001And now we're moving on to our presentation item 5.01 readiness for opening of schools. >> Thank you, Mr. President. We will have uh representatives come up uh from our cabinet, Dr. Heiser, Ms. Cutches, and Ms. Catalano uh representing our operations department, human resources, and our school leadership and academic department. They will provide an update to this board and to the community on our readiness for the opening of schools. And uh I couldn't be pleased any more with all three of them and the work that they're doing to lead their divisions, in addition to the other cabinet members who have worked in collaboration uh to put us in the position that we're in. So, I will pass it over now to you all to let everybody know where we are as we get ready to open
002school. >> Okay, so thank you, Dr. Bedell. Good morning, President Silkworth. Good morning. Sorry, it's afternoon. Good afternoon, President Silkworth uh Silkworth, Vice President Dent, Dr. Bedell, and members of the board. It is an honor to be with you today, along with my colleagues, Ms. Jessica Cutches, Dr. Heiser, uh to present to you our readiness for the opening of schools report. I'm going to start us off this afternoon by sharing the incredible work that has been done by the Office of Academics to prepare for the opening of schools. Summer is a busy but happy season as we take the summer months to prepare to welcome our almost 85,000 students to a new school year. In alignment with priorities 1 through 4 of our strategic plan, the divisions within the Office of Academics align all of
003our work to ensure that we will continue to increase academic outcomes for all of our students. Prepare our students for not only their future, but for all of their transitions while they are in our system. That we invest in our staff by building their capacity to ensure that they have the knowledge, the skills, and the tools that they need to be successful in their roles, and that we are supporting the social social and emotional well-being of our students. For my portion of this presentation, I'm going to share the incredible work that has been done across the five divisions in academics. I could not be more proud of the leaders and the team members in these five divisions who have worked tirelessly over the last 3 months as they have prepared to welcome back our staff
004and our students. Our division of specialized instruction and early intervention services has been busy hiring to fill 127 positions, 30 of them being new positions. We are grateful for these new positions as they will allow us to better service and support our students with special needs. This summer, we were able to serve 1,119 students with disabilities through our extended year service and summer bridge programs, which support continuous learning for 5 weeks. Additionally, we are fortunate that this coming school year, we will be able to expand programming for students with special needs. The division of specialized instruction has spent time this summer preparing to support additional co-taught pre-K classes, classes serving students on the autism spectrum, and classes that serve our students on the alternative framework. Building the capacity of staff servicing students with disabilities has
005been and continues to be a focus of preparing for the opening of schools. For the second summer in a row, this division held our annual summer symposium entitled embracing differences. That was attended by 334 participants, highlighted a powerful keynote by Ms. Jordan Zimmerman, and offered a variety of breakout sessions. Additionally, this summer we will we were able to train and certify approximately 50 staff members in crisis prevention and intervention, and recertify 35 staff members. The division of professional learning and organizational advancement has provided a plethora of learning opportunities to staff this summer to build their capacity. They once again co-hosted our annual rise conference with the office of equity, where there were 646 registered attendees. This was our highest attended and registered event. There were 80 concurrent sessions and eight national keynote speakers. This division
006welcomed, as you heard, over 500 new teachers during new teacher orientation the week of August 11th with over 60 professional learning sessions throughout the course of the week. They also continue to support our teachers across the spectrum by offering professional learning to our conditional teachers, as well as supporting our teachers who are ready to further their journey through the process of becoming nationally board certified. College and career readiness spent time getting ready for the school year by ensuring that our teaching staff has the resources, tools, and capacity needed to teach our programs that provide our students with what they need for planning for what comes next after they leave us in AACPS. As you can see by these numbers, we are pleased that so many of our staff were able to attend training this summer
007that is tied to advanced placement, AVID, and IB. These are three programs that prepare our students for their post-secondary pathway of choice. As this board knows, in AACPS, we are invested in the science of reading. To date, including this summer, we have educators enrolled in an MSDE-approved science of reading course, and 413 of our staff members have completed this course. This robust training supports our implementation of CKLA as we go into year two of implementation. In addition to preparing our teachers, we used this summer months to engage students in the learning process. This summer, we proudly served over 6,000 AACPS students in over 80 sessions of summer learning at 40 locations. We know that engaging students in learning over the summer helps to reduce the learning gap that can occur. Our school Our team has
008also planned programmatically for the next phase of dual language at Tyler Heights as we expand into grade three, and also our expansion to a new dual language site at Maryland City. Additionally, as our English language learner population continues to increase, we hired 22 new ELD teachers. On August 25th, we are prepared for our pre-K expansion. We will open our doors to host 2,760 4-year-old seats. That's an increase of approximately 400 seats from last year across 138 pre-K classrooms. 60 of our sites hold an Exceeds rating of five out of five, and that's 90% of our of all of our pre-K sites. This year, we're going to launch several new high-quality instructional materials in our middle and high schools. The teachers of these impacted courses are having the opportunity to learn about these new materials this
009week, and they will continue to receive support for these materials over the course of the school year. As you know, this year we are launching Canvas, our new learning management system, and it will replace Brightspace. This was a commitment Dr. Bedell made to our community in his post-entry plan. Canvas will house all things teaching and learning for our students, our teachers, and our families. We have been preparing for this launch since last fall, and there has been a lot of work that has occurred over the summer. From courses being migrated and creating during our annual curriculum academy to robust training for our 12-month employees, we have been busy building the infrastructure to support teachers and students the first week of school. I would like to take a moment to personally thank the teachers, the TAs,
010and the administrators who participated in our early adopter phase during the fourth quarter of last year. These brave pioneers tested the training course in Canvas that we launched this week. They took risks, and they gave us invaluable feedback to ensure that the professional learning and training that we're providing this week would be supportive and set up for a successful school year. Materials have been shared with schools for families, and we have launched a new website. Go to the next slide. Yep. We've launched a new website, www.aaccps.org/lms, where our families can find resources and tutorials that will assist them in navigating this new resource that will give them access to their students' learning and grades all in one place. Our Division of Instruction and School Performance has prepared for the opening of schools by ensuring that
011all of our schools are staffed with dynamic administrative teams. This division hired or transferred 19 new principals, and they have focused on building the capacity of our school leaders. Additionally, they reorganized by transferring the director of leadership development that was previously in the Division of Professional Learning and Organizational Advancement. This reorganization will ensure that there can be a focus on building leadership capacity among our building leaders with a specific focus on first- and second-year principals and assistant principals. As the team that provides critical support and capacity building to school-based leaders, this division ran our first-ever two-day leadership conference for all principals and assistant principals in June. With a focus on empowered leadership, school administrators heard from keynote Dr. Lovell Brown, and they had an opportunity to choose from over two dozen unique learning sessions. As
012we move into next year, principal learning will focus on teacher instructional feedback and Tier 1 instruction with all of their professional learning being differentiated by level. Many people wonder what happens in schools over the summer. There is a lot that takes place. Our principals and their school leadership teams have been very busy engaging in the school improvement planning process, scheduling, organizing their teams, and getting their buildings ready to welcome staff and students. I want to end by thanking our school-based leaders because like every year, they are ready this year to welcome our students to their buildings for a new year in AACPS with all the promise that our students will enter a place with opportunities to belong, grow, and succeed. At this time, I will turn things over to my colleague, Ms. Catches. >> Good
013afternoon. Human resources remained an exciting and busy place this summer as we hired and welcomed new educators in preparation for the upcoming school year. We continued with a continued focus on showing staff that they are valued through another year of compensation increases and through other efforts, we had a successful summer from the staffing perspective as we were able to retain most of our talented educators while also adding high-quality candidates to our team. In alignment with strategic plan goal three, investing in our staff, because of the collaborative efforts of this board, Dr. Vidal, our chief negotiator, and the Teachers Association of Anne Arundel County, we were able to offer teacher salaries starting over $61,000 and over $63,000 for special education teachers who receive an additional $2,000 to their annual salary. Leading the way in this area,
014we were also able to offer our new hires choices in compensation off- options this year. We added our new and innovative teacher career ladder selection. Based on recent conversations with new hires, the option to choose a compensation structure was a welcome addition. Regardless of the selection of the traditional scale or the teacher career ladder, there is a general appreciation for having a choice in compensation structure from our newly hired educators. Because of the intentional focus on educator salaries, working conditions, and a mindset to create a school system where everyone can belong, grow, and succeed, and in spite of the continued nationwide teacher shortage, we are in a significantly better place today than we were when we opened schools last year and the year prior to that. To give you an idea of what our hiring
015season looked like this summer, I will share some numbers with you. We had 2,161 applicants this year. From this rich candidate pool, we hired 544 new Anne Arundel County Public School teachers so far. As a point of reference, last year on the same date, we hired 106 or I'm sorry, 602 new AACPS teachers. This decrease in the amount of new teachers hired is a result of continued improved retention numbers. For reference, we have 120 less resignations this year than we did last year at this time. Our hiring data changes daily as we continue to hire and onboard staff members who are excited about working with children and educating our future. Our new teachers come from a variety of places. Some are recent college graduates, while others come from Maryland other Maryland districts, other careers, out
016of state, Puerto Rico, and even retirement. 118 of our hires are graduates of Anne Arundel County Public Schools, and 33 were interns with us before we hired them this year. We are proud they have chosen to come home to AACPS, and we look forward to supporting them as educators. Over the past 3 years, we've seen a steady decline in classroom vacancies at the start of the school year. I'm pleased to share that as of today, we have only 32 classroom vacancies. To provide context, last year at this time we had 69 classroom teaching vacancies and the year prior 171. Right now, we are over 99% staffed for classroom positions. We have only three school counselor vacancies and we do not have any vacancies for school psychologist, PPWs, or social workers. We have 42 teaching assistant
017vacancies. While we continue to recruit and hire for all positions, due to the collaborative work of many different offices in AACPS, all classroom positions have or will have a plan to ensure every student has a caring adult educator to support them on their first day of school. Our substitute office is ready to provide substitute teachers when educators are unable to be present in their classrooms. Substitute teacher recruitment is ongoing and we continue to add qualified substitute teachers to our AACPS team. Ranking number 11 nationally for the number of nationally board certified teachers, we currently have 464 active nationally board certified teachers working in AACPS. And 110 of our schools have one or more nationally board certified teachers on their team. Our staff is working hard to continue to fill vacancies and onboard new staff members
018as we speak. This This summer we continued our streamlined summer onboarding sessions and we are in the second year of our electronic onboarding process. This process allowed teachers to provide all their documents and records needed for hiring online instead of a time-consuming session where individuals have to fill out every form in person and wait for staff to collect, review, and accept their documents. This ultimately reduced paper and seat time resulting in an efficient and current process to welcome newly hired staff to AACPS. I'm extremely proud of the progress proud of the progress we've made over the last several years to fully staff our buildings with high-quality educators. The division of human capital management along with all of human resources is commended for their intentional work to provide for the improvements I mentioned. Through the positive
019attention as you see on the screen um AACPS has received due to the quality promotions and advertisements designed by our office of communication and design and print services and with a laser focus on data and constant communication with schools because of highly committed and dedicated principals, we continue to make real and noticeable progress to staff our classrooms. Department partnerships of the entire system, especially our network assistant superintendents, principals, and human resources staff put us in a positive position for result in as regards results for school staffing this year. Beyond the numbers, those of us who attended new teacher orientation, which was mandatory for new teachers for the first time this year, know that the energy and excitement of our new educators was contagious. They are excited to start the new school year, meet their students,
020and add value to their educational experience. Building off that momen- momentum, we are looking forward to a great school year with all of our educators who we hope to retain for many years to come. As they belong, grow, and succeed with AACPS. I will now turn it over to Dr. Vilheizer, my colleague, who is the chief operating officer. >> Thank you. The final piece of our readiness presentation is focused on our operational readiness in the areas of facilities, food and nutrition services, and transportation. Our operational readiness for the opening of schools continues to be aligned with our strategic plan, specifically priority five, building and sustaining our future, which clearly lays out that we must ensure the safety, security, and upkeep of all of our facilities. Two important operational goals that we continue to aim for.
021One, to increase organizational effectiveness and efficiency by providing first-class support and service to schools, students, parents, and the entire community. And goal two, to create a culture of trust through action with team AACPS members. I am pleased to share that our facilities division has been had a very busy and productive summer. Design, construction, and maintenance work has been happening at 83 out of 130 school facilities. Ranging from major construction projects to reconstruction projects down to the more necessary tasks such as painting and repairs. Many of these projects have wrapped up, but the larger projects continue as planned through the balance of the school year without interrupting students or teachers. We are adding seven security vestibules to our schools. Additionally, we have replaced six school roofs, replaced seven school playgrounds, and 13 HVAC and boiler systems.
022All schools are fully stocked. They're currently being cleaned and they'll be ready for the first day of school. Our team has cleaned a total of 14.3 million square feet this summer. I applaud the hard work and important work of our facilities, operation, and maintenance workers. At this time last year, our operational staffing vacancies was 35. And this year, we have reduced it to 29 vacancies. I want to thank our facility division as well as our human resources team for for excellent work in helping us staff. Our food nutrition services is also well prepared for the upcoming school year. Food and supplies are in stock and deliveries have been made to all of our schools. Our online meal benefit application is available to all families. We will continue to accept new applications and our schools will
023be assisting families in applying at their back-to-school nights um this fall. And our opening in-service training for all of our staff was held this week and was very successful. At this time last year, our food nutrition services had 81 vacancies. And as of today, we also have 81 vacancies. This These vacancies consist of 54 associate positions and we currently have 17 people that are in processing for those positions. So, that number should be drastically reduced as we get closer to the school year. And we have 27 manager and assistant manager positions. We will continue to work with human resources to recruit and hire staff throughout the year so that we can ensure first-class support and services to our schools. Our transportation division has been also diligently preparing all summer to ensure a smooth and successful
024start to the school year. With the successful implementation of a new routing software called Transfinder by our transportation and IT families can easily see their address and whether it's eligible for bus transportation directly on our AACPS website. This has also played an important role in our routing of our buses. All bus drivers are conducting dry runs at this time of their respective routes to get acclimated. And while we anticipate a very strong start, we kindly ask for patience from students and families during the first two to three weeks of schools, as everyone adjust um to their new routes and the new stops. We held a highly productive meeting with our bus contractors contractors last week with 100% participation from them demonstrating the strong alignment and commitment to readiness from our contractors and our staff. To
025give you a broad perspective of our transportation services, this year we will transport 57,200 students daily across 681 routes covering 53,291 total miles. This equates to over 10 million miles annually. Three years ago, we began the year with 68 bus driver vacancies. Many of you remember that time. Under Dr. Bedell's leadership and innovation, support from our board members, and the leadership of every division pitching in to solve the bus driver shortage problem. The team put several initiatives into action. We gave bonuses to attract and retain drivers. The innovative alternative vehicle program helping to alleviate the pressure of our buses and ensure greater efficiencies was a huge success. This seems like a long time ago now, but I think it's important to point point out how far we've come as a system. I'm pleased to report
026that last year and now again this year, we have zero vacancies. With 61 drivers in the training pipeline for our contracted bus companies. And our alternative vehicles have zero vacancies with four people in training. As our bench for drivers continues to grow, we are not yet at our goal of a 10% surplus. Because we are not there yet, there may be situations whereby a driver may be sick or unavailable to drive, and this means that a route may not automatically be covered for that day. However, we encourage our students and families to check the website daily for any interruptions. And I want to thank our bus contractors and team for their excellent work. When we look at transportation services on a whole, we will have a total of 624 bus routes with zero vacancies and
02766 drivers in training. We will have 57 alternative vehicle routes and ACPS has two alternative vehicle vacancies at the moment, but we're confident that we'll fill those vacancies as we have seven drivers in training. To close, I'd like to reiterate how excited we are for the upcoming school year. And I think it's really clear after this presentation how well prepared we are and just how poised we are for another great school year. At this time, this concludes our readiness update. We'd like to turn it back over to President Silkworth and we invite any questions. Thank you.