Maxwell backs plan to move Lothian students

Tomorrow the superintendent is expected to ask the school board to follow a committee recommendation for redistricting south county schools, with only minor additions.

That plan would send 74 students who live in Boone's Estates, a mobile home community off of Marlboro Road in Lothian, from Lothian Elementary to Tracey's Elementary, a new school with new technology.

"It's kind of a win-win," said Ray Leoni, the South River schools' representative to the Citizen Advisory Committee.

The board will hear Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell's recommendation and in January will decide which plans will go to public hearings in the spring.

The South County Redistricting Committee was charged with filling about 110 open seats at Tracey's, which was rebuilt last year. Moving students from Boone's Estates filled that charge easily because the neighborhood was the right size and in a good location, said Leslie Day, a member of the committee and vice president of Tracey's PTA.

Dr. Maxwell's plan adds seven students who live between Boone's and the Patuxent River to the group moving to Tracey's. All will still attend Southern middle and high schools.

He also is expected to recommend the board take this opportunity to formally redistrict students on Glebe Meadow Way to Central Elementary School. Right now, the roughly 17 students there are technically supposed to attend Edgewater Elementary, but they are allowed to transfer to Central under a standing agreement with the school system, said Chuck Yocum, the school system's demographer.

The recommended moves are minor, but keeping the students at Central hinges on funding for renovations to the school, which currently is overcrowded, Mr. Leoni said. The committee left Central alone because a planned kindergarten addition is expected to correct the overcrowding next year, he said.

"If they don't do that, they're going to have to do something," Mr. Leoni said. "They're going to have to alleviate that problem somehow."

Mountain Road

Dr. Maxwell also is expected to recommend the board ditch much of the plan proposed by another redistricting committee, which was looking at options in Pasadena.

Instead of that committee's more complex plan, which shuffled students around several schools, Dr. Maxwell is recommending 147 Riviera Beach students be moved from Chesapeake Bay Middle School to George Fox Middle School. That move would keep them in their home school district, the Northeast feeder system.

He's also taking the committee's recommendation to move students in the new Tanyard Springs neighborhood from Solley Elementary School to Marley Elementary School. Those students would attend Marley Middle, instead of George Fox Middle, as well as Glen Burnie High School instead of Northeast High School.

But neither the superintendent's nor the committee's plan solves the overcrowding problem in Pasadena-area schools, said Joe Offer, an Old Mill parent who chaired the Mountain Road Corridor Redistricting Committee.

"The committee had a tremendous amount of pressure from the public to not redistrict their children, so our plan even fell short," he said.

The schools badly need construction, but to get state money, school officials need to show they're utilizing space to the best of their ability, and this plan won't accomplish that, he said.

"Redistricting is a necessary evil," he said.

Dr. Maxwell is recommending a lighter plan because he hopes to fix the space problem with programs like magnet schools that would get students to transfer voluntarily, said Bob Mosier, a schools spokesman.

The superintendent will be forming a committee to look at program options, and the Mountain Road redistricting committee likely will be asked for input, Mr. Mosier said.