Dan Gross/The Gazette Dr. Joshua Starr has his say during his first Board of Education meeting on Thursday as superintendent of Montgomery County Schools. Board member Patricia O'Neill (left) and board Vice President Shirley Brandman (right) listen.

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Montgomery school board members, heeding their new superintendent’s advice, delayed a scheduled vote Thursday on what could be the county’s first charter school.

The Board of Education was slated to take action on the proposed Community Montessori school in Kensington for pre-K through the third grade. In June, recently retired Superintendent Jerry D. Weast recommended approval for the proposal.

But board members stalled over the key issue of which students would receive the highest priority to attend the school. New Superintendent of Schools Joshua P. Starr recommended that the board review the situation and vote on the matter July 25, rather than rush through an approval and risk setting a bad precedent.

“It’s a little too messy, frankly, right now. Or I shouldn’t say messy, I should say, unknown,” Starr said.

At issue was the provision in Maryland law that says charter schools must be open to all students in the school system. However, board members were worried that this would clash with what they said was a main goal of the charter school focusing on low-income, underserved students.

Under a proposal from school board member Patricia B. O’Neill, the school system and Crossway Community, the nonprofit group that would run the school, would work together to create a designated geographic zone, called a “catchment area.” Students in the catchment area, which could be designed to include low-income residents, could choose to attend Community Montessori. Then, if the number of students applying exceeded the number of places, the school would conduct a lottery from among those students to determine who could attend.

If there were still places available after all the catchment students were accounted for, the process could be opened to all county students. If the number of these students applying exceeded the number of places, a lottery would take place.

In its first operating year of 2012-2013, the school proposed an enrollment of 122 students, expanding to 188 by 2015-2016.

Community Montessori would have to receive a waiver from the Maryland State Board of Education to create the catchment area, although school board attorney Judith Bresler indicated that such a waiver seemed possible under charter school law.

The catchment area differs from a school boundary, in which students within the boundary are automatically assigned to the school. The school system’s French Immersion language program, for example, uses catchment areas to enroll students.

“We’ve defined catchment areas before; this is not a new process for us,” said O’Neill (Dist. 3) of Bethesda.

But other board members argued that the enrollment process should be worked out before the vote.

“I can’t approve a catchment area to be defined,” said board member Laura V. Berthiaume (Dist. 2) of Rockville.

Berthiaume worried that the school system would simply be providing an additional funding stream for the school without the school, in turn, meeting the system’s goals for charters. Judith Docca (Dist. 1) of Montgomery Village also expressed concern that the school system was already providing services similar to those proposed for the school, although board President Christopher S. Barclay (Dist. 4) of Takoma Park noted that no Montessori programs existed in the school system.

Late in the discussion, Starr said he didn’t understand why the issue hadn’t come up before the board’s discussion. He reiterated his support for the school, but said the implications of creating a geographic area of priority students for a charter school needed to be studied further.

“There’s some more work that has to be done,” he said.

Board members generally expressed support for the school’s proposed academic program.

Kathleen Guinan, executive director for Crossway Community, stressed after the vote Thursday that the school would seek to serve all students and families equally.

“I just see it as really a procedural matter that will be resolved by the 25th,” Guinan said of catchment-area discussions.

In a separate action, the school board unanimously rejected an application to begin the K-8 Seneca Creek Charter School in Germantown. The focus of the school was to be environmental science and outdoor education.

O’Neill was particularly critical of the application, saying it fell far short in areas ranging from food service to security, and generally said the proposal “leaked like a sieve.” Board members also questioned the school’s academic program and staff training.

“I cannot support an application that is still evolving,” she said.

Krisna Becker, Seneca Creek’s founding board president, said after the vote that the school’s backers planned to meet soon to consider an appeal to the state school board, or opening a private school instead.

aujifusa@gazette.net