Howard County parents are asking the state to save them from radical change they say last-minute adjustments to some elementary school districts will cause.

"Basically, I'd like to get [the county school board] back to the drawing board," said Denise Ruggiero, parent of a Stevens Forest Elementary school pupil.

Ruggiero has filed an appeal with the Maryland Department of Education asking for just that, as has Joanne Andrews, whose children attend Jeffers Hill Elementary. The state board combined the two unrelated appeals, and the county board has until Dec. 30 to file a reply.

"I'm not surprised that there are appeals. We knew [some parents] were unhappy," said Howard board member Patricia S. Gordon. "We were trying to solve a number of problems in that area. ... It was a tough call."

The appellants and many of their neighbors claim they were illegally blindsided by decisions the school board made when voting on elementary school boundary lines set to take effect next year.

"What they did wasn't even on the radar screen," Ruggiero said.

Two days before the vote, board members had been officially considering two plans - before the public for nearly a month - that suggested Stevens Forest receive 120 higher-income, better-scoring pupils from Jeffers Hill, including Andrews' children.

"We had no reason to complain, we didn't even wince, we didn't even blink, we were psyched," Ruggiero said of those two maps.

But on Nov. 19, Superintendent John R. O'Rourke offered his recommendations, one of which was based on an informal idea developed the previous week, which included drastic changes to the Stevens Forest pupil population that raised its percentage of low-income students threefold and decreased its test scores significantly.

In the superintendent's plan, the Jeffers Hill students would be sent to Talbott Springs, which would in turn send a group of lower-income pupils to Stevens Forest.

The board adopted the amended plan Nov. 21 in a vote of 3 to 2 (members Virginia W. Charles and James P. O'Donnell were opposed to the motion).

"There was no chance to respond to the changes," said Meg Feroli, Jeffers Hill PTA president. She is drafting a letter on behalf of the PTA that will be sent to the state board to "protest the process that was used."

The late changes were made to accommodate complaints from Talbott Springs pupils' parents who said their school had a disproportionately high number of low-income and low-performing students, which consequently lowered their property values and the quality of their children's education.

But critics say the shifts put Stevens Forest in the predicament of which Talbott Springs complained. They also said sending poor-performing pupils to a school without the resources to help them will cause children with greater needs to get lost in the shuffle and mask the learning problems by shifting data.

The Stevens Forest principal, John Birus, said that will not happen.

For their appeals to have weight, parents must prove that the school board's decision was arbitrary, unreasonable or illegal.

The board's rules say it can adopt or modify plans as it sees fit, but they also say in that event, members will schedule an additional public hearing to gather community input.

That is where the board slipped up, parents say, because there was no proper follow-up hearing after the superintendent made his recommendations. That could be grounds for claiming illegality, said Ron Peiffer, assistant state school superintendent.

"If you decide there are six steps you go through every time you make the decision," Peiffer said, "even though you set them yourselves, you don't have flexibility there."

Gordon said there was a lot of shuffling around of ideas during the board's public work sessions on redistricting, and that the shift was presented, albeit informally, earlier.

"Whether that was adequate time or not, all things considered, I don't know," she said, adding that she does not fault the parents for their efforts.

"I'd probably do the same thing myself if I felt it was the best thing for my child or children in the area," Gordon said. "I'm really sorry we couldn't find a better solution."

The appeals process is likely to be lengthy, requiring many filed responses from both sides and taking several months, and the chances of success are slim. As far as anyone can remember, the state board has always upheld the boundary-line decisions of the Howard board.

But that will not stop Ruggiero.

"Right before the actual vote, [a board member] said: 'It's time to face the music'," Ruggiero said. "Well, I am just a prelude to the symphony to follow."