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Crofton Schools Shuffle Boundaries

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School Bus

If you use the School Locator on my website, you’ll only get part of the story.

Today’s school assignments may or may not be an accurate reflection of which Crofton-area school your child will attend in 2008–2009. With the construction of a new elementary school on Nantucket Road (now referred to as Gambrills Elementary, although the school is located in Crofton), you can expect to see shuffling in some school boundaries next year.

Redistricting is a lengthy process that takes into account many factors including overcrowding in existing schools, neighborhood boundaries, and assignments for middle and high schools. While a final decision will not be made until Spring, a Redistricting Committee of parents with children in the affected schools voted earlier this week to approve this plan for recommendation to the School Superintendent:

Children who live on the east side of Route 3 that now attend Four Seasons Elementary will shift to the new school.
Children who live in the Walden subdivision will attend the new school.
All children who attend the new school will go to Crofton Middle School and Arundel Senior High School.

Other changes to neighboring schools:

Some students on the west side of Route 3 who currently attend Piney Orchard Elementary will attend Four Seasons Elementary.
Elementary students who live on streets off of Strawberry Lake Way between Waugh Chapel Road and Porcelain Tile Court in the Piney Orchard neighborhood and 32 students from the North Patuxent area will go to Four Seasons Elementary.

This redistricting puts Crofton Middle just over 100 percent capacity, which means that new housing developments cannot be built anywhere inside the boundary lines of the middle school or any of the elementary schools that feed into it, unless the developments are exclusively for people who are 55 or older. This will not please area developers and builders who hope to benefit from the 22,000 new jobs anticipated in this area due to BRAC 2005.

The next step in the process, after committee's recommendation is reviewed by the Superintendent, will be for the Superintendent to make a recommendation to the School Board, at or before the December 5 School Board meeting. The Superintendent's recommendation may be the committee's plan, a revised version of the committee's plan, or an entirely different plan.

Then, at the January Board of Education meeting, the Board will vote on the Superintendent's recommendation and may accept or modify it. or even make an entirely different proposal. The Board will hold briefings throughout February to explain the proposal to citizens in the affected areas, and a hearing will be held to accept public testimony about the plan. The Board will vote and, if the recommendation on the table is not accepted, the proposal, briefing and hearing processes will be repeated, with a final vote by the Board of Education in April.

Over the years, since we moved to Crofton in the 70’s, there have been other school boundary changes – some more controversial than others. Frankly, all the schools in this area are excellent, and there isn’t any public school in the Crofton area where I would hesitate to send my children or grandchildren.

For more information about this re-districting, contact Chuck Yocum, Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Specialist in Demographic Planning (410-439-5695).

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Posted by Margaret Woda, Maryland Real Estate on 11/02/2007 02:43 PM

Comments (8)

crofton real estate, margaret woda, remax vision, crofton schools

Originally posted at: Fort Meade - USNA - Andrews AFB: Crofton Schools Shuffle Boundaries

This post has been included in Maryland Information Anne Arundel County, MD Information Crofton, MD Information

8 Comments on Crofton Schools Shuffle Boundaries

NOV

2007

And what usually happens when the school boundaries are published is that folks who purchased a home so their child would attend a particular school decide to sell.

We often see a lot of for sale signs following reassignment.

Very interesting to watch.

Hi Margaret,
Redistricting can be a hot topic. People often buy homes based on the school district and when that is changed, they are upset. It will be interesting to see if many homes go on the market.

Lenn - No one likes change, but these changes are not too dramatic... none of the schools are "bad ones" or far from home, like the old days when we had forced school busing. Walden kids that were divided between two overcrowded Crofton elementary schools will now all go to the same new Crofton school. That will relieve crowding at the current schools, and the new one will be closer to their homes - walking distance for many. Only the Piney Orchard families transferred to Four Seasons are likely to be too upset.

Cynthia - That is true. I think the most dramatic result of this re-districting is that some kids going to the new school will no longer end up at the same high school as they would have - Those families might decide they have 'til Middle School to make a decision about moving... We'll see. I'll certainly be on the lookout.

I think that builders and developers will be the most upset, since the middle school will be at capacity with this change, and that will result in no new development being allowed in the immediate area - right at a time when they were eager to profit from all the BRAC relocations to the area.

Margaret: Your posts are always so thorugh and well written. This provides a lot of information. I hope the redistricting doesn't cause to much disruption to people's lives. Change is hard to take sometimes.

Donna, thank you! This shouldn't be too controversial, but that could change if the Superintendent or Board of Education substitute another plan. I'm actually pretty impressed that they came up with something that so effectively relieves overcrowding to populate the new school.

NOV

2007

Margaret- this is one hot topic for searches, you surely will get a lot of readers with this post. I did one short one on a school on an outside blog and it was read 212 times in just 3 days. Great content. Katerina

Goodness, Katerina - That's amazing. What did you do to get so much exposure for it?!?!!?

Margaret- The schools are the most searched for in our community. I used keywords that moms would use to search for info on schools.Katerina

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