The president of the Rodgers Forge Community Association says the school system’s plan to move some of its residents to a new, state-of-the-art elementary school on Charles Street is unfair and will hurt their sense of community.

“Hampton and Riderwood get to stay on the periphery, while they dump on us like the bastard stepchild,” Janice Moore, the association president, told the Towson Times today.

Some residents in Rodgers Forge who can currently walk to the elementary school there will be transported to the new West Towson Elementary, under four proposed redistricting scenarios.

School officials say that allowing all current walkers to stay at Rodgers Forge would leave the school 115% overcapacity now, and more crowded in coming years — defeating the purpose of building the new school.

In the article, Moore seems to oppose efforts to break up the school at all, despite it being among the most overcrowded in the state of Maryland.

“It is bad enough that the school is facing the redistricting that will break up the current school family,” she told the newspaper, “but to break up our community family is not acceptable.”

However, Moore’s statements contradict earlier comments she made to the same newspaper, when she said there would be competition among residents trying to be redistricted into the new school.

“There is going to be a lot of jockeying,” Moore told the Towson Times in an October 21, 2009 article. “It could be a sticky wicket. Who doesn’t want to go to a brand new school with state-of-the-art computers? Who doesn’t want the best for their child?”

Read more of today’s Towson Times article here.