At a recent four cities meeting, the Greenbelt City Council struggled to convince Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and Board of Education District 2 Representative Joshua Thomas why Greenbelt Station youth should be in the Eleanor Roosevelt High School (ERHS) district.
The teenagers of Greenbelt Station have been directed by the county to attend Parkdale High School, a school that few of their friends from other parts of Greenbelt will attend. The city has been pushing the county for months to redistrict the youth to ERHS to resolve that divide, but the county has so far been reluctant.
Why? Because, redistricting the youth would counter another recent initiative from Prince George’s County staff which is to eliminate the stigma that any one school is better or worse than another. When Councilmember Colin Byrd brought up the issue, Alsobrooks said that she is “nearly grief-stricken” about this sentiment of inequality. Citing one high school graduation she recently attended, she was saddened to find that one third of the class said they had no plans after school.
She continued in a lengthy reply, “We have to work to make sure that when you graduate from a Prince George’s County public school, you don’t have a sense that if only you lived in a different area you would have a different education. That’s something that I am really concerned about.”
Not having heard of the situation in Greenbelt Station, she then said, “We will see about getting an answer to that.” Councilmember Leta Mach offered to send more information on the situation in an email after the meeting, and Alsobrooks accepted that offer. Thomas, who is himself an ERHS graduate, agreed with the county executive, saying that he is also trying to fight the stigma that, “Graduating from one school in the county, though that diploma might match a diploma you might receive at another school, the skills and the opportunities that that school might provide are going to vary. We think that this is not an equitable system, we know that it is not doing justice by our kids.”
Although neither formally refused to redistrict Greenbelt Station youth, both implied that to go through with a redistrict would conflict with the push for a more equal school system. The best Alsobrooks and Thomas could offer was that they would look into the situation. They did not offer much hope for resolving what Mach called a longstanding complaint.
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