Howard County has now seen another school redistricting option, this time from the county’s top education leader.
Howard County Public School System superintendent Bill Barnes unveiled his proposal for redistricting to the Board of Education Thursday night.
The process, which also is known as boundary review and attendance area adjustment, started in February. Up to 11 schools are slated to be shuffled around.
Barnes’s proposal looks to reassign less students than the three initial scenarios proposed by school district staff in the summer.
However, the Board of Education brought up some concerns.
The superintendent’s proposal
The latest school redistricting proposal looks to only move a little more than 250 elementary school students to alleviate overcrowding at Bryant Woods Elementary School.
That’s one of the schools that triggered this process, being over the 90-110% capacity utilization threshold. For this school year, it’s at 123.9% capacity, and in the next 10 years, it’s only expected to get worse.
The proposal would shuffle students between Bryant Woods Elementary, Clemens Crossing Elementary, Running Brook Elementary, and Swansfield Elementary.
Middle and high school students wouldn’t be reassigned under this proposal.
Despite being overcapacity as well, this plan doesn’t touch Centennial Lane Elementary. Many families with students in that school spoke out against the initial scenarios.
Some of the concerns families raised were students turning from walkers to bus riders and being reassigned to schools farther away from their neighborhood.
Some of that appeared to have influenced the decision to leave the school alone for now.
Tim Rogers, the school district’s manager of school planning, specifically brought up those reasons to the Board of Education on Thursday.
“It was determined that it was considered a compromise we did not want to pursue,” Rogers said.
Impacts of reassigning
In the Board of Education’s questions, several members were concerned with the focus on West Columbia communities, worried that schools’ concentration of poverty would be amplified.
“Not only more than the county average, but more than the state average,” said board chair Jolene Mosley. “I’m also not okay with leaving an elementary school at 118% when there is capacity nearby.”
Board member Jacky McCoy was also worried about how this proposal would affect schools’ funding, particularly Title I funding.
Title I funding specifically helps public schools with high numbers of children from low-income families.
“If the matter of moving a few students would cause [schools] to come out of a [Title I] designation and they’re not getting the funding — that’s where I’m concerned,” McCoy said.
Next steps
The Board of Education will have to vote on a final redistricting plan at its Nov. 20 meeting. But there are several meetings and hearings before then.