PLEASE DON'T FORGET to write to PG County Schools today! Email your clear and polite pleas to save our lovely Magruder park and build a new middle school for our kids to: testimony@pgcps.org
PLEASE COPY Prince George's County Council Members Deni L. Taveras (dltaveras@co.pg.md.us) and Dannielle M. Glaros (dmglaros@co.pg.md.us) so they also know how important Magruder Park is to you, your family and to our community! Both of them play a big role in making decisions about the school location.
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Dear Friends of Magruder Park,
The big meeting to discuss the whole PG School buildings plan that is likely to include Hyattsville Middle School is -- in just one day -- on Thursday! TIME IS RUNNING OUT for our beloved park. Decisions are being made too quickly without any meaningful public engagement, and no clear chance for the public to oppose the selection if it is in Magruder Park. If you can go in person, that would be great, but please also submit your testimony online since speaking slots are limited and need to be booked in advance at this link.
This hearing on September 12 is critical because PG Schools could advance Magruder Park as "the" build site soon after. That may mean no more discussion on WHERE the school is located, only what the building will look like. There is another hearing at the end of September and Request for Proposal is set to be released to builders (but hidden from the public) in October. Beyond that we have no clear public information about when the actual decision to locate the school is going to be made.
We need to act before the school location is set in stone!
If you love the park, you must make your voice heard before it's too late! Before, our slice of heaven on earth is cut in half by decision-makers who haven't bothered to understand just how essential the park is to our healthy and lively community!
It will take only a few minutes to write an email to PG County Schools right now and tell them how important Magruder Park is to the people of Prince George's County. Let them know we will fight for it! We want a great middle school for our kids, but it should be built on the site of the current school.
This matter may already be out of the hands of the Hyattsville's City Council, that failed to protect the park from being proposed in the first place. This could be the last meaningful public hearing before the site option is chosen for the school.
Tell them, "NO, we don't want you to build on Magruder Park!! Build us a new school and build it on the current site!!"
Our elected representatives on the Board of Education and the County Council need to deliver both, and it is possible to deliver both! If we don't act soon, we could see bulldozers rolling down our streets as soon as next year to demolish the pool and cut down the forest. This would be a sad, tragic and permanent loss, but if we act now there is a chance we can stop it.
We need both great schools and great parks!
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We sincerely appreciate everyone who has already written a letter. I'd like to personally thank you and invite you to join our band of jolly civic activists!
Email us at: ProtectHyattsvilleParks@gmail.com, we started in Hyattsville but anyone who cares deeply about saving our park is welcome!
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Cover Photo Credit: Jian Jeffrey