After nine packed work sessions, several protests, thousands of pages of comments, and scrutiny of neighborhoods and school maps, the Howard County Board of Education voted Thursday to move about 5,400 students to new schools for the 2020-21 academic year, according to the school system.
With all but one of 55 motions approved, the board’s plan makes modest improvements in balancing the levels of poverty across the county’s schools by moving 2,827 elementary, 568 middle and 2,007 high school students, capping a contentious redistricting process.
The motion that failed would have moved students out of Clarksville Middle School to Lime Kiln Middle.
“Board members, we have just completed a long, arduous comprehensive redistricting process,” Howard schools Superintendent Michael Martirano said Thursday night. “This is the largest redistricting effort in Howard County’s history ... undoing nearly a decade worth of overcrowding at many of [our] schools, [and] advancing socioeconomic equity across all schools and yet we still have more work to do.”..
...Clemens Crossing Elementary School parents rejoiced for about two minutes Thursday night after a decision to move their neighborhoods to Bryant Woods Elementary failed.
After taking a brief break, the board came back to reverse the decision.
Vice Chairwoman Kirsten Coombs said, through tears, that not moving the Clemens Crossing students would have affected the entire plan.
Wearing bright orange shirts, parents whose children attend Clemens Crossing Elementary abruptly left the meeting after the decision.
Julie Hotopp said Clemens Crossing was “put in at the last minute” without enough time for parents to give testimony...
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