Takoma Voice/Silver Spring Voice: Local Flavor

Beautiful Swimmers
Saving the Piney Branch Pool

Once upon a time, there was a wealthy county that decided to build a visionary school adjacent to a low-income neighborhood. The school would act as a model for a new sort of partnership between school and community, housing outreach services including dental and health clinics. The city donated the land to build the school, with the understanding that it would also serve as a community center. In a final, perhaps lavish, gesture of goodwill, the county built a swimming pool inside the school. This aquatic talisman would work to knit the community together, to inspire children from the adjacent corridor of high-rise apartment buildings, to engage teenagers, to create a healthier neighborhood.
By now, you have figured out that the county in question is Montgomery County. And the school, built in 1971, became Piney Branch Elementary School, on Maple Avenue, in Takoma Park. But the dental and health clinics were dismantled long ago, turned into offices and closets. The pool was the last vestige of this utopian dream.

Until Labor Day weekend, when the county drained and locked the pool.
Never, ever underestimate the capacity of Takoma Park citizens to stand up for a just cause, or for a utopian dream. Immediately, the school, the neighborhood, city and county elected officials, all sprang into action. Students and parents with protest signs, some dressed in bathing suits and goggles, testified before the City Council on September 4th about what the pool has meant to them. Residents with chronic and debilitating diseases, elderly neighbors, tiny children, all testified and wrote letters and emails about the essential role the pool has played in their lives.

Fortuitously, both City Councilmember Colleen Clay and County Councilmember George Leventhal have children at Piney Branch this year, and took the lead on this issue. But they were quickly joined by a chorus of City and County Councilmembers supporting the pool. No one wants to have another “old Blair auditorium” hanging around their necks—a school system resource left to deteriorate, becoming more and more expensive to renovate as time goes by. “The school system has a funny approach to managing its own assets,” says Leventhal. “They say elementary schools don’t have pools. Okay, but what about when they do? The school system has a responsibility to do something with it. They can’t just leave it as a hole in the ground.”
In 2001, the County Recreation Department had turned over management of the pool to the YMCA. According to an August 31st memo from MCPS Superintendent Jerry Weast to the Board of Education, the YMCA cited the fact that they have “been losing money on the operation of the pool” as part of the explanation for why they ended their agreement with the county this summer. But was the pool supposed to make money? As citizens, we pay taxes, and the taxes pay for services from the county: for instance, public schools and recreation. The idea that this pool should actually make money, or even break even, is certainly not in the spirit of the original agreement between the county and city when they built the school with the pool.

For years, the pool has been “underutilized” because the community has been unaware the pool exists, unsure how and when they could use it. Or there has been no outreach programming and the management has been erratic. All of this, in spite of the fact that we pay substantial taxes for county recreation. Many local elected officials see this, rightly, as a double-taxation issue. We pay taxes for City Rec. We pay approximately $250,000 annually in taxes for County Rec and receive virtually no local County Recreation programming. We aren’t asking for a fancy-schmancy “upcounty” pool with a lazy river and spiral slides. We’re just asking for our very humble, very “Takoma” pool, a simple slightly shabby box, to continue to serve our very dense, very underserved community.
Last month, Leventhal called together city and county officials to research a list of options for the pool. These options include closing the pool for good, getting the county to assume responsibility for the pool, bringing back the YMCA or some other independent entity to run the pool, or getting the county and city to cooperate on the pool management. At the moment, a working group is trying to untangle the complex pool costs, which had been shared between various county agencies and the YMCA. Says Leventhal, “Of course it’s important to understand that shutting down the pool is not cost-free. The alternatives are expensive also.”
Let’s admit right here that the city would love to have a gym built in that spot, right next to the Community Center. But historically, the city has not been able to get easy and affordable access to MCPS gyms. “They could turn it into a gym, but Piney Branch already has a gym,” says Leventhal. “The school system isn’t in the business of opening gyms for cities.” Another alternative would be for the city to negotiate better access to the gym that’s already there, inside Piney Branch, in return for taking on some of the publicity and programming for the pool. We get a gym, and a pool with better programming. Everybody wins.

Piney Branch is the place where the Takoma Park community vision becomes a reality—it’s the place where our children actually meet and make friendships across the lines of race, socioeconomic status, and language. For both of my children, now in 8th and 5th grades, it has been a primary crucible in forming their Takoma Park identities. The school is made up of very close to equal parts African-American, African immigrant, Hispanic and white families. Piney Branch Elementary forms the porous boundary, both physically and metaphorically, between the apartment buildings on Maple and the Takoma Park city government buildings.
The school is stuck with a dour brick building, very few windows, no land. The one exceptional physical asset it has is the pool. The pool, as frivolous as it may seem, is a significant draw for both students and parents in choosing to stay at the community elementary school. With a dead pool at its heart, I fear that the delicate balance that is a school’s reputation will be tipped, and more families will abandon Piney Branch for other school alternatives—language immersion, gifted centers, private schools. The reputation of Takoma Park rests in large part on the reputation of its schools. We need this pool to stay open.

Listen to the voices of Piney Branch children. When they learned that their pool was about to be drained, a classroom of fourth graders wrote their elected officials:
“I want you to keep the pool open because it actually teaches us something. That something is to swim and don’t you want us to learn?”
“When we swim in the pool that means we are exercising…So please open the pool please.”
“…last year I did not pass the swim test and I told myself this was the year I would pass… you are personally taking away the city’s happiness.”
“Closing the pool is wrong. Many 2nd graders went to Piney Branch Elementary School because of the pool.”
“Why won’t you help this wonderful school with our horrible crisis?...We are famous for this pool …By taking away the pool you take away the entire school’s pride.”

In the County public schools, every student studies the Chesapeake Bay—the watersheds, the skipjacks, and the legendary role of the Maryland Blue Crab, callinectes sapidus Rathbun, a name derived from the Greek for “beautiful swimmer.” And yet, many of the students at Piney Branch have never actually seen Chesapeake Bay, and many of them don’t know how to swim. Their parents work multiple jobs, while they live and study and play on Maple Avenue. For many of the 500 plus Piney Branch kids who got to splash around in the pool for twelve weeks during gym class each year, this was their first and only experience in the water. For many local residents without cars, it is the only accessible pool. We used to have loftier goals. In the 1970s and 80s, every fourth-grader in every MCPS school in the county got bused to one of three pools, including the Piney Branch pool, for actual swim lessons, not just splashing around. But that required funding for swim instructors—funding that has evaporated. Now, it’s all about reading and math, thanks to the federal mandates of No Child Left Behind.
We can and must at this key moment reclaim the pool and use it as the community resource it could be. What if the City Recreation Department planned programming for the pool? Could we recruit volunteers to teach non-swimmers how to swim? Could we have water aerobics for senior citizens and people with disabilities? Could we have a Maple Avenue swim team? Imagine.
We in Takoma Park are proud of our diversity and our exceptional cohesion as a community. The pool can and should be an embodiment of these values, a city resource at our center, providing opportunity for recreation, physical therapy and skill-building for all our citizens.

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