Nearing the sixth hour of the Howard County Board of Education meeting Thursday night, school system officials unveiled two brand-new redistricting options that could quell concerns at one school and reopen the floodgates at another.

Details are still scant — the board ran out of time to dive in — but both would reverse course on the superintendent’s initial proposal to delay shuffling students out of Centennial Lane Elementary School.

This round of redistricting announced last winter was intended to address overcrowding at Centennial Lane, a sought-after school in Ellicott City, and Bryant Woods Elementary in Columbia.

The Centennial Lane community for months has voiced their desire to keep the school as is, and Superintendent Bill Barnes seemed to heed that call last month when he suggested holding off until a renovation project at a nearby middle school is complete.

But the new concepts before the school board — whose members have the final say in the redistricting ordeal — put Centennial Lane back in the mix, suggesting that some students move to Bryant Woods, Longfellow and Running Brook elementary schools.

They also address concerns from Bryant Woods families that the superintendent’s initial proposal would increase the number of students attending the school who are living in poverty.

Currently, more than half of Bryant Woods students are enrolled in the school’s free or reduced-cost meals program. That means they’re more likely to come from low-income families and need extra support to succeed. Under Barnes’ September proposal, many of the students who would be moved out of Bryant Woods are from families with more resources and who can afford to pay for outside tutors, for example.

That was the scenario communities members were testifying about at a public hearing ahead of the board meeting on Thursday afternoon.

“Let’s say the quiet part out loud,” Natalie Vinski Ibrahim, a parent of a Bryant Woods second grader, testified at the hearing. “This proposal concentrates Black and Hispanic students into the highest-poverty, lowest-performing elementary school in the focus area. In education policy, we have a word for that. The word is segregation.”

The new proposals set out to distribute the county’s youngest learners between six elementary schools: Bryant Woods, Centennial Lane, Longfellow, Clemens Crossing, Running Brook and Swansfield. In the first option, if approved as-is, 593 elementary schoolers would attend a new school next fall. The number wuld be 699 students if the second concept is approved.

The concepts also suggest moving around some middle schoolers, another change from the superintendent’s initial proposal.

At Thursday’s hearing, some families said they feel redistricting is urgent at Bryant Woods but not at Centennial Lane.

“Both Bryant Woods and Centennial Lane are over capacity, but they’re not the same. Bryant Woods is critically over capacity. Centennial Lane is still manageable,” Bena Zeng, an elementary school parent, said.

Zeng then made an analogy to a Thanksgiving dinner. Sitting around the table, Bryant Woods, as Zeng put it, is in a dress too small, bursting at the seams, while Centennial Lane is in sweatpants.

“[Centennial Lane] has some wiggle room there,” Zeng said.

The school board has a boundary review work session scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 23, and another public hearing set for Thursday, Nov. 6. Dates may change if additional work sessions and public hearings are needed. A straw vote is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 13, with a final vote set for Thursday, Nov. 20.

Public comments can be emailed to redistricting@hcpss.org or mailed to the Howard County Board of Education, 10910 Clarksville Pike, Ellicott City, MD 21042.