Frederick County school officials on Thursday released revised options for the Oakdale High School boundary change.

The options were posted on the school system's Web site, and staff is scheduled to present them to the Frederick County Board of Education on July 8.

"We wanted to get this information out in advance so parents have time to review it," said Ray Barnes, the school system's director of facilities.

The options are the latest attempt to determine who will attend Oakdale High School when it opens to its own student population in 2010. Linganore High students are using the school while Linganore High School is being rebuilt.

School officials, who have been working on the boundary change since last year, want to use it as an opportunity to reduce enrollments in overcrowded schools. The board rejected several options last month, and asked staff to draft a new plan.

While the options reduce overcrowding, staff could not avoid splitting "feeder patterns" — an issue that has been a concern for parents, Barnes said. In a split feeder pattern, students are separated as they move from elementary to middle to high school.

Under Option 1, students at Spring Ridge, Twin Ridge and Walkersville Elementary will be split as they move to middle school, while New Market Middle and Windsor Knolls Middle will have to separate as they move to high school.

Under Option 2, students at Oakdale, Walkersville, Centerville and Twin Ridge elementaries will be separated as they move to middle school, and students at Windsor Knolls and Gov. Thomas Johnson Middle School will be split as they move to high school.

Some communities may not be happy with the new options, Barnes said.

Spring Ridge parents, for example, may not like Option 2, which would keep Spring Ridge Elementary students at Gov. Thomas Johnson Middle School. Parents from the Spring Ridge development have been advocating for months to be moved to a middle school that is closer to their community.

Some Twin Ridge Elementary parents also have a problem with the new options. Under both options, students from Twin Ridge Elementary will have to go to two different middle schools.

Kathy Makers, a parent at Twin Ridge, said she expects a number of parents from her school to be disappointed. "It seems that we are losing under either option," she said.

Makers said Twin Ridge parents will most likely attend the board meeting on July 8 and try to talk to the board about their concerns.

"I know it's a difficult thing. I know they have to take a lot in consideration," she said. "But it seems that everyone is getting what they wanted, and our desire to go from Twin Ridge to New Market Middle to Linganore High wasn't considered."

Barnes said staff tried to accommodate parents' concerns as well as they could.

At Liberty Elementary, for example, parents no longer have to worry that their students will go to Walkersville Middle School. Under both of the new plans, Liberty students will go to New Market Middle and Linganore High.

"We created new options. We didn't simply resuscitate the old options," Barnes said.

Parents are welcome to contact school officials with questions and comments about the new options, Barnes said, but the final decision will be in the hands of the Frederick County Board of Education.

"The board is going to have to establish what their priorities are," he said. "Staff could work with either of these options."

Meanwhile, board members are waiting for an opinion by its ethics board to determine if they should vote on the boundary change if it affects their neighborhoods — an issue that some parents raised last month.

Judith Ricketts, the Board of Education's administrative director, said the panel has not announced its decision. "We are hoping they will have the decision by Wednesday," she said.

Even if the panel gives the board the green light to move on with the boundary change, board members will not make a decision on the two new options on July 8, when staff makes their presentation.

Instead, board members will decide on the next steps for the boundary change, Ricketts said.

E-mail Margarita Raycheva at mraycheva@gazette.net.