The air was growing tense as parents and community members shuffled into the media center at Burleigh Manor Middle School in Ellicott City. The discontent had been building on social media all day.

“We have to unite and fight this as redistricting equals criminal child abuse,” one commenter wrote in a popular local Facebook group, urging neighbors to call and email school board members. “They need to feel the pressure and know that we won’t give up.”

As the information session at Burleigh Manor began, school system officials fielded a flurry of questions: Why can’t you move prekindergarten classes to schools with more room instead of redistricting? Why hasn’t Centennial High School been renovated yet?

The crowd kept grilling school officials in the hallway after the session ended.

The boundary review process has barely begun, yet Howard County families already are up in arms about the school system’s intention to adjust attendance zones to relieve overcrowding at two elementary schools — Bryant Woods in Columbia and Centennial Lane in Ellicott City. The shuffle, to be finalized later this year, will affect at most 11 of the county’s 78 schools starting in fall 2026.

It’s nothing new for the district, which grappled with a contentious countywide redistricting nearly six years ago that left lingering wounds. Parents and community members at that time held protests and flooded public hearings and work sessions. Neighborhood coalitions were formed in an attempt to keep their kids at their current schools.

Could the school system be facing round 2?

Newly formed community groups are cropping up already. Anu Prabhala, Shirley Nan and Daniel Diep formed the Alliance for Neighborhood Schools. The parents have gathered 600 signatures so far on a petition calling for the school system to relocate prekindergarten programs to schools with more room so that older kids wouldn’t have to change schools.

Their children attend Centennial Lane Elementary, Burleigh Manor Middle and Centennial High, all sought-after schools that earned high marks on the Maryland School Report Card.

“We’re just a couple of parents,” Nan said. “We just want the best for them and care about their well-being.”

Both Centennial Lane and Bryant Woods have more students than their buildings were designed to hold. School officials have identified three nearby elementary schools the students could attend instead: Longfellow, Running Brook or Swansfield. Clemens Crossing Elementary could be an option for Bryant Woods kids, too.

“What a lot of people have to recognize is that while our enrollment is currently projected to be flat or decrease, that’s at the county-wide level. There are still pockets of areas where there are capacity needs,” said Dan Lubeley, the school system’s executive director of capital planning and construction.

There also may be some shuffling at the middle and high schools “fed” by the elementary schools in the boundary review. At least 15% of a grade should move together to their corresponding middle and high school, per school district policy. Officials notified families of possible changes to attendance zones for Burleigh Manor, Harper’s Choice and Wilde Lake middle schools and Centennial and Wilde Lake high schools.

School board member Jen Mallo said that’s caused some confusion, leading some parents to assume the redistricting is designed to relieve overcrowding in high schools.

Mallo is the only one of her board colleagues who served during the 2019 redistricting process. This go-around, all but one of the schools in the boundary review are in her district.

Mallo wants to have a “very strong understanding” of the schools’ physical layout. For example, she said, the classrooms Bryant Woods uses for pre-K “are not large enough to be a traditional classroom.”

That means the Alliance for Neighborhood Schools’ solution might not be as simple as it sounds. It also doesn’t take into account that the school system needs to expand pre-K across the county, said Cornell Brown, the school system’s chief operating officer. That’s a directive of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s plan to make local schools the best in the nation.

“[We’re] not necessarily moving pre-K from one location to another to avoid balancing enrollment,” Brown said.

Still, the Alliance remains unsatisfied. The school system and school board “haven’t thought of more creative solutions,” Nan said. “Their mind is set on redistricting.”

No plans have been proposed to the Board of Education yet. The school board is slated to receive an enrollment balancing report, including potential redistricting options, in July. A vote is expected in November.