Severn Run High School in AACPS

[Anonymous]

Anyone have any thoughts about the new school opening in AACPS this fall? A lot of people were excited for Crofton to open, so I'm wondering what the perspective is of Severn Run HS.

[Anonymous]

For whatever reason it hasn't had the buzz around it that Crofton did when it opened, possibly because the boundaries are still being worked out. I thikn the fact that no Severna Park kids will end up there sort of diminished some of the good will it might have otherwise had - perception is that yet again, SP is protected from any change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For whatever reason it hasn't had the buzz around it that Crofton did when it opened, possibly because the boundaries are still being worked out. I thikn the fact that no Severna Park kids will end up there sort of diminished some of the good will it might have otherwise had - perception is that yet again, SP is protected from any change.

The boundaries of the school have been finalized since November.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For whatever reason it hasn't had the buzz around it that Crofton did when it opened, possibly because the boundaries are still being worked out. I thikn the fact that no Severna Park kids will end up there sort of diminished some of the good will it might have otherwise had - perception is that yet again, SP is protected from any change.

+1 but it seems like it will be a really nice facility and IB program too!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For whatever reason it hasn't had the buzz around it that Crofton did when it opened, possibly because the boundaries are still being worked out. I thikn the fact that no Severna Park kids will end up there sort of diminished some of the good will it might have otherwise had - perception is that yet again, SP is protected from any change.

The boundaries of the school have been finalized since November.

Really? I hadn’t realized that phase 1 was finalized already. My bad - definitely try to keep up but it’s been a busy few months.
Regardless, separating out SP into phase 2 redistricting - thereby eliminating the possibility of it being part of Severn Run - definitely pissed some people off.

Which will have little to nothing to do with the actual school experience at the new school. The facility looks great and the new principal has rave reviews from the former school.

[Anonymous]

So Corkran Middle will go to Old Mill now with the new plan, which is weird to me, Severn
Run is closer

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For whatever reason it hasn't had the buzz around it that Crofton did when it opened, possibly because the boundaries are still being worked out. I thikn the fact that no Severna Park kids will end up there sort of diminished some of the good will it might have otherwise had - perception is that yet again, SP is protected from any change.

The reason is that it won't be the bougie new school for affluent kids. It will absorb some of Old Mill's and Meade's more challenging neighborhoods. Folks on this board aren't clamoring to get in boundary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For whatever reason it hasn't had the buzz around it that Crofton did when it opened, possibly because the boundaries are still being worked out. I thikn the fact that no Severna Park kids will end up there sort of diminished some of the good will it might have otherwise had - perception is that yet again, SP is protected from any change.

The reason is that it won't be the bougie new school for affluent kids. It will absorb some of Old Mill's and Meade's more challenging neighborhoods. Folks on this board aren't clamoring to get in boundary.

It absorbed Old Mill's best neighborhoods. The most affluent neighborhoods feeding to Old Mill, Crownsville and Millersville, which have multi-million dollar waterfront homes, will be feeding to the new school, leaving Old Mill HS with all high poverty elementary schools. It is absorbing Hanover from the Meade feeder system, which is technically an upper-middle-class area, but has a large private school culture. Maybe parents will opt for public now that Severn Run is their high school.

[Anonymous]

Do any of you have kids at Severn Run? I know the school year just started but what do you think? How is it so far?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do any of you have kids at Severn Run? I know the school year just started but what do you think? How is it so far?

I'm not a parent, but I've heard good things so far. Just seems like there isn't much school spirit. It definitely doesn't have the hype surrounding it that Crofton had when it opened. My guess is that people are weary about Severn Run because it pulled students from Meade, Old Mill, North County, and Glen Burnie instead of Arundel and South River. However, Severn Run pulled the strongest neighborhoods from many of these schools--such as Crownsville, Millersville, and the nicer parts of Severn/Hanover, so time will tell how well the school does.

[Anonymous]

Severn Run High School is great. The principal and teachers are fantastic, and the facility is beautiful. The only downside is that because the boundaries of the school reach basically every corner of the county, it can be hard for kids to form tight knit friendships if one kid lives in Hanover and the other one lives in Crownsville or Annapolis. It's also very diverse, both racially and socio-economically. The school is evenly split between white and black students, and has a decent percentage of hispanic and asian kids as well. The school already has cultural clubs like Asian Student Union, Black Student Union, Muslim Student Association, and a Hispanic club. The FARMS rate is about 35%. There's some super wealthy students who live in gigantic $3M waterfront homes, a lot of middle and upper-middle-class kids, and some low-income kids as well. I'd say it is very similar to some of the schools in upper Montgomery County like Northwest or Quince Orchard High School (maybe even slightly more affluent than QO). As far as the students go, they're pretty nice and teachers have told me that they're so bored from the lack of incidents at Severn Run compared to some of the schools they came from (Meade, North County, Old Mill, etc).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Severn Run High School is great. The principal and teachers are fantastic, and the facility is beautiful. The only downside is that because the boundaries of the school reach basically every corner of the county, it can be hard for kids to form tight knit friendships if one kid lives in Hanover and the other one lives in Crownsville or Annapolis. It's also very diverse, both racially and socio-economically. The school is evenly split between white and black students, and has a decent percentage of hispanic and asian kids as well. The school already has cultural clubs like Asian Student Union, Black Student Union, Muslim Student Association, and a Hispanic club. The FARMS rate is about 35%. There's some super wealthy students who live in gigantic $3M waterfront homes, a lot of middle and upper-middle-class kids, and some low-income kids as well. I'd say it is very similar to some of the schools in upper Montgomery County like Northwest or Quince Orchard High School (maybe even slightly more affluent than QO). As far as the students go, they're pretty nice and teachers have told me that they're so bored from the lack of incidents at Severn Run compared to some of the schools they came from (Meade, North County, Old Mill, etc).

That’s wonderful to hear! Now if only the Severna Park cluster could break up…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Severn Run High School is great. The principal and teachers are fantastic, and the facility is beautiful. The only downside is that because the boundaries of the school reach basically every corner of the county, it can be hard for kids to form tight knit friendships if one kid lives in Hanover and the other one lives in Crownsville or Annapolis. It's also very diverse, both racially and socio-economically. The school is evenly split between white and black students, and has a decent percentage of hispanic and asian kids as well. The school already has cultural clubs like Asian Student Union, Black Student Union, Muslim Student Association, and a Hispanic club. The FARMS rate is about 35%. There's some super wealthy students who live in gigantic $3M waterfront homes, a lot of middle and upper-middle-class kids, and some low-income kids as well. I'd say it is very similar to some of the schools in upper Montgomery County like Northwest or Quince Orchard High School (maybe even slightly more affluent than QO). As far as the students go, they're pretty nice and teachers have told me that they're so bored from the lack of incidents at Severn Run compared to some of the schools they came from (Meade, North County, Old Mill, etc).

That’s wonderful to hear! Now if only the Severna Park cluster could break up…

You can thank the BOE member who represents Severna Park for making sure that will never happen. She larps as a progressive and a liberal but then turns around and protects the racist and classist concerns of her constituents when it comes to redistricting and upholds segregation.

From the very start of the redistricting in 2023, she made a politically charged Facebook post saying she is open to all redistricting proposals except for those that move any kids from the Severna Park or Broadneck clusters out of their clusters, and she specifically mentioned her desire to not "fracture" Shipley's Choice. Unsurprisingly, Severna Park was not part of Phase I of redistricting even though all but one of the clusters it shares boundaries with were in Phase I of redistricting.

During Phase II of redistricting, there was one proposal to move kids in the Jones ES area to the Broadneck cluster and the parents went ape shit crazy. They said it would deflate their property values and that it would be a deterrent for the wealthy families who move to the area for the Severna Park schools. Lawyers in the block wrote a letterhead with a bunch of bs excuses as to why they shouldn't be moved and the sup dropped them from the redistricting proposal.

I keep hearing the excuse that "this isn't Montgomery County and we can't do certain things here," but if I was a school official, I would be far more afraid of families from Walt Whitman HS or Winston Churchill HS during school redistricting than I would be of families from Severna Park. The former are the power elite while the latter are just standard upper income working professionals with mostly normal jobs and connections. The Severna Park parents also don't even know wtf they're talking about and all of the arguments they use are so easy to shut down, while the W school parents know how to put up a good argument and they're all lawyers who went to the very top law schools, not like the lawyers in SP who mostly went to mediocre law schools.