A rendering of “Old Mill West” High School in Severn, the county’s newest high school, which will open in the fall of 2024. Image from GWWO architects.

In November, Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS) in Maryland concluded the first half of an immense redistricting project—the first of its kind in nearly three decades. The county’s strategic positioning between Washington, DC, and Baltimore, along with the employment opportunities at Fort Meade/the NSA, have resulted in substantial growth. Consequently, the school system now grapples with issues of overcrowding, despite having 16,000 unoccupied seats across various schools in the county. The primary objective of the redistricting effort is to address overcrowding and make use of these vacant seats.

Additionally, demographic changes and disparities between different neighborhoods are causing the system’s schools to become increasingly segregated by race and class, affecting academic outcomes for vulnerable students. However, the school system is not addressing these disparities, even after adopting an amendment to its redistricting policy in 2022 that states that the board “…recognizes the value of diverse and inclusive school populations when establishing school attendance areas.”

A monumental redistricting process

To efficiently utilize space in schools across the county, AACPS is undertaking a comprehensive redistricting that will examine all school boundary lines. The redistricting is divided into two phases.

Graphics explaining the two-phase county-wide redistricting plans and timelines, as well as the schools that were/are involved in each phase. Image by AACPS.

The first phase, which was finalized November 15, focused on the northern part of the county and was part of a plan to establish attendance zones for the new Old Mill High School West in Severn (which is distinct from the existing Old Mill High School and will go through the naming process in January) and West County Elementary School in Odenton, both of which are scheduled to open in the fall of 2024. Apart from delineating boundaries for Old Mill High School West and West County Elementary School, the first phase included the redistricting of schools in the Chesapeake, Glen Burnie, Meade, North County, Northeast, and Old Mill clusters, with the aim of rebalancing enrollments among them.

The second phase, known as the “southern phase” of the redistricting process, focuses on the remaining portion of the county. It will commence after the conclusion of the northern phase and the implementation of the new boundaries. Phase II will evaluate schools in Annapolis, Arundel, Broadneck, Crofton, Severna Park, South River, and Southern clusters. This phase is scheduled to begin in 2025, with the new boundaries taking effect in the fall of 2026.

To navigate this monumental redistricting process, AACPS has enlisted the services of WXY Studio, an urban planning consultant with extensive experience in school boundary analysis—including previous collaborations with nearby Montgomery County Public Schools and Prince George’s County Public Schools, to create redistricting scenarios which the superintendent then comments on and adjusts as needed.

The current redistricting study is the first comprehensive look at school boundaries in three decades. Previous large-scale redistricting endeavors occurred in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s due to the opening of several new high schools. However, redistricting has been limited since the 1990s due to geographic constraints (peninsulas, rivers, etc.), limited new school construction, and resistance from affluent neighborhoods.

Until about the 1990s, AACPS considered “racial balance” of student populations when it redistricted its schools, and the school system made diligent efforts to minimize segregation of its students as much as it possibly could. That seemingly came to an end with increasing advocacy from residents of predominantly white neighborhoods to redistrict them out of schools with larger populations of people of color and into predominantly white and affluent schools.

Anne Arundel becomes more diverse, and more segregated

Since 2020, students of color outnumber white students in the county’s public schools. Although household incomes in the county have risen significantly over the last two decades, the proportion of poverty in the county’s schools has also increased. Over the last five years, AACPS has witnessed the largest surge in students receiving free and reduced-price meals (FARMS) among all school systems in Maryland. Students receiving FARMS now comprise nearly half (45%) of the school system’s students.

How the percentage of white students in Anne Arundel County high schools has changed between 2010 and 2020. Data from schooldigger.com. Image by the author.

However, demographic changes are not equal throughout the county. Northern Anne Arundel County—which includes areas like Severn, Glen Burnie, Linthicum Heights, Hanover, Jessup, Brooklyn Park, and Laurel, as well as Annapolis, saw the most remarkable demographic changes. Over the last two decades, schools in these areas have shifted from majority white to majority people of color. Three high schools, Glen Burnie, Old Mill, and North County, became majority people of color over the last decade alone. On the other hand, schools in the “southern phase” area, such as Arnold, Severna Park, and Davidsonville, saw the least change in demographics. The high schools serving these areas, such as Severna Park, Broadneck, and South River High Schools, remain 70-80% white today, while almost every other high school in AACPS flipped from majority-white to less than half white over the last decade. The percentage of low-income students at those three high schools, as well as at Arundel and Crofton High Schools, remains far below the percentage of low-income students in the school system as well.

This segregation is hurting student performance. On average, underserved students (Black, Hispanic, and low-income) in AACPS have lower test scores and college matriculation rates at high-poverty schools than their counterparts at low-poverty schools. In turn, AACPS’ overall ranking lags even less affluent school districts in Maryland—making it harder for Anne Arundel County to compete with neighboring counties for families. Studies have shown that high-poverty Title I schools are costly for taxpayers to run as well.

How redistricting could make segregation worse

Dividing the redistricting into two phases was the idea of AACPS Superintendent Dr. Mark Bedell. Although some Board of Education members suggested redistricting the whole county all at once, Dr. Bedell, who became AACPS’ superintendent when the redistricting process was first announced, explained that he felt that he did not know enough about the school system to navigate the complexities of a single-phase county-wide redistricting process. He was also concerned that such an abrupt process would cause stress for students and families who were already experiencing the burdens that COVID-19 placed on the education and transportation systems. While Dr. Bedell’s concerns regarding a one-phase county-wide redistricting are valid, the two-phase redistricting and its arbitrary delineation of “northern” and “southern” schools could exacerbate existing inequities involving the distribution of students of color and low-income students in different schools within AACPS if important nuances are not addressed.

Data from the Maryland State Department of Education unveils the shocking disparities:

The schools in the first phase of redistricting contain 62% of AACPS’ students who receive FARMS, 60% of its Black students, and 55% of its Hispanic students, while the schools in the second phase of redistricting contain almost 60% of the school system’s white students. If a majority of the school system’s Black/Hispanic/FARMS students are in a separate phase of redistricting from the majority of the school system’s white and higher-income students, how will the board have any opportunities to create diverse student populations—which it claims to recognize the importance of?

Map showing the new boundaries of Old Mill High School (black lines) vs its existing boundaries (shaded green area). The elementary schools feeding to Old Mill High after the boundary changes are all Title I schools—thereby further concentrating the school with low-income students and minorities—and juxtaposing it against the affluent Shipley’s Choice ES in the Severna Park cluster. Image from AACPS redistricting website.

The delineation of some clusters as “southern” seems arbitrary and contributes to the problem as well. Severna Park High School, which is in the “southern” phase of redistricting, shares boundaries with Old Mill and Chesapeake High Schools, which are in the “northern” phase of redistricting.

Perception is reality, county residents say

The growing race and class divide in Anne Arundel County, and in turn, the school system, is no secret. Parents and county residents have even confronted the board about the redistricting process’ failure to address segregation and possibly amplify it. Some community members even perceive the divide as an intention to maintain the status quo.

“I happen to live in the Riverdale community. It is a 21146 (Severna Park) zip code. It was redistricted to Chesapeake when Shipley’s Choice was a little bit louder and they didn’t want to go to a more ethnically diverse school, that is Old Mill.”

A school boundary map demonstrates segregation in Severna Park cluster schools caused by gerrymandered school boundaries. Shipley’s Choice Elementary in Millersville, which has a 0.8% FARMS rate, feeds to wealthy Severna Park Middle and High Schools instead of Old Mill; the Riverdale community in Severna Park–which has higher rates of poverty relative to the rest of Severna Park, feeds to Chesapeake Middle and High Schools. Image created by the author using a map from AACPS. Image by the author.

Those were the words of Old Mill Middle School North teacher and Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS) parent Bess Clark when she testified to the AACPS Board of Education during their meeting on September 7, 2022. Clark alluded to the fact that the Severna Park cluster, the wealthiest in AACPS, with the second whitest high school in AACPS, was not included in Phase I of redistricting despite bordering the districts for Old Mill and Chesapeake High Schools.

Clark is not alone in her concerns. Several parents from the Crownsville area, which is assigned to “northern” Old Mill High School despite being significantly closer to “southern” Annapolis, Arundel, and Crofton High Schools, have brought up similar concerns.

How to make the next phase of redistricting more equitable

To ameliorate the mistakes made in Phase I of redistricting and ensure that similar mistakes aren’t made in Phase II of redistricting, AACPS must instruct WXY to include a metric involving diversity, such as balancing FARMS rates among adjacent schools. The second phase of redistricting will involve two higher-poverty high schools, Annapolis and Southern, and the county’s five wealthiest high schools, Arundel, Broadneck, Crofton, Severna Park, and South River.

The potential to make the county’s wealthiest high schools a little more socioeconomically and racially diverse will be on the table, but the potential to maintain or even exacerbate existing patterns of racial and/or socioeconomic segregation in the school system will also be on the table, and the backlash of some parents who oppose redistricting could be a major threat to ensuring that the redistricting process addresses segregation.

Further, AACPS should consider adding some of the clusters in Phase I of redistricting to the second phase of redistricting so in order to study additional opportunities to both diversify schools and meet other redistricting objectives, such as reducing commute times and utilizing empty seats. For example, adding Old Mill West High School to Phase II would allow WXY (the urban planners consulted for this project) to explore the possibility of students in Crownsville being redistricted to Arundel High School, which is both much closer to home for them and has empty classrooms, let alone empty seats. Adding students from the Crownsville area to the Arundel cluster would also increase Arundel’s economic diversity.

As Dr. Bedell says, AACPS is a great school system, but we need to make it even greater. Ensuring that all students have access to a quality education, regardless of their race or income, is a crucial step toward ensuring that AACPS becomes a top school system. There is no better time than right now for the board to demonstrate its commitment to equity and diversity, and this opportunity will not be presented in front of the board again for a very long time.