Anne Arundel County Board of Education voted Wednesday night to change school boundaries for nearly 400 students on the Annapolis Peninsula, shifting students to reduce crowding and bring students closer to their neighborhood schools.
According to The Capital Gazette,
County leaders and some parents have advocated for reducing crowding at Tyler Heights Elementary School in past years. The school has 13 portable classrooms and sends its pre-kindergarten students to Georgetown East Elementary School.
Under the plan, Tyler Heights would go from 133 percent over state-rated capacity to 99.5 percent capacity, according to the redistricting report.
Monarch Academy in Annapolis will draw students from the Tyler Heights area when it opens in the fall. Tyler Heights Elementary will also get a construction upgrade, which would expand school space.
The redistricting plan moves students from Tyler Heights Elementary to Eastport and Georgetown East elementary schools, as well as shift graduates of Walter S. Mills-Parole Elementary School from Wiley H. Bates Middle School to Annapolis Middle School. Hillsmere Elementary is the only elementary school in the Annapolis feeder system whose boundaries will remain unchanged.
Some students living north of the Severn River would move from Annapolis Elementary School to Arnold Elementary School in the 2019-20 school year. And some students would move from Germantown Elementary School to Annapolis Elementary School in that school year as well.
Fourth-grade students affected by the plan have the option of remaining at their school the next school year. Students living in the Mills-Parole Elementary attendance zone and going to school at Bates Middle can also remain next school year.
The proposal to graduate Mills-Parole Elementary students from one middle school to another had raised some concerns among parents because the shift will concentrate minority students in Annapolis Middle. Mills-Parole Elementary has a student body with 59 percent Hispanic students and 36 percent African-American students.
School board president Stacy Korbelak said parents have the option of choosing a middle school because both Annapolis Middle and Bates Middle are magnet schools.
Seven board members voted unanimously to approve the plan. Board member Eric Grannon was absent. And board member Tom Frank resigned earlier in the year.
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