthand about ten years ago when I was part of a team that began to work on a proposal for a teacher-powered charter school. We never even finished the application because we had sources at Central Office at the time who told us that such a school would “never” be approved in Montgomery County (though now that I’m typing these words and thinking about the current members of the Board of Ed and Superintendent that it might fly better with the current administration). One thing we did know, however, was that none of us knew enough about the financial or construction pieces to adequately prepare the application.
S.A. Cordes, C. Rick, and A.E. Schwartz (2022). “Do Long Bus Rides Drive Down Academic Outcomes?” in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis December 2022, Vol. 44, No. 4, pp. 689–716. via https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1355933.pdf For further reading about a local school district and transportation times, a recent study in Washington, D.C. made a similar conclusion about commute time and chronic absenteeism.