[Baltimore Sun] Baltimore County Council considers bill to ease school overcrowding
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The Baltimore County Council is considering ways to slow down school overcrowding, including a bill that would tie new construction to current school capacity, nearly four years after a task force first recommended it.
In doing so, however, the council is setting itself up for another bruising round in an ongoing political fight over the future of county development.
Councilman David Marks, an Upper Falls Republican, proposed earlier this month a bill that would create an adequate public facilities ordinance (APFO), four years after a council created-task force suggested it in a February 2020 report as a potential solution to chronic school overcrowding. The ordinance would approve development contingent on nearby schools’ ability to accommodate additional children, and create a county-appointed committee to study the impacts of proposed developments upon nearby schools. The council discussed it at a Tuesday work session, where it was first introduced.
The bill is supported by Council Chair Izzy Patoka and Councilmen Wade Kach and Mike Ertel. Patoka and Ertel are Democrats; Kach is a Republican.
Overcrowding has plagued Baltimore County schools for over 30 years, forcing school officials to stagger lunch hours, host classrooms in portable trailers, and expand class sizes beyond state recommendations to accommodate extra students. Nearly a third of BCPS institutions are over capacity.
Marks’ bill expands the county’s ability to withhold permits in overcrowded areas from residential homes to commercial buildings. It also closes a loophole, known as the adjacency rule, that allows proposed building projects in an overcrowded school district if a neighboring district has space to absorb extra students.
“Any way you look at it, it’s bad math,” Patoka said of the adjacency rule.
The bill is one of a handful of legislative bills the council has considered in recent months as the county faces a dearth of housing, a dwindling supply of developable land, and a looming federal deadline to produce 1,000 units of affordable housing by 2027.
Critics argue Marks’ bill will accelerate the county’s population decline and exacerbate its housing crisis by making permitting more cumbersome and deterring investment in planning projects. Developers said the bill allows the council to sidestep other politically thorny solutions, like redistricting, while nominally addressing overcrowding.
David Murphy, a partner at Elm Street Development, pointed out that Baltimore County issued record-low building permits in 2023 amid low school enrollment numbers.
“I really think we need to look at the utilization of our schools rather than looking to shut down future development,” he told the council during a Tuesday meeting.
Tiara Booker-Dwyer, the chair of the county’s board of education, said the bill’s proposal to create an 11-member interdepartmental committee to study the impacts of a proposed development on a nearby school could jeopardize county schools’ state funding.
“Capacity determination for state funding are established by the interagency commission on school construction,” said Booker-Dwyer, who spoke at Tuesday’s meeting. “This bill does not address how Baltimore County government intends to subsidize the millions of dollars in total construction funding that may be lost if the school system no longer meet the state’s requirements as a result of passing this bill.”
The bill also has detractors on the council. Republican Councilman Todd Crandell diagnosed the bill as a false “panacea,” while councilman Julian Jones, a Democrat, said the bill would accelerate the county’s “state of decline.”
“I know what happens when you have population fleeing your jurisdiction,” Jones said. “What happens is people demand services, employers demand raises, and requests go up. The tax base is shrinking. You have nothing to do then but increase taxes on the people that are there, which then motivates some of them to leave, which then motivates others not to come and you get on this spiral.”
The council will discuss the bill again at its May 14 work session, before voting on it at its May 23 legislative hearing.
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