A candidate for the Baltimore County Council?s Perry Hall district says students of Chapel Hill Elementary are the victims of his opponent?s plan to tackle overcrowding at the school: busing them elsewhere.
Republican candidate Wayne Skinner called Council Member Vince Gardina?s support of an enrollment cap at Chapel Hill and plan to bus students to neighboring schools an “election-year stunt.” He said parents at a Perry Hall festival this weekend told him they are furious their children, under the proposal, might be split between two schools.
“This is a rushed proposal that will disrupt families and confuse the public just so Councilman Gardina can claim some credit on an issue he has failed to resolve for the past five years,” Skinner said. “This would not be a problem today had comprehensive steps been taken years ago before this runaway development started to occur in the Honeygo area.”
Overcrowded schools and development is expected to be a hot election topic, but few debates have intensified as early as in the fifth district, where Gardina is running for his fifth term.
Skinner ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2002 after serving on the council for one term.
“All [Wayne Skinner] does is criticize people,” Gardina said. “His solution would be to do nothing, I guess. He has no solution.”
Gardina, a Democrat, said he encouraged school system administrators to redistrict near the school, which this year is about 8 percent over capacity.
School superintendent Joe Hairston refused, but compromised with an enrollment cap, Gardina said. Students beyond the cap would be bused to other schools and the cap would be reassessed each year until the planned Vincent Farms Elementary School opens in 2008, Gardina said.
