"It's a really difficult process whenever you have to uproot kids and move them around," school board member Eugene Peterson said. "We had to do it with our daughter, moving her from the West Coast to Maryland, but it's hard. And when you're talking about young kids ... some kids many not be as well-adjusted and the move could be really hard on them."
Recommendations from a 23-member redistricting committee that met last fall helped form the basis of Maxwell's redistricting proposal. Under his plan, the new Gambrills school would also get 384 students who live east of Route 3, from Four Seasons Elementary.
To refill Four Seasons, the district will move about 200 students from Piney Orchard Elementary, which is about 150 students over capacity and uses eight portables.
Piney Orchard parents vowed to fight the board's decision. They raised concerns over conflicts of interest on the redistricting committee and called the new redistricting plan "a brokered deal."
"Four of the seven elementary schools [in the area] opted not to be affected by the redrawing of boundaries; it was a tyranny of the majority," said Jeff Andrade, an Odenton resident who has lobbied on the parents' behalf.
The Piney Orchard alternative proposal sends only kindergartners, about 110 students, to Four Seasons. The move would create an early childhood center at Four Seasons and still allow older students who have already made friends and relationships with teachers to remain at Piney Orchard, parents said.
However, school officials said the alternative proposal would require the school system to run an additional five buses between Piney Orchard and Four Seasons, an additional cost that made board members wary.
Szachnowicz later countered parents' concerns, saying the unaffected schools - Waugh Chapel, Odenton, Crofton Woods and Crofton Meadows elementary schools - did not have the crowding concerns that Piney Orchard, Crofton Elementary and Four Seasons did.
"Three of those schools are already under capacity, so the question was: `What benefit can be gained from moving kids out of those buildings?'" Szachnowicz said. "You don't want to get into a situation where you're potentially displacing students, disrupting learning unnecessarily."
ruma.kumar@baltsun.com
