Howard County’s main economic engine is its school system. According to a 2016 report, the Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) provides 8 percent of total annual county output. Yet, for over two decades, the county has failed to integrate HCPSS into its General Plan development. 

As a result, HCPSS is woefully short of capacity for our students. There are 129 relocatable classrooms in use at elementary schools, 53 in middle schools, and 56 in high schools.

The Howard County Capital Budget (Project E1045) includes $2M for still more relocatable classrooms in 2023, and $1.5M per year for every year thereafter.

School capacity is no longer aligned with student populations, resulting in gross inequities in travel times and overcrowding levels in different parts of the county.

The failure to proactively plan for school capacity along with residential growth has had a devastating effect on the HCPSS budget, beyond the lack of school capacity. Deferred maintenance has ballooned to over FIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS. The county failed to collect HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in school surcharge legislation.

The county’s Adequate Public Facilities Ordinance (APFO) did not include a school capacity test for High Schools and imposed very little restrictions on the middle and elementary schools.

Class sizes continue to increase.

Schools have been segregated by income and race due to zoning and land-use policy.

Funding for special education and other critical components continue to decline.

These are all due to the county’s failure to  integrate schools in its development of the General Plan.

Failure to deliver a quality education and improve our level of service will have far reaching ramifications. If the level of service of our schools continues to decline, families with means will choose private schools, or move to neighboring counties with a better school system. Those who remain will not be able to sustain the tax obligations to support the crumbling infrastructure which leads to a downward spiral of dwindling tax-base and further decline in quality of service. We will not be able to address the maintenance backlog, and to add the capacity needed for development which has already occurred.

The county’s draft General Plan, HoCo-By-Design, despite the importance of schools to the vitality of our county, does not address school planning at all. HoCo By Design perpetuates the bad planning practice of planning residential development without planning schools that has led to the disastrous outcome of insufficient capacity and exploding deferred maintenance backlogs.

 We call on County Executive Calvin Ball and the Department of Planning and Zoning to add a GENERAL PLAN UPDATE ON SCHOOLS!

HoCo By Design should identify the number of students who will live in all unbuilt housing units allowed under current zoning, and for all proposed new housing that will be enabled by the general plan update, in both new proposed areas of development such as the Gateway Industrial Center, and due to policy changes such as allowing Accessory Dwelling Units by right.

HoCo By Design should:

• Explicitly describe the method of estimation of the number of these potential students.
• Identify the regions of the county where these potential students will live.
• Calculate the number of new school seats required by these new students.
• Identify the number of new schools required by these new students, and where these schools will be located.
• Establish land use policies that will ensure that needed school sites will be secured in the communities where the students live, so that school capacity aligns with student population.
• Establish the cost of the required new school capacity and the funding sources to provide that capacity, to include the elimination of all trailer classrooms.
• Provide a plan that will address how class sizes will be reduced with changes in the rate of residential development.
• Develop a General Plan that will ensure new residential development will achieve racial and economic integration both within the new development and in the broader community.