Howard County Board of Education pushes redistricting decision to December
The Howard County Board of Education moved to delay when it will make a final vote in the school district's latest redistricting effort, after not being able to fully support one of the concepts that were up for debate on Thursday.
The Board of Education was supposed to have a straw vote Thursday. The vote would've help guide HCPSS superintendent Bill Barnes and his team to draft motions for the board to vote on at its Nov. 20 meeting.
The new timeline has now added a public hearing and straw vote for Nov. 20, and a final vote for Dec. 4.
Before making the new timeline, the board did decide to spare one of the schools that triggered this process.
Selecting a plan
The board's first order of business was to pare down the list of 11 concepts to redistrict. The process, also known as boundary review, started earlier this year to address overcrowding at Bryant Woods and Centennial Lane elementary schools.
But, the board looked to delay redistricting at Centennial Lane Elementary for now, worried about impacts to other schools and housing factors.
"If you redistrict [these students] to Longfellow Elementary, it would affect the the capacity at both Longfellow and Swansfield [elementary schools], which then affects Bryant Woods," board member Jen Mallo said. "So, I'm not currently in favor of redistricting Centennial Lane to Longfellow. The risk of overcrowding Longfellow and Swansfield due to unknown yield rates, from the housing being redeveloped, is too high of a risk."
The board was close to moving Concept IV-B as the preliminary plan. This one shuffles 122 elementary students.
But, several board members had concerns about the impacts to school feeds, as well as reassigning walkers and transportation costs. This concept adds a bus, which has a price tag of $100,000.
As time went on, some board members started asking if the final vote could be delayed to give time for the board's concerns to be fully explored.
"Can we pump our brakes and just give ourselves another week. What's a week to you guys? We are still [asking questions like] is that going to impact anything operationally, is it going to impact how buses are handled for the transportation for next year," said board member Antonia Watts.
The delay is also meant to let families weigh in. The board is proposing another plan that would redistrict some neighborhoods south of Longfellow Elementary, and have those students change from Harpers Choice Middle to Wilde Lake Middle. This has been dubbed Scenario IV-B.2.
The board will now consider either Concept IV-B, now named Scenario IV-B, and Scenario IV-B.2.
