Our say: Without change in school planning, taxpayers lose | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

Our desire to modify the calculation of APF for schools stems from the plain fact that current school capacity decisions are made using bad data. The use of bad data during the last several years has led to chronic overcrowding at some schools while neighboring schools lie fallow and far under capacity.

Our unbalanced school population, coupled with our approach to building schools, is the direct cause of Anne Arundel County's repeated failure to secure more state school money when compared to similarly sized counties.

In short, overcrowding burdens school resources and facilities and vacant schools are a drain on precious school resources. In either case, under the current system, the taxpayers lose. Our bill will begin to remedy that.

"Projected enrollment" of a school is the critical piece of information on which decisions about whether a school may take on additional students are based. Thus, if the data used to determine projected enrollment is inaccurate, the decision to make a school "open" to new students will similarly be unsound.

The formula Anne Arundel County uses to determine projected enrollment "double counts" students who live in one school district and attends school in another. This situation arises when, for example, legitimate day care needs necessitate out of area attendance. The result of this double counting is that one student occupies a seat at two different schools. Such a result wastes taxpayer money by not maximizing every dollar allocated to our schools.

The use of the current formula results in schools remaining open for development despite being overcrowded. These schools include, Belvedere, Davidsonville, Deale, Edgewater, Marley, and Riviera Beach Elementary. The proposed bill would close these schools to development.

Likewise, the formula produces the exact opposite result in which there is excess capacity yet the school remains closed because of the formula required by our current laws. Such is the case at Meade Heights Elementary. Empty seats also waste taxpayer money because just a like a seat occupied by a student, an empty seat costs money to air-condition, to staff. In short, every empty seat represents lost potential to educate a student.

The part of our legislation that has elicited the most attention, would raise allowable capacities for elementary schools to 105 percent and 110 percent for secondary schools. We decided on these numbers by researching several factors.

First, surrounding jurisdictions use higher capacities than we propose but we took a more conservative position. For example, Montgomery County allows up to 120 percent, Howard County and Baltimore County allow up to 115 percent. Second, our system requires a "capacity discount" called a scheduling factor. So for example, if a school was built to a 1,000 student capacity, capacity for the purposes of whether a school may receive new students is artificially lowered to 900.

We believe that a law which uses actual projected enrollment data will help Anne Arundel County make better land use, capital improvement and school district decisions and will help balance school capacities throughout the county.

The bedrock of sound decision making is accurate, up-to-date information. This is especially true when making decisions about the educations our children receive. Both of us are proud of the education we received in Anne Arundel County's public school system. In the face of a growing school maintenance backlog and a lagging economy, our children are in danger of getting something less than we did.

Our highest duty as elected officials is to make sure our school system is funded and efficiently managed so that your children get the same education we are so proud to have received. This legislation is one attempt to fulfill that duty.

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County Councilman Ron Dillon is a Republican from Pasadena. County Councilman Jamie Benoit is a Democrat from Crownsville.