Divisive Redistribution in a Baltimore County School

The goal was to have a civil conversation about safety at Summit Park Elementary. The screaming started within minutes.

“Stand up if you want answers about how our children will be safe,” shouted Lauren Shapiro, co-vice president of the PTA, as she paced a cafeteria full of parents and educators last week. Many stood up and some applauded.

Baltimore County Public Schools staff put aside their sticky notes and question papers. Parents were not in the mood for a class activity.

Since school started, families in Summit Park have been alarmed by their children’s reports of fights and bullying at school. Nearly a third of them are new to the school this year, thanks to a redistricting effort to alleviate overcrowding elsewhere. The student body is now 221 students larger and much more diverse.

The battle at last week’s community meeting is a rare window into the growing pains of redrawing the boundaries of school attendance. something Baltimore County often does to balance the changing population. In this case, longtime families in Summit Park wonder if the school was prepared for the newcomers, and new families feel unwelcome and even scapegoated for the problems. because of their race or income.

Angel Vosburgh St Pierre said she was initially okay with her child attending preschool at Summit Park instead of Milbrook Elementary, where the family was originally assigned. Summit Park earned 4 out of 5 stars on the Maryland school report card and has test scores well above the district and state average. But then she saw Summit Park parents’ assumptions about the redistribution of documents.

“I’m concerned because it appears that some of the schools that may be funneled into Summit Park are from lower-income neighborhoods,” said a Summit Park parent. wrote. “The children often have undiagnosed/untreated ADHD, which manifests itself in physical aggression/violence.”

“The influx of students from schools with lower test scores could impact the academic standards that Summit Park has diligently maintained,” another person wrote.

It didn’t help that Vosburgh St Pierre was told at a birthday party by a Summit Park parent that he was moving his child to a private school because of the kids coming in — kids like hers.

Feeling that her daughter, who is biracial, would not be welcome at Summit Park, she signed up her at a charter school.

Summit Park doesn’t look like it used to. Predominately white in a city with significant Jewish and black populations, it had fewer than a quarter students from low-income families and enrolled about 300 students. students from last school year. That changed when a committee was created that mainly consisted of parents the school boundary lines redrawn in the northwestern region of the province.

The school system rebuilt four elementary schools with room for an additional 1,200 students and distributed the children among six schools to alleviate overcrowding at three of them.

The new card came into effect this school year. Registrations at Summit Park increased to about 524, a school system spokesperson said. Redistribute documents predicted that black students would go from 16% of the population to one-third, and that the low-income population would increase by seven percentage points.

School system policy says that maintaining or increasing school diversity should be a primary goal when moving children, and studies show that this is the case advantages to have diverse schools. The resulting maps often doing little to move the needlebut Summit Park saw progress. For example, white students were expected to drop from 70% of the student population to 47%.

This was projected to be the case 50 students will transfer to Summit Park from Milbrook, a three-star school with a large Black and Latino population and 42% of its children from low-income families. The remaining 164 transfers would come from Wellwood International School, another three-star school where 65% of students were black and more than a third came from low-income families.

At last week’s community meeting, Jodi Freedlander, the parent of a Summit Park second-grader, mocked the interruptions. “Basically they’re saying that since these kids came from Wellwood the behavior has gotten bad.” She called it racism.

Principal Bre Fortkamp said the school has received additional staff this year, including a safety assistant, an additional teacher’s assistant and an additional paraeducator. More staff are needed to meet the needs of a larger student population, especially in special education, she said.

They’ve found ways to highlight students and staff to support school culture, used tape to direct students where to walk in the hallways to avoid bumping into each other during classroom transitions, and they have adjusted the schedules so that entire classes can have a toilet. breaks together to prevent students from playing where they shouldn’t play.

There was a fight, Fortkamp said. And seven suspensions so far this school year, a spokesperson said. Only two suspensions occurred around this time last school year.

“Although the number of suspensions is higher, there are approximately 200+ more students at Summit Park this year,” a school system spokesperson said in an email.

The school system declined an interview request on behalf of the principal.

During last week’s meeting, small discussions took place at tables around the cafeteria. One Black parent, a school system employee who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation, said her son, new to Summit Park this year, has been bullied. Some of the incidents involved a white student who, the parent said, pretended her son was invisible. And a black student pushed her son in class, she said.

Parents need to take more responsibility for their children’s behavior, she said, and a more diverse teaching staff could help with that the issue.

“Because it is not very diverse and you get an influx of diversity, how do homogeneous teachers know how to deal with students who are different from themselves?” she asked.

Teachers and staff looked quietly at the back and around the edge of the room. Also in attendance were school board member Jane Lichter and County Council President Izzy Patoka, both representing the Summit Park district.

Parents expressed frustration with the communication and said they wanted it to be that way informed of incidents in which their children were not involved, but which they witnessed. Fortkamp said the policy determines which families are notified. Sometimes it is only the parents of the students directly involved.

Some brought up an incident in which a student made a threat. It’s unclear what happened, but the principal has refuted a rumor that a student had access to a gun. Baltimore County police did not find the threat credible, she explained, and found no weapons in the student’s home.

“Every day I have a panic attack because my kids are here, and I know nothing is being done because they are scared,” said one parent.

“We just want the school to say, ‘The things that happen at other schools won’t happen here in Summit Park,’” said another.

“It’s hard to want to involve children who make other children fear for their lives,” one parent noted.

Shapiro, the PTA member, said in an interview that she worries about the fighting, growing class sizes, teachers wanting to leave and parents choosing private schools.

She said she has never experienced this level of behavioral problems in the four years she has had children at the school. This is not an issue of inclusion, she said. They are okay with embracing newcomers “as long as everyone treats everyone else with respect and safety.”

What they need, Shapiro said, are more resources to help students with behavioral problems. She said her husband suggested a detention room.

“If I had a child who was misbehaving, I would want my child in that detention room,” Shapiro said. “I would like my child to learn that they cannot stay in a classroom with other children if they are physical or taking away from other children’s learning.”

The meeting ended as it began: with shouting. A man across the room yelled at Shapiro’s father after he suggested keeping special education students separated from the rest of the school.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, a community-funded journalism program that gives parents the tools they need to make decisions about the way their children learn. Read more.