The Harford County Board of Education received the following input on redistricting from the Stone Ridge development in Bel Air, with unanimous support from the Fountain Green Elementary School PTA. A copy was provided to The Dagger for publication:
The community of Stone Ridge (west of MD 543 and north ofWheel Road) has approximately 100 elementary students who currently attend Fountain Green Elementary School (FGES). The redistricting plan shifts the Stone Ridge children from FGES to Homestead-Wakefield Elementary School (HWES).We have reviewed the proposed Superintendent’s Technical Advisory Committee’s (STAC) redistricting plan in detail. As a result of this review, Stone Ridge has identified numerous inconsistencies to the STAC parameters (See Appendix A). Per STAC recommendations Stone Ridge has developed an alternative redistricting plan that addresses these contradictions. In addition, the original FGES attendance data distributed by the STAC is inaccurate. As a community, we feel that the school board should evaluate these contradictions and base its conclusion on valid statistics.
Alternate Plan to the STAC plan:
Stone Ridge neighborhood children remain at FGES
There is no need to redistrict a school that is not over capacity and has a declining enrollment. Moving Stone Ridge from the Fountain Green district is not required to meet the county’s capacity goals. The STAC plan uses 2009 enrollment data rather than current year data as the basis for the decision to move Stone Ridge. FGES capacity is 571 students. Currently, the STAC is using an enrollment of 604 students or 106% capacity (See Appendix B). The corrected current attendance of 567 (as verified by FGES PTA) equates to a 99% capacity this year, versus 106% as defined by the STAC.
Read the full Stone Ridge Neighborhood/Fountain Green Elementary School Alternate Redistricting Plan below:
This is a good example of a well thought out alternate plan! Assuming their fax and figures are correct and they accounted for all the other variables, this should be considered.
Interesting that someone who cannot spell “facts” correctly thinks they should weigh in on school redistricting.
perhaps you should learn that netiquete dictates it is poor form to correct grammar, spelling and punctuation. Also perhaps you should realize that in this great country I am free to weigh in on what ever issue I choose regardless of a typo!
That should be “netiquette” and “whatever”.
Hahahaha!
correcting typos is the arguement of the weak!
I’m curious as to the capacity numbers. FGES has 4 portable classrooms and no available art or music rooms. With current capacity under 100% there is still crowding. Take away 100 or so kids, maybe we can have a music and art room. Also, no more walking through rain and snow to get to classes out in portables.
Just because capacity is under 100% does not mean FGES is not overcrowded.
The State of Maryland does not recognize Music and Art classrooms as separate from other classrooms in a building which is why you could be having this issue. Harford County (as well as most counties in Maryland) offer both of these subjects to their elementary students but when there is an overcrowding issue they will point to these type of rooms and say that they should be “regular classrooms.”
When my kids attended Ring Factory we had the same problem. After much investigation, our PTA found out that the school was housing 65 Boundary Exceptions. At that time, HCPS didn’t have a policy for limiting those to under 95%. With the urging of our PTA, HCPS and the Board changed their policy. Unfortunately at this time, it is not always being adhered to and that is an upper management issue. At Patterson Mill Middle, we have math teachers running around with carts because they don’t have enough classrooms for the teachers – school has only been operational 3 years.
I was in Mrs. Lanphear’s room last week for American Education Week so I know there are dedicated art classrooms this year at FGES. In fact, she was commenting on how wonderful it was! My son assures me he goes to the music room now too when in years past the music teachers came to them. And that is even with adding a second art and music class per quarter to the rotation now that we are A/B.
Actually FGES does have Music and Art rooms inside the main building. The portables are for a couple of 5th grade classes, one Enrichment classroom and one is used for storage.