Hampton Elementary School parents have asked the Baltimore County Board of Education to relieve their overcrowded classrooms for months.
Teachers host class sizes well beyond state-recommended limits. The gymnasium cannot hold all students for assemblies. Lunch now spans three hours to fit each student into the cafeteria.
By Baltimore County school system’s count, the Timonium school reached 112% capacity in September. Hampton Elementary parents say the current percentage is even higher. Nearly a third of the system’s schools are at or over capacity, according to August data.
Baltimore County Public Schools said it would send four trailers, portable classrooms that require students to leave the main school building, to Hampton next fall to alleviate overcrowding.
“This is not a solution but a Band-Aid,” said Hampton Elementary PTA President Julie Culotta at the Feb. 28 board of education meeting. “BCPS must plan better.”
Some parents believe the school system’s reaction to overcrowding at their child’s schools lacks the forethought necessary to solve issues long-term. BCPS adds portable buildings and conducts boundary studies to mitigate large classroom sizes and overwhelmed buildings, but the fixes historically have left schools over capacity or failed to consider future overcrowding. As the frequent boundary studies for redistricting redraw school zones, communities are split and some students must switch schools multiple times.
A 2020 report from the Baltimore County Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance Task Force found several issues with how BCPS addresses overcrowding. The school system had “insufficient” methods of projecting future enrollment and, as allowed by law, used 115% as the school overcapacity threshold, a benchmark higher than other Maryland school districts.
Baltimore County also continues to grant exceptions to allow development to proceed in overcrowded school districts and doesn’t collaborate with the school system to mitigate the impacts, the reports said.
In 2019, the county council passed a law to impose impact fees on developers to help fund additional or expanded public facilities such as schools, but that revenue wasn’t expected to start coming in until 2023. There are questions about how much money the fees will generate because the council created so many exemptions from the fee for developers.
Setting boundaries
BCPS has conducted boundary studies using Ohio-based consultant Cropper GIS since 2005, according to CEO Matthew Cropper. His company guides the boundary study committee — a team of educators, parents and community members — through the process of recommending a redistricting map to the board of education, which then votes on the final plan.
Yet the committee must balance overcrowding concerns and pleas from parents who don’t want their children to change schools.
“We want to hear the community,” Cropper said. “We want to make as many people happy as possible, but the most important task is doing our job.”
BCPS currently has three ongoing boundary studies, focused on northeast area elementary schools, Deer Park Middle Magnet School and central and northeast area middle schools. Community members have requested boundary studies elsewhere, such as at Hampton Elementary.
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The school participated in a boundary study in 2020 to help relieve overcrowding at Pleasant Plains Elementary nearby in Towson. The school board approved a redistricting plan that kept Pleasant Plains over capacity, albeit by fewer students, and made Hampton Elementary, which was only at 86% capacity, into an over-capacity school at 101%.
A 2011 boundary study for Hampton Elementary prompted the school system to renovate the school to increase capacity. The school, which had 200 students above the school’s capacity of 300, received 24 new classrooms; however, the cafeteria, bathrooms and gymnasium were not included in the update, Culotta said at the Feb. 28 board meeting.
“It’s extremely disappointing that poor planning has led us back to this place,” she told the board.
Long-term plans and procedural delays
In a Facebook group for one of BCPS’ boundary studies, school board member Julie Henn said the system does have a long-term solution to overcrowding, the Multi-Year Improvement Plan for All Schools, published in 2021. The 15-year plan aims to eliminate over-capacity schools by 2026 through school additions and redistricting. She noted that deviations from the plan would not guarantee project funding.
The board of education also briefly considered using a redeveloped Middle River quarry, known as the LaFarge property, for a school as recommended by the County Council. During a board meeting Jan. 24, Henn amended the system’s county capital budget request, substituting a proposed high school replacement on the site for a more vague description to allow other possibilities.
Pradeep “Pete” Dixit, executive director of BCPS facilities management and strategic planning, said such action would delay the process of developing a new school in the area, but the board, nonetheless, voted to approve Henn’s amendment. Weeks later, a BCPS report on the LaFarge site said the property isn’t big enough for a high school, only an elementary school.
Growing frustrations
The boundary study for Deer Park Middle Magnet School is in its last stages.
At a March 1 public hearing for the proposed redistricting map, Deer Park Middle teacher Sherie Williams said the one-floor school has seven trailers, and she worried that the boundary study hadn’t considered the future of the school’s enrollment given the number of nearby development projects.
“Where are those kids gonna go in the next five to 10 years?” Williams asked.
The school’s overcrowding, she said, has led to loss of staff and even staff injuries in the crowded hallways. Last year’s school principal, who has since left, got hurt breaking up a fight, Williams said.
BCPS also is conducting a broad boundary study for middle schools in its central and northeast areas. Some parents, worried their kinds may be separated from friends, have expressed dissatisfaction with the study’s large scope.
The study is looking at building a new middle school for the northeast area and expanding capacity at Pine Grove Middle School in the central area. The boundary study committee considered several redistricting maps, which would disrupt how people get to school and won’t prevent overcrowding for more than a few years, according to committee members.
At boundary study committee meetings, members got about one hour to review new map options alongside previous ones. The committee chose four maps to present to the public at two boundary study town halls, where the community had even less time to review the maps.
On Wednesday, the committee selected a map as its recommendation for the school board, which will consider it on May 2. Presented to the public for the first time on Wednesday night, this map option was not shown during the community town halls but created after the committee looked through public feedback. The map looks to impact 1,625 students, the second-lowest number of the options.
Parents said the process has felt disorganized and chaotic.
Rossville Elementary School parent Jessica Krasnick, who said she participated in a past BCPS boundary study, said the school district should have included elementary school parents on the committee. The committee includes middle school parents whose children mostly won’t be affected by the study by the time lines are redrawn, Krasnick said.
Cropper GIS said the central and northeast study looks to maintain diversity in the student body and efficiently use school capacity above all else. Long-term enrollment capacity and maintaining neighborhoods are secondary priorities. Geographic considerations rank at the bottom of the priority list, meaning some parents would have to bring their children to schools farther away.
“We basically would have to drive past Perry Hall Middle School an extra 10 minutes to get to Pine Grove Middle School,” said Buddy Redmer, a Gunpowder Elementary School parent, about two of the four map options presented at the town halls.
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Lindsay Rothstein, a Mays Chapel Elementary School parent, said the boundary study process seems good in terms of how it’s being explained to the public, but she is distrustful of the final decision. Her distrust grew after she spoke with Cropper, whom she recalls saying that the map option that affects the most number of students is the one that best meets the boundary study priorities.
“It was clear this man did not care at all about real families and this was just another boundary study for him moving lines around a paper,” Rothstein wrote in an email the day after the second town hall.
Committee member Keith Jeffries said he read the boundary study’s online survey feedback during his spare time, including breaks from his teaching position at Parkville Middle School, one of the middle schools included in the study. He said balancing community wants and overcrowding needs is the “toughest part” of the process.
Jeffries said one of his physical education classes hosts 38 students and smaller class sizes would be better.
“Unfortunately, there are going to be plenty of people unhappy about it,” Jeffries said. “Minimizing those class sizes, it’s a win-win for everyone.”
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Jeffries said he still wants to do his best to keep communities together.
The Evening Sun
A public hearing will be held May 17 before the board votes on the study June 13.
School board member Maggie Litz Domanowski asked the board to consider an emergency boundary study for Hampden Elementary. She also asked the board to find long-term solutions that aren’t conducting frequent boundary studies.
At the school board’s Tuesday meeting, Superintendent Darryl L. Williams acknowledged community members’ pleas for overcrowding relief. He said that the school had 802 students as of March 22, which means it’s at 120% capacity. Williams said short-term and long-term solutions have been identified and that details will be provided soon. He said student projections for the next five years require a solution beyond redistricting.
Del. Michele Guyton spoke during public comment following Williams’ announcement, sharing her concern and the concerns of her constituents surrounding how BCPS handles overcrowding. She said it “might be appropriate” for the board to work with the next superintendent on this issue because Williams plans to leave the district this summer.
A previous version of this article incorrectly attributed information about Baltimore County development fee exceptions to the Baltimore County Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance Task Force's report. The Sun regrets the error.