Parents of School Board: "They're Tying Our Hands"

LA PLATA – Matula Elementary families who live on Hawkins Gate Road picketed the recent Board of Education work session at the Starkey Administration Building.  They hoped to convince the Board to let their children remain at Matula Elementary when the new Neal Elementary opens at the start of the 2008-2009 school year. 

The Bay Net Photos by A. Dailey

The protesters were polite but insistent while they chanted “La Plata schools for La Plata kids” to passing board members.  Hawkins Gate parents’ group spokesman Colin Mohler spoke with every administrator he could persuade to stop for a moment.

“We’re trying to be respectful,” Mohler told The Bay Net.  “I’ve spoken with some great people, but they’re tying our hands. We may have to seek legal representation.”

The situation doesn’t look hopeful that the Hawkins Gate families will get their way.  During the work session, the Board learned from Charles County Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Chuck Wineland that he and other community planning officials are confident that the Heritage Green and Agricopia neighborhoods in La Plata will grow exponentially as the new housing market returns to full health.  Those neighborhoods are closer to Matula Elementary than Hawkins Gate Road.

Heritage Green and Agricopia are inside La Plata town limits, and consequently not subject to the same annual growth control cap developments within county regulated zones obey.  If they grow as Wineland predicted to the Board, they will create a serious problem for already over-crowded Matula, unless La Plata families at the edges of Matula’s boundaries are redistricted as new schools open.

During the BoE work session, the Board took time to question representatives of the Neal Redistricting Committee.  They dispelled concerns the redistricting plan had been guided to the current options by the administrators who oversaw the committee.  Berry Principal Daryl Evans, a member of the Neal Redistricting Committee informed the Board that the administrators simply provided the committee with data.  Evans assured the Board that the work was tedious and thankless, but the two plans in question are indeed the ones which made the most sense when the committee considered safety, distance, geographical area and future growth. 

In the more populated areas of the county, Wineland told the Board, CCPS is working toward a neighborhood school concept – a tight zone of nearby residents assigned to a school located centrally to them.  Charles County hasn’t really had that to any uniform degree before.  In fact, two decades ago, Maryland State would not give the county money for a new school if open seats existed in another school of its level anywhere else in the county.  CCPS was forced to bus students from overcrowded schools at one end of the county to empty seats at the other end.

Certainly, if Charles County Public Schools does realize its plan to build roughly one school annually, redistricting is something with which county residents will become quite familiar over the next five years.