Nearly 150 Columbia elementary and middle school students will call a new school home in August as the latest round of Howard County redistricting comes to an end.
The Howard County Board of Education on Thursday approved measures that reassign 122 Bryant Woods Elementary students and 24 Harper’s Choice Middle students for the next school year. The student shuffling is aimed at relieving overcrowding at Bryant Woods, which is at 124% of the building’s capacity.
The Bryant Woods students will move to Running Brook, Swansfield and Longfellow elementary schools. Meanwhile, the Harper’s Choice students — rising sixth, seventh and eighth graders — are moving to Wilde Lake Middle.
Board members by and large agreed on the need for the student moves, though board member Jacky McCoy voted against two changes: transferring Bryant Woods students to Running Brook Elementary and sending Harper’s Choice Middle students to Wilde Lake Middle.
No board members spoke about the redistricting process after the vote.
Moving the middle schoolers helps balance how many Longfellow Elementary kids move on to Wilde Lake. The school system tries to avoid siphoning off extremely small groups of students, called “feeds,” as they move from elementary to middle school and from middle to high school.
The final plan looks much different from initial proposals, which also sought to reduce the number of students attending Centennial Lane Elementary in Ellicott City.
Centennial Lane parents and the surrounding community successfully kept the elementary school off the chopping block. Community members asserted that while numbers show the school is overcrowded, it doesn’t feel that way to students or staff.
The elementary school enrolls 139 more students than its building was designed to hold. Additional capacity is supplied by six classroom trailers.
Superintendent Bill Barnes recommended leaving Centennial Lane alone until a renovation and expansion project at nearby Dunloggin Middle School is complete. The project is expected to add 136 seats to the middle school by September 2030, which could trigger a small boundary review process involving Centennial Lane students.
While some board members expressed hesitation about not also redistricting Centennial Lane, the board decided to move ahead with only the one elementary school, Bryant Woods.
