Anne Arundel County-Wide Redistricting

[Anonymous]

Anyone else following this? AACPS is going to redistrict high schools in the whole county over the next 3 years. First they’re redistricting the “northern” half: Old Mill, Glen Burnie, Meade, North County, Northeast, and Chesapeake. Then they’re redistricting the “southern” half: Annapolis, Arundel, Broadneck, Crofton, Severna Park, South River, and Southern.

The north-south split doesn’t make sense. Severna Park is a couple of miles away from northern schools like Old Mill and Glen Burnie, and the Arundel/Crofton feeders are in between the north and south parts of the county, so they could benefit from being redistricted with both sets of schools. It feels like Severna Park and Arundel were intentionally kept away from the northern redistricting.

[Anonymous]

Dividing the county into “north” and “south” for the redistricting also doesn’t make sense because Old Mill serves students in both northern and southern parts of Anne Arundel County. Kids from Crownsville and even Annapolis north of route 50 are currently zoned for Old Mill HS, but the way the redistricting has been divided up won’t allow them to be redistricted into closer schools like Arundel, Crofton, South River, or Annapolis HS.

[Anonymous]

I agree the u shape of the supposed ‘north vs south’ map is weird, but I do think they are scrambling to quickly deal with the disaster of overcrowding that two rivers development introduced which was supposed to be a 55+ community but somehow got around that loophole and now the pineyorchard schools are at 150%. I think that has a ripple effect on the northern schools. But no reason why severna park should not be included especially the Shipley part. Sp is def the most homogeneous in the county. There’s an interesting study on the background of this I randomly came across on the web when researching schools, don’t know much about the author but interesting research. Feels like history repeating.

https://abra2014.medium.com/anne-arundel-countys-school-attendance-boundaries-and-community-divisions-are-products-of-b1cc839d49af

[Anonymous]

Yeah the split is stupid.
The issue is they need boundaries for the new old mill high school asap and the new super said there wasn’t time to prepare for a county wide redistrciting before the new school opened.
What this mean is that some kids may move twice in three years, and SP boundaries remain “safe”
I think we’ve seen this week the devastating effects
Of having protected the SPHS boundaries over the years.

[Anonymous]

When the discussion started at the beginning of the school year, I came across this website (https://www.aacpsredistricting.org/home), which was live for about 4 weeks or so before they took it offline for maintenance. I'm guessing they were not intending to have it go live then. In addition to not including Severna Park schools in the 1st phase (which is ridiculous), the plan that I saw has AACPS shifting three Title I schools further away from their closest high school (Freetown to CBMS and Chesapeake, George Cromwell to Corcoran MS and GBHS, and North Glen to Marley and GBHS). In the case of Freetown they are passing a WHOLE OTHER MIDDLE and HIGH SCHOOL on Mountain Rd to get them to the Chesapeake schools at the very end of Mountain Rd. Not quite sure where the equity is in that plan. Hopefully while the website is down for "maintenance" someone will address those monumentally bad ideas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When the discussion started at the beginning of the school year, I came across this website (https://www.aacpsredistricting.org/home), which was live for about 4 weeks or so before they took it offline for maintenance. I'm guessing they were not intending to have it go live then. In addition to not including Severna Park schools in the 1st phase (which is ridiculous), the plan that I saw has AACPS shifting three Title I schools further away from their closest high school (Freetown to CBMS and Chesapeake, George Cromwell to Corcoran MS and GBHS, and North Glen to Marley and GBHS). In the case of Freetown they are passing a WHOLE OTHER MIDDLE and HIGH SCHOOL on Mountain Rd to get them to the Chesapeake schools at the very end of Mountain Rd. Not quite sure where the equity is in that plan. Hopefully while the website is down for "maintenance" someone will address those monumentally bad ideas.

Lol moving Freetown to Chesapeake would make Chesapeake parents go bonkers.

[Anonymous]

Anyone who has watched the bus situation and school hours logistical nightmare unfold and still have any shred of hope that AACounty can tackle a county wide re-districting without it being a disaster, is simply too optimistic to live in AACounty.

[Anonymous]

can they finally redistrict crownsville to a closer high school? how the hell are they still expecting kids from there to travel all the way to Severn! Arundel HS has more than enough space and is so much closr.