WINDHAM – More than 100 Windham parents blasted the Regional School Unit 14 School Board’s plan to redistrict the school system during a public hearing at the Windham High School Wednesday night.

One by one for more than two hours, parents rose to argue against the proposal that would shift elementary and middle school students living in the northern areas of Windham to Raymond schools.

Before the public hearing began, School Board member Catriona Sangster, who serves as chairwoman of the facilities committee that spent a year weighing various proposals to solve capacity discrepancies within the district, announced that the board had amended the plan. The plan, first publicized Sept. 12, originally called for all northern Windham students in kindergarten through eighth grade living north of Whites Bridge Road and Anglers Road to attend Raymond schools. The new plan, which could go to a board vote as early as the end of the month, only concerns kindergarteners through third-graders starting in fall 2013. Those children would continue attending Raymond Elementary School through fifth grade and then shift to Jordan-Small Middle School for sixth through eighth grades. They would then attend Windham High School.

The plan is necessary, school officials say, because both Jordan-Small Middle School and Raymond Elementary School are at half-capacity while Windham schools, especially Windham Primary School, are well over capacity.

While some parents were relieved to hear students in fourth through eighth grades would attend Windham schools, most were exasperated with board officials who they say don’t realize how the proposal affects lives.

Parents such as Suna Shaw, who lives in the affected area along Hunger Shore Road in Windham, tried to put a human face on the numbers that school officials have been using to justify sending Windham students to Raymond schools.

“I’ve heard over and over about the 100 kids being uprooted from their school. What I haven’t heard from the people making the decisions, the ones creating the proposal, is who these kids are,” Shaw said. “These children aren’t just a number. They’re Braden Shaw, second-grader; Olivia Shaw, kindergartner; Josh Harris, third-grader; Joey Fecteau, second-grader … and 95 other children that have names, connections and feelings about leaving their school that they love and being moved to a place where they don’t know anyone because their school is growing quicker than they can accommodate.”

Kristen Day, of Windham, who lived in Raymond and attended Jordan-Small, also did not support the redistricting.

“While the proposal may sound good on paper,” she said, “Raymond residents don’t expect an in-town K-12 education for their kids because Raymond doesn’t have a high school. But the residents of Windham moved to and pay taxes to Windham with the understanding that their kids will go to Windham from K-12. Windham residents don’t want our children to go to Raymond schools because it’s not what we signed up for.”

Other parents were frustrated with the board for throwing a monkey wrench into their lifestyle and ambitions for their children. Some, like Shaun Morrison of Bittersweet Way, said his first-grader enjoys school “so staying in Windham to avoid having to change school systems was a big drive for us to stay here, and I feel this redistricting pulls that rug out from under our feet.”

Morrison also echoed a sentiment shared by many parents concerning social networks their children will inevitably develop in Raymond that could be untied when the kids enter high school. Raymond residents are allowed a voucher to attend any high school, though 80 percent continue on to Windham High School, school member members confirmed.

“What’s going to happen if the majority of his friends are from Raymond and they decide to take the stipend and go to a different high school, and they choose not to go to Windham High School?” Morrison said. “What happens at that very key, very fragile time going into high school … I think the possibility to lose that support system can be pretty challenging.”

Taxes were an important theme for the residents as well. One compared property tax rates between the two towns and determined Windham taxpayers pay about 30 percent more. Many speakers said they’d likely move to avoid sending their kids to schools outside of town.

Christine Williams, a Windham parent who wouldn’t be affected by the redistricting, said, “You’d be asking the parents … who pay taxes in Windham and they are planning to attend Windham schools with all of the services that those tax dollars afford – things like having a DARE officer at Windham High School knowing your primary school kid is only a couple hundred feet away as opposed to having to rely of a Cumberland County sheriff deputy who could be 40 miles away. Little things like that are things that our tax dollars pay for. And we’re happy to do it as long as we know we’re getting benefit from those services.”

While taxes and home values and other impacts were shared, so were many stories of “Eagle Pride,” a concept pushed daily at Windham, schools speakers said. Parents such as Windham native Mike Donnelly lamented the fact that his children, since he lives in the redistricted area, wouldn’t be able to share his own childhood school experiences even though they live in the same town. Erica Brown, a teacher at the high school, said she has a son who will attend kindergarten next year, and they live in the affected area “and let me tell you, this kid wants to be an Eagle. He wants to be an Eagle.”

Practical matters such as day care were raised. Like other parents who use day care, Brown said the move would be a hardship since she’d have to uproot her child from his daycare center based in Windham.

“He’s been there since he was 7 months old, and the thought of having to change child care providers for him breaks my heart because I have entrusted my most precious gift to them nearly every day of his young life,” she said.

While the meeting was dedicated to getting feedback on the board’s proposal, parents offered some solutions of their own regarding overcrowding in Windham. Several advocated for a construction of a wing onto Windham Primary School. One spoke about how the introduction of all-day kindergarten is what precipitated the overcrowding of the primary schools. Some advocated for a voter referendum asking to pay for a new middle school. Several requested the introduction of portable classrooms to handle overcrowding.

At the end of the meeting, School Board Chairman Mike Duffy said the board would consider the options and discuss them during board deliberations to take place Oct. 17.