Students living in the City of Takoma Park but attending a Silver Spring elementary school will be reassigned to elementary schools in Takoma Park to alleviate overcrowding at the Silver Spring school, as part of a recommendation from the school system's superintendent last week.

Sligo Creek Elementary School in Silver Spring is 126 students over its capacity of 526 students this year, according to preliminary statistics from Montgomery County Public Schools. But under MCPS Superintendent Jerry D. Weast's recommended boundary changes, enrollment would decrease by more than 100 students at Sligo Creek.

The Sligo Creek students living in Takoma Park will attend Takoma Park Elementary – a kindergarten through second-grade school – and Piney Branch Elementary – a third- through fifth-grade school.

The affected area in Takoma Park is northeast of the Long Branch neighborhood, southeast of Carroll Avenue, southwest of University Boulevard and bounded by the Montgomery and Prince George's county lines. It's an area once part of Prince George's County but added into the MCPS coverage area in 1999 as part of Takoma Park's unification. Sligo Creek was opened in 2000 to accommodate the new students.

The new boundaries would place Sligo Creek's enrollment just around its capacity, while enrollment at Takoma Park and Piney Branch elementary schools would be about 90 percent of capacity, which is 562 and 588 students, respectively. East Silver Spring Elementary, which had also been part of the boundary study, will be unchanged.

"My recommendation provides long-term stability and a stronger sense of community for the families living in this part of the City of Takoma Park," Weast wrote in his recommendation.

There will be two public hearings to discuss the recommendation Nov. 11 and 12 before the Board of Education makes the final decision Nov. 19.

While parents were heavily involved in the occasionally contentious, yearlong boundary study, it doesn't sound like many will be fighting the recommendation.

"A boundary reassignment should affect the fewest students possible, and this option affects the least amount of students," said Chris Lage, whose first- and third-grader at Sligo Creek would not be affected by the boundary change.

Jim Anderson, a Takoma Park Elementary parent, wouldn't mind the additional students and is relieved an option that would have moved eight Takoma Park families out of the school was not chosen.

"I'm on one side of the street, and I have my neighbors on another, and our kids have been playing together since [they were] babies," Anderson said. "The whole idea of walking out the front door and seeing kids going to the same school was important."

With all schools operating under capacity if the recommendation passes, the main changes to the elementary schools will be demographic ones. At Takoma Park and Piney Branch, there will be increases in both students that are in English for Speakers of Other Languages classes and those that receive free and reduced-price meals.

Those numbers will decrease in the "academy program" at Sligo Creek, which contains the roughly 350 students not enrolled in Sligo Creek's French Immersion program for French-speaking students living in the southern part of the county. Those students would not be affected by the boundary changes.

The decrease from a 37.5-percent rate of students in the academy who are receiving free and reduced-price meals to a rate of 21.6 percent could potentially move Sligo Creek out of the MCPS list of "focus schools," the 60 most impoverished county schools. Focus schools have reduced class sizes and additional support from paraeducators.

However, under Weast's recommendation, each grade at Sligo Creek's academy program would have roughly 33 to 35 students and require two classes each, so class size would remain relatively low anyway. Sligo Creek parents hope those projections turn out accurate.

Having two classes per grade is "big on a day-to-day basis," said Sligo Creek parent Debbie Spielberg. "If we end up with one class per grade, what does that mean for what we are asking our teachers to do?"

Sligo Creek would also see a decrease in African-American and Hispanic students under Weast's recommendations. Each demographic would account for about one quarter of the academy students, down from about one-third currently.

"It's still a very diverse school, it's just not the same mix that it was before," said Lage.

If Weast's recommendation is approved, no changes will be made to the middle schools, except the students moved from Sligo Creek to Takoma Park/Piney Branch will attend Takoma Park Middle instead of Silver Spring International, beginning in 2012-2013 school year.

While the demographics at the schools are changing, the boundary study also comes at a time of physical change for the schools.

Takoma Park Elementary students are currently being bused to the Grosvenor temporary holding center eight miles away as a 35,000-square-foot addition is being built for the start of next school year. An addition is also scheduled to open at East Silver Spring at the start of next school year.

No additions are planned at Sligo Creek, likely because there is no space left to build. There are now five portable classrooms on the school's campus, which is adjacent to Silver Spring International Middle School.

It's never easy to move students, and the boundary changes' effects on Sligo Creek's faculty is still unknown, said Principal Diantha Swift, who is in her sixth year at Sligo Creek.

But still, "I don't know how you solve overcrowding without moving kids out of the school," she said.