Transfer students in Anne Arundel?s public school system exist in two places ? at the school they moved from and the one where they attend class.
This double-counting has created additional bureaucracy and inaccurate school enrollment figures ? and has prompted reform from the Anne Arundel County Council.
A controversial bill before the council would change how Anne Arundel deems schools open or closed for students coming from new housing developments.
Among the provisions would be to remove language that requires the county to address transfer students in capacity calculations.
“The current ordinance … is out of step with the statewide procedure,” said Alex Szachnowicz, chief school facilities officer.
Officials subtract transfer students from the school they move to, while adding them to the school they moved from.
The concept was enacted in 2003 as a way to prevent schools from becoming overcrowded due to transfers.
Yet now it has had a reverse effect ? it is making under-capacity schools look overcrowded, officials said. That blocks critical development needed to help pay for school construction.
“We need to move on a new adequate public facility bill, because the one we have now is flawed,” said Councilman Ron Dillon Jr., co-sponsor of the capacity bill.
The county sees about 4,000 transfer requests a year, said Chuck Yocum, school demographic specialist.
Parents can apply to transfer their children to another school for limited reasons. Most of the requests are due to one school being near a day care facility, and others are connected to health reasons or administration requests tied to behavior.
But school officials say it is rare for students to revert back to their home school. As a result, an open seat exists for a student not at the school, officials said.
For the school system, the process creates two weeks? worth of analyzing the transfer and computing enrollment.
“It?s a pain,” Yocum said.
The bill would have capacity calculated by the state-rated school size subtracted from enrollment. That figure would let developers know whether a school has enough open seats to handle residential projects.
“I applaud this effort because one thing that is botching us are transfers,” Szachnowicz said.
