Jeremy, excellent posts as usual. I agree with your disappointment about the Hickory Ridge redevelopment ruling. Three or 4 stories on Cedar Lane makes sense. That Giant is dying, I recently stopped going there and transferred my prescriptions in the last month to River Hill for a variety of reasons. River Hill has a gym I am at 4 times a week at least, an M&T bank, UPS store, and other amenities I need. The River Hill Giant is also larger and has a wide variety of products Hickory Ridge does not offer (e.g. large bags of frozen blueberries) due to space constraints. The staff at RH is also much friendlier. The apartment development would have helped. Most of the time HR's parking lot is mostly empty; a complete waste of space.
if you get a chance to read Stuck by Yoni Applebaum, i’d love to hear your take. its Abundance adjacent with a focus on housing restrictions and their impact on mobility and income inequality.
I’ll believe Mighty Quinn’s is opening when it opens. It’s been sitting with paper in the windows for 6 months now, if not more? I messaged them in ‘23 and they projected a spring ‘24 opening. I’ve asked again and gotten not response.
Interesting perspective. I don’t agree with a lot but maybe there’a middle ground. I think your discussion of school enrollment is flawed. Projections do not take into account increasing enrollment from preK Blueprint mandates; my understanding is seat need for preK is really hard to project for a variety of reasons. However, under the Blueprint preK will increase. Enrollment projections also do not take into account major projects like Gateway.
Hey Ryan - I’ve read a lot of your viewpoints on APFO as well, and appreciate all the research and thought you have put into it.
Putting the PreK issue aside, the schools enrollment projections focus only on new development that is actually approved and happening. At this point, we don’t even have an approved master plan for rezoning/redeveloping Gateway let alone a single building permit, so why would the school system (which does a 10 year enrollment projection) include potential enrollment growth of a 30-year plan that is still a hypothetical? That doesn’t make sense.
The type of analysis that does make sense for Gateway at the moment is to model various revenue and cost scenarios under different growth assumptions. That’s a much broader economic analysis that goes way beyond the scope/ability of just the school system and obviously comes with so much more variability and uncertainty depending on the extent and timing of Gateway development, job creation, population growth, etc.
You cannot simply put the preK issue aside. This is a major driver of new enrollment growth due to mandates in the Blueprint. The Office of School planning does a great job navigating a very contentious issue; I'm not arguing with their projections. What I'm saying is the "enrollment is flat" mantra is only technically true. Ignoring the reality of the limitations and constraints of these assumptions makes it seem like flat enrollment is a fact. In fact, school enrollment has increased 458 students since September. (https://www.hcpss.org/schools/enrollment-reports/)
Gateway was last predicted to bring in ~8400 homes in 30 years. Yes, these numbers will change, but are you telling me not to expect any new enrollment growth based on this? Again, I understand they can't be projected, but are they "enrollment is flat" true?
My opinion is that it is actually more accurate to say about this incredible reconfiguration of balancing infrastructure with growth: "following preK Blueprint mandates while also getting rid of any development pauses in overcrowded school areas will lead to unpredictable levels of enrollment growth" Literally, this can't be predicted accurately because you are opening up the floodgates by making a major change to a process that heavily favors development.
I am similarly confused about how pre-k fits in. I’m not an expert on any of this but it stands to reason that when we know we have mid-implementation legislation mandating that we add more pre-k seats, that’s going to require more seats. Quite a bit more. It is frustrating that nobody in local govt staff or otherwise has been able to explain this lack of accounting in a way that would put my concerns at ease. It’s worrying that this doesn’t appear to be on the radar.
When I said, “putting it aside”, I simply meant that I wasn’t going to respond to your point about PreK in my initial response but rather only respond to your point about Gateway. I didn’t mean that I think the PreK issue isn’t important or worth considering, I just think it’s a complex issue.
Here’s what I know: Blueprint will ultimately require free Pre-K for 3 and 4 year olds but only for households below 300% of Federal Poverty level (that’s a household income under $93k for a family of 4). There will be subsidies for families above that income level. Further, the goal is for a mixed delivery system where half of preschool education is by private preschool providers (e.g. not in public schools buildings). So, certainly, the private sector will be involved in meeting the demand. There are many HCPSS schools already providing some preschool within their school buildings, but the school system does not count preschool students or seats in their enrollment/capacity numbers, so if a school has 3 preschool classrooms, those students are not included in a schools enrollment #s nor are those classrooms counted towards that schools capacity.
The school system will soon be renovating Faulkner Ridge into a regional preschool center.
All this to say is that between eligibility requirements, use of private preschools, existing PreK space already in HCPSS schools, and the Faulkner Reno, it’s really hard to predict how much additional public infrastructure will actually need to be built for preschool. Maybe we have enough? Maybe we don’t? Blueprint isn’t fully implemented yet.
I tend to think given this uncertainty, focusing APFO on K12 only makes sense.
Do you have suggestions / ideas / solutions on how you think APFO should consider preschool? Would love to hear em.
Forgive this rant, I still have very bitter feelings about the shortsighted way the Blueprint was designed with regard to pre-k. I used to run a little nursery school in the Running Brook neighborhood center that had been operating in Columbia since the 70s. It was a really special place with amazing teachers. Both of my kids attended for 3 years each, and just like the hundreds of other students that had come before them, they were ready for kindergarten when the time came. But schools like ours weren’t being included in any of the Kirwan commission conversations. We watched state legislators write us out of existence in real time. We went to Annapolis and tried to warn them that their plan was never going to work - that it would actually harm a great many pre-schools. At the time, circa 2016, a household of 4 could make up to $78k and still be eligible for a state childcare scholarship that covered 100% of our modest tuition. But Kirwan couldn’t see the forest for the trees. They could have carried out their goal of providing preK to more 3 and 4 year olds by expanding the availability of the childcare scholarships and/or subsidizing some of the operating expenses at these community nursery schools. But they insisted on creating standards that most places couldn’t meet, or chose not to meet because to do so would fundamentally change the nature of their program. They vastly over-estimated the number of programs that would be willing and able to make the required changes and they gave zero consideration to the number of programs they would kill completely. For as long as I can remember, folks have been legislating and implementing for 3 and 4 year olds on the basis of a hope and a prayer. There isn’t even an early childhood educator OR early childhood program administrator on the state board of education. Community partners aren’t going to be able to alleviate the pre-k demands through Blueprint participation. I think it’s a big mistake to assume we’re going to have space and everything is just going to work out.
All that being said, the kinds of enrollment increases I’m talking about don’t have anything to do with new residential developments right now. I think it’s going to be a problem even if there’s no new development. For that reason, I think it would behoove HCPSS and APFO to 1) acknowledge that the legislation has prescribed a path forward for pre-k that isn’t going to work because it was propped up by incorrect assumptions and 2) come up with projections and standards that include these 3 and 4 year old kids that are going to be entering the system, most frequently by way of an existing elementary school.
(If anybody is curious, I left RBCN in 2021, and in 2023 the program merged with the nursery school in Wilde Lake so they could both avoid going out of business. I fear that has only bought them a few more years.)
1)First, the Faulker Ridge has a capacity of 260 preK. Realistically, this is a good start, but it is a drop in the bucket for the need.
2)Google anything about the Blueprint and you will see the private sector is not meeting up with expectation for preK seats. There is not enough money in it for them to meet the standards called for. HCPSS actually is one of the highest in the state and is leading the way, but private preK is lagging.
3) My main issue that I started with is you continue to contend that "enrollment is flat" (And I hear it multiple times said by Council Members, "declining", before they are corrected). It is clearly not going to be flat when Blueprint mandates are fully implemented.
4) Why? Our demographics are changing. English language learners (up `33%), free-and reduced meals (up ~40%), and special education (up 16.5%) have all risen since 2018. These are exactly the types of students the Blueprint is targeting for help with preK
5) I have no clue why APFO would only focus on K-12 students when it is supposed to be about infrastructure supporting all student needs. Turning a blind eye isn't a good solution.
6) You are saying you don't know and that it's up in the air. Again, no, it's not. At least 20-30 additional classrooms for preK students are needed for the future. All this before the UPP makes it a developers' free for all on overcrowded schools without the funds to actually pay for the seat cost.
"Informed by this estimate, HCPSS is planning to provide approximately 260 seats of capacity with the renovation of the Faulkner Ridge Center and is continuing the process of identifying opportunities to convert half-day programs into full-day classes, where appropriate. Additionally, future planning should continue to maximize the amount of Pre-K capacity in new elementary projects. This report recommends two new elementary schools over the next ten years, and those schools should each include ten to fifteen classrooms for Pre-K programming. In addition to these projects, a study should be conducted to identify opportunities to add Pre-K classrooms to
elementary schools in areas of need. Pre-K additions should be prioritized in Columbia, the Route 1 corridor, and Ellicott City. Additional third-party consultant services should be considered in order to facilitate strategic planning to meet this need. "
So, what’s your solution? How would you recommend the county structure an APFO test for Pre-K? If you figure out a method to project future PreK enrollment and compare to available seats (and there are plenty of uncertainties there given eligibility, optionality, school assignment, private/public, etc. making that projection difficult but for discussion sake, assume one can develop a accurate prediction method), then what?
Jeremy you start off with this statement “The County and Schools have a robust process for projecting future school enrollment, taking into consideration housing turnover, student yield projections from future development, birthrates, and our County’s aging population, etc. The methodology has been proven to be accurate over the years”
How can you say this when there are over 220 portable class rooms?
Hey Brian, Key word here is ENROLLMENT- projecting how many students will be enrolled at HCPSS schools in the future. This sentence isn’t about capacity.
Drew, I didn’t say anything about portables/trailers. All I’m saying in #1 in the list above that Brian asked about is that I think the process the school system uses to predict future enrollment is robust and has proven to be fairly accurate. If you want my opinion on portables, I think they stink and limit learning, particularly when used as a grade-level classroom. My kids school uses them for related arts, which I think is a better use, but obviously not ideal.
If the projections are accurate, as you say, please explain why we have 200+ trailers. I note that elsewhere in this discussion you state support for the prioritization of maintenance of existing schools.
I think he’s saying the enrollment projections are accurate. Full stop. Without respect for how they impact capacity and or any aspect of the government’s ability or inability to apply those accurate enrollment projections in their real world planning (which is a separate issue).
The problem with APFO is that the HCPSS and the county government will not build new schools. Instead, we have "temporary" portable classrooms forever, and a misalignment of school locations with population patterns. The misalignment creates a geographic inequity where most of Columbia has walkable schools, and at the high school level especially, the rest of us have long bus rides to file the excess capacity at the schools in Columbia. The CIP doubles down on this by expanding Oakland MIlls Middle and High Schools to address growth in Elkridge, instead of adding capacity in Elkridge. Columbia Privilege is at work.
One in-the-weeds cause of no schools getting built is that the HCPSS planning process assumes that when an area fails the schools test, development will be delayed, and so their projection does not include the seats from the delayed development. HCPSS does not have to make that assumption. They could assume the delay will not occur because they will decide to build the needed new capacity, and reflect that in the projections. I would recommend an APFO change that HCPSS shall not reflect APFO schools test delays in their projections, and instead they do their job, build needed schools *where they are needed*, and reflect *that* in the projections.
There have been many school capital projects over the past couple of years, including HS#13, and many more are planned for the next 10 years, so I don't agree that HCPSS isn't building. HS #13 helped relieve HS capacity, so now the HS level doesn't need a capacity project as much as the middle school level. It seems like you're upset that the school system chose Jessup instead of Elkridge for HS 13?
Meanwhile, many older school buildings like OMHS/OMMS are in need of a reno, so it makes sense that the school system is prioritizing renos/expansions of older buildings like these and Dunloggin, Patapsco, Murray Hill, etc.
OMHS and OMMS do not need to exist. Neither schools can be filled with students who live nearby, and outrageously, both schools have proposed expansions to be filled with even more students bused in from the Route 1 corridor.
OMHS has a capacity of 1400, and only 900 students who attend it live closer to it than to another school. That $182M proposed for expanding and renovating OMHS would be far better spent building a high school in Elkridge.
I'll thank you not to project attitudes onto me that I am "upset" about the location of HS 13. The issue here is much bigger. The issue is that Elkridge (1/6 of the county population) has no high school. Columbia (1/3 of the population) has 6 of 13 high schools, which cannot be filled without busing in students who live far from Columbia. The issue is that growth in Elkridge is used to justify building high school capacity elsewhere, and not in Elkridge. That is straight-up exploitation.
And no Howard County students should be attending school in trailers. Trailers mean HCPSS isn't building enough. And as long as there are trailers, we certainly should not be digging the hole deeper by building more houses.
Jeremy, excellent posts as usual. I agree with your disappointment about the Hickory Ridge redevelopment ruling. Three or 4 stories on Cedar Lane makes sense. That Giant is dying, I recently stopped going there and transferred my prescriptions in the last month to River Hill for a variety of reasons. River Hill has a gym I am at 4 times a week at least, an M&T bank, UPS store, and other amenities I need. The River Hill Giant is also larger and has a wide variety of products Hickory Ridge does not offer (e.g. large bags of frozen blueberries) due to space constraints. The staff at RH is also much friendlier. The apartment development would have helped. Most of the time HR's parking lot is mostly empty; a complete waste of space.
if you get a chance to read Stuck by Yoni Applebaum, i’d love to hear your take. its Abundance adjacent with a focus on housing restrictions and their impact on mobility and income inequality.
I’ll believe Mighty Quinn’s is opening when it opens. It’s been sitting with paper in the windows for 6 months now, if not more? I messaged them in ‘23 and they projected a spring ‘24 opening. I’ve asked again and gotten not response.
Interesting perspective. I don’t agree with a lot but maybe there’a middle ground. I think your discussion of school enrollment is flawed. Projections do not take into account increasing enrollment from preK Blueprint mandates; my understanding is seat need for preK is really hard to project for a variety of reasons. However, under the Blueprint preK will increase. Enrollment projections also do not take into account major projects like Gateway.
Hey Ryan - I’ve read a lot of your viewpoints on APFO as well, and appreciate all the research and thought you have put into it.
Putting the PreK issue aside, the schools enrollment projections focus only on new development that is actually approved and happening. At this point, we don’t even have an approved master plan for rezoning/redeveloping Gateway let alone a single building permit, so why would the school system (which does a 10 year enrollment projection) include potential enrollment growth of a 30-year plan that is still a hypothetical? That doesn’t make sense.
The type of analysis that does make sense for Gateway at the moment is to model various revenue and cost scenarios under different growth assumptions. That’s a much broader economic analysis that goes way beyond the scope/ability of just the school system and obviously comes with so much more variability and uncertainty depending on the extent and timing of Gateway development, job creation, population growth, etc.
You cannot simply put the preK issue aside. This is a major driver of new enrollment growth due to mandates in the Blueprint. The Office of School planning does a great job navigating a very contentious issue; I'm not arguing with their projections. What I'm saying is the "enrollment is flat" mantra is only technically true. Ignoring the reality of the limitations and constraints of these assumptions makes it seem like flat enrollment is a fact. In fact, school enrollment has increased 458 students since September. (https://www.hcpss.org/schools/enrollment-reports/)
Gateway was last predicted to bring in ~8400 homes in 30 years. Yes, these numbers will change, but are you telling me not to expect any new enrollment growth based on this? Again, I understand they can't be projected, but are they "enrollment is flat" true?
My opinion is that it is actually more accurate to say about this incredible reconfiguration of balancing infrastructure with growth: "following preK Blueprint mandates while also getting rid of any development pauses in overcrowded school areas will lead to unpredictable levels of enrollment growth" Literally, this can't be predicted accurately because you are opening up the floodgates by making a major change to a process that heavily favors development.
I am similarly confused about how pre-k fits in. I’m not an expert on any of this but it stands to reason that when we know we have mid-implementation legislation mandating that we add more pre-k seats, that’s going to require more seats. Quite a bit more. It is frustrating that nobody in local govt staff or otherwise has been able to explain this lack of accounting in a way that would put my concerns at ease. It’s worrying that this doesn’t appear to be on the radar.
When I said, “putting it aside”, I simply meant that I wasn’t going to respond to your point about PreK in my initial response but rather only respond to your point about Gateway. I didn’t mean that I think the PreK issue isn’t important or worth considering, I just think it’s a complex issue.
Here’s what I know: Blueprint will ultimately require free Pre-K for 3 and 4 year olds but only for households below 300% of Federal Poverty level (that’s a household income under $93k for a family of 4). There will be subsidies for families above that income level. Further, the goal is for a mixed delivery system where half of preschool education is by private preschool providers (e.g. not in public schools buildings). So, certainly, the private sector will be involved in meeting the demand. There are many HCPSS schools already providing some preschool within their school buildings, but the school system does not count preschool students or seats in their enrollment/capacity numbers, so if a school has 3 preschool classrooms, those students are not included in a schools enrollment #s nor are those classrooms counted towards that schools capacity.
The school system will soon be renovating Faulkner Ridge into a regional preschool center.
All this to say is that between eligibility requirements, use of private preschools, existing PreK space already in HCPSS schools, and the Faulkner Reno, it’s really hard to predict how much additional public infrastructure will actually need to be built for preschool. Maybe we have enough? Maybe we don’t? Blueprint isn’t fully implemented yet.
I tend to think given this uncertainty, focusing APFO on K12 only makes sense.
Do you have suggestions / ideas / solutions on how you think APFO should consider preschool? Would love to hear em.
Forgive this rant, I still have very bitter feelings about the shortsighted way the Blueprint was designed with regard to pre-k. I used to run a little nursery school in the Running Brook neighborhood center that had been operating in Columbia since the 70s. It was a really special place with amazing teachers. Both of my kids attended for 3 years each, and just like the hundreds of other students that had come before them, they were ready for kindergarten when the time came. But schools like ours weren’t being included in any of the Kirwan commission conversations. We watched state legislators write us out of existence in real time. We went to Annapolis and tried to warn them that their plan was never going to work - that it would actually harm a great many pre-schools. At the time, circa 2016, a household of 4 could make up to $78k and still be eligible for a state childcare scholarship that covered 100% of our modest tuition. But Kirwan couldn’t see the forest for the trees. They could have carried out their goal of providing preK to more 3 and 4 year olds by expanding the availability of the childcare scholarships and/or subsidizing some of the operating expenses at these community nursery schools. But they insisted on creating standards that most places couldn’t meet, or chose not to meet because to do so would fundamentally change the nature of their program. They vastly over-estimated the number of programs that would be willing and able to make the required changes and they gave zero consideration to the number of programs they would kill completely. For as long as I can remember, folks have been legislating and implementing for 3 and 4 year olds on the basis of a hope and a prayer. There isn’t even an early childhood educator OR early childhood program administrator on the state board of education. Community partners aren’t going to be able to alleviate the pre-k demands through Blueprint participation. I think it’s a big mistake to assume we’re going to have space and everything is just going to work out.
All that being said, the kinds of enrollment increases I’m talking about don’t have anything to do with new residential developments right now. I think it’s going to be a problem even if there’s no new development. For that reason, I think it would behoove HCPSS and APFO to 1) acknowledge that the legislation has prescribed a path forward for pre-k that isn’t going to work because it was propped up by incorrect assumptions and 2) come up with projections and standards that include these 3 and 4 year old kids that are going to be entering the system, most frequently by way of an existing elementary school.
(If anybody is curious, I left RBCN in 2021, and in 2023 the program merged with the nursery school in Wilde Lake so they could both avoid going out of business. I fear that has only bought them a few more years.)
No, we clearly do not have enough preK seats.
1)First, the Faulker Ridge has a capacity of 260 preK. Realistically, this is a good start, but it is a drop in the bucket for the need.
2)Google anything about the Blueprint and you will see the private sector is not meeting up with expectation for preK seats. There is not enough money in it for them to meet the standards called for. HCPSS actually is one of the highest in the state and is leading the way, but private preK is lagging.
3) My main issue that I started with is you continue to contend that "enrollment is flat" (And I hear it multiple times said by Council Members, "declining", before they are corrected). It is clearly not going to be flat when Blueprint mandates are fully implemented.
4) Why? Our demographics are changing. English language learners (up `33%), free-and reduced meals (up ~40%), and special education (up 16.5%) have all risen since 2018. These are exactly the types of students the Blueprint is targeting for help with preK
5) I have no clue why APFO would only focus on K-12 students when it is supposed to be about infrastructure supporting all student needs. Turning a blind eye isn't a good solution.
6) You are saying you don't know and that it's up in the air. Again, no, it's not. At least 20-30 additional classrooms for preK students are needed for the future. All this before the UPP makes it a developers' free for all on overcrowded schools without the funds to actually pay for the seat cost.
"Informed by this estimate, HCPSS is planning to provide approximately 260 seats of capacity with the renovation of the Faulkner Ridge Center and is continuing the process of identifying opportunities to convert half-day programs into full-day classes, where appropriate. Additionally, future planning should continue to maximize the amount of Pre-K capacity in new elementary projects. This report recommends two new elementary schools over the next ten years, and those schools should each include ten to fifteen classrooms for Pre-K programming. In addition to these projects, a study should be conducted to identify opportunities to add Pre-K classrooms to
elementary schools in areas of need. Pre-K additions should be prioritized in Columbia, the Route 1 corridor, and Ellicott City. Additional third-party consultant services should be considered in order to facilitate strategic planning to meet this need. "
https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/hcpssmd/Board.nsf/files/D67KCN513DC2/$file/06%2020%2024-2024%20Feasibility%20Study%20Report.pdf
So, what’s your solution? How would you recommend the county structure an APFO test for Pre-K? If you figure out a method to project future PreK enrollment and compare to available seats (and there are plenty of uncertainties there given eligibility, optionality, school assignment, private/public, etc. making that projection difficult but for discussion sake, assume one can develop a accurate prediction method), then what?
Jeremy you start off with this statement “The County and Schools have a robust process for projecting future school enrollment, taking into consideration housing turnover, student yield projections from future development, birthrates, and our County’s aging population, etc. The methodology has been proven to be accurate over the years”
How can you say this when there are over 220 portable class rooms?
Hey Brian, Key word here is ENROLLMENT- projecting how many students will be enrolled at HCPSS schools in the future. This sentence isn’t about capacity.
So you're saying then that HCPSS is making an informed, willful decision to educate our children in trailers, right?
Drew, I didn’t say anything about portables/trailers. All I’m saying in #1 in the list above that Brian asked about is that I think the process the school system uses to predict future enrollment is robust and has proven to be fairly accurate. If you want my opinion on portables, I think they stink and limit learning, particularly when used as a grade-level classroom. My kids school uses them for related arts, which I think is a better use, but obviously not ideal.
If the projections are accurate, as you say, please explain why we have 200+ trailers. I note that elsewhere in this discussion you state support for the prioritization of maintenance of existing schools.
I think he’s saying the enrollment projections are accurate. Full stop. Without respect for how they impact capacity and or any aspect of the government’s ability or inability to apply those accurate enrollment projections in their real world planning (which is a separate issue).
Yes, this!
I could not access the board docs link. It is broken.
May 2025 APFO Chart
Odd, I double-checked and is still working for me.
https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/hcpssmd/Board.nsf/files/DGEPW966791E/$file/05%2008%202025%20APFO%20Chart.pdf
I accessed it from the email. I will try from here.
The problem with APFO is that the HCPSS and the county government will not build new schools. Instead, we have "temporary" portable classrooms forever, and a misalignment of school locations with population patterns. The misalignment creates a geographic inequity where most of Columbia has walkable schools, and at the high school level especially, the rest of us have long bus rides to file the excess capacity at the schools in Columbia. The CIP doubles down on this by expanding Oakland MIlls Middle and High Schools to address growth in Elkridge, instead of adding capacity in Elkridge. Columbia Privilege is at work.
One in-the-weeds cause of no schools getting built is that the HCPSS planning process assumes that when an area fails the schools test, development will be delayed, and so their projection does not include the seats from the delayed development. HCPSS does not have to make that assumption. They could assume the delay will not occur because they will decide to build the needed new capacity, and reflect that in the projections. I would recommend an APFO change that HCPSS shall not reflect APFO schools test delays in their projections, and instead they do their job, build needed schools *where they are needed*, and reflect *that* in the projections.
There have been many school capital projects over the past couple of years, including HS#13, and many more are planned for the next 10 years, so I don't agree that HCPSS isn't building. HS #13 helped relieve HS capacity, so now the HS level doesn't need a capacity project as much as the middle school level. It seems like you're upset that the school system chose Jessup instead of Elkridge for HS 13?
Meanwhile, many older school buildings like OMHS/OMMS are in need of a reno, so it makes sense that the school system is prioritizing renos/expansions of older buildings like these and Dunloggin, Patapsco, Murray Hill, etc.
OMHS and OMMS do not need to exist. Neither schools can be filled with students who live nearby, and outrageously, both schools have proposed expansions to be filled with even more students bused in from the Route 1 corridor.
OMHS has a capacity of 1400, and only 900 students who attend it live closer to it than to another school. That $182M proposed for expanding and renovating OMHS would be far better spent building a high school in Elkridge.
I'll thank you not to project attitudes onto me that I am "upset" about the location of HS 13. The issue here is much bigger. The issue is that Elkridge (1/6 of the county population) has no high school. Columbia (1/3 of the population) has 6 of 13 high schools, which cannot be filled without busing in students who live far from Columbia. The issue is that growth in Elkridge is used to justify building high school capacity elsewhere, and not in Elkridge. That is straight-up exploitation.
And no Howard County students should be attending school in trailers. Trailers mean HCPSS isn't building enough. And as long as there are trailers, we certainly should not be digging the hole deeper by building more houses.
I hope you sent these comment to apfo@howardcountymd.gov.
I'll send this in as testimony next week.