The goal was to have a civil conversation about safety at Summit Park Elementary. The shouting started within minutes.

“Stand up if you guys want answers on how our kids are going to be safe,” Lauren Shapiro, co-Vice President of the PTA, yelled as she paced around a cafeteria full of parents and educators last week. Many stood, and some applauded.

Baltimore County Public Schools staff set aside their sticky notes and question prompts. Parents weren’t in the mood for a class activity.

Since school started, Summit Park families have been alarmed by their children’s reports of fights and bullying at school. Nearly a third of them are new to the school this year, funneled by a redistricting effort to relieve overcrowding elsewhere. The student body is now 221 students larger and far more diverse.

The strife at last week’s community meeting is a rare window into the growing pains after redrawing school attendance boundaries, something Baltimore County does frequently to balance its shifting population. In this case, it’s left longtime Summit Park families questioning whether the school was prepared for the newcomers, and new families feeling unwelcome, even scapegoated, for the problems because of their race or income.

Angel Vosburgh St Pierre said that, initially, she was fine with her child starting kindergarten at Summit Park instead of Milbrook Elementary, where the family was originally zoned. Summit Park earned 4 out of 5 stars on the Maryland School Report Card and has test scores well above district and state averages. But then she saw the assumptions made by Summit Park parents on redistricting documents.

“I am concerned because it seems that some of the schools potentially being funneled into Summit Park are from lower income neighborhoods,” one Summit Park parent wrote. “The children often have undiagnosed/untreated ADHD which manifests in physical aggression/violence.”

“The influx of students from schools with lower test scores may impact the academic standards Summit Park has diligently maintained,” another person wrote.

It didn’t help that Vosburgh St Pierre was told by a Summit Park parent at a birthday party that he’s moving his kid to private school because of the kids that were coming in — kids like hers.

Feeling as though her daughter, who is biracial, would be unwelcome at Summit Park, she enrolled her in a charter school.

Summit Park no longer looks the way it used to. It was overwhelmingly white in a town with a significant Jewish and Black population, had less than a quarter of students from low-income families, and enrolled approximately 300 students last school year. That changed when a committee made up of mostly parents redrew the school boundary lines in the northwest region of the county.

The school system rebuilt four elementary schools with room for 1,200 more students and redistributed kids among six schools to relieve overcrowding at three of them.

The new map went into effect this school year. Enrollment at Summit Park went up to roughly 524, a school system spokesperson said. Redistricting documents projected that Black students would go from 16% of the population to a third, and the low-income population would increase by seven percentage points.

School system policy says maintaining or increasing the school diversity should be a primary goal when shifting kids around, and studies show there are benefits to having diverse schools. The resulting maps often do little to move the needle, but Summit Park saw progress. White students, for instance, were projected to drop from 70% of the student body to 47%.

There were projected to be 50 students transferring to Summit Park from Milbrook, a 3-star school with a large Black and Latino population and 42% of the children from low-income families. The other 164 transfers would come from Wellwood International School, another 3-star school where 65% of the students were Black and over a third were from low-income families.

During last week’s community meeting, Jodi Freedlander, the parent of a second-grader at Summit Park, scoffed at the interruptions. “Basically, they’re saying since these kids have come from Wellwood, the behaviors have gotten bad.” She called it racism.

Principal Bre Fortkamp said the school has gotten additional staff this year, including a safety assistant, an extra teacher assistant and an additional paraeducator. More staff are needed to meet the needs of a larger student body, particularly for special education, she said.

They’ve found ways to celebrate students and staff more to help with the school culture, used tape to direct students where to walk in the hallway to stop them from bumping into each other during class transitions, and tweaked schedules so entire classes can have restroom breaks together to cut down on students playing where they shouldn’t.

There has been fighting, Fortkamp said. And seven suspensions so far this school year, according to a spokesperson. Only two suspensions occurred by this time last school year.

“While the suspension number is higher, there are approximately 200+ more students at Summit Park this year,” a school system spokesperson said in an email.

The school system declined an interview request on behalf of the principal.

At last week’s meeting, small discussions took place at tables around the cafeteria. One Black parent, a school system employee who didn’t want to be identified for fear of retaliation, said her son, who is new to Summit Park this year, has been bullied. A couple of the incidents included a white student who, the parent said, acted as if her son was invisible. And a Black student pushed her son in class, she said.

Parents need to take more responsibility for their children’s behavior, she said, and more diverse teaching staff could help with the issue.

“Because it’s not very diverse, and you get an influx of diversity, how do homogeneous teaching staff know how to deal with students who are unlike themselves?” she asked.

Teachers and staff observed quietly in the back and around the perimeter of the room. Also in attendance were school board member Jane Lichter and County Council Chairman Izzy Patoka, both of whom represent Summit Park’s district.

Parents voiced frustration about communication and said they wanted to be notified of incidents that their kids weren’t involved in, but witnessed. Fortkamp said policy dictates which families are notified. Sometimes it’s only the parents of the students directly involved.

A few brought up an incident where a student made a threat. It’s unclear what happened, but the principal shut down a rumor that a student had access to a weapon. Baltimore County Police found the threat wasn’t credible, she explained, and didn’t find guns in the student’s house.

“Every single day I have a panic attack because my kids are here, and I know that nothing is done because they are afraid,” one parent said.

“We just want the school to say, ‘The things that happen at other schools are not going to take place here at Summit Park,’” said another.

“It’s hard to want to feel inclusive of children that are making other children feel scared for their life,” a parent remarked.

Shapiro, the PTA member, said in an interview that she’s concerned about fighting, rising class sizes, teachers wanting to leave and parents opting for private schools.

She said they’ve never experienced this level of behavioral challenges in the four years she’s had children at the school. This isn’t an issue of inclusion, she said. They’re fine with embracing newcomers “as long as everybody treats everybody with respect and safety.”

What they need, Shapiro said, are more resources to assist students with behavioral issues. She said her husband suggested a detention room.

“If I had a child that was misbehaving, I would want my child in that detention room,” said Shapiro. “I would want my child to learn that they can’t stay in a classroom with other kids if they’re being physical or taking away learning from other kids.”

The meeting ended the way it started, with yelling. A man across the room shouted at Shapiro’s dad after he suggested that special education students should be separated from the rest of the school.

About the Education Hub

This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.