BACKGROUND: The Piney Branch Pool was built in 1971 as part of a visionary concept that a school should benefit the whole community. The City of Takoma Park gave the land to MCPS with the pool and the larger gym as part of that vision, and the county agreed to fund those community aspects of the school.

Preserving the Piney Branch Pool is a racial justice issue. Our pool is on the densest corridor of affordable housing in the county. After desegregation in the 1950s, white residents created private swim clubs in greener County places, but the Piney Branch Pool has always been open to all. There are huge racial disparities in drowning rates nationally, but all PBES students get water safety skills during the school day, and in afterschool programs and summer camps, and generations of neighborhood kids have learned to swim at Piney Branch Pool. 

CURRENT STATUS: The community is glad that MCPS is now planning a renovation or rebuild of the school. Seven design options have been presented, with only three preserving a pool. There was not adequate outreach to the families on Maple Avenue who rely most heavily on the pool. There is a suggestion that we should accept the new Silver Spring Aquatic Center instead, although it is farther away, more expensive to access, could not be used by PBES students during the school day, or by local summer camps, and it is not accessible to elders and the disabled because it is neither walkable nor does it have parking. 

We the undersigned state that we will not accept a school renovation or rebuild that leaves us without a Piney Branch Pool.