Crofton High School (Maryland)


Crofton High School is a high school located in the suburban community of Crofton, Maryland, United States. It is part of the Anne Arundel County Public Schools system and lies about 10 minutes northwest of Annapolis, 25 minutes east of the District of Columbia, and 35 minutes southwest of Baltimore. It will serve students from the greater Crofton area.
The school is currently under construction. It will open its doors to students in the fall of 2020, to students in grades 9 and 10 only. The school will have 11th grade students starting fall 2021, and will have its first senior class in the fall of 2022.

History

Historically, all high school students in Crofton were served by Arundel High School in Gambrills. However, in the 1990s, Arundel High School began experiencing extreme overcrowding issues to point where the school held split sessions to alleviate the overcrowding. Eventually, community members started pushing for county officials to build a new high school in Crofton. In 1998, instead of building a new high school in Crofton, Anne Arundel County Public Schools officials decided to split Crofton Middle School students between two high schools in the county. The plan redistricted students zoned to Crofton Meadows and Crofton Woods Elementary Schools from Arundel High School to South River High School in Edgewater beginning in the fall of 1998. Crofton residents were told by school district officials that the redistricting of students from Arundel to South River was only a temporary measure until a high school in Crofton would be built in the near future. However, the "temporary" solution became permanent as Crofton Middle School graduates were continuously split between Arundel and South River High Schools for 17 years with no plans of a new Crofton High School. During those 17 years, Crofton residents were advocating for a new high school to be built, but many of the attempts were met with no success. Eventually, an activist group called "Build Crofton High School" was formed in 2012 by Crofton residents and pushed for AACPS to build a new high school in Crofton.
In 2015, after AACPS did a professional study on their facilities and the results strongly suggested to build a new high school in Crofton, Anne Arundel County Public Schools adopted a plan to build a new high school in Crofton. It was decided that the new high school would be built on a portion of the land that belongs to Crofton Park, behind Crofton Middle School. Construction for the new school building began in November 2017.
Attendance boundaries for the school were finalized in April 2019. On August 26, 2019, a ballot to vote on an official name for the new high school was held at Crofton Middle School and was attended by 402 people from Crofton, Gambrills, and Odenton. 320 out of the 402 voters favored the name "Crofton High School," which was the most popular vote. The name "Crofton High School" was officially approved by the county's Board of Education on September 11, 2019.

Students

Crofton High School will gather all students with Crofton addresses and some students with Gambrills and Odenton addresses that fall within the Crofton area. The attendance area also includes a small portion of Davidsonville. Crofton High School will only have one feeder middle school, which is Crofton Middle School. Crofton Middle School has four feeder elementary schools: Crofton E.S., Crofton Meadows E.S., Crofton Woods E.S., and Nantucket E.S.