Continued Growth in Frederick County Calls for More School Redistricting

This after the County Executive announced to fast-track the proposed east county area elementary school.

FREDERICK, MD.  (LG)   The Frederick County Board of Education agreed this week to expand a number of schools to be considered for redistricting.

“What the board decided to do is to expand the redistricting study to encompass all the areas that will include the new east Frederick area elementary and Sugarloaf Elementary school. So it covers a lot of the areas that feed into Urbana, Linganore, Oakdale, and all the way up into the Liberty area,” said Brad Young, BOE President.

This agreement approved this week by the Board comes on the heels of an announcement made by County Executive Jan Gardner to fast-track the proposed design and construction of an east county area elementary school.   “Originally, this new east Frederick school wasn’t suppose to happen for a number of years later. Since that was sped up, it’s going to open a year after Sugarloaf, and so we decided instead of doing back-to-back redistricting, that we would go ahead and do it at the same time.”

The study will affect approximately 20,000 students.   “We will have on our website all the schools that are affected and we will have many community input meetings,” he continued.

Young said redistricting studies typically take one year to complete.  “We will take public input, staff input, and develop a plan, and then put that out for public input. The Board will then decide whether or not to leave it alone, or make additional changes, and then we will pass that plan which will take effect when Sugarloaf Elementary opens.”

“It affects almost half of the students in our county, but again its going to be required because of all the growth in that part of the County.  Oakdale, Linganore and Urbana areas are growing quite fast. We’re putting two new elementary schools in, which will seat approximately 1500 students, so we need to redraw the boundaries to accommodate for those two new schools,” Young added.

Urbana Elementary School is on tap to open in the Fall of 2020 and the east county area elementary school in the Fall of 2021.

By Loretta Gaines