Parents at Ridge Ruxton School have filed two separate federal complaints opposing plans to build an addition at the special-education facility in Towson to ease crowding at elementary schools in the area.
School board members learned of the actions at Tuesday night's meeting, where they voted to conduct a feasibility study of options -- including expansion of Ridge Ruxton -- to alleviate the overcrowding.
The complaints -- the first step toward possibly filing a federal lawsuit -- come amid a budget-planning season that has been especially prickly for the school system.
In recent weeks, the school board has faced teachers angered that it adopted a proposed budget that does not include across-the-board pay raises. Teachers jeered after the board's decision Tuesday to give county schools Superintendent Joe A. Hairston a 3 percent raise with his renewed contract.
The board last month postponed voting on the plan to relieve crowding by expanding Ridge Ruxton -- rather than building a new school -- after some members complained of "political pressure" to vote a certain way on the matter.
The parents who filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights contend that the system's proposed addition appears to violate their children's Individualized Education Programs, which direct that each of the 127 students there be taught at a "public separate day school."
A 400-seat addition has been proposed for Ridge Ruxton. Some parents, however, say a new elementary school is needed and that adding students to Ridge Ruxton could jeopardize the "medically fragile" children there.
"We want a legal finding, a judgment, that this is illegal," said Laura Mullen, whose 18-year-old daughter attends Ridge Ruxton.
Mullen is one of two Ridge Ruxton parents who filed separate federal complaints March 20.
Melanie Brockman, another Ridge Ruxton parent, said yesterday that she filed a separate complaint on behalf of her daughter, 11-year-old Kasey.
School officials, citing student privacy rights, said yesterday that they could not discuss Mullen's and Brockman's cases.
Towson Families United, a grass-roots parents group, opposes the Ridge Ruxton addition because the county cannot say whether there will be enough room on the property for an additional cafeteria, gymnasium, health suite and other common areas that the group says are necessary to serve the additional 400 students.
