Damascus High School students enrolled in the Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs are fighting to keep their automobile technology and restaurant management programs.
Plans for the renovations to their aging high school have been delayed by the Board of Education until Fiscal Year 2029. Currently, those plans don’t include space for the automobile technology program.
The BOE voted to not include certain career-based programs at Damascus when it reopens. But Montgomery County Public School officials stressed it is not definite and specific rooms in the renovation plans are not officially dedicated.
During a Montgomery County Council Education and Culture Committee meeting March 21, school administrators explained they were seeking to change the automotive technology program into a more future-oriented program that would involve work with electric cars.
They also said students interested in the current technology program could attend Seneca Valley or Thomas Edison high schools and that transportation would be provided between Damascus and Seneca Valley.
Also, they noted, the 57 currently enrolled students at Damascus could continue for at least one more school year as no renovations would begin before that.
The district has 51 career and technology programs spread throughout its schools. Not all are offered at every school.
“I just think it is not prudent and not forward-thinking to reduce a successful program,” said Councilmember Marilyn Balcombe during the committee meeting. “If anything, we should be adding more CTE programs, not reducing them.”
Balcombe noted that area automotive industry workers have told her the current program is needed and that they hire its graduates.
Dawn Luedtke, whose district includes Damascus High, wrote a letter to her fellow councilmembers urging them not to support the BOE’s request to delay renovations at the school, calling it “a significant setback to a project this Council has already appropriated planning and construction funds.”
Work at the Damascus High previously was set to begin in Fiscal Year 2025.
“The effect of again delaying these improvements to one of the oldest school buildings in the County, a building with significant capital needs, and a facility so central to the Damascus community would be devastating, and would be felt throughout the Upcounty, because this project is also meant to add capacity to relieve overcrowding at Clarksburg High School,” Luedtke wrote.
The school was built in 1950 and then renovated in 1978.
According to Luedtke, MCPS first notified the community in December of 2023 that a full automobile technology space may not be included in the capital improvements project.