Parents and students from the Charles Carroll community won their battle to defeat the school board?s controversial redistricting plan.
“We have a lot of people behind us,” parent Kelley McIver said, choking back tears after the board?s 4-1 vote Wednesday night against redistricting the community. “It means a lot to my family.”
“Thank you for reconsidering and allowing me to stay with my friends,” Dave Steinwedel, a sixth-grader at East Middle School, told the board.
About 90 students from three schools ? Winters Mill High, East Middle and Charles Carroll Elementary ? got pulled into the redistricting because the new Manchester Valley High School won approval based on projected enrollment increases.
But enrollment is actually falling, not growing, as in the years leading to 2003, when the projections were made.
Parents and students said students should not be pulled from their schools because of the faulty projections.
The county funded the $80 million Manchester school, which will open in two years, without help from the state. The state helps fund schools only if there are enough students to fill them.
Board President Gary Bauer and member Patricia Gadberry changed their votes. Barbara Shreeve cast the lone dissenting vote.
Bauer had cast the deciding vote to reconsider the decision, and then he and Gadberry flipped from their initial votes to exclude Charles Carroll from redistricting.
The board said it would find another way to replace the Charles Carroll students at the new high school.
“If that?s the case, why move them?” Bauer asked. “If they want to say, let them stay.”
Parents had prepared to file an appeal to the state school board if the county board did not change its decision Wednesday night.
