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

“Stand up if you want answers about how our kids are going to be safe,” PTA co-vice president Lauren Shapiro shouted as she walked through a cafeteria full of parents and educators last week. Many stood and some applauded.

Baltimore County Public Schools staff put away their sticky notes and questions. The parents were not 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, driven by a redistricting effort to reduce overcrowding elsewhere. The student body is now 221 students larger and much more diverse.

The fight 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 moving population. In this case, longtime families in Summit Park question whether the school was ready for the newcomers, and new families feel unwelcome, even scapegoated, for the problems. because of their race or income.

Angel Vosburgh St Pierre said she was initially 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 at Maryland School Report and has test scores well above district and state averages. But then he saw the assumptions made by Summit Park parents about the redistricting documents.

“I’m concerned because it looks like some of the schools that may be funneled into Summit Park are from lower-income neighborhoods,” a Summit Park parent. he wrote. “Children often have undiagnosed/untreated ADHD that manifests itself in physical aggression/violence.”

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

It didn’t help that Vosburgh St Pierre was told by a Summit Park parent at a birthday party that she was moving her child to private school because of the kids who were coming — kids like hers.

Feeling that her daughter, who is biracial, would not be welcome at Summit Park, she signed up she in a charter school.

Summit Park doesn’t look like it used to. It was overwhelmingly white in a city with a significant Jewish and black population, had less than a quarter of its students from low-income families, and an enrollment of about 300. students last school year. This changed when a committee made up mostly of parents was created redrawn 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 reassigned children to six schools to reduce overcrowding at three of them.

The new map went into effect this school year. Enrollment at Summit Park has grown to about 524, a school system spokesman said. Redistribution documents estimated that black students would go from 16 percent of the population to one-third, and the low-income population would increase by seven percentage points.

School system policy says that maintaining or increasing school diversity should be a primary goal when transferring children, and studies show that there is BENEFITS to have diverse schools. The resulting maps often do a little to move the needlebut Summit Park has seen progress. White students, for example, were projected to drop from 70 percent of the student body to 47 percent.

They were designed to exist 50 students transfer to Summit Park in Milbrook, a 3-star school with a large black and Latino population and 42 percent of children from low-income families. The other 164 transfers would come from Wellwood International School, another 3-star school where 65 percent of students were black and more than a third came from low-income families.

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

Principal Bre Fortkamp said the school received additional staff this year, including a safety aide, an additional teacher’s aide and an additional paraeducator. More staff is needed to meet the needs of a larger student body, especially for special education, she said.

They found ways to celebrate students and staff more to help with school culture, used tape to direct students where to go in the hallway to prevent them from bumping into each other during class transitions, and adjusted schedules so that whole classes to have a toilet. break together to reduce the number of students playing where they shouldn’t.

There were struggles, Fortkamp said. And seven suspensions so far this school year, according to a spokesman. Only two suspensions occurred at this time last school year.

“Although the number of suspensions is higher, there are more than 200 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 there was small talk at the tables around the cafeteria. One black parent, an employee of the school system who did not want to be identified for fear of retaliation, said her son, who is new to Summit Park this year, was bullied. Several 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 a more diverse teaching staff could help problem.

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

Teachers and staff quietly observed behind and around the perimeter of the room. Also in attendance were school board member Jane Lichter and County Board President Izzy Patoka, both representing the Summit Park district.

Parents expressed frustration with communication and said they wanted to be were notified of incidents in which their children were not involved but were witnessed. Fortkamp said policy dictates which families are notified. Sometimes only the students’ parents are directly involved.

Several brought up an incident where a student made a threat. It’s unclear what happened, but the principal shut down the rumor that a student had access to a gun. Baltimore police found the threat not credible, she explained, and found no weapons in the student’s home.

“Every day I have a panic attack because my kids are here and I know nothing is being done because they’re scared,” said one parent.

“We just want the school to say, ‘Things that happen at other schools won’t happen here at Summit Park,'” said another.

“It’s hard to want to feel inclusive with kids who make other kids feel scared for their lives,” noted one parent.

Shapiro, the PTA member, said in an interview that she is concerned about infighting, growing class sizes, teachers wanting to leave and parents opting for private schools.

She said they have never faced this level of behavioral challenges in the four years she has had children at the school. This is not an issue of inclusion, she said. They are fine to embrace newcomers “as long as everyone treats everyone with respect and safety.”

What they need, Shapiro said, are more resources to help students with behavioral problems. She said her husband suggested a detention cell.

“If I had a kid who misbehaves, I’d want that kid in that detention room,” Shapiro said. “I’d like my child to learn that they can’t sit in a classroom with other kids if they’re being physical or pulling them away from other kids.”

The meeting ended as it began, with screams. A man across the room yelled at Shapiro’s father after he suggested that special education students be segregated from the rest of the school.

About Education Hub

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