Unlike many county parents who dread redistricting, Dayton resident Mark Darden was banking on it, hoping it would keep his family united at one county high school.

So a recent proposal to increase the capacity at Howard County high schools — and thereby delay redistricting — has Darden worried that his eighth-grader will go to one high school and his fifth-grader will later be assigned to another.

Darden lives in western Howard’s “Greenbridge Exception” area, in which current students can choose between attending River Hill High School with bus service or attending Glenelg High School with private transportation. Darden had hoped to get a definitive answer on which school his children would attend during the redistricting that was previously planned for the 2010 school year.

“A lot of us would like to have a (redistricting) decision one way or the other and have continuity in the community,” Darden said.

Darden was one of eight people who testified before the Board of Education at a public hearing Feb. 26 regarding the proposed change in the way school officials calculate capacity at the county’s 12 high schools.

The proposal is based, in large part, on a 2008 architectural study that showed that each of the county’s 12 high schools could hold more than the current capacity target of 1,332 students. Under the proposal, Marriotts Ridge High School in Marriottsville would have the largest capacity at 1,573 students and Hammond High School in Columbia would have the smallest capacity at 1,403 students.

By allowing more students to enroll at each high school, redistricting could be delayed as would the need to build a 13th high school, according to school officials, who have discussed the potential need for a high school in Elkridge for several years.

Seven of the eight people who testified at the Feb. 26 hearing voiced concerns, including delayed school construction in Elkridge, the continuation of only a small group of students who advance from Folly Quarter Middle School to Marriotts Ridge High School, and the possibility of overcrowding and large class sizes.
 
Howard Johnson, president of the Greater Elkridge Community Association, voiced concerns about the lack of a nearby high school in the Route 1 corridor and the proposal’s effect of delaying new school construction.

“The county should take this opportunity ... to plan for a future high school in the eastern area to realign the neighborhood primary and secondary schools with much closer high schools,” he said.

Nancy McAllister, of Ellicott City, told the board that she understands the rationale behind the proposal but fears that it would prolong an undesirable situation in her Woodmont subdivision. Children who live in the subdivision attend Folly Quarter Middle School and advance on to Marriotts Ridge High School with just 2.9 percent of their middle school classmates. The board typically tries to keep students with a “feed” of at least 15 percent of their familiar classmates as they advance from one level to the next.

“I am deeply concerned that this proposal ... could allow our existing poor feed to persist without correction,” she said in her testimony. “Our neighborhood’s feed ... violates the Board of Education’s commitment to ‘avoid the establishment of feeds less than 15%.’ ”

School board member Allen Dyer said he wants the county to stick to the current capacity formula. He believes that raising target enrollment numbers could negatively impact the academic quality of county high schools and possibly create higher incidence of gangs and other social problems, he said in an interview following the hearing.
 
“The question shouldn’t be how many students can we physically get into a building,” Dyer said. “The right question is what is the optimum size for high schools?”

Though outright support for the proposal was sparse at the hearing, the board has received numerous e-mails from residents expressing approval of the proposal, according to member Sandra French.
 
The board is scheduled to vote on the issue on March 26.

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