Concerning Bethesda:

At Ashburton Elementary School in Bethesda, enrollment has grown to 770 this year from 650 last year, mostly in kindergarten and first grade. Principal Charlene Eroh Garran said that she had hired two veteran teachers and two rookies in the past month and had to find new space in the school to accommodate all the students, but she was optimistic that things would work out. Any more and she’ll have to call in the trailers, she said.

Meanwhile, Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, who is retiring in June, undertook a “back-to-school-tour” yesterday marking the final of his 12 years as Superintendent.  He began the day at Bethesda’s Walter Johnson High School.

Read the full article here.

Ever fancied a career in law enforcement, serving and protecting the rest of us from crime?  If so, this poster on the side of the police department building in Bethesda states that Montgomery County Police Department is now hiring officer candidates as well as 911 specialists.

After browsing the department’s website, the first line of the careers page says:

Due to current fiscal constraints, the County is under a hiring freeze.

I was about to read no further but luckily I kept going.  It appears that this hiring freeze is only in relation to certain positions, and for some roles only internal candidates may apply.  That said, if you’re interested in the above, definitely swing by their website and have a look what’s going.

The NYT has a nice feature outlining the project on their site at the moment. It doesn’t provide many new details but captures the general parameters and challenges of the effort. Well worth a read….

You may remember that the State Highway Administration forced a couple of farm producers to shut down popular stands in Bethesda and Potomac that sold tomatoes, melons and other produce. The public was not happy with the Admin and the politicians have reacted to get the stands legalized. These little stands are terrific and seem to be quite popular – hope Frosh can get them back in business soon!

As you know, here at Bethesda Actually, we are delighted at the possible development of the White Flint area. Firstlyit should create a really nice neighboring area for folks in Bethesda to visit and secondly, if businesses are creative the tandum of Bethesda and a “new” White Flint should be more attractive to shoppers and those looking to play and work who live in the District and the surrounding area — that would be good for the local economy and signal that people really do vote with their pocket books when it comes to smart growth.

I just hope they keep Bertucci’s at White Flint — I like that place

The Wash Biz Journal recently reported that Bethesda is being hit by a couple of significant departures in the commercial arena:

With the recent decisions of Hanger Orthopedic Group Inc. and CoStar Group Inc. to leave 2 Bethesda Metro for greener — and cheaper — pastures in Texas and D.C., Bethesda’s already slumping office market is facing a loss of some 480 employees and gain of a couple hundred thousand square feet of empty office space.

This is obviously a bit of a hit to the area but as we have tried to show, there is a lot of good stuff going on as well and I suspect that this prime space will be attractive to a company looking for a base of operations in our terrific, fun, educated and well located community.

We have previously reported that Equinox fitness will be opening in downtown Bethesda by the end of the year. Now it seems that the state of the art establishment is looking to staff up. Equinox is hiring both managers and sales staff for their Bethesda location. This is really good news in this tough economic environment and one of the nice perks of the job is that you get complimentary use of the gym. You can get additional details here.