As a November target to pass a school redistricting plan nears, members of the Anne Arundel County school board this week pitched new proposals for tackling student overcrowding and under-enrollment across the southern half of the county.

The options under consideration would force 900 to 1,500 students to change schools starting in fall 2026. They build on the plan that Superintendent Mark Bedell presented in July.

Some board members suggested popular ideas, such as exempting high school juniors and seniors from switching schools before they graduate. Others pitched plans they know will roil parents and lamented being threatened as they prepared to weigh in.

“I’m really sorry that we’re in this place, but we have to do it,” board member Dawn Pulliam said. “And I hope that once we get through this process, we can work on mending our communities.”

District staff will brief the board on the proposals at a Sept. 29 meeting, and the board will hear public comment on the plans at a pair of community meetings scheduled for October.

The new ideas were introduced by board members as amendments to Bedell’s July plan.

Two of Pulliam’s less controversial amendments seek to minimize disruption in the Crofton and Southern school clusters.

She proposed keeping students from Shadywood Circle set to attend Crofton Meadows at Crofton Elementary, and allowing children in the Chalk Point and Shady Oaks communities to stay at Deale Elementary.

As Pulliam prepared to summarize her third proposed amendment, she acknowledged that the decision was hard on her and said she understood it would be difficult for some families to accept. Still, she insisted it was necessary.

She suggested sending children from the Gingerville, Poplar and Wilelenor communities — who currently attend Edgewater Elementary, Central Middle, and South River High — to Rolling Knolls Middle, Bates Middle, and Annapolis High.

“I hope you know I took into consideration every single suggestion,” she said.

Pulliam’s amendment seeks to address a projection showing the South River schools cluster will be on the cusp of overcrowding by the 2034 school year, less than a decade from now. She implored her constituents to support bold action now to avoid more turmoil later.

“What I don’t want is to be here in three more years with the hatred, the threats, the emotional turmoil that every single one of us has been through,” she said.

She also implored parents to view the amendment as an opportunity to join a school cluster in Annapolis that she said is thriving and that wants to welcome more families.

“We are not going to do well as a community if we don’t address this,” Pulliam said. “I can’t see the faces I’ve seen, and the crying, I’m crying, we’re all crying.”

Pulliam noted that she had been working to address the concerns of families in Glen Isle who don’t want to see their children moved from Davidsonville Elementary to Central Elementary. But in the end, she did not propose any adjustments.

Board member Joanna Bache Tobin introduced amendments that seek to send students who live south of Carrollton Road and attend Georgetown East Elementary to Hillsmere Elementary, and send some students who attend Eastport Elementary to Georgetown East Elementary.

She expressed concern that the change would reduce diversity at Hillsmere Elementary. “That does not make me happy,” she said. But she said she hopes the move will incentivize some Annapolis families who send their children to private schools to return to the district.

Bache Tobin noted that only 19% of children in Annapolis attend public schools. Hillsmere is one of the district’s most highly rated and sought-after elementary schools. She implored her constituents to weigh in on her ideas.

“I would very much like to hear from the public on this amendment,” Bache Tobin said. “I approach this with great humility. I may have it wrong, but I’m trying here, to be perfectly honest with you. And if nothing changes, nothing changes.”

Several of the amendments pitched by board member Sarah McDermott seek to roll back pieces of Bedell’s proposal that affect the Arundel and Meade communities. Her suggestions include:

• Allowing some Two Rivers Elementary students to stay put instead of moving to Piney Orchard Elementary
• Keeping some Piney Orchard Elementary students on track to attend Arundel Middle and Arundel High rather than Manor View Elementary, MacArthur Middle and Meade High
• Routing some students who were set to attend Manor View Elementary to Seven Oaks Elementary
• Canceling the plan to send some Nantucket Elementary students to one middle and high school while sending others to a different middle and high school

McDermott acknowledged that her ideas would strain capacity at Arundel Middle, but she said she expects the school to “shoot up the list” for capital improvements and predicted that it could have a new wing built “in the very near future.”

“I look forward to advocating strongly on behalf of the Arundel cluster for that project,” McDermott said.

Board member Dana Schallheim’s amendment was perhaps the most straightforward. She pointed to a map showing a small cluster of homes assigned to attend Piney Orchard Elementary and said the students who live there should attend Odenton Elementary instead.

“I know that this has been drawn this way for quite some time,” she said. “I have yet to understand why.”