School Board Passes Central Elementary Redistricting Plan

The Anne Arundel County Board of Education unanimously approved Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell’s  Wednesday afternoon, shifting students from  to  and elementary schools next year.

The redistricting plan hopes to alleviate  by moving approximately 100 students to the nearby schools. 

I provided live reports as heard public testimony and ultimately voted 7-0 in favor of the redistricting plan. Those updates can be seen below. 

3:13 p.m.—Anne Arundel County's Board of Education unanimously passes Superintendent Maxwell's .

3:12 p.m.—No individuals come forward for public comment.

3:08 p.m.—Board member Amalie Brandenburg says she personally visited Central Elementary and that there's a definitive atmosphere of love and pride in that school. 

3:04 p.m.—Ritchie says not enough families are impacted by the possible redistricting in order to consider changing school start times. 

3:02 p.m.—"This redistricting will not solve 100 percent of the problems, but it will give Central Elementary significant relief until projects such as Edgewater Elementary become funded," Szachnowicz said. 

3:00 p.m.—Ritchie asked the AACPS COO why not wait until other schools are finished constructing. Szachnowicz said that's not ideal because new enrollment figures show that the school district will be overpopulated by 81,000 by the end of the decade. 

Szachnowicz said they can't use Edgewater Elementary (EE) to help alleviate overcrowding at other schools because the county executive removed development at EE from his budget for the next six years. 

2:53 p.m.—Board member Deborah Ritchie asked AACPS Chief Operating Officer Alex Szachnowicz to explain the process of choosing which schools are redistricted. He's explaining now.

2:50 p.m.—Here we go, the board is now getting into the redistricting proposal.