St. Mary’s County Schools Plan Major Redistricting Effort Amid Budget Shortfalls

LEONARDTOWN, Md. — At the St. Mary’s County Public Schools (SMCPS) Board of Education meeting on April 23, 2025, the board confirmed their support for the start of an effort to redistrict the county’s public school system for the 2026-2027 academic year.

This redistricting seeks to address what the board noted was a disorganized system of feeder schools in which elementary and middle school students do not infrequently attend a different middle and/or high school from their classmates. The plan for redistricting is the central aspect of a more general effort that was described by Director of Capital Planning at SMCPS, Kim Howe, as a “facility utilization study,” which is also attempting to confront a potential $6.3 million shortfall in the FY26 budget for SMCPS, $5.3 million of which comes from a shortfall between the BOE recommended budget and the funding allocated by the commissioners of St. Mary’s County, and $1 million of which is from reduced state funding.

Redistricting is one way of addressing that issue, in part through a “consolidation of facilities” that might involve closing schools with low enrollment and finding a way to equitably redistribute that student body to other schools. However, in the short term, also mentioned in the meeting was the possibility of cutting as many as 90 positions from the school system to deal with immediate budget shortfalls.

Representatives of the board of education stated throughout the meeting that the plan to redistrict the county’s public school system was going to be a very gradual and “methodical” process that would involve a significant amount of consultation with the St. Mary’s County public through community engagement meetings that are planned to start in fall 2025, and when a final plan is put together, it will be taken before a public hearing before any final decision is made.

Board members acknowledged that “redistricting” was a “dirty word” that would almost certainly result in public backlash, with some board members having had personal experience going through redistricting in their personal lives.

There are two primary reasons SMCPS finds itself in the position of having to redistrict. The first is that the county has never done a large redistricting of St. Mary’s County, while surging population and development have changed the outlook of the county. The superintendent of SMCPS, Dr. J. Scott Smith, stated that, instead, “What we’ve done is we have construction projects that increase capacity for a particular site, and then we go and redistrict to accommodate that new site, neighborhood to neighborhood… We’ve never really taken a large step back and said from the very start to the very end, taking all boundary lines and resetting all of them.”

The second is from the aforementioned $5.3 million budget shortfall between the budget announced by the superintendent and the budget allocated by the commissioners of St. Mary’s County in their recently released FY2026 budget. This is despite an overall spending increase of $18.6 million in the county’s budget, most of which is set to be distributed to various county departments and the sheriff’s office. At the same time, Dr. Smith said that there was a high likelihood of reduced support for public education from the federal government, and that Maryland had already decided to reduce its funding to SMCPS by $1 million due to relatively static enrollment numbers.

St. Mary’s County “per-pupil spending” ranks 20th out of 24 among Maryland’s counties and Baltimore City, and it was mentioned by the student member of the board that students have responded negatively to the flat funding for education. Notable quotes from students include “How can higher ups expect future generations to be successful policemen or government officials if they don’t invest in education,” and “this will cause a domino effect [in St. Mary’s County].” Also expressed was surprise: “How did we not know about this?”

A number of ideas were floated during the meeting on what redistricting and other changes might look like. One sought to address the disparity in enrollment numbers between schools, a serious issue that the county is facing at present. For example, Leonardtown Middle School is the largest in the county, with 969 students enrolled as of September 2024. Alternatively, Esperanza Middle School is one of the smallest in the county by enrollment, with 835 students. Part of this is because of issues in the flow of students coming from feeder elementary schools like Evergreen Elementary School. While most fifth graders at Evergreen attend Esperanza in sixth grade, a significant minority of students choose instead to go to Leonardtown Middle, which exacerbates the enrollment gap between the two middle schools. So, something the school system might start doing is blocking that flow of students to Leonardtown, to rebalance the enrollment numbers.

The board and the presenters in this information session — Mr. Michael Watson, COO of the superintendent’s cabinet, and Kim Howe, director of capital planning — discussed how SMCPS might address the root cause of this issue, which is that the schools are not all on equal footing. Because of this, it is not uncommon for parents to apply for waivers for their child to go to a school system they are not technically districted to attend because the parents believe that school offers the best opportunities for their child. Specific examples of draws mentioned were the various academies at the county’s high schools, like GIS at Leonardtown High School and the AVPA at Chopticon High School, as well as certain programs like Leonardtown High School’s Chinese program. When asked about whether redistricting would have an effect on those academies, Mr. Watson said it was “very possible,” and that the question would be “do we still offer those, or do we try to offer those at all three high schools?” Mr. Watson also suggested that those transfer waivers might be denied more frequently.

Also mentioned was the potential to consolidate the starting times for the county’s elementary, middle and high schools, specifically making middle and high school start at the same time. The county’s elementary schools start at five different times between 8 and 9 a.m., the middle schools start at either 7:20 or 7:45 a.m., and all three high schools start at the same time at 8 a.m. If start times were more closely aligned, it was acknowledged that buses might have to be combined to optimize transportation and transportation costs, raising the possibility that high school students would ride on the same buses as middle school students, and that in some cases elementary school students might ride with high school students, something that happened “not so long ago” in some areas of the county.

None of these ideas are close to being finalized, which is why the board is making sure the public will be able to be highly involved throughout this process of figuring out how to redistrict the school system. In the case of the potential job cuts, Dr. Smith said that “if we are going to cut 90 positions out of the school system, we aren’t going to do it haphazardly. It has to be done in a thoughtful, methodical, well-informed way so that everybody has the opportunity to provide their input and ultimately for staff, for them to make decisions about what’s next for them as well.” The student board member, Hannah Heisler, also advocated for focus groups to be carried out over the course of this process, making sure to appropriately consult the teachers and students who would all be directly affected by these changes.

Still, the prospect of redistricting and more generally implementing major changes in the SMCPS system is concerning for many St. Mary’s County residents. Addressing this, the board member for District 4, Mary Washington, gave a comprehensive response addressing those concerns, “Redistricting — and that is a dirty word to most community members — that’s a word they do not want to hear. We have called it realignment, but it’s redistricting. It is the most stressful, disruptive, and agonizing time for families, students, and the entire county. The entire county will be impacted by redistricting: traffic patterns, what time parents have to be to work, what time their kids get on the bus — everything we do is major. The change of school time by five minutes can be totally disruptive to what time a parent has to get to work. It’s difficult to find child care for 10 or 15 minutes while you have to be to work. Families would have rather had a larger class size and their students being in a learning cottage — which is a mobile unit — than to disrupt them by moving.

“Moving high school children, elementary, and middle school kids is going to impact them as well if they’re going to go to another elementary school or middle school. So we have a lot of challenges ahead, and it is going to be an emotionally tough year for the entire county because this is not an easy process. So when a school was renovated or a new school opened, it was more palatable for the community to accept that their child would be redistricted because the child was going to a new school or a renovated school. But when there’s no new school, no renovated school, they’re going to another school — it’s going to be very challenging.

“Community engagement is essential so that all voices will be heard and we can have a thoughtful process. I would like to see students included on the committee, just like our student board member… We do hard work in public education. We don’t do the easy work. We do the hard work. We impact the families at the dinner table and what they’re talking about.”

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