001[Music] i always respect so [Music] good morning please stand for the invocation and pledge allegiance oh god we pray to administer that which is just in all educational policies being ever mindful of your guidance starts to action with love wisdom and the united understanding of america sincerely which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and health welcome to this meeting of the board of education this meeting is being televised live on acps tv and live streamed on the internet general information and protocols for the meeting are posted on the signs by the doorway as you enter the room please make sure you read those if you have not already item 2.03 is the approval of the minutes we have a motion a second consensus in favor okay item 2.04 is the establish of
002the agenda order um just note um before we make motions about the departmental reports on today's agenda we will be having a presentation from chief fifa police ultimately coming up later in today's meeting in a public transportation workshop scheduled for 6 p.m next tuesday march the 10th in this room therefore it is my understanding by staff that we will not be having reports for item 5.01 and 5.04 on today's agenda all of that being stated the board will still hear any public comments on those particular items as they were would appear on the agenda um okay um i have one other thing um is that um as you know the uh the the cac has been our our citizen advisory committee has been trying to expedite the vacancies uh replace uh to replace them um
003for those who uh have signed up and are no longer to continue to serve in that manner and so to our surprise we were able to complete the nomination recommendations yesterday afternoon and i was asked by the president and the staff advisement and agree myself that we'd like the board to consider the filling of vacancies on the executive committee so with that being said and recognizing they only got a couple more months left and this was originally scheduled for next month's agenda but under the circumstances and the caseload that they have in their timeline i'd like us to consider that today so i move that the board add filling of vacancies on the executive committee of countywide citizen advisory committee to the agenda today as item 7.09 okay we have uh two folks for discussion
004miss antoine and then mitchell high ms antoine and thank you president corgado i had a question about the movement so the agenda indicated that safety uh the 501 and 504 will be presented today and you're saying that we're moving it because of the workshop that's coming up and because of chief altimer's presentation today one of the things um i gotta get this thing um it's new um what i was saying is is that uh chief altamari's um presentation will be the report of staff um but it's going to be under a different section so we're still going to hear from public testimony yeah from folks we're just those two items are going to be addressed in those separate yes ma'am what i'm asking is whatever our staff will be available during um the chief's presentation
005today oh yeah so the staff is all here today absolutely okay um um in that regard but they're not they did not prepare a traditional report because it his report is is that is the report today got it and then in 504 because of what's what we're doing on the 10th um we're moving that as well uh that that is well there were it just said there is no report um because because the bigger report will be on the 10th yeah gotcha thank you you're welcome ms shaw hun um i i understand what you're saying about proposed item 7.09 but this was not released to the public in advance so the public doesn't know that we're going to be talking about it and and i have an issue with that i also we were just
006provided a list of names and i'm not sure if you all remember last spring but i thought i made it clear at that time that i mean i wouldn't know these people if they walked by me on the street and so we were able to get i asked for and we all received um their applications for us to read so that we can make an informed decision yes i get that a committee met but that doesn't mean i don't want the background information in advance of voting so i'm a hard no on this one i think that we should put this on the agenda and put it out to the public the friday before the meeting like we do everything else and we can do that for the march 18th meeting which is only in
007a couple of weeks so that's why i'll be voting now on this alice thank you michelle ham i i was right with you last time on that discussion and for me it is extremely important that i i normally do not feel comfortable making of taking a vote when i don't feel we have all the information however i do recognize um in other words i i never see our vote as a formality um when if something comes through a committee that means the work has been done but it's our responsibility if we're voting on it that means we have to consider everything so um so i never take that lightly but i am very concerned for our cac right now with the time constraints that they have and i i feel this committee is extremely challenged
008right now to get done the work that they've been tasked to do for this board so um under the current urgent circumstances i am i am supporting this agenda item thank you thank you miss ellis uh seeing no more comment ms hal please call the role to add the item item 7.09 for the filling of vacancies for the cac to the agenda please beginning with miss ellis today ms schoelheim i'm a hard no and in the future i would like to receive applications for everyone so we're not just a formality so we're not just a rubber stamp for all cac positions going forward miss antwine aye mr gilland aye mr leib miss hummer miss alvey miss corcodel aye motion passes 7-1 so we can now entertain a motion are there any other additions recommendations seeing
009none i'm willing to entertain a motion to accept the agenda order as amended seeing no comments miss hal please call roll or do we have consensus we have consensus moving along item 2.05 um i'm going to at this time uh turn uh turn it over to miss antwine santoy thank you president corcodell in an extraordinary show of support for the students across anne arundel county the members of abundant life church in glen burnie raised and donated funds to eliminate meal debt for more than 2 500 students the donation to the 21st century education foundation a non-profit organization that supports the activities of anne arundel county public schools and its students will cover student meal debts at 59 schools in the chesapeake glen burnie mead north county northeast and old mill theater systems this specific amount
010of the donation is being withheld at the request of abundant life church talk about humble last year aacps served more than 5.9 million lunches and 3.5 million breakfasts in schools aacps menus feature additional healthy options for all students choices include additional fresh fruits and vegetables more whole grain options and more lean protein and low-fat dairy options in addition to breakfast and lunch the school system also serves free early evening meals at 45 sites and operates a summer meals program abundant life churches lead pastor nate dry said for our church this donation is not about dollars but about the impact we can have on the lives of children we believe fundamentally that we are called to serve and we are blessed to be able to serve the community in this way therefore the board of education
011of anne arundel county and dr alato agree many of our children and their families struggle with food uncertainty every day with community partnerships like abundant life church our students are better today we recognize abundant life church and is awesome lead pastor nate dry and we thank you for your collaborative efforts to to reduce the meal debt for our students and their families please join me up front as i pre i present this to you on behalf of the board of education [Applause] you don't want to give a preacher a microphone i'll make this quick um we're humbled and we um as a church we just want to do the things that we believe churches should do and christians should do and that's to have a positive impact in the community the mission of our church
012is sincere acceptance and we saw a bunch of kids that weren't being sincerely accepted so we just wanted to help them thank you and god bless [Applause] thank you all right guys we'll take a couple of these thank you [Applause] item number 2.06 is the educator of the month the national education association's read across america day is a nationwide reading celebration that takes place annually on march 2nd dr seuss's birthday across the country thousands of schools libraries and community centers participate by bringing together kids teens and books to celebrate and this morning the board of education celebrates read across america day by recognizing a fantastic reading teacher lindsay ells literacy teacher from hillsboro elementary is all about reading she implements reading initiatives that benefit students staff and the heelsmere community she takes a lead role
013with hashtag aacps read with me challenge to encourage a love of reading and awareness of the importance of reading outside of school she coordinates the premier reading event for the school year cookies and cocoa reading to celebrate the winter and the love of reading during this event the community comes together to read celebrate and create based on some of our favorite winter read aloud books ms ells promotes positive changes in the growth of students by collaborating with staff to ensure students are identified for additional reading intervention or challenging more advanced readers she just completed the rigorous renewal process for national board certification unbelievable accomplishment for which i congratulate you heartily through this process she has proven to be a reflective practitioner who is in tune with the needs of her students and colleagues while also
014growing her own capacity as an instructional leader lindsay performs with a high degree of professionalism knowledge and leadership ensuring that families are given sufficient time and attention to questions they pose the same is true when she is working with her colleagues as a result she has identified as the administrative designee to act on behalf of the principal in her absence through all of her actions lindsay continually builds relationships with students staff and families through her collaborative conversations patience and compassion for all and so for these reasons and more the board of education is pleased and honored to recognize lindsay ells as the educator of the month for march 2019 bravo zulu your human future principals [Music] [Applause] [Music] congratulations [Applause] 2.07 is the employee of the month michelle thank you today we recognize an employee
015in our school system who's the ultimate staff member elizabeth martello teacher assistant at jones elementary school mrs martello consistently goes above and beyond her job responsibilities to support each and every student that she encounters you can find her actively preparing creating and supporting both students and teachers in the classroom she is organized and always thinks ahead to prepare for instruction in the classroom while also managing iep paperwork timelines and other important documents her work ethic speaks for itself as she has frequently offered to substitute when substitutes are not available mrs martella's first priority is always the students which is visible from the moment she steps through the door she supports student learning in self-contained classrooms providing small group assistance creating anchor charts and facility and facilitating intervention groups just to name a few she actively
016participates with the special education team and is considered the go-to staff member when it comes to iep paperwork she reaches out to families ensuring their feedback is gathered as well her enthusiasm and determination have positively impacted jones elementary arriving every day with a smile on her face her presence in the lunchroom and during recess duty helps maintain structure and routine for the children she's knowledge she's a knowledgeable resource for teachers mentoring her colleagues with various instructional strategies or techniques to implement mrs martello is trusted in our school community and the staff at jones elementary school are lucky to have her so on behalf of the board of education the students teachers and staff of anne arundel county public schools we are pleased to recognize you as the employee of the month for march 2020 congratulations
017please join me up front [Applause] [Music] that's my daughter my husband my mom my grandma my grandfather my aunt oh wow yeah so this is for you and a certificate we're just gonna take a picture too congratulations [Applause] item 2.08 volunteer of the month miss hunter anne arundel county public schools offers a great many paths for volunteerism tutoring mentoring chaperoning and guest reading are just a few of the ways community members can support our schools but there is another type of volunteerism that is often forgotten the support given to us by those who take the leadership route these are our volunteers who represent their school count clusters on the citizens advisory committee or the superintendent's parent involvement advisory council and serve as officers of the anne arundel county council of ptas today we are here
018to celebrate the dedication of one such volunteer miss vanessa rivera the board of education is thrilled to honor you as our march 2020 volunteer of the month [Applause] the anne arundel county council of ptas is an umbrella group that provides support mentoring training and networking opportunities to local pta chapters ms rivera is the current president of the council as leader she is often seen out in the schools helping to get a new pta group up and running or helping them prepare for an audit jen lombardi senior manager of schools and family partnerships appreciates all that vanessa does her knowledge of how ptas work mixed with a calm unflappable spirit makes for a powerful combination ms rivera's service to aacps is not limited to the work she does with the local units she is also according
019to family involvement specialist shelly davenport assisted in the procurement of system-wide grants ms rivera is interested in finding any and all opportunities support our students from speaking to the local development council to pulling together all the needed paperwork her support of the trauma-sensitive classrooms grant has been remarkable and i can't thank her enough vanessa focuses not only on the success of students while they are attending aacps but also their success after they graduate she is a strong supporter of the anne arundel county council of pta's scholarship program that honors students who demonstrate academic success and have shown leadership in the school community library media specialist tammy duvall shared vanessa works tirelessly as the aacc pta president and scholarship chair she has helped to improve the future of countless anne arundel county students over the past
020few years it is an honor a privilege and a joy to work with her lisa shore who serves as secretary of the anne arundel county pta shared in our roles with the aacc pta vanessa and i have served on many committees together including the school board nominating commission and the mental health task force there are so many extra duties and responsibility for this position but what impresses me the most about vanessa is that she shares her love of reading and books by having a little free library in front of her house neighborhood kids can borrow books for free and this inspires so many kids to read i think we can all agree that teresa tudor who recently retired from a position as senior manager of the office of school and family partnerships hit the nail
021on the head when she said vanessa was a joy to work with at aacc pta she is very organized energetic and always ready to assist any local pta her dedication to all students teachers and parents in aacps is proof that we are all better together ms rivera you are a great asset to the entire anne arundel county public schools community and we thank you for your service as a volunteer and for your dedication to the aacps family please come forward [Applause] i think they surprised you what did they tell you today how did they get you i was coming for somebody else coming for somebody else and there you were and so and i saw that teresa came back from her retirement thank you very much for all you do it for those who don't
022know vanessa is everywhere we see her everywhere all the time and she is such a great asset for the whole school system so here's a belt that you can use on your children or at the meetings and then stick around we're going to take some pictures [Applause] and next we have school and community highlights miss shawhin thank you so i just wanted to say that well a few of us attended the forum on hate and bias crimes the other day and this is a partnership as i understand it between the school system the county anne arundel community college and i thought it was a fabulous event the both panels were amazing dr lotto was definitely on point that night and his point everything that was said was um was very good i just thought it
023was a wonderful gathering of our community and and really shows our our our joint interest in erasing hate and bias from our schools i'm very grateful to our staff who were a part of this um the second panel included representatives from a variety of groups from the lgbtq community from the muslim community from the jewish community from the latino community and there were there were many others and i just thought it was a fabulous event and so i just wanted to say bravo for everyone who's involved and i look forward to more similar events like this i thought it was a really wonderful evening and a lot of wonderful points were made i also attended the stem festival at in suverna park put on by a non-profit group called page and that acronym is partnership
024to address the achievement gap in education and it was also really just lovely community event a great way to spend a saturday afternoon thank you thank you michelle hi miss antoine thank you um i was i was also in attendance for the formal bias and hate i so appreciate the joint efforts the community that showed up especially our students who um even going until about nine o'clock in the evening they were there for all of what was being offered and they offered their support as well and everything miss charlheim just shared i concur with tremendously this is a huge incredible issue across our county state and nation and i appreciate that we are leading change and how we can best combat it i want to give out a very special thank you to north glenn
025elementary for hosting me and miss friend on our reading tour we even had a nice little schedule the students were very well behaved attentive and involved in the reading they even got up while i was reading and read with me turned pages and otherwise without being requested to do so so it was it was it was a fun time april um ends our tour i'm looking forward to more of these events in april but i sincerely thank you dr alato miss baden this friend dr mcmahon i thank all of you for allowing this this even when i'm having the worst of days i can i can reflect on these moments with the students and it makes all the difference and then i had one about the um the recent nominations or are we talking about
026that oh yeah okay so i so we'll i'll i'll save it for you then president crocodile oh okay so we also i want to congratulate all of our nominees for teacher of the year in anne arundel county congratulations that is all definitely um we i definitely echo miss unfined sentiments um miss hummer and miss alby miss hummer yes i want to thank the pta of chesapeake bay middle school who invited me out for their anti-bullying assembly last week it was great they had an outside speaker and there were hundreds and hundreds of middle schoolers who were totally paying attention which tells you that he was a great speaker and had captured them and so um it was a wonderful all school activity that they had i also for those who march madness has begun basketball
027playoffs are in full swing i was able to go last night to one of playoff games mead versus north county went into overtime right at the end so it's the best of basketball so i encourage you to look at the schedules and get out there we have lots of our teams guys and girls that'll be playing over the next couple of weeks and then just a shout out to the overall school system over the past month our school system has received a number of great recognitions for schools and departments and we don't always highlight those things but over the past month six weeks we've received we had five schools that were named wellness schools of distinction we had three schools that received the state excellence and gifted and talented education we had two of our
028schools that were named national magnet schools of excellence and then our finance office was just received for the 39th year in a row the certificate of excellence in financial reporting by the association of school business officials the highest honor in that association of finance professionals 39 years in a row so across the board our school system is excelling in a wide range of things and i just wanted to make sure and highlight the outstanding efforts from all these different departments and the recognitions they have earned ms salvi so i just want to remind everyone that the student member of the board student leadership forum is taking place at severna park high school in their cafeteria on thursday march 12th from 6 to 8 p.m it is an opportunity for students any aacps student to come
029and speak to their board members about what's concerning to them so i highly encourage that all the students you know please tell them to come and join us and also the future business leaders of america state leadership conference is coming up i want to congratulate all the regional um uh regional winners throughout anne arundel county from our various high schools and middle school that won at the regional level and i wish them the best of luck for their their state conference and then finally i want to thank the staff the office of student leadership here at the board of education for helping with the page program because they did a wonderful job and all the pages that i participated with at the state house had a great experience and i want to thank them for
030just for participating in that opportunity and allowing me to have that opportunity as well so thank you thank you miss avi and one final comment from ms sanford president corker i forgot about our town hall meetings um we we started a series uh the board of education started as a series of town hall meetings our first one was over the over the last couple of weeks at north county i appreciate all the participation and the support i am not sure off the top of my head when the next one is but i'm looking forward to it i believe that we have a student one on the 12th is that the correct date and then on the 19th will be our next one which is at northeast thank you thank you for the reminder miss miss
031antoine that totally set my mind okay great thank you all um next we have the item two two dot one one zero the cac report ms howard good morning president corcodell vice president alice board members and dr alato before proceeding as chair of the cac and on behalf of our body we truly appreciate the board's expedited assistance in filling vacancies this will positively impact our work now let me update the board on our activities the cac met monday february 10th having a guest q a with lisa van buskirk of start school later she provided a briefing of the history of her her organization and its interaction with the board related to school's start times and associated health and safety impact considerations we appreciate her information perspective and in particular the resources made available for our
032members consumption the dialogue was vigorous engaging and insightful future actions of our committee induct any newly appointed committee members appointment of a permanent member as liaison and member of the recess work group led by mrs jackson continue dialogue with policy committee on the cac policy review continue to study and examine practices for recess at the elementary level and the magnet program selection process lottery criteria at the secondary level we'll also be refined refining the topic scope goal setting and selecting a group leader to manage the engagement and to support a final report submission due to the delay of the secondary topic selection and elementary vacancies report submissions would be more realistic for the june board meeting the cac anticipates with the addition of replacement elementary members our recess study will drastically benefit from increased participation
033in fulfillment accordingly we revise our time our report timeline as below data collection analysis and collation and collaboration will continue through april and a final report mid to late may early june we will have also the 2020-2021 current member commitments and term expiration notification to the board no later than march 31st our next meeting is scheduled for monday april 13th to have work sessions planned for the committee work progression thank you for your support of the cac and looking forward to the challenge to deliver deliver meaningful information assisting the board and its goal and to strengthen the committee interactions building stronger capabilities and the future and in our future endeavors thank you very much um any questions miss antoine it's my i missed something you said that you're presenting something to us in june and
034i missed what that was i'm sorry the report we're gonna we anticipated to have the report uh draft for you in may but it's gonna the final one will be ready for june instead of may understood thank you thank you very much miss howard greatly appreciate it chief ultimary is going to be next on our agenda for a presentation item 3.01 the anne arundel county police chief chief baltimore and as if you recall uh this is going to be our safety and security report for this morning of course we will continue with 5.01 for public comment uh chief ultimary thank you so much thank you so very much for joining me yes ma'am it's tamika you want to come up yes and just normally we would break right now for the for the employee volunteer
035and teacher of the month in the interest of time for chief old to marry we're going to entertain his presentation and then promptly following that we will take a short break to take care of the pitchers and we greatly appreciate your patience as you may recall we had some uh information uh requests that our team players at the anne arundel county uh police force uh they we recognize that they are they're an integral part of our school system and helping uh keep our children safe and so in that interest i want to thank you sir so much for coming down because you know you're a part of our team and we greatly appreciate you taking time to help us better understand some of the systems and i believe you have a presentation that you'll be
036making today so we're going to go through the presentation and then we will entertain comments from the board thank you so much sir and take it away madam president thank you for having me ladies and gentlemen of the board i appreciate you having me in so um i asked miss tamika perkins to join me today we have a couple um very engaging uh presentations to give you within the grander scheme of what we're going to talk about today i think there's no way to start the talk today but to say that we're here in a fair part to discuss disproportionality on juvenile citation data i think that the disproportionality there is a part and parcel of the reasons that we're having such a cohesive effort on the opportunity gap it's part and parcel of why
037we're having meaningful discussions and efforts on our efforts at being better at accounting at being trauma informed in our care and handling of juveniles when they do mess up um kids or kids they do uh kid things sometimes and i'm proud to say that while we still have a problem with disproportionality and i would never in a million years say that we don't have a problem with disproportionality i think our problems all dovetail into each other on those areas that we just talked about and then i think we are by no means unique in the nation we got problems as a nation we need to fix um and at least part of that a huge part of that particularly in anne arundel county where we have been light on investment for the past 30 years
038uh might be a fair way to say it uh we we fit the norms that are out there so today i wanted to talk about the fact in opening that if you look to the back of the room deputy chief gerard flemings is back there go ahead chief wave sorry um deputy chief fleming's came back on board after retiring with us in 2012 to help me when i in my first year as chief and one of the first things that we talked about was this problem with disproportionality and what we could do to fix it we had a traditional model as it related to kids who entered into contacts with police through enforcement very shortly thereafter we hired miss tamika perkins to my right to start to work on the problems so we had a
039choice when we looked at data very early on in my tenure as chief we could either ignore that we had a problem we could wait until somebody in this nation figured the problem out and nobody had done it yet in uh 200 and some years of our history or we could get to work and roll our sleeves up and start working on um consequences of the problem and continue to invest in uh being proactive to get rid of the problem as we move forward in history and that's kind of what we've done so um really i want to be open and honest with everybody we still have a problem i think that the the problem of disproportionality as it relates to minorities um is in every bit of the law enforcement and criminal justice system
040in the united states if we are to take on faith and i think we should that the measure of a society is is how it takes care of its least fortunate people then we got a lot of work to do together uh as we move forward in time before i go into the the details the minutia of what all we're doing to work on the problem i want to acknowledge that and commit to the board and indeed to the citizens behind me that we've been working on it every day since i was a decision maker and we ain't never going to stop and i'm sorry for the teachers in the room i love ain't i can't i can't stop doing it but you have my commitment that any good idea will steal it any good
041program we'll try to import it and we'll keep working on this together because just as with the racism problem in the schools and at homes we ain't fixing it unless we do it together so with that segway i will uh start our program i'm going to talk to you a fair amount today about everything we're doing with kids to lessen the impacts of what has been termed the school-to-prison pipeline there's a um a reality to the fact that enforcement actions by police tend to create a paradigm moving forward in one's life uh that can be negative so we're trying to turn that on its head and we're doing all the things we're going to talk about today um to do that so i think we can move to the next slide really quickly as as
042i took over as chief in the tail end of 2014 it became very apparent to me that everything good the police department did with its community disappeared in the bad budget years of to 20 09 010 10. when i lateraled from annapolis city to the anne arundel county police department we had whole units and when i say whole units i mean eight ten people who worked on nothing but positive interaction with the kids and indeed with adults our dare program went away and i'm not here beating the table about dare but we need to be doing something positive with the kids people with a badge need to be doing something positive with the kids in school that had gone away our police and community together units had gone away our youth activities program had gone
043away a lot of our positive crime prevention efforts had gone away and it's much like a human body when one experiences an arterial bleed you've got to try to keep the heart beating and that's what the police department did in those bad budget years so very quickly we looked at that and realized that we had to start doing a lot of things to build positivity particularly as you look at what was going on nationally in in mid to late 2014 and early 2015 so we committed to that very early and we're doing a lot of good things dr arlatto has been a great partner for us especially in giving us access to the schools there's still a human reaction that people tend to see our uniform and say what's wrong what's happening bad so one
044of the first things that you think about with kids is if you're going to have positive interaction with them and create positive paradigms moving forward we've got to take that as our first reaction as a society out of the equation and make people glad to see cops sometimes so when we looked at getting into the schools we knew we had sros in the high schools some of the middle schools doing everything i can to have an sro in every middle school in the county next year if that was going to be a question later in the in the program but so we knew we had interactions at those levels at the elementary school levels we didn't have any interaction and quite honestly i'm not sure that uh folks wanted the interaction at first because people
045react with what's wrong when a cop shows up so we started our lunch buddies program in the schools it gives a chance for cops to show up at lunchtime eat with the kids be a human being we try to really mix up the officers that go into the schools and interact with the kids because we want to give every kid a chance to see an officer who looks like them as somebody to look up to just as a positive role model and give the genesis of thought in the in a child's head that wow that guy or guy was pretty cool and maybe it'd be cool if i was a cop so we started that early with dr alato's help we had some fits and starts in the first couple years but i'm proud to
046say that we're really kind of up and running in the elementary schools and starting this week through the end of the school year we got a state grant to have officers on overtime do nothing but go out and interact with kids in elementary schools on a positive basis so you're going to see a real ramping up of that interaction in the last few months of the school year and then next year we'll try to figure out how to keep that momentum going shop with a cop is another program we've been doing for years i can't take credit for that one but it is an incredible program during the holidays we have a lot of kids who don't have even a tree to look forward to to have something under or a menorah to light and
047the shop with a cop program uses the schools as a resource to identify those kids to partner them with a cop and and to allow the cops to take them shopping for the holidays i have to tell you that i've been doing it for years now and i have yet to have a kid who doesn't buy everybody else in their family something before they buy themselves so it's a pretty cool uh it's a pretty cool day it's a touching day i'm facing away from the crowd so i tell everybody i don't have tears in my eyes and if anybody says i do they're lying so we're going to keep that up and try to expand it as time goes by the optimists are a great partner because and walmart is a great partner because they
048help us get the stuff to the kids our national night out we've really been trying to expand our youth activities at these events to make them more attractive for kids instead of mom and dad just dragging them around and interacting with um grown-ups so that's something that you'll see us continue and then both at halloween time and during the holidays we're really trying to step our interactions with the kids on a positive basis up and i encourage the cops even if they're not at one of our trunk or treat events to have candy in their car and to interact with trick-or-treaters as they're going around in every community in anne arundel county so that they think about those cop cars as a place to go just like they do people's houses for something positive and
049for help if they need it move on to the next slide please we did move on to the next slide that's how bad my eyes are i apologize i really can't see it so our youth activities program no i'm good i'll figure it out i'll figure it out so we talked about what happened in those bad budget years and extremely early deputy chief flemings and i started to conceptualize a youth activities program and we historically we stayed away from the term police athletic league because we wanted it to be about a lot more than athletics um so we started looking at how to do this and for the first year year and a half we really robbed a lot of peters to pay a lot of polls um to get stuff going and then in
050that second budget year we were able to get the local development council to fund our efforts in a meaningful way that's morphed nowadays into a fair amount more money and a lot more kids that we can impact so as you might know about the local development council funds we're supposed to use that predominantly in a three-mile impact area around the casino we we predominantly use that money in a in that area and i'm not speaking out of school i've told the local development council this but we cheat our tails off um we bring kids from other parts of the county into the impact area so that it is thus supported by the notion of the local development council we are attempting to impact the communities that need it most and there's no way around it
051the communities that need the relationship strengthened with their police department the most and in anne arundel county that's communities that struggle with poverty and um are disproportionately african-american so we are targeting in a very good way african-american kids latino kids kids that aren't going to get an opportunity to go have a baseball camp if we don't put it on for them aren't going to have homework help unless we do it sometimes we'll never get to go to the museums or the aquariums and we've really done gangbusters in that i'm not allowed to talk about budget asks prior to budget time as you guys know it's against the law but it would be a pretty good bet that i'm trying to expand some funding there into general fund funding so that i don't have to cheat
052as much anymore to get kids from other parts of the county i will tell you that chief jackson and i in annapolis city have discussed trying to get his kids up to us it's not it's not not doable it's doable we've just got to figure out the logistics of it and this year we folded our midshipman community action club into our mentoring program so that the mids are coming out and helping us interact with the kids um and and give us a force multiplier so we have more people doing it so um i would i would say at this point that we've positively impacted thousands of kids with our youth activities program this is our fourth year up and running um and we're going to continue to do that i do have one very telling
053story about police in the community as it relates to this youth activities program our first year we were taking a group of kids to the national aquarium up in baltimore and we were picking kids up at van gaalin elementary school and there was a kid on a bike going around us like a satellite time and time again and as he would come by my officers and and i jumped in on the bandwagon also kept saying hey man all it takes is a signature on a piece of paper you want to come with us nah i don't want to come look man we want you to come all you got to do is take us to your parents and get this piece of paper signed no i'm not doing it and there was clearly an animus
054towards the police in this interaction but the kid wanted to go on the trip so bad so work on it work on it van gaachlin tends to be the jump off point for us a lot because it's in that in the impact area and my officers came up to me a month later and said they had gotten a kid on a trip so it was a big win for us in our world we talk all the time about we have to celebrate small victories because we don't get big ones all the time so that was a big celebration for us i will tell you that as you look at disproportionality in enforcement statistics and discipline statistics that the meat cluster i'm not surprising anybody sitting at the desk is is absolutely an area that we
055need to be involved in to make improvements in and it is fortunate then that the local development council has that area in its uh three-mile impact radius because about 90 percent of our efforts go towards impacting kids in a positive um manner in that cluster moving on to the next slide and i'm looking close this time so i think this slide just shows you kind of the gamut of things we're taking kids to do we had a dance camp last summer we imported a dance teacher all the way up from georgia who's kind of known on the east coast it was an extremely cool experience for me who has absolutely zero exposure to dance um it was it was very cool and i was floored by the impact we were having on the kids with
056dance we're doing homework help you can see up there we've taken kids to orioles the hockey games but we really try to keep a nexus to learning in in our activities so we're doing a lot of things other than just athletics and um for instance we've taken kids on train rides out in western maryland so that they see the geography of maryland change during the holidays the the national aquarium trip has has given us great benefits i'm drawing a blank on the elementary school harmon's harmon's harm harmon's hebron elementary school we do a lot of things in that school as well we're very welcome the principal has gotten used to seeing us and i think uh kind of grabs us which is cool um so it's it's working and um we're going to keep it
057up we can move on to the next slide i'm gonna ask miss tamika to start to talk with me now at this point because she i'm gonna i'm gonna say this to the group i don't know what the heck we would do with miss tamika i struggle without miss tamika i struggle um i struggle to pay her what she's worth and i know that's a very frequent reality for the board as well um this lady beside me is brilliant she has a master's degree or is about to get her master's degree and thinks outside the box to such an extent that um we'd be dead in the water without her and and uh i would ask you to add your voices to not letting her leave um so we're trying to get a lot better
058at being trauma-informed you know we look at aces out in the community i wouldn't have known what aces were other than playing poker um five six years ago they matter i think that they they leave lasting imprints on kids and we're doing a lot to try to make us better at even if we interact with a kid through an enforcement encounter at turning that paradigm on its head turning that pipeline on its head and instead of looking at that encounter as a negative turning it into a positive and miss tamika does all of that for us she has two part-time employees that work with her she needs five full-time employees that work with her the handle with care program was entirely her efforts that got us up and running from the police department's perspective i
059know a lot of effort went into it otherwise but from our perspective she was it i'm gonna shut up and let you talk a little bit about that um so we have been in full implementation can you guys hear me okay we have been in full implementation with handle with care since 2018. for just to give you guys a scope about that we've had 241 handled with care notices sent this school year already so it is making a huge impact um on the on our students we're working with the school to constantly roll out best practices through that come out from the governor's office as to how to improve the program make sure that the kids who need our help the most are getting that focused information we were the first county of our size
060one of the first counties of our size nationwide but the first county of our size locally to roll out county-wide implementation of the program and so that's something i'm really proud about and we're constantly training our officers to make sure that we keep them coming um keep the notices coming so that we make sure that all of our kids have the opportunity to um combat the the trauma that they're experiencing um we kind of am i allowed to brag a little bit sir we kind of we kind of set the standard we are working with the governor's office to help create the best practices guys for the state and so we do have a very robust program as far as handle with care goes and working very closely with the governor's office to make sure
061that if if there's new evidence-based best practices out there that we're one of the first to implement them so that's something i'm extremely proud about so the next thing i'll talk about on the slide is is our crisis intervention team so it's it's no secret to dr arlatto because he and i have had a million meetings on this and and the need in the schools it's no secret to you ladies and gentlemen either because you're seeing the need you're seeing the stories our crisis intervention team has done wonders and it's early to talk about some of the programs we've been working on but i will tell you that what we're trying to do is look at a negative event in a kid's life where he interacts with a police officer in a manner or she
062interacts with a police officer in a manner that would have traditionally caused friction and heartache and take that as a genesis and plug being trauma informed into it through our crisis intervention team and our mobile crisis folks and to start looking for root causes in the home for behaviors and to start identifying kids who need more support on the emotional health level to reduce that negative impact and it's not just altruistic on our part although altruism is certainly a big part of it um it reduces recidivism amongst these kids and that's a win for the kids and it's a win for society and it's a win for the police so um we're really doing cool stuff with kids that have had problems in their life that have left trauma on them trauma marks on them
063in a figurative manner and trying to teach them coping skills and provide interventions before crisis happens last summer we had what were termed cit camp and i'm only calling it cit camp because that's who did it mobile and cit trained officers and clinicians put this camp on we had somewhere in the area of 12 to 15 kids who at the beginning of the week literally would not look at or talk to my officers and or the clinicians who by the end of the week were crying because they were leaving my officers and clinicians after camp we're trying to keep those relationships going and as you look at us moving forward in time that's the kind of stuff i need more funding for so when i'm talking about future requests you may well see me look
064for more funding for things like that if we did that with 12 or 15 kids we all know there's 500 kids 2 000 kids in the school system who needed it yesterday and last summer so um we ain't gonna quit we're gonna keep it up the soapbox derby is another cool mentoring program that we've had i think we're going into our fourth year we've had some public private partnership help us out and what we're doing is we're pairing a child with one of our officers to go through the whole evolution of building a soapbox derby car together over weeks participate in the racing together and i got to tell you we had so much interest from the community last summer we had to open it to the rest of county government so we had folks
065from central services from the fire department from parks and recs from all different branches of county government pitching in to help these kids chief fleming's it was still a police car that won though right firefighters firefighters beat us so just goes back to what we're trying to do with the kids and and every kid matters here you'll hear us say all the time much like your your educators do one kid at a time um i'll talk about annapolis middle in a couple of couple minutes to you is it now that we should bring your guests up or should we wait to another slide the next slide next slide okay one more slide please okay so i'm going to be quiet here and let tamika talk to you and she has some guests that also want
066to talk to you as well so i'm going to talk to you really briefly but i know i think that the students that i brought with me can probably say it better i just want to give you guys a brief overview of what it is that we do within the department so we do what's called frontline diversion which means we work with kids who are charged prior to any formal system involvement so prior to the department of juvenile services prior to court and my whole motto is meaningful intervention sorry is meaningful intervention this is not a meant to be a punishment this is not not meant to be a slap on the wrist either it's meant to meet the needs of the child link them with services help restore the community help change their perspective
067meet the kid where they're at and really try to make an early intervention change in our students lives we do have a great partnership with the crisis intervention team it is so unique that we have actually been able to to speak nationally and at the state level because we can divert and through our divert through either our joins program or our teen court program and link them to our crisis intervention team to make sure that if this is a behavioral health or a mental health issue that is causing the uh the offense that they're linked with services to prevent it from happening again because a lot of our families don't know where to go and so if we can can keep them out of the system while linking them with the services i think that
068that's the best thing that we can do for both the child and for the family we do have a great partnership on our community conferencing because everything that we do is based in restoration so the kind of consequences that we will do are some of the projects that you'll see up there as well as community service we can do the counseling we can do essays apology letters that kind of thing and but i want to make it clear that when i say community service this is not um the type of community service that we all think of as far as like you know picking up trash on the side of the road and that kind of thing that's not what we do we work to link them with organizations that are somehow related to their
069offense or somehow related to their job preference or their needs and their interest because we can really turn this into a positive we've had people who from their community service are now full-time volunteers or employees they get letters of reference from it so it's really about turning a negative behavior into a positive opportunity i started in 2016 at which time we switched to something called universal screening so our diversion programs are not referral based everyone for an eligible offense first time offender is automatically screened and asked if they want to participate in a diversion program the reason for that change is anytime you're dealing with referral base you we talk about disproportionality we talk about implicit bias and that has we've seen a positive impact because now about 60 percent of our diversion cases are
070minority youth so we are having a disproportionate impact i just want to highlight some of the projects that you see up there because a project is just part of it but if you can look at the red painting right there that is a was made by a student who was a straight-a student but who got in trouble because there was some self-medicating going on because she was experiencing severe anxiety but she couldn't articulate what anxiety felt like and she thought that there's no way that i can have anxiety because i'm a straight a student and it shouldn't be happening to me and so that was actually a painting that she brought back to me as part of her project a visual depiction of what anxiety feels like to her the comic book that you see
071where it says new leaf middle school was actually someone who was charged but was really it was rooted in bullying and so this is a full comic book written and illustrated by a middle school student and that the topic is an alternative reality a middle school where there was no bully the successful man poster down there is actually someone who came into my office is one of my most difficult cases but he had a history of fighting and what he said was you know i'm 13 i'm becoming a man that's just part of manhood so we had a really long conversation about that and we were able to um get his father involved link him with the mentorship and so he was instructed to him and his dad worked on an essay for me about
072what it means to actually be successful and what manhood is about then he created that poster and with along with each of his justifications for along with each of his choices he had to justify why he chose them and money could not be the sole criteria so we worked with them on anger management the help poster was a part of a psa to help in the stigma between seeking help for mental health treatment and then the um the woodworking the the leaf that you see there another near and dear one to my heart because we were actually able to link that student and his family with someone who's involved in woodworking and so that is carved and then burnt the wood is burnt the words are burnt on it by a middle school student who
073has since learned a trade and the special part about that one is we left such an impact on that family that he suffered the loss of a parent a year or so after he was involved in the program and the mom actually reached out to us because we worked so hard to get him on track that we wanted to stay on track and so we attended the funeral with him we really wrapped around him and he he's been doing phenomenally i think my my crowning achievement the one thing that i want to stress to you is that when we take the time to work with these kids about 80 upwards of 80 percent of them do not have any additional negative contact with law enforcement within a year and that's huge to me upwards of
07480 of our students who complete one of our diversion programs do not have any additional negative contacts with law enforcement within a year and um the reason why we track it at the years that's just the national um data mark and so i don't have it beyond that but i'm going to be quiet now and i would like for my 30 students student participants to come up and i just want you guys to hear um from them if it's okay for confidentiality purposes i won't be sharing their name but these are all anne arundel county school students who have had different involvement with our programs ladies and gentlemen we also promised them they wouldn't get peppered with a bunch of questions and i'll tell you this we actually offered them some options other than showing
075up today and all three of them insisted on showing up [Applause] all right so we'll start with my young lady from the annapolis area um can you tell me what program you were involved in i was involved in the team court okay and um can you tell me what impact um given having this second chance has made on you um it gave me a positive and a negative impact a positive impact it made me realize how much a parent stuff a parent struggles to keep a kid on track it brought me actually closer to my mom even though during the process i did lose her trust i didn't actually communicate with her when i wanted food when i wanted to eat i would cook it myself because of the situation that was going on i
076was actually a daddy's girl so my whole life i grew up close to my dad but the time of period that the process was going on i was not close to him um i was actually close to myself so if i had a problem i would try to figure it out myself i wouldn't ask help for anything but now in 2020 i'm a sophomore at a high annapolis high school i am actually in the cast off program for foundation to patient care which i will be attending my junior and my senior year and we could get a diploma from kent south meaning i could start working at any i'm going to say nursing facility or we could keep on going but what i decided to do is attend two years at aacc and then i'll
077probably transfer and what type of relationships have you developed as a result of the program as a result of the program um i like i said i've gotten closer with my mom gotten closer with my dad um actually i met officer rayden and joe hudson which been a amazing impact they check up on me once in a while i've actually helped them cook for the homeless a couple months ago so it was wonderful we actually went to a baseball game i think it was last year being around the little kids and like seeing how they develop and try to communicate with people is so nice so thank you um and we'll next talk to one of our students from the glen burnie area so can you tell me same question how has this program involvement
078impacted you it impacted me in a good way because i stopped staying to myself and getting into trouble and i built a better relationship with my mother than it was before and what about in school i'm not doing bad anymore i'm doing good and getting good grades um so why did you when we when we met why did was it so important to you to speak here today because i was proud of myself for doing better than i was before and what are your plans for the future to go to college anything that you want to study in particular um psychology all right thank you and then my gentleman from the mead area um how long have you been volunteering with our program i've been i've been volunteering uh with team corporate arnold county for
079three years now um is it okay if i stay go for it okay my name is peter stevenson um i'm currently an ib student attending meet senior high school i also interned for the state's attorney's office and i've been a uh i've been volunteering for team corps for three years and one of the things that i did is i i enjoy helping people i aspire to be a judge for the state of maryland in the future and i went to the baltimore city team court because i know that's where change needs to occur and also i went and i talked to the coordinators and the social workers there made a meeting and they were saying funding funding is in there's not enough funding for these uh teens there's not enough opportunities for them but then
080i said to myself well anne arundel county has enough funding has enough opportunity and from seeing that i the first time i enter team court i was interested there's not many programs for teens specifically and team court i was i was given the engagement opportunity to be able to help others and i was also given the opportu the opportunity to sit as a student judge and team court was an amazing opportunity because i've met prosecutors on the way i've met actual judges and i mean being able to be given the opportunity and see a new perception of everyone's lives everyone's different in team court it's not like a specific uh personality that you see everyone's different everyone changes over the course of time and it's interesting being able to give be able to be given
081the opportunity to talk to these people after they sit as a respondent because i was able to see how have you changed how have you reflected on your life so far and to see that that was amazing to me to see how different people have changed over the course of team core thank you thank you all three um and i i don't think that i could say it any better than um than these three have so that's all i have for you thank you so much thank you i i just i have to speak i have to thank the three of you so much for speaking to us i i learned more in those five minutes than i've learned in months i mean that was just that was incredible um young lady i was a
082psychology major and um i went to umbc umbc would be so fortunate to have you um all of you have amazing stories you have you have amazing college essays that you could be writing and and please keep keep on track because these institutions um need students like you someone who has overcome challenges and turned their lives around your your way ahead of where a lot a lot of people would be in their 20s so um just thank you so much for coming here today thank you so i i'm going to close on on that slide with simply saying this tamika mentioned it i want to say it again we're having an impact with the kids we need to have the positive impact with 60 of our diversion is minority kids the kids that we're trying
083to make sure we get over the humps that get placed in front of them in life and i'm very proud of it i i hope you guys are today too after you've heard about that thank you moving do we have another slide sros so i'm extremely proud of our sros at the outset i want to tell everybody because it seems like a lot of folks in the county don't know this there is a state mandated curriculum centering on being trauma informed alternatives to citation and arrest supportive practices coaching mentoring and one of our sros john carrier co-authored that curriculum for the state of maryland so the good stuff that we're doing is seen kind of inside the world of sros and maybe inside the world of education but a lot of people outside that world
084who aren't paying attention to it every day don't know that stuff um our one of our primary caregivers as a crisis intervention team officer alan marcus was recognized internationally as the best crisis intervention officer on earth last year so we're doing a lot right that people don't hear about my promise is that we'll keep doing it right pretty proud of our i'm proud of all of them but in the last week or two i've had another um shining example of why i should be proud of rsros corporal vasquez is our sro at annapolis middle school she is obviously a latina and she has done a lot with the kids who have been impacted by gangs in the last couple years feeding into the annapolis high school through annapolis middle school she is the only certified
085instructor of chinchilla that i'm aware of in this area which is a gang avoidance strategy for latinas and as a part of her efforts last week she started a running club with her young latina ladies in the school she's got 20 22 kids we were able to get some help to get them running shoes and a couple days a week they're in a running club keeping them busy in a positive manner and there's a million of those success stories that i could tell you guys today this one just happened to have happened in the last week or two um so it's fresh in my mind we can move on to the next slide i don't even know i don't know if i can make it through this one so if nobody's heard of mo gabba
086in the room mo is he's probably 14 now he's a young man who's on his third or fourth fight with cancer he's been blinded um corporal chris lindsey bigler is our sro at um lindale and there's no other way to say it then he and mo have become kind of best buddies he shows up at moe's house i think these two set a standard for relationships between cops and the kids that they serve that that could be held up worldwide as an example of hope and investment i think it shows really who our sros try to be every day um there's no doubt about it that sros in school mean that there's going to be enforcement activity sometimes it is a necessary part of the job but the picture that i'm trying to paint for
087you guys today is that they don't consider it the primary part of their job they consider it fourth or fifth tier in behind coaching mentoring keeping kids safe and building bridges um and i'm very proud of them next slide please more on the sros there's john carrier i was telling you about with the captain america shield corey eslick i'm ashamed to say i told him he couldn't have his own official twitter a couple years ago so he's been doing his own unofficial twitter um that and i'm really reconsidering although as soon as i let people have twitters i'm going to have a headache out of it um but you see the story there of him and the young lady that he developed an extremely beautiful relationship with and what i what i find almost most
088gratifying about that is he has the same relationship with her father and he's been a constant source of positivity in her life and the elf costume just shows you they're willing to be silly sometimes too i guess moving on please so i think the watch words um that tamika and i use and we meet uh she falls into our chain of command um just under the direction of captain fred who's in the back fred would you put your hand up for me and um so we meet all the time on how can we get better how can i push money her way that she needs how do we think outside the box what can i cheat on to to make wins for kids things like that um and our watch words really are being collaborative
089evidence-based because it's important to help the kids the way they need to be helped and being uh data-driven in our responses so mead is a perfect example of that that's where the support in part large part needs to be in the county and it's going to be there from the police department and i do believe that may be our last slide so i'll take questions um i'm going to uh start with miss antoine who had made the request in it um from the beginning and then we'll roll down starting uh thereafter with smith's ellis musa and michelle hunt miss antoine i i i didn't get a chance to write down all of my questions yet i got about 200 more that's okay i'll be back i want to first publicly say thank you we're glad
090to do it man service hardly ever is contingent on pay it's hardly ever contingent on notoriety service comes from here i've been in anne arundel county since one of my main concerns was raising michael's son as a single parent in another area i had purposely chosen fairfax county for safety and insecurity i want to thank you all not only have you been very successful in keeping our county safe but you've been instrumental in changing lives i know that personally so thank you thank you we appreciate the support the request of course was made because of the information that was true but it also introduced different perceptions and it definitely put an incredible school feeder system in a poor light including the sros that i have witnessed this is heavy because i've witnessed you all first-hand
091support students students who trust the sro sros sometimes more than their parents you all do and you're short-handed we want to make that clear as well that your the police department is in constant need of additional people but what i have appreciated most is the fact that even with everything you are doing you're here still you're here to let us know as the public that we are committed to your safety your security and your students well-being overall that's right so thank you the next thing i want to do because i don't want to waste time crying i want to thank you personally chief i put out a phone call to you you answered it i wanted to come see you you made you made room and everywhere i have been and i have seen you
092you have been consistent in your leadership and your support to our county so thank you personally thank you man all right so now for the questions um often you talk about the barriers that are introduced when we are trying to collaborate as a school system between law enforcement and the school system and the variables that come into play to keep us from that challenges us in our success in doing that can you share some of those barriers please sure so one of my bigger frustrations is we spent a lot of time here today showing you kind of who we are you know um i think that that message doesn't get out enough um and that's a failing on our part without a doubt it's also a failing in the ability that i have to do
093it you know finite resources um so marketing is not something that police are trained to do all the time i think we need to get better at it so that all of the educators in anne arundel county have a feeling that we're not the enemy i think we got some work to do on that uh it's been a tough six or seven years nationally for policing and much of it we got to own um you know i have a lot of talks with people about that national conversation i try to drag them back to anne arundel county because i'm only responsible for entering the camera and more fairly i can only work on the problems of anne arundel county be an advocate outside but um we've got something going pretty good here um there's always
094room for improvement i think teachers and cops are on just naturally different wavelengths sometimes i think we've we've dialed those wavelengths into being closer over the last five eight years and i'm not taking credit for that by the way but at all um we just need to refine that i think um i think communication is important i think whenever you have 200 people communicating with 200 people filtering occurs if that makes sense filtering adulterates message sometimes so for instance when when you're talking about statistics historically i think we've got we've got the group of sros 20 i think we're 25ish sros talking to 25ish principles plus your other 100 in well we've got 125 total 125 total schools so and then what happens in the schools without sros you have all those police talking to
095all those administrators and teachers and filtering happens if that makes sense now on a positive message i think that's okay um when we're showing up to be lunch buddies when you're talking about the bad days when cops do have to make enforcement decisions i think we need to get better at making sure we're talking with one voice to one set of ears so the message um coming directly from us is my message not i'm not always the one saying it but my people know what my message is um and then it gets heard with one set of ears and i think particularly with statistics we've had a problem with that which is why you see differences i think um i think we're putting safeties in place now to make sure that there's always that communication
096is occurring at the lowest possible level which is healthy but then there's extra communication through singular points of contact higher up to make sure that we're on the same sheet of music if that makes sense yes sir it does thank you for that yes ma'am um so mr mika i'm sorry i did not write down your last name so i is miss tamika okay for now yes okay thank you as well when we made the request to get the um most updated arrests and citations report we're the layman making that request we had no idea that you were a single point of reference for that that you have to manually put all of that in and ensure no mistakes yes ma'am so thank you that that is incredibly tedious and and to see your presentation
097today on top of that request thank you for what you do for our students our community for our county thank you you all introduce what you call frontline diversion you introduced a phrase called meaningful intervention and enforcement activity you have to do your jobs and that is to be respected and understood and often those jobs are done in our schools so i wanted to better understand how we could as a school system before you are involved introduce meaningful intervention your recommendations on that how we can be that front line rather than you in diversion opportunities for our students so i i will say that that is an area that is my personal research project is how we can better collaborate as chief said i'm in grad school and that is my my area of research
098focus and so i am working on pulling what else is out there because i don't have the answer personally but i'm constantly trying to educate myself on what the best practices are what guidelines are out there for us and i say in very very close contact with my chain of command regarding like proposals and what those best practices are and so that's something that we're working on i don't have an answer for you today um i don't know that i'll ever have an answer for you but i know it's something that i'm working that we're working on um and those conversations are happening and we're working on putting something together to see how we can best collaborate can i jump in yes sir so i think exactly that question is why we had to share
099training between the principals and the sros in january i think the understanding of unintended consequences is a biggie the principal at north county high school i should be ashamed of myself right now jeff jefferson principal jefferson kind of sets a standard on the differentiation of his maintaining good discipline in the school right in a positive way and the police getting involved and he's very trauma informed i'm kind of proud of him a lot as we talk um he's a model that i think stands the test of scrutiny um and so i i think we are working on that dr alato when i talk about that constantly um i'll use an example everyone knows we were having problems at the football games in the fall so i think there was a belief from staff and it's
100okay i don't know teacher stuff i don't expect teachers to know cop stuff there was a belief that we could do certain things on escorting people out but we can't maryland law prohibits the police from saying you have to leave and then escorting someone out our soul statutory fix is arrest right so that custodians of the property the administration teachers athletic directors security staff have to do those things and the police are there to make sure it stays safe so that kind of detail is very important if you think about it right um and we're working together over time to get much better at that so that just that little thing i just told you is a big deal if you if you think about the repercussions that it can have with police putting a
101hand on somebody trying to walk them out we don't we're not empowered to do that because the moment we do that we've arrested somebody do you see so those realities are very important to get through and historically i think there was a big need and then we're getting much better at it nowadays did we answer your question okay excellent thank you um so with your presentation with your you with you being here i would like to pose a motion to the board your reports have helped us your work has helped us tremendously um but once we get that it's not okay for us just to have numbers and and line items we have to do something in order to make good decisions we have to utilize the data as you presented in your presentation for
102meaningful intervention for support to these students to put them on tracks as the as the other the students earlier testified too so my my motion is that the board requests the superintendent to work with the anne arundel county police department to receive and to generate an annual arrest and citations report and that that report once once generated and reviewed be presented to the board no later than november of each year this report would be for the previous school year and not the current that's how we have a motion in a second um do you did everybody um hear the full motion we good okay we have a second now i'm gonna clear the board of the chief ultimary questions because we have a motion taking precedent and then whoever wants to come in on debate
103no comment seeing none miss hal please call roll miss ellis miss antwine aye mr gilliland mr lime miss hummer miss alvey miss corketto aye motion passes eight miss zero did you have any further questions or comments for the chief the chief was kind enough to give me his cell phone so i'll i'll save him just don't give it to everybody will you my badge no ma'am i do not thank you okay miss ellis thank you um both of you all of you uh that truly was one of the best and most informative presentations i've seen as a board member i cannot thank you all enough for being here today chief i want to make a plug for you i did attend the hayton bias forum last week i heard you loud and clear so i
104want to in case we have an expanded audience and others are listening this is for our students perhaps their parents or others who might be listening that are considering a career change if you do not see yourself represented in your police department chief wants you please please keep that in mind and um i i think you'll be well taken care of in your career so um i i know how important that is um i have one question i so i i may maintain a pretty large presence on social media i belong to as many groups as i can because i feel like i get a lot of information that doesn't come to us formally and um i i was witness to a conversation recently about it it was about police presence within neighborhoods and you
105know we can talk about what we can do in our schools all day long but we we know the neighborhood presence is so important and i know you talked about all the efforts you have and activities going on but this conversation was particularly about a police beat and having having particular officers um maintaining a presence within um confined neighborhoods and communities and really developing those relationships now this was uh the conversation i witnessed would would apply to annapolis city but i know there's other neighborhoods um in the county um can you speak to that a bit i i think the idea was sort of like the the function that our sr sros serve in our schools um it would be a similar type of purpose within communities within neighborhoods that doesn't just apply to our
106youth because you you need buy-in with with the adults in the community too to be successful and um steer our youth in the right direction yes ma'am it's extremely important so it's a tenet of community policing also um i think that the sweet spot in policing is being intelligence led and then community oriented so one of the one of the downsides if you've ever heard the term compstat comstat is the the paradigm of policing in the early 2000s and it's all about you have numbers you have a map you have dots that are crimes on your map put the police on the dots right but what that forgets is that human beings exist elsewhere right so um what we try to do in the county is is kind of find a sweet spot between definitely
107being intelligence led but staying community oriented and even more than community oriented down to individual oriented sometimes i think um cit is a perfect example of that um there's thousands of mental health consumers in this county that they are helping stay away from a crisis day every day you know um down to a simple phone call hey buddy you taking your medic medication this week you know um things like that so it's very important in the county if you remember at the outset of our briefing today i told you all the positive stuff has gone away so we're back to having a police and community together unit in all four police districts it's two per district except for southern where i've only got one up and running we'll get there with our second and then
108remember that the district commander and deputy commander have their police community relations council meetings that meet every month to talk about community stuff and then i expect not just those packed officers packed police and community together as packed not just the packed officers but the beat cops need to be in our community meetings monthly might not be the same cop because the shifts rotate right but they should know they're beat cops if you look at the old footbeat model of the 30s 20s before cars started taking off particularly in in cities the great thing about that was it it naturally lent itself to community policing because the the foot beat cop knew everybody he knew miss sally would tell him what was going on as long as people weren't watching right on the corner miss
109sally lives one two three main street she's going to tell me anything i need to know whenever i need to know it he knew or she knew what families were struggling where mom was working three jobs to feed the family where the support might be needed in a positive way which kids he had shot at having a positive intervention with which had gone so far that he probably didn't or she probably didn't have a shot with so the relationship with the communities brings all that stuff to the table there's no doubt about it policing is not about handcuffs should have never been all about handcuffs but for a while it got that way the relationships that you just discussed and that i've described here in the past couple minutes or how you keep that balance
110going people have to get arrested people have to get arrested right people do things wrong they have to be held accountable that's part of living in a in a society but there's a lot of positive you can bring even behind that and that's that's where we try to be in the county and i i don't want to speak for chief jackson but he and i have talked a lot he believes in that 100 percent so i think it's fair to assume that you will see much more of that moving forward than perhaps has been the case in annapolis city thank you and just to speak to a couple things you said i mean the conversation very much took a turn to the old days and that's that's kind of what drove the conversation um but
111also um shoot i'm sorry i lost my train of thought um anyway it was it was about the relationships and um so i'm i'm glad to hear that um that there are efforts from that direction thank you so much yes ma'am thank you miss ellis misalvi and then miss shawhan miss so my goal is always to bring the conversation back to the students and this is a really important issue and going to annapolis high school which we have pockets of communities pockets of students who are from communities that struggle with their relationships with the police this issue really hits home for me um so with that being said you if this is of security concern the question about to ask you can always tell me that it's you can't answer it in public but after
112a student is arrested in or outside of school all the students who are watching that occur which i have what kind of efforts are taking place to restore the student body's faith that this the police is there to protect them and i know that's hard for me because i have a very positive relationship with my sros even if it's just over my parking spot every day but it's hard for students to trust their sros again if they've just seen their friend be arrested which is a tough site for the student who's being arrested and everybody else who's watching that happen so i guess my question is then again like what kind of steps are taken to restore that relationship with the student body as a whole great question so there's a couple steps a particularly
113for your school i don't know if you've noticed but a lot of your classmates have noticed that there's two they're policed by two different colored shirts right so um the dark blue shirt needs to be more involved in and this isn't in the school but bear with me because i'll get there okay the dark blue shirt needs to get a lot more involved in the positive angles of policing it's why i have pounded on the table since i've been chief to get annapolis city into the sro game it's not about money it isn't about us not wanting to do it it's about that police department needs to work on its relationship with the community that it serves um so that's one thing trying to work on that it's it's without a doubt that friction points
114occur particularly um allow allow this observation we use the word child i'm not terribly sure you're a child to me so i think that's kind of a given right you're a young you're a young lady for sure but when you're talking about a six foot two 240 pound lineman on a football team it's tough for us to handle that confrontation like we're doing it with a child so i think we have to do that on the back side on the supports that we're talking about order has to be maintained it has to be reinstilled very quickly when you have a brawl in the school which i'm also sure you've seen um so it ain't necessarily officer friendly showing up in that situation right and i'm not sure i want it to be officer friendly showing
115up in that moment in that situation um but the supports have to come after so step one i would not have made a good sro when i was a young officer because i didn't get the soft side of policing for several years so that's step one we have to choose the right cops to go into those schools um who understand that after that encounter it is absolutely their responsibility to try to build a bridge back with that kid the next week and that kid's friends the next week we also have cit and mobile who will and do come into schools after something kicks off not just a negative encounter with police but certainly some of the negative encounters with police um i will tell you that we have to be [Music] we have to be
116welcomed for that right so some schools are more welcoming than others on occasion annapolis high school always welcomes us so that's not a problem at your school and or annapolis middle school um so the the the outreach after a bad day is extremely important i agree with you um that's one of the reasons i'm so proud of our sros and it's made even more pronounced for me because i understand i wouldn't have been good at that when i was younger um so we tend to pick very mature and i don't mean an age i mean in in their thinking critical thinking and and very open people to be sros in the school and then anytime we have a bad day you will see their bosses showing up as with mobile crisis crisis intervention just to
117extend that friendly hand the next day to say welcome back school guys everything's good we're gonna have a good day things like that did i answer your question okay we could probably get better at it i'll admit that thank you miss alvey michelle i don't think i could have said it better than miss antoine and misalis so i'll just simply say thank you thank you for all that you both do for a community both in our schools and around the county um the work that you do and your officers do uh even when they're not at schools when they're watching other uh critical infrastructures and the like um on their on their off time i'm personally grateful for um and uh and yeah i i i just was very impressed with everything you said at
118the forum thank you and um and i'm just really grateful for your um partnership with our school system and uh with the relationships that your srs form with our students every day is it's critical and even on those even on those bad days you know it's uh it's it's everything in this day and age and not something that existed when i was coming up through schooling and uh and uh so i'm just really grateful for for all of you and thank you for um for being here today too thanks thank you man thank you michelle hi miss hummer yes um just i want to highlight again and say bravo for the 80 percent of the students that are not having go through your diversion programs and then aren't having any interactions i think that's the
119goal for all of us is we're doing everything we can on the school level to try to help the kids make good choices unfortunately sometimes they don't and then they come to y'all and then y'all are doing everything in partnership with us to make sure that those kids are learning from that mistake so they don't make it again and so that we don't end up i some of the best parenting advice i ever got was catch your child do being bad you know start catch them young when they're doing bad so that you can teach them and help them to make better choices and that's what we've got to do with our kids so that they don't become adults that are having more problems and so that 80 percent rate that's fabulous and so great
120job thank you okay looks like we're pretty good shape i just want to extend thank you first to miss antwine uh my fellow member for making the request and chief altimary you definitely took the request to the next level and i think providing this opportunity for us to exchange more than uh data specific points has been very beneficial and so the chief and i also talked about maybe in addition to miss antoine's motion of report that maybe every four to six months you come down and give us an update on some of the progress that we're making with a lot of these aspects just in a general sense just like we had today and i'll afford those conversations to continue to open up so thank you so much once again and um at this time
121we're going to take a short um five quick five-minute break to take care of the photos of our recognized of the months that have been so patient to wait uh unique to this morning because of chief baltimore and they will then we will resume with public comment [Music] do [Music] my [Music] foreign do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] missions we do not do on every meeting but most certainly worthy of our guests in time uh item 4.0 is public comment anyone wishing to speak on an item not on today's agenda may offer testimony during this public comment portion of the meeting speakers are allotted three minutes each and may not allocate their times to others a tone will sound when the time has expired the board asks that comments remain civil and appropriate for the
122various audiences that may be watching or viewing this meeting student specific and personnel matters are confidential and cannot be discussed in this form it is not the board's general practice to engage in question and answer sessions with the speakers for the record please provide your name before speaking and handouts should be given to the board assistant for dissemination with that we have um 11 people who have signed up either in advance or this morning and so we've got quite a few uh today i'm going to be calling up a total of five people at a time and first we have lisa mckerney jacqueline boone also dr dadone donai sorry um miss india oaks that's summary one two three four and miss tony pratt good afternoon madam president members of the board i stand before you
123to speak of the epidemic of the hate bias incidents in anne arundel county public schools i stand before you to carry the frustration of over 600 anne arundel county naacp members i stand before you carrying the frustration of generations of anne arundel county public schools students and parents we have been at this for years and it doesn't seem to be getting better the data suggests it is getting worse although we acknowledge that it might be the result of better reporting yet every time another incident abides so hate is published and there we are and i've heard of three separate ones last week these are not isolated incidents to us they are ongoing continuous assaults on our mental health and resilience the principal sends letters home to the parents after the incidents occur the board members
124should be also sending letters to that schools that they represent therefore in concert with the caucus of african-american leaders and other organizations committed to fight hate and bias in our schools and in our community we had advised the following the board of education to task the citizen advisory committee to investigate why these incidents are arising in each school cluster and what can be done to reduce the incidence ensure the cac includes the voices of the students and parents of that cluster make this a permanent casting requiring the cac to report regularly to the public venue create a permanent hate buyer's focus within anne arundel county under the direct and personal leadership of dr alato keep the data visible to the public and speak on it right on it at least monthly adhere to a zero
125tolerance approach to hate and violence incidents within anne arundel county public schools consistent across the entire system this means maximum enforcement of consequences for verifiable hate and biased incidents within the limits of the student code of conduct establish equivalent consequences for any staff faculty or contractors found responsible for similar transgressions including failure to report or to intervene i have lived in anne arundel county all my whole life i was part of the last class graduating class of the wally h based high school i am in my fourth term as president of the anne arundel county branch of the naacp i've served on multiple county and state task force i'm a registered nurse and a mental health nurse educator who has spent her career working with youth our county executive has declared racism a public health
126crisis he's right our children are suffering from the pervasive hate bias incidents in our schools and this does this has to stop in conclusion the anne arundel county naacp believes strong consistent and ongoing actions against hate and bias incidents including the actions we have offered in this testimony is essential for the physical and mental health of our children and of their future thank you thank you ma'am um i'm just going to call one more time i didn't see lisa mckerney that i had called seeing none okay that has expired um next go right down the line um mary to joanie anne arundel county and double aacp member of the education committee and i speak today from my position as a member of the education committee we fully support the testimony of president jacqueline alsup and
127we wish to reiterate reiterate the following demand and offer several proposed actions we reiterate the demand for a uniform system-wide zero-tolerance approach to hate and bias incidents we request this body in collaboration with the naacp and other stakeholders defined in policy what zero tolerance means an enactback decision via either a new aacps regulation or modifications of existing aacps regulations we propose that aacps establish an online and constantly updated tracker for hate bias incidents this tractor tracker should track incidents and their status toward resolution without highlighting anything that could give the offenders any additional motivation or motivate copycats the education committee has developed some suggestions and will share them with the board in a separate communication because of his position in power we ask that dr alato publicly and personally take ownership executive ownership of an
128aacps wide program to identify address mitigate and eliminate hate and bias incidents within aacps and at sponsored events we recommend dr alato personally present and disseminate a monthly executive summary of the hate and bias incidents and trends within aacps including a monthly presentation before this body posted video and text of the presentation and a monthly guest column in the local newspapers this would be in collaboration with the kinds of reports we will hear later this morning afternoon we know that we are fighting against a national trend embedded by bias-based reasoning language and behavior from the highest levels of public visibility down to the constant intrusion of biased language and hate into the lives and minds of our faculty staff and especially our student classrooms via social media and entertainment to combat this we need to
129show a different picture we therefore request that aacps make equally prominent their efforts and the statistics around recruitment and retention of non-white faculty and staff at all levels and in all disciplines we again recommend that dr alato personally and publicly head this effort and participate in quarterly reporting on aacps efforts statistics and trends towards diversifying the faculty and staff at all levels in all schools again an executive function tied to the kind of report we'll hear later this afternoon finally we asked this board to make their commitment against hate and bias visible and systemic through including an equity impact assessment and each proposed policy regulation and budget proposal including an equity impact assessment of all existing policies and regulations this could be performed in accordance with the suggestions of the mabe equity lens these assessments
130should be made public and presented along with each proposed policy and regulation thank you good morning good morning madam president my name is tony pratt and i'm also in agreement with the recommendations from the cal and the naacp but i come on a more personal basis in reference to the hate and bias crimes in anne arundel county public schools i'm a grandmother of a student that goes to germantown elementary and she's been affected by two hate crimes that hasn't been reported the first one was a caucasian student called her in spanish and a spanish boy told her what he said no teacher called no principal called but i sent the email and they made excuses to why the young boy said that he was talking about the colors that's not acceptable it was never never
131reported it was never documented i recently had a conversation and sent an email to ask what happened and what was the reporting process nothing happened just this week i got a phone call home about my granddaughter hitting another student i asked what had happened she clearly visibly got upset and she wouldn't talk to the the teacher or the principal or the assistant principal and none of them looked like her so as i was called to go to the school and she began to tell me what had happened she came home from school and she got in the van and she said nana i didn't tell you something and i said what she said i didn't feel comfortable talking to the principal or the assistant principal or the teacher she said none of them look like
132me and when i make complaints or i tell about things that happen to me i get treated differently she's under second grade we're starting a trend that's not acceptable it's not acceptable for her to go to school every day and not feel safe and feel that she has to do things that aren't in her character to keep her safe we need to do something and it starts with a zero tolerance what are we doing with the authority figures and the teachers and the principals who are part of the problem i'm here visibly upset not about our county just having the highest hate bias crime rate but every day almost you hear about our schools hanging nooses swastikas writing on the bathroom walls and it seems as though we make excuses but i'm tired of the
133excuses i want action thank you i believe we have a couple questions um before we proceed with ms oaks um or did you guys want to wait um miss antoine and miss summer okay um miss hammer and then miss and fine it's miss allsup and mr dhoni would y'all make sure that you share all of your the your suggestions and comments so that we can all receive it and we have a chance to to review and look at all of your ideas and things ahead of time i mean we can look at it in depth and and really respond to it well so as secretary i was sure those are sent as soon as we're back home yes please do so that i know that we would all like to look at those um in
134more detail and and carefully thank you miss antoine that was that was actually my request as well um for doctor and doctor if you could um please make sure we we get your recommendations so that we can make informed decisions on and while i have a live mic um i wanted to request dr alato she she's the the grandmother has testified that every day there's a second grader that's afraid to come to school is there someone within the system that can work with her before she leaves today to get innovations for her grandchild please so you guys thank you and thank you for your testimony thank you miss oaks good afternoon india oaks hill smear parent human rights lawyer and board of education candidate former canadian prime minister lester pearson once said misunderstanding arising from
135ignorance breeds fear and fear remains the greatest enemy of peace those words could not be any truer when it comes to hate incidents the racist incidents at southern middle and chesapeake high last week are just two more signs of how systemic racism is within our county and country for that matter we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them and given that these incidents continue to occur aacps cannot just keep doing what it currently does to address these issues i have stated this for years and i will keep saying this sending letters home to families at the specific school is not enough in the face of such hate silence is deadly and if we truly want to raise awareness on how prevalent racism is we need to
136notify all raacps families every time these incidents happen just as we cannot simply tell families to talk about hate to their kids merely explaining to our kids what hate is if the family actually does that is not enough awareness is not enough knowing that racism exists is not enough for people and if i may say specifically white people to want to see it eliminated too often racism has to disrupt the lives of people before they are moved to action and we should not be educating our students to be in that reactionary mode we must take steps to address the root causes of such hate if we want to stop it just as having unity days such as today although i don't see much orange in this room today or professional development on unconscious bias is
137not enough if we do not have measures in place to track if what is being taught is actually being implemented there is no question we have a great community to combat hate and bias with groups like the kindness club in south county or advocacy from organizations like the caucus of african-american leaders including everyone that is in the audience today but these are the same people that show up at the hate and bias forum at town halls on gun violence and so again i say the current system is not enough if we are not proactively reaching the people that may be next to incite such hate we all need to do more and we need to do it now thank you miss oaks okay we're going to ask the net next folks to come on up
138please carl snowden heather coles don zebron jessica o'kane and mike shay [Music] [Applause] when you're ready mr [Applause] maryland president members of the board my name is carl snyden i'm representing the caucus of african-american leaders i'm here to underscore two points one extremely disappointed that the board of education where we formally made a request at the cac be involved in conducting an investigation i had originally communicated a year ago almost sorry last year with the previous president got assurances that we would be moving forward talk to the current president and quite candidly was very disturbed to read in the paper that the president i assume speaking on behalf of the board that a decision had been made no consultation no discussion there is a statement that was once made by a man named bull connor
139and he was talking to martin luther king jr and he defined racism and white supremacy he gave the best definition i ever heard what he said was that racism is a question is a situation where people with power people in positions of power make the following statement it's just a question of mind over matter we don't mind and you don't matter excellent definition in my opinion of racism to hear and to read that the reason this issue of racial incidents that recess according to the newspaper article recess and the fact that you have the csc dealing with the issue of recess there's not enough time to deal with the issue of racism how insulting do you have any idea what that says to people who happen to be people of color our children subject to
140nooses racial threats to tell us that you don't have that this is not a priority there are two final things i want to say before the time runs up generally i try to work with people i have a great deal of respect for the county executive but i'm here to tell you i think he made a terrible mistake when he decided not to take a survey the one the first of its kind in anne arundel county to see how pervasive the issue of racism is in the county i think that was a mistake i think we need to know what we're dealing with and having a survey would do that and lastly the reason i wanted to see asc involved i think parents need to talk to parents in the feeder system chesapeake high school
141where one of these incidents took place why shouldn't parents who are part of cac talk to their fellow parents about these incidents and to hear from them what their recommendations would be as to how to curtail it thank you for this opportunity to speak thank you are these questions to the person testifying or in general probably probably okay ma'am members of the board madam president uh dr alato good morning my name is dawn zebron i am a resident of pasadena my daughter is a sophomore chesapeake high school and i'm 100 opposed to the cell tower proposal for our campus i emailed each of you a copy of my testimony along with a petition with 340 signatures of people that are also opposed to a cell tower on our campus i've sat in here and i've
142listened to the shadyside team talk about the science and harm to our their children from cell towers that were proposed for their school and this board stopped construction of the shadyside tower my question is why would one be allowed on any school grounds after that i have volunteered our schools for the last 20 years in the time that i have learned that aacps follows an evidence-based best practice approach we set up a task force of 70 plus people from across the county to research best practices and approaches to tackle big concerns like mental health and suicide and there are limitations on what we can and can't do for liability and safety reasons like we can't have a cool bmx bully prevention assembly or a community bond fair but it's okay to put a 5g macro
143cell tower emitting electromagnetic radiation on campus a few hundred feet from where our students are eating lunch or just a few feet from where they play sports for hours every day but is the tower benefiting the people placed at risk the most no there's cell service around all three schools on campus there's some not go so good inside the building areas but that's because it's concrete and brick and it's not the tower's not going to change that i've spent hours looking for evidence saying these towers benefit our students and staff the only evidence i have found is the growing science behind non-ionizing radiation being harmful to developing brains the radiation from tower antenna changes dna over time developing brains absorb the radiation 10 times as much as adults biological mental and behavioral changes are seen
144this is from peer-reviewed evidence-based medical journals from renowned doctors and scientists leaders in their field this is not their first rodeo asbestos lead paint roundup jewel this is peer reviewed and evidence based by renowned scientists and medical doctors national institute of health pubmed journal states there is clear cause for concern in the scientific medical communities based on the squirrel and evidence the national institute of health made recommendations in august and again in november 2019 no cell towers within sixteen hundred and forty feet of schools or hospitals we need to practice the pause here think first is it needed to provide students fape no is it safe the medical science says no is there a risk yes is it worth the risk of our students no can it be placed somewhere else yes we don't want
145to need this tower on school grounds and request this board give equity to our community and find an alternative site not on school grounds for the tower thank you hi my name is heather coles i too have a student at chesapeake high school he's also a sophomore and i wish i had the time to talk about the cell tower but i also like to speak on the hate and the bias in our county um first thing i'd like to say is that i am 100 against hate and racism in this county and i feel that i should not be alone in being so bold in making that statement i would love to hear that come from our board if at all possible but um i understand that if that is too much of a request
146there's two things i'd like to speak on and that's one a baby was here earlier and that baby started to cry and i thought that the child wanted her mother i couldn't give that to her but what was given to her was a pacifier and i would like for that not to happen to me and the people that are talking about this issue today first thing is halloween in 2009 i was shot with a bb gun trick-or-treating with my children in a neighborhood that i lived across the street from the house the individual who shot me didn't realize that i was his next door neighbor because he was aiming for my child in the stroller um i say that to say 2000 this year this halloween had just passed there was a speeding driver in
147my neighborhood i asked him to slow down and he didn't so i took action when that individual got out of his vehicle he came at me as if he wanted to hurt me i probably would have wanted to do this thing the only difference between this halloween and that halloween was that every adult jumped in his face also just like we say the pledge of allegiance here it needs to be stated every single public meeting that we are against hate we are not for the bias i'm tired of being pacified i'm tired of being told okay yeah go send your kid to the school that you know they don't want him there you know i'm tired of that and it's not okay for that to go down i'll give you another another instance last week
148i had to call the police because a driver that worked with my company was attacked by a resident now when i told them that this individual was spewing hate words he's trying to get in his truck he's being rude the app the police got there within maybe 45 seconds and what impressed me was when you got when he got out the car you could tell he meant business and that's what i'd like to see from the board here from everybody in this county that we mean business and that we're not going to pacify the issue of racism anymore thank you thank you ma'am mr shane mike shea president of south arundel citizens for responsible development in total solidarity with the naacp on this real school issue process transparency and honesty these are the reasons milestone
149was thrown out of prince george's county enough is enough it's a past time for our school system to get back to the mission of education and stop using our resources to subsidize milestone cell tower business plan as we share as we shall share in future board meetings and upcoming board meetings milestone has continued to work against your direction with your senior administration staff this has corrupted your staff and diverted resources intended for education through persistence in finally getting a well-overdue maryland public information request from your information officer we obtained over 200 pages of emails that blow the whistle showing the collusion that has corrupted our school administration it is our attorney's letter of october 18 2019 that stopped further review at planning and zoning on behalf of this tower project at shadyside elementary school when
150reading these released emails they show the school administration inappropriately and illegitimately assisting the cell tower company these efforts are contrary to the board's vote and directive of december 19 2018. i've been through the 203 pages of inappropriate emails and have categorized them into 12 areas that demonstrate and illustrate what's been going on behind the shadyside community's back and more importantly your back at future meetings i will continue to share the story of what we have found it is our intention that you should remove milestone from our community and all new proposed projects at anne arundel county schools having your staff go rogue is a management problem and a misallocation of resources away from the mission of education let's back up to the 6-3 vote on december 19th directing superintendent our leader to stand down the
151shadyside milestone proposed tower project let's repeat the 28 words of eric grant's motion the motion is the superintendent take all action necessary to pause the placement of the cell tower at shadyside elementary until further direction from the board otherwise this vote was 6-3 in favor of the motion what is it that milestone dr alito and the school administration did not understand this issue was tabled we get back to process transparency and honesty these exact issues the community has been bringing up to this board now for years during multiple board changes we've said in the past we're not going away until the shadyside tower proposal went away now we're not going away until milestone goes away [Music] thank you sir we have a couple of questions or comments from board members i should say probably miss
152antoine and then michelle hunt miss antoine thank you president corcodell i appreciate all the testimony to include the cell phone towers all any any testimony is important to this board um i am disheartened though that i hear words like insulted from our public and especially our leaders in the public words like unsafe pacifying these these words should radiate with us we should take action beyond what we're already taking but let me take the time to tell you all we are at constant at constant work in eradicating hate and bias in our schools behind you is a staff that will put in overtime under time time time time to do this dr alato himself writes columns every month he is anytime he's invited anywhere to speak on this issue he's there we are working as a
153board to do what we can to make decisions properly to ensure that we are keeping an eye on our bottom line which is to teach and learn our students to learn and our teachers to teach and have that ability to do that safely and soundly the poisons that are in our system we didn't request but they're here and so we will be continuously doing what it takes to ensure we introduce a presence that says we have a zero tolerance for this so thank you very much thank you miss antwine michelle hun i want to echo what uh miss antoine just said and i am 100 against racism and bias in our schools and our communities so i wanted you to hear that from me thank you 100 um racism has no place in our schools
154hate has no place in our schools biases no place in our schools bias and hate also have no place in my mind in the community at all period ever and i definitely appreciate the naacp the caucus of african american leaders and your testimony today and to that end and i know we've talked about it a little bit in the in the past um but i i think we should bring it back up and so i'm going to go ahead and move that that the cac look into this on an ongoing basis alongside their other tasks because this is important and we need it to stop second okay we have a motion and a second and it looks like we have a couple comments um miss antoine and then miss hummer miss antoine i have a
155friendly amendment it's definitely an important motion we have talked about this publicly and in closed session but it needs to take a priority so my my friendly amendment would would be that it is prioritized over everything else that the cac is being requested to do at this time i'll accept that okay thank you um miss hummer yes excuse me um i i've been listening to everything they said and i um am especially very interested in mr none and dr dadonay and miss alsop's um suggesting about some a system-wide committee or something to look into these issues greater and so while i'm not opposed to the cac it seems to me that this actually could be something that is broader that and i um for the cac right now that that that is not necessarily the
156best venue to have them be a part of it but for us to look at something on a broader basis so i'm not going to support this today not because i'm against us looking into it it's just i would like to look at everything and consider and find the best avenue that we could have this because as we know it is everyone every time we hear this happening in schools it makes me sick to my stomach yesterday i'm sure many of you saw in the news there was a white supremacist neo-nazi group that put stickers all over annapolis town center we're seeing we turn around and it's everywhere in our community it's so much bigger that's there and so we need the parent voice that we get from cac but we also need the student
157voice in there we need everyone to come together and so i would really like to us to pause on that and say let's make it a priority to find a bigger method that to bring everyone together on this rather than the cac which is is parent volunteers that are coming without necessarily the expertise and guidance and i think they would want to be a part of something larger that helps them to do that work misalis and then miss antoine misalis thank you i actually agree with what ms hummer is saying i want to add so i i agree that i think it's something that needs more focused attention and should be bigger than the cac this is not to say that the cac should not be involved and i think cac should have a presence
158on that committee or whatever group is is investigating this this topic and beyond just representation i could see the cac being an arm of this effort where they in other words they can still go back to the cac as a whole to gather information but i do think that that should fall under a larger and more focused umbrella of some sort of and i don't know what we want to call this if it's a task force or some sort of um organization or group that does have some more um expert representation to to drive this so for that reason i i don't want to vote in favor of putting the entirety of this issue on the cac i would like the cac involved in whatever larger effort we come up with thank you miss ellis
159we have miss antwine with schallheim and then mr live miss antoine the request from dr snowden back in november was that the hayden bias report that was requested in april and presented i think in september be reviewed by the cac and introduce outcomes to help us shape decisions this was in november whatever happened i'm not sure about especially after hearing his testimony i'm a little concerned i'll tell you that but we cannot wait we can have the cac lead that type of task force but the cac is our citizen advisory committee they need to have input from the citizens and they can engage effectively that is their point and purpose i bel i agree miss hammer and miss ellis that we definitely need to involve other arms and i believe the cac should not be
160restricted in that outrage which i understand is has been concerns before so if we are to introduce a bias and hate work group i guess that's what we're calling it my recommendation is that the cac leaves it thank you miss antoine michelle heim and then mr lord i also don't agree i also don't disagree with miss hammer and miss ellis but i'm really tired of kicking the can down the road and down the road and down the road and when and how and what and like oh we need to wait on this or wait on that no no this is this is racism and hate in our schools this negatively impacts our students which are the focus of everything on the daily imagine a student seeing those things in a bathroom stall or elsewhere and
161it it impacting them on the daily so i'm i'm just tired of reading about these in the paper i'm tired of seeing press releases saying that what's that and getting it secondhand or or firsthand or reading the press releases or whatever seeing the the letters that go home to parents this is not a this is not enough and i'm i'm tired of waiting um if we're going to do those things and have it be part of a bigger thing then let's come up with the bigger thing now let's let's go let's do this because i don't want to wait anymore um and uh and i i just don't want to wait the time is now to finish this so um i i wanted to say a couple of things and an input too as we're
162making that if i could i don't have a button obviously but just a couple notes i uh [Music] i appreciate the capital reaching out to me in response to a reach out i believe that came from your organization um i don't believe they ever have enough space to give a full answer so i i i don't believe the capital misrepresented but i think the abbreviation of a phrase to a 15-minute conversation clearly does not depict that and i was disappointed to find that um you did not see my email requesting a meeting to have this discussion interactively so that we can come to a solution and i was hoping to be able to bring it to the dias with a little bit more information so that stated those are things that have happened so please
163accept my apologies um there was no misintent there miss howard's letter did serve i think in the beginning it had specified and my goal was to and what the board had discussed was to get with you to discuss such a work group in lieu i do have concerns about the logistics of the cac the agenda item that michelle heim was hesitant too actually fills four seats and we do have others who are still not continuing to attend so quorum issues and their existing stuff do remain a just it is what it is it's an operational thing i do want to make mention that the cac is undergoing a transformation michelle heim and a couple other members had suggested last spring recognizing that we're transitioning so the role original role and definition of the cac has
164definitely dynamically is in flux and will continue to be in flux through the remainder of the year till fully elected and by that i mean that as appointed members of the board the cac truly was the eyes and ears on behalf of those appointed folks what we're seeing i i would think that my fellow elected members would concur is the desire for the constituents to work interactively with the board members direct so some of our initial feedback over through the fall from the cac has included concerns that the the community is not engaging them as much as they used to ms howard's letter did speak for itself of how of some of the implications that we were hoping to incorporate with it um that stated i i have moved to expedite the cac's nomination so
165that we can fill that today and if my members join me in the motion when we get to that moment in time which will be a little it's definitely going to be after lunch most certainly um i'm not opposed to the cac starting to get started i would like to if the members are accommodating i don't believe dr alato and his staff would have had would have enough time with us formulating maybe the framework today with how those details and resources for deployment so i would suggest maybe that we as a board consider working with designees from the stakeholders who are making the request and who have a clear and evident vested interest uh to work collaboratively perhaps with a group to formulate so in other words you know maybe we could motion to get
166it started and to designate a couple members of the board to work collaboratively with everyone so that we are well so that we can specific with specificity make the request to the cac and make the request to the citizens at large see what stakeholders we want to have at the table um of course as i shared with you mr snowden in meetings i'm always hesitant to do duplicity with the same people over and over again so my only request of my fellow members is to consider that we have some ongoing things that will have outcomes that will include the mental health task force that does include the gap group that does include work that i believe the eac has been working on in collaboration with some of the stakeholders there's a total of about 40
167some individual projects and policies and actions going on there i just want to make sure that what we're going to do is going to be most effective and can address the now as well as as well as build the foundation for the future i agree we we just keep in seeing every single week this is this is definitely out of control and uh as a society and we have an obligation to keep uh to keep ourselves safe so with that in mind i'm willing to support aversion i'm hesitant to work out hash out too many details here not having the relevant resources that are available so i believe that the motion were broad enough to allow for more intimate work to be conducted not here on the diets during in the middle of our business
168meeting i think that uh we should be able to come up with something really good um no but but there's emotion on the table so uh with that stated um uh we're starting to get to repeat um so i'm going to say um is we have a motion right now is the is this an amendment request to the motion okay well then we'll wait till we'll dispel that this is the business at hand is there any other comments to ms scholheim's statement i have miss ellis here and i have miss schallheim i'm going to hold yours back obviously miss ellis so mr alheim um i i will not be comfortable supporting the current motion because of the reasons we already stated um i would offer either and really i think it has to be a
169different motion so i wanted to um so i i guess i want to defer back to you um to see if you would like to alter yeah i'm going to i'm going to go ahead and tweak my emotion a bit that um that the board lead the effort i just want to just make sure that we're part for the benefit of these guys here in the public so are you withdrawing the motion and and reinstating a new one i was amending it but whatever you want well because we already have a second i i just want to make sure if it's a slight change it would be an amendment to it and otherwise we could just redo it too it's your choice um i just want to make sure let me read it first and
170then we'll get to that okay so um that i move that the board lead the effort um with staff and leadership with staff leadership and support so that it affords the full insight and responsibility and involves the stakeholders in eradicating hate and bias i also wanted to say one thing about um your words um i don't want to be mischaracterized i'm i was against putting it on the agenda today because we found out about it today and we have no other information on the people with the cac so i just want to make it clear that not against getting people on the cac so that they have a quorum okay i just want it to be broadcast to the public in advance with the rest of our agenda and i want to know who these
171folks are beyond their name and what what cluster they are and i think that that's fair because i'm not a rubber stamp um i have mr uh stralib and then miss antwine um on this motion thank you madam president i have no doubt and i'm certain that employees of our school system the folks in our audience also have no doubt that we join ms and mr snowden and their goal to completely eradicate not only our community but our country of these heart-wrenching incidents that continue to break our hearts and break us apart i agree with the comments of identify with the comments of miss hummer and ms ellis and also miss corcodell and rather than get all bent out and how to put a motion together i don't see why we need a motion to
172say that this board will dedicate its effort to work with the leaders in our community to make a much more visible effort and public effort to eradicate these actions in our community to identify publicize and eradicate i believe that's something that we can just commit to and then put the working group together and do it i don't see why we have to keep tripping over motions etc we all have the same goal we agree to that goal we should be able to come together and put together a working group or whatever we want to call it to attack this and make progress thank you thank you mr lab michelle heim and ms antoine i think we need a motion because we haven't done that yet because we keep kicking the can down the road and
173these good people keep showing up with the same testimony over and over um and i'm sure that they all have things they'd rather be doing than sitting in our audience for hours waiting to speak so while again i agreed wholeheartedly with miss ellis and miss hummer earlier it's a timing issue for me and the time is now so let's start a working group today and get this started with staff involved miss antoine i have to agree with michelle hein this not only was the request made and the request was an achievable request at the time now it's escalated so emotion is definitely necessary to help us keep track of what's going on we we can shape as we go but right now we need something on the record that says we are we truly have
174a zero tolerance for this and we're ready to go and i think masavi so after hearing the debate i'm i'm understanding that the original motion has been altered so if this is okay with michelle heim i have formulated a a structured version of that motion that i feel will will incorporate all the discussion so i have here that i moved to establish a temporary board-led work group board member-led work group excuse me to address bias and hate in the anne arundel county public school system immediately with further conversation on the structure and goals in another agenda item at a future meeting i'll totally accept that and in lieu of my previous motions plural yes i'm withdrawing mine in favor and i'll second it in favor of the more the better articulated version of my emotion
175thank you okay so um just to clarify we have a withdrawal of the second motion of michelle heim in um and uh replaced with miss um alvi's motion and a second miss antwine did you want to speak to that in particular yes miss alvey thank you for always taking what we have up here and making sense of it um but i have a point of clarification if i could when you say temporary so do we need to introduce a time frame for that for that i would be hesitant to introduce a time frame currently because we don't know what the goals and the structure will be so that's why i just said temporary yes ma'am thank you um i i just one more comment before we go to vote here and that's from myself um
176in that i would suggest that um after it it should miss all these motion passes um that looks pretty probable here um not to preclude anything um that we take a minute to gain consensus to designate our board member today on the dyas so that the public knows who that they can be looking towards as our representative because this would truly be a representative of the board being on uh overseeing that is the way i'm hearing it and so i would just ask that we could do that not in the motion of course um so miss antoine you had another comment on her motion i have another comment on the comment you just made so i understand that we are leading as a board right because we're the one board are you introducing a separate
177member to represent the interest of the board is that what you're introducing i believe that would be appropriate if the motion passes to have a designee because um as much as miss ellis and i would love to get involved in everything i i think it's more appropriate for a member to do to take the lead on this if not and have an alternate i'd like to have as much if if i if i may requested you as a president who does a fine job at appointing if you can take the time once if this passes to let us know whom you're recommending um not not here of course but after you've deliberated please thank you you can handle that in closed session as well absolutely um seeing no more comments do we have we do
178have a motion and an opportunity for the public to speak on that would any members of the public care to speak i know we're right in the middle of public comment yes dr j danny i'm standing before you wearing two hats you can see them right the first is the naacp hat before our president jacqueline also had to lead she affirmed that we are in support of something happening today and we stand ready to support you we are not only as deep as the few members you see here this white woman has the privilege of time i have with me so many parents and educators we stand ready to serve i'm going to put on my other hat as a member of the joint initiative to eliminate the opportunity gap in that group i head
179up the subcommittee on systemic racism a subgrouping we created ourselves among that group among that body from public input and we have been hearing from the public and this is a big part of it we are putting forward a recommendation we will be putting forward a recommendation for a standing body to engage with all elements of the opportunity gap the discipline gap and ongoing public accountability i can affirm as the chair leader whatever administrator of that little subcommittee that i will bring this recommendation to engage on an ongoing basis with hate and bias within aacps to that body thank you very much and i i'm sure the board i i believe i can speak on behalf of the board of how my at the gratitude that we have for you guys's willingness to take your
180time to help us solve these important problems to all of us and and clearly your service on that committee and all the subcommittees that you serve you you wear so many hats not just those two so i just wanted to extend the appreciation everyone in front of me and everyone in this room thank you we have a motion and a second to vote on seeing no more action uh miss howell please call roll miss ellis miss schollheim aye ms antoine aye mr gilliland aye mr leib miss hummer miss alvey miss corkado motion passes 8-0 thank you all very much um we have one more person signed up for public testimony and um that is and and also say if anyone else has not signed up but would like to speak um you can join pilot
181earl smith sir please hi my name is pilot earl smith and i live in shadyside maryland i came here last year a few times to ask to ask you to stop the building of a cell tower in shadyside elementary school i was so happy when you voted to halt the tower project but i recently just found out that the cell phone tower project is still being worked on i was shocked and confused so i felt i needed to come back and remind you about the vote you made kids in shadyside do not want to sell tower at their school i was so proud of my community coming together to help me protect me and all the kids in shadyside i was so happy that when my voice was heard i really trusted that you were
182thinking about the kids you represent i thought you voted against the tower but apparently the vote didn't mean anything when you voted to stop the shadyside cell tower last year i believed you what happened i think your word should mean something your vote should mean something and i think i should be able to trust you can i i just want to say that um you you have a a gift of words and of speaking um that definitely moves a room so thank you so much for staying engaged because you know you're a model example of civics and how the engagement can really go a long way and how one voice from one young gentleman um in one commune one very small community can have a very big impact so thank you for your continued engagement
183i think you have a very bright future ahead of you no matter what you do because those communication skills go a long way in every industry and uh i look forward to continuing to serve you as your district representative thank you very much sir you had something on on his testimony yes okay so i just wanted to say that um we did pass a resolution here and sent that message pretty clearly to the county executive to um to find an alternative location for that cell tower site so that's i believe that's up on our website at least i thought i just saw it but um you know we did we did vote uh to um for the county executive to explore other locations for that cell tower site yes michelle hyman that i believe that
184is tentatively scheduled for the agenda coming up um later this month uh too as per the request on the dies by mr leib and miss hummer um um we have two more um individuals if you could just please this is a refresher to what i said in the oh going on about an hour ago when we started public testimony uh all good i think the public's important of course um can you please state your name for the record i'm thornell jones i joined boy scouts about 70 years ago the first thing we did was um we studied first aid for getting ready for a camper v what i found out in first aid is the first thing you have to do and constantly do is stop the bleeding that's what we have to do without
185racism we have to stop the bleeding we also need to understand what our roles are this community this committee here is a policy board but you have a ceo who has the responsibility for action so dr alato you must continually clearly and definitively state that the schools will not tolerate any racism from teachers staff students and even parents the buck stops at the schools there's no other organization in our society that can keep racism out of our future we have taught unbelievable stereotypes through our schools by the way we teach by our curriculum we've got to stop doing that we have to pick books that depict the real history of the us we have to have all of our teachers understand racism i'm not talking yet about implicit bias i'm talking about racism racism itself
186is not acceptable restorative justice is an option rather than suspension or jail or those things what we do with restorative justice is it's an educational process it's how we learn to understand how things affect one another and it's not the words that i'm talking about but the words do generate action so what happens when people leave school with racism or implicit bias is they impact the work and the health and welfare of everybody in the society so we have this economically racially separated society because of the things we learn and so therefore we have to stop teaching that and everything that we do is teaching so everything that we said is teaching so i'm asking for by the way we are we're doing a good job we're trying to teach implicit bias to the teachers
187but what i keep hearing from teachers is it's it's not uniform some teachers are getting it and some aren't so i'm asking for an audit of every teacher's time spent in professional development and anti-buyers training and by the way who's doing the presenting and how they've been trained thank you very much sir um ms van busker good afternoon board of education lisa van buskirk we're a star school later um wasn't necessarily planning to testify about this issue but then um a new study was released and i saw it um just the other day so um a new michigan state study of 250 asian latino and african-american students in new york city found that a good night's sleep does allison's good beyond helping them stay awake in class adequate sleep can help teens navigate social challenging
188social situations the study which focused on 9th grade students found that adequate sleep allowed students to cope with discrimination and challenges associated with ethnic or racial bias it helped so help them with problem solving more effectively and help seek peer support when faced with hardships findings of this study have important implications said we yang an assistant professor of human development and family studies at msu understanding how sleep helps adolescents negotiate social challenges may consequently elucidate how promoting sleep may improve adolescent adjustments during high school and beyond the study did not treat sleep as a consequence of discrimination yang said however our team did identify the influence of discrimination on same-day sleep in other studies these studies showed that on days when adolescents experienced ethnic or racial discrimination they slept less and also took longer to
189actually fall asleep and so as i've reiterated before sleep and our school start times cross many uh elements of our students stay and this is a very new interesting uh implication that the sleep helps them with their resiliency in dealing with their mental health challenges as we know but now also some racial and discrimination biases thank you thank you ma'am miss antoine you had a comment i i just had a question on dr jones just shared that he understood that not all of our teachers were getting the implicit bias training it was my understanding uh dr alato that that we're not only ensuring that that but this is an ongoing situation so could you help us understand the status i guess of that training i'll be glad to try and help i can't speak for
190um the presenter i i don't know what information he has that i don't but we have we continue to offer our training to our teachers there are certainly teachers that could be absent on a particular day either not feeling well or choose to be absent and so we then have to work to find ways to get them engaged with the professional development they've missed that's ongoing it happens in schools um all the time obviously that we've we've made this a primary importance but the key is time right so when we have a half a day to deliver professional development four times a year and somebody misses it we now have to find time where i can take them either away from children or stay after school or on a saturday to get that professional development
191and that's really hard to do in the schools in any school system and so we need more time for professional development thank you for that and dr jones if i could share as well publicly even the board this year was trained on implicit bias so it is definitely a strong effort within our system and thank you for letting us know thank you one more comment michelle hunt i just have a question for for you um because of the switching of the the different um agenda items i actually had some questions about something that falls under safety and security i didn't want to do it when the chief was here because it didn't relate to him specifically but it still fell under safety and security and i was going off of the the publicly posted um
192agenda so when can i ask those questions it's for staff um well we are uh logistically speaking um i would prefer we use our request for information log but i i would have to defer to dr alato as to the availability of staff at this moment in time um because they had not uh prepared for one so dr arlato i did send these in advance yeah yeah so dr alado i will defer to your judgment on that on as to whether or not you want to i mean we're going to be taking public testimony on 5.01 and 5.04 but there was no presentation is is staff available to address michelle hunt's questions i'm assuming that schallheim is referring when she talks about safety and security to lead testing is that right yes okay so that's
193so that's what she's referring to safety and security and lead testing um and i believe she's got some questions she forwarded us some questions that the team got a chance to review and and we were going to provide answers but if you want to take time now for her to ask those questions i guess that's something you certainly can do okay um as opposed of course to as you said where we get the log questions we respond and then we post them to the board site for everybody to see the responses that's the other option so the agenda did specify when we got to the agenda section and we adopted the agenda it included an omission of of a report to it right um and we are at 1 30. um uh so let's let's
194ask the questions after lunch because in lieu of a presentation i'll ask my questions per that agenda item um okay uh well i was going to break for lunch after we got through those so that we have a person at least one person who has signed up for testimony on there um so is the staff available to answer those questions i mean i i kind of uh i'm not sure if it's our general practice if something is to be put in um in advance like questions that are put in through our private site and then for us to get answers doesn't that have to be done for each board member through that and not in front of everyone if that's not what we decided on earlier with the agenda because wouldn't that be unfair to
195the other board members who don't get to just ask questions but you can't just ask questions in the interest of time and just getting this moving along um if dr arlatto is stuff available at this moment in time or not certainly mr sheknovich will try his best to answer the the sean questions regarding lead testing thank you yeah because i i had actually i was going to request um an actual presentation on on the lead stuff because i had quite a few myself but we can we can start here and we'll get going so we are on item 5.01 uh there is no staff presentation uh because that was chief ultimary and we are now with questions uh starting with ms scholheim on 5.01 yes um yes ma'am um i i first and thank you
196for that president corbin not to waste time but we are here to make decisions in real time publicly it was brought to our attention not in closed session that this was going to happen this change in the agenda that was publicly announced but but as we sat here and i also prepared some questions uh i now understand about efficiencies in time and otherwise but these are these these have to be addressed and we have decisions that have to be made based on that so we i i just would prefer if we don't have discussions on board members asking staff questions publicly during these meetings that's a given and we do not have to go to dr alato and request permission to do that we have to be able to work as a board to get
197our to do our jobs we request recommendations and advice from dr alato for sure but this about do we i i didn't that that didn't go over well in my opinion we have business to take care of the water testing results came out this week we have questions and we do not necessarily it's definitely a courtesy but we do not necessarily have to formulate our questions in advance either or put it in a log we need to be here taking care of business publicly thank you okay all right um so anyway i want to thank you all for um for this i i was able to do this in advance um because i i uh i had time over the weekend to prepare this so and i did set it as a courtesy in advance
198and so i'll just start with the question with with my questions um have the testing protocols in light of the fact that we just got all these new results in have the testing protocols changed between the time the first samples were taken in 2018 and today no no okay and are we ensuring that i assume it's the same contractor from from 2018 to today we utilized two contractors first because we needed to accelerate the work to meet the time frame we had a primary contractor that undertook the bulk of the work we had a second contractor that helped us in the meat area because they could get access to the post and some of the secured sites now that we've gone over that initial first wave we are utilizing only our primary contractor and how
199are we ensuring that the contractor is following the testing protocol consistently at every sample that they're taking are we are they being qcd in any way so to begin with the both the contractor and the personnel are certified trained and audited by mde so not just a lab on the back end doing the analysis but the actual sample takers have to be certified and retrained and audited by msde so that's on the state agency side certainly their contract is with us so staff from the facilities department are also ensuring that to the best of our ability you know they are comporting with the requirements that mde is established not running the tap first and then taking the sample for for example right got it so there are 18 schools that tested this year that had
200results that troubled me so some of these schools had consumable outlets that were tested in 2018 and they were positive again for example annapolis middle had some consumable fixtures tested positive in 2018 then those same fixtures tested negative spring 2019 but then tested positive again in december 2019 and for others consumer consumable outlets that previously were negative are now positive and some examples are corcoran middle cork and middle had a whole new list of fixtures that didn't previously test positive and so the schools that i'm talking about are annapolis middle brooklyn park elementary central elementary central special chesapeake bay middle cochrane middle george fox middle glen burnie park elementary hilltop elementary lindell middle lithicum elementary north county high school oakwood elementary ruth parker easton shadyside elementary sunset elementary tracy's elementary and woodside elementary so can
201you confirm the events that take place when a for just the public when an outlet at any point in time 2018 early 2019 now is what happens when that fixture is found to be positive sure our practice comports with uh state law state law at present is that within 24 hours of becoming aware that the outlet has a lead level test result that exceeds the actionable level as prescribed within state statute that fixture has to be turned off and disabled that fixture then cannot be reactivated for use for consumption until it has been either remediated and retested or retested in both cases you have to have a acceptable test result come back from the laboratory before it can be placed back in service okay so they're not necessarily all turned off and then replaced and
202then retested so our practice has been actually to do that so the the law allows you to simply retest we have not taken that course of action our course of action that we have decided upon is that they are turned off replaced and then retested but that's an internal decision that we've made here at the board thank you and so for example so shadyside elementary had a had a whole list in 2018 and then they have a whole new list today so is that particular school on well or city water shady sides on well okay and so i assume that that water per state law has to be tested regularly as well for a whole variety of different things is lead included in that so there are separate regulations but yes well water has to
203be tested for chlorine iron ph cola forms metals nitrates organics copper lead etc so there's different statutes but yes well water is actually more extensively tested than municipal water systems certainly at the point of source we utilize maryland environmental services mes which is an agent of the state and authorized under mde they both they operate they plant they do the testing of the water products it's logged that's audited by mde the parent agency of or sister agency of mes then separate and apart from that separate and apart from that we have the contractor that we use for our lead testing program at the consumable outlets that does testing at those points as opposed to at the water origination or source which is where mes does their testing okay so a wall school really has two
204different sets of testing protocols for two very different purposes there's a little bit of overlap but both are highly regulated and we comply with all of those provisions under both the water generation side as well as the point of consumption site okay and i appreciate that and i just wanted the public to hear that there are two separate sources of testing that occur um but then it's weird that they were some were negative some are positive that are now negative some are negative and now positive and so are we and i know that school is up there in age are we and i've seen this i've seen this in other places where i've lived where the ph of the source water is such that it reacts with the the piping in the walls and then
205leeches lead into the water this was a systemic problem in mississippi and jackson when i lived there and um so i heard about it i know way too much about this so um are we addressing is there been a ph problem and then are we addressing the the pipes in the in the walls i i'm not sure when that school is slated for updates so and i do understand that it's sort of an older school but can you talk about that so to begin with your your recollection from mississippi is correct uh ph is an influencer there's a correlation between ph levels and the ability of lead to leech however at shady side the ph level is tested and logged daily has to be at a neutral level there's a prescribed band and we have
206not we've not experienced a ph divergence at that school and again you know unlike private domestic wells at my house i don't have a professional well operator that's you know certified and trained and taking tests every day and logging and sending stuff out to labs so ph is a very carefully controlled piece i mean you're only speaking about lead and that's the purpose of your questions yes but on our side corrosiveness of our hvac equipment there's a tremendous potential downside potential to having ph out of calibration in either direction and because of that we very tightly try to control that within a very narrow band of neutral so that we're not um in any way adversely impacting uh people or things okay and so i just have one follow-up question so when we when we
207have when we see these schools that have again that had positives that are now negatives but they have a whole new list of positives are we are we looking into the piping within the walls or in the cases if it's city water are we are we test are we inquiring with with um the city the city of annapolis or the county about ph levels and and all that to see if it's not if it's not our issue our pipes and our schools if it's source water that can contain some of these because i think i mean some of these some of these really scare me you know um and um and since this is you know somewhat a preventable thing like i just want to know how we're addressing so there is an entirely different
208set of regulations on potable municipal water systems the department of public works both the city and the county separate but follow the same regulations manage that if it is a municipal water source issue then 100 out of 100 fixtures in the build in the building would come up high for lead so if it's coming in through the main six inch line into the building and if it was high for lead all hundred fixtures in the building would have a lead issue that is not the case so you know by by that process of deduction a we we have results from dpw we know what they test for they share those results with us that that's not a concern so when you have sporadic you know if you've tested 120 fixtures in a building and six
209have elevated lead levels clearly that speaks to it's not a anne arundel county department of public works issue it's localized to those outlets it is for the reason it's for the reason that it's essentially acknowledged that lead levels will fluctuate over time it could be because of usage or non-usage or stagnant late latency periods for water that's why when the when the bill was crafted it wasn't just a one-time test so there's a test and then there are p periodic retests as established you know within a statute again knowing full well that over the course of time through whatever reasons you know level levels can fluctuate so you know i think the crafters of the state's legislation knew that were well advised and constructed that testing algorithm and that testing out of the rhythm was
210then translated into regulation by the maryland department of the environment explicitly to take that into account as well i definitely appreciate your answers to all these questions thank you for taking them advanced and allowing me to to speak them even though we you didn't have a um because i don't think it would be you that's there wasn't a presentation for for this particular um uh agenda item so anyway thank you for that uh i have i have these in case you need them i printed out all 18 that were sort of troubling some of the had the overlaps and whatnot so if this is of help i will give this to you and thank you for continuing to keep our kids safe by addressing the leaded water problems thank you thank you mr alham is
211there any other questions on item 5.01 from members seeing none any public comment on 5.01 safety and security report seeing no motion item 5.02 bullying prevention report miss jackson good afternoon president corcodel vice president ellis members of the board and dr arlatto for the record i'm monique jackson deputy superintendent for student and school support i am providing an update on bullying prevention as requested as of february 28th we've received 645 bullying forms representing a slight decrease from this time last year at 667. we hope that this trend continues as our students find ways to celebrate similarities and differences we continue to utilize curriculum opportunities to be proactive in reducing bullying harassment and intimidation especially at the elementary level second step emotional learning kits have purchases for the remaining 23 elementary schools have been completed with
212the support of the safe schools grant we are now working to incorporate this program into all of our middle schools the next bullying prevention committee will be held at corcoran middle school on monday march the 9th at 3 15 where we will analyze and discuss how we captured the student voice middle schools under their universe unity day message participated in the kindness cup challenge which was launched on february 10th this kindness campaign serves as a proactive bullying prevention initiative that supports improved school climate and student engagement during the campaign middle school students were challenged to complete 1 000 acts of kindness within their schools the student acts of kindness were recognized by adults and displayed on bulletin boards throughout the school building three middle schools completed the challenge and earned a kindness cup trophy i'd
213like to congratulate this year's kindness trophy cup winners marley middle school two-time kindness cup champion severna park middle school and central middle school trophy presentations will be held this month i would like to challenge everyone to continue to foster a culture of kindness that will increase compassion unity and respect starting with all of us in the room today thank you this concludes the update and i'm available to answer questions that you may have thank you miss jackson miss antoine thank you president corcodell i had a question about in terms of our bullying forms for our younger students who are experiencing bullying who are just learning to read write or otherwise how do they report bullying when it's happening to them so we always encourage our students to report to a trusted adult and so sometimes
214that occurs i'm at home as a youngster and i believe i've been a victim of bullying and i tell my parent and my parent goes online immediately and completes the form sometimes this is what happens most often they see their professional school counselor in the hallway or at lunch and they report it to their professional school counselor as one of the trusted adults their school administrator as such so we don't see students actually completing the forms it's usually an adult on behalf of the student okay and i guess i have a following question if if say i'm a first grader and i don't know how to express that quite quite as much i don't know right it's been a long time since i was first grade but um when they go to these trusted adults
215is the the teacher or whoever they go to how do they know what actions to take after that because would they not have to then understand the whole situation because it's not necessarily coming from the student as i'm being bullied it may be coming in a form of he didn't want to play with me today right so um our teachers are trained to um if they're in a situation where they don't understand um that uh scenario for example um to report it to either the school administration or the counselor as they do with many things but i want to back up to a statement that you made that our students may not understand we do a really great job of developing a counseling curriculum where they actually do understand my own and i talk about
216and i can talk about this from personal experience my own students my own personal children come home especially through their counseling curriculum and second step and that's what we teach them how to articulate their needs through the counseling curriculum and second step excellent thank you thank you thank you see no more questions i'll just do a personal extra shout out to marley severna park and central middle schools for doing an outstanding job i love these challenges and um they take them very seriously oh i know they do and they do an outstanding especially the middle principles well you know when when you see something good the good energy perpetuates just like the unfortunate occurrence of bad when a negative thing happens it it bubbles out and so we need to plant those seeds most certainly
217i think the the kindness in planting the seeds is literal and figurative thank you so much miss jackson for taking time i know you guys put in a lot of work for these reports next is item 5.03 diversity and inclusion miss jackson good afternoon again president corcodel vice president ellis dr alato and members of of the board for the record i am monique jackson deputy superintendent for student and school support i am providing the monthly update on diversity and inclusion on behalf of dr gillens who is training who is currently training our equity leads for the march professional development the incidents of last week of hate and bias are absolutely horrible and must stop i have a unique perspective as a parent alum and community member of one of those schools so for all of
218us that are on staff of the executive team and senior staff this is very important and personal but especially to me as of february the 28th there were 182 incidents of bias motivated behavior or language this number represents an increase from this point last year as bias language was instituted yesterday i was interviewed about the school system's response to these acts and part of my interview was in fact quoted but i'm now taking this opportunity to outline the other points that i did give during that interview our school system takes a strong stance on incidents of hate and bias we have a code of conduct that outlines consequences for acts of hate and bias hate and bias as well as bias language and to be very clear when we identify and verify the student who
219has committed this act they receive consequences as are outlined in the code we don't only react we are very proactive and i'll repeat that as a school system we do not only react we are proactive first we start with our children we start with our earliest learners in elementary school with a research-based systemic approach through counseling lessons rich diverse curriculum diverse media centers that become the hub of teaching and learning and recently introduced second step in restorative practices these activities are designed to afford students the opportunity to interact with peers and develop relationships our middle schoolers engage in advisory lessons and activities restorative practices and co-curricular activities designed to continue the theme of relationship building throughout their middle school years and finally at the high school level we continued to utilize restorative practices co-curricular activities
220and extracurricular activities as well as advisory and curriculum such as the gcc to elevate the student's sense of responsibility in the greater school community that they are a part of our children are often exposed to hate and bias in the community outside of the school day the technology that our children have access to at home gives them greater access to both the good and the bad that's happening in the world around them any child with a smartphone device or smart device probably saw the recent article about the racially insensitive comments directed at black business owners our children are watching and therefore they are mimicking the adults and the world around them and to that end we have community meetings all around the county to facilitate conversation about how to engage communities in the quest to
221eliminate hate and bias and i will repeat our children are watching how we behave and interact with each other and as such our school system participates in and facilitates professional development in january several board members community members and members of the anne arundel county public schools team attended the national school board equity symposium in washington i was honored to be asked by dr alato to be part of that team in attendance and many of us intentionally selected the session titled combating hate in schools offering best practices for school administrators we hoped to hear from national experts on the best way to tackle hate and bias and they offered the following suggestions on how to turn things around empower educators to address issues in their classrooms become upstanders because bystanders contribute to the problem bystanders contribute
222to the problem establish a culture of inclusion build staff capacity and knowledge use inclusive language and set a positive tone create and enforce policies and procedures establish a reporting system and engage the community so at the end of the session i was given the opportunity or rather i took the opportunity to interact with these national experts i told them about our district and what we were doing and that we essentially met all of the criteria that i outlined above and so i asked them i said what more can we do or is the answer do we need to do something different and their response was to simply continue what you are doing but to engage the community in and with that effort the office of equity and accelerated student achievement continues to be intentional in
223their efforts in assisting schools in eliminating all gaps and promoting inclusion i just spoke about dr gillen's and her team as they are giving professional development to the equity leads for the march 24th professional development modules that will include implicit bias part 3 which indicates that there have been an implicit bias part one and two participants will identify cognitive biases and their impact on the classroom describe the brain science behind the way humans make decisions and plan for and ensure decisions are made with the best interest of students culturally responsive teaching and the brain part three participants will recognize their own cultural reference points and explore strategies to widen our lens and manage our responses to students and trauma investigate invested classrooms part three where participants will be able to identify characteristics of trauma trauma-invested
224practices identify ways to create a culture of safety for students and adults and to understand how systems of meaning can impact students outcome student outcomes and identify student need versus student behavior and ways to respond appropriately and finally planning practices programs and school-based decisions through the equity lens which was mentioned in public testimony today participants will explore the equity lens and literacy frameworks to develop equitable programs practices and decisions within our schools a survey will be provided to all staff to complete to inform the office of equity and accelerated student achievement next steps for next year's early dismissal equity professional development so as you can see our school system response and proactive measures are more than sending a letter and although that too is very important thank you this concludes the update and i am
225available to answer any questions that you may have thank you miss jackson michelle heimden miss antoine heim i just wanted to thank you as always for the work that you do and you know we should chat also behind the scenes and some of these things and i appreciate everything you do every day everything your team does every day everything that maisha gillen's dr gillens does every day and i also recognize that this that this problem in our schools is the result of decades and a very long history in maryland a very long history in the united states and it cannot be corrected overnight and so where the board can and has helped with that effort i don't can't speak for the board but i'm always willing to to do whatever is required to help eradicate
226hate in our schools and and i just wanted to to um echo what you were saying so that the the public hears that this problem is is uh long in the making and also takes more than a you know 30 minutes that come to resolve so i appreciate your work every day thank you thank you um ms antoine miss jackson i definitely appreciate that you took the time to expound upon what was shared in the papers concerning hate and bias and the school's position on it i also appreciated what you had to say in the paper as well i had a question about you mentioned throughout your what you just shared with us that there are actions all ongoing actions and that some of the requests that came in today we're already doing would it
227be by well i guess i have to turn to dr alato doctor would it be possible once we do get some of the recommendations from the public to um for you all to identify what we're already doing so that we won't duplicate efforts yes ma'am but many of our public partners meet regularly with mrs jackson and dr gillens in a number of different formats including the naacp representation from the caucus and others um so they're they're well aware of the work that that is ongoing in fact they're they continue to contribute and help us do that work better making suggestions so um we will of course always want to enter we don't want to duplicate we want to strengthen what we're doing and we want to implement what we're not doing right and so we'll
228always take the opportunity to share the work that we are doing okay thank you thank you thank you for that see no more questions do we have any testimony on item 5.03 seeing no movement from the audience item 5.04 [Music] as previously stated we will be having a workshop that i encourage um those of education minds to attend and all member all people are invited to attend we do not hear public testimony that is that will be an opportunity for us to get dig deep with the consultant and the staff on transportation are there any questions of the board at this time seeing none we do have one person signed up for comment ms van buskirk good afternoon board of education lisa van buskirk start school later anne arundel county very much looking forward to
229the discussion next week with prismatic and so my question is because i don't think it was clear on the press release like the october 2015 school start time workshop will this one be recorded and broadcast um so you can clarify that later um but my testimony today is um today i'm going to talk about another form of high school transportations and that's students driving themselves and i'd like to think back to february 20th it's 1 30 am and you just finished a marathon obsession discussions of fy 2020 one your brain hurts like you just finished chemistry physics biology homework are wrapped in in a history lesson and you start to drive home it's dark lighting isn't great but at least there aren't too many cars on the road at the time of night now did
230you wake up at 6 00 a.m and drive to work on about about four hours of sleep or less how much caffeine did you drink that night before and then that morning think about it doing that again and again and again like 79 percent of aacps students who don't get eight hours of sleep research following fairfax county's 50-minute delay from 728-10 in high school start times continues to be calculated last month the study published online as an accepted paper in the journal of clinical sleep medicine found that the later stool start times were associated with a significant drop in vehicle accidents involving teen drivers results showed that the crash rate in 16 to 18 year old licensed drivers decreased significantly significantly from 31.63 to 29.59 accidents per 1000 drivers over delayed start time in contrast
231the teen crash rate remains steady throughout the rest of the state and i quote accidental injuries including motor vehicle crashes are the number one cause of death of adolescents in the u.s and anything we can do to mitigate that risk should be considered said senior study author dr judy owens professor of neurology at harvard medical school and director of sleep medicine at boston children's hospital we know from independent data sources that after a change in school start time students get more sleep which leads to multiple benefits not just for individuals but also in terms of huge economic implications teenagers who get more sleep are less likely to make poor decisions such as not wearing a seatbelt or engaged in distracted driving explained owens one of the potential mechanisms for this reduction in car crashes is
232a decrease in behaviors that are related to risk taking before she moved to boston dr judy owens testified before this board of education in 2013 or 2014 before my time she is the lead officer of the 2014 american academy of pediatrics recommendations and it was her colleague and fellow author dr wolfson who testified before you in december and also mentioned the drowsy driving implications dr owen's comparison of car accident matches those of comparing adjacent virginia counties virginia beach versus chesapeake and henrico versus chestfield with both early and late start times and other school systems across the country across the country that have found fewer teen driving accidents with later school start times would your driving have been better on february 20th if you had had more sleep and could wake up even an hour or
233two hours later please keep that in mind with your discussions next week with the prismatic thank you thank you miss bamba members kirk um we are going to um take a break for lunch and enter into closed session during that time our oh yes i'm sorry i i didn't see that um michelle heim and then so i guess this question is for dr alato will next week's um workshop be either audio taped or uh videotaped and streamlined or any combination of those i don't know okay can we find out please i will talk with the team but the answer is i don't know okay thank you sir miss ellis thank you madam president i move that the board go into closed session to consult with council to obtain legal advice on a legal matter okay
234we have a motion in a second are we in consent okay we have consensus we will be back in 20 about approximately 20 30 minutes tops [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] fans [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] back into session i want to thank the one person nobody's really here okay [Music] next item if i could please have attention of everyone we are officially in lord um let's think of the poor audio people out there trying to yes we do um item number 6.01 public address system replacement at point pleasant annex item 6.02 psychiatric services and item 6.03 scoreboard and mark bundle
235second we got a motion to bundle in a second any comment okay no comment do we have consensus yes having consensus okay um do we have a motion or uh concerning our bundled items how about my recommendation oh oh i'm sorry i'm sorry and then you can motion on the recommendation okay dr alato your recommendation please thank you madam president i recommend the board of education um uh approve i'm sorry i'm looking at award the contract says list on today's one agenda point zero two and six point zero three so move second we have a motion in a second seeing no comments any public comments on those items seeing no public comments miss hal please call roll mr gilliland aye mr leib miss hummer miss alvey and miss corcodale aye motion passes five zero okay
236next item is item 7.01 and item.7.02 dr arlatto yes ma'am regarding 7.01 administrative personnel appointments i'm recommending the person to listen in the attach sheets be promoted and or appointed we have a motion in a second any comments on personnel seeing none no public seeing no public testimony as hell please call roll on item 7.01 person administrative personnel appointments ms schoelheim aye ms antoine aye mr gillian aye mr leib aye ms hammer miss elvi and miss corkedale aye motion passes 7-0 next item is item 7.02 personnel dr alato yes ma'am i recommend board approval of the actions as stipulated on the attached sheets [Music] we have a motion in a second any comments seeing no comments any public testimony seeing no public testimony ms hall please call roll miss schollheim we're on seven miss antwine
237aye mr gillen aye mr leib miss hummer miss alvey and miss corcodale could you please call miss ellis please i apologize miss ellis motion passes 8-0 thank you next item is item 7.03 the agenda preparation and distribution second reading miss ortiz good afternoon oh i got the short chair again okay i hate the short chair i'll do it when the cameras knock on me okay so uh 7.03 is policy bca board agenda preparation and distribution it went on a 30-day public comment period and we received no public comments thank you very much i'm not seeing any requests for questions i do have one or two okay i have one okay miss antoine uh dr alado with our new app would that be a source for the public to get this agenda the new aacps app
238application and cell phone i don't know i have to find out okay and the reason i'm asking is because i wanted to be able to amend it to this to include the application if if it wasn't but i didn't know that oh good um so i just didn't know how far along we were in the development of the app you're taller than me sorry i was confirming mr burns what's the question application as well as a current access for the agenda but i didn't know if the app was so there's a board of education app on the app where you can access the same web page that you can on our website so you can get to the agenda if that's your question it's already on the app but there's not there's not a board
239agenda button if that's your question they can access it on the app via the website so for so they would uh so the end user would have to go maybe right right similar to that yes more conveniently they can just go to the site yeah i have to look and see we have some conversations upstairs about whether that's possible maybe have those conversations sure seeing no more questions do we have any testimony from the public seeing no motion thank you very much miss ortiz item 7.04 is up for first reader again the board member ethics and professional standards just as a point of history on this matter if you recall there was quite a bit of discussion and before we went through the policy like we traditionally do and afford courtesy to staff we did
240have a number of motions lastly of which included a reprimand back to the policy committee that was adopted and they have since reviewed it with that being stated um usually the orig what the originators or originator originators do get a chance to speak in some point in the beginning of of that and mr gilliland who had joined me with this did not have that opportunity so um i'm going to provide him with that as the intro um as the first reader uh the this afternoon um mr live would like to walk through since this was a unique revert back along with a couple of his members and then miss ortiz is going to give an overview not read it line by line or anywhere near that but given a better understanding so that we have
241a good framework and then we will open it up to discussion motions and amendments as such so that all of our core base information is clearly stated before we move on to action so with that stated mr gilliland thank you madam the president to say a few words and i just want to certainly say thank you to the board for i what i believe was a lively discussion last month on on the policy and then um i would be remiss if i did not say thank you to ms ortiz for for all of her work and effort um multiple times and um i'll just say this is uh something that uh became near and dear to me uh almost a year ago i would say it was late spring last year when we um were
242passing our financial disclosure policy and uh for obvious reasons we we passed that uh unanimously and and certainly that is an essential policy for the board to have um what i noticed at that time and i know i made a comment from from the diocese that there were aspects of that policy that did not include some of the other ethical aspects for forgive me for using the word multiple times so there were some gaps and and i think through some conversations we we stepped back from the financial aspect uh and and delve more deeply into the non-financial ethical components that i think morphed into a policy that that was before us last month and then you know with some adjustments um i believe under mr leib's leadership and and certainly with mr ortiz's support i
243think has has come back to us i i do believe that there are going to be some some amendments today that that may fine-tune um or or at least bring some clarity to to what we have before us but why this became more important to me um you know we made the the request um i think was just as mrs crocodill became vice president last summer and and and we worked on this throughout the fall on and off my concern was and and i don't mean to single out institutions i i think this stuff happens in in so many places not just in maryland but but throughout the country we had a series of resignations from the maryland general assembly some were resignations previously there had been you know some some discipline occurring in the
244general assembly and i thought what better time than to have the board fine-tune its ethics um and as this was coming to fruition we had additional resignations from the maryland general assembly for some poor judgment some poor ethical behavior and i think because of that and again i'm not saying that anything unethical has happened here it has not to my knowledge and this is not singling yet to my knowledge but this is not singling out any board member but it's protecting the board protecting our stakeholders our students our teachers uh taxpayers in the community at large should there be a violation of ethics and and i think as we'll see in some of the definitions potential are some of the amendments today potentially adding to the definitions or bringing clarity to definitions that i think
245leaves no doubt in the people's minds that this board takes its ethical responsibility seriously and i i think ethical behavior starts at the top of an organization so here we are today uh madam president i thank you for for bringing this to the table thank you mr gilliland mr live thank you madam president prior to ms ortiz reviewing revised policy board member ethics and professional standards i'd like to extend my personal and professional thank you for the dedicated efforts of the policy committee to bring this draft of policy bk bravo kilo in the navy terms back to the board for first reader board members candace antoine ritter alvi julie hummer staff members jeanette of course bob mosier walter fedorwicz darren burns nikki burns diane howe and cac rep julia howells together with a great deal
246of discussion we reviewed 41 recommendations from board members staff members and interested citizens to delete add or modify the initial draft of this policy that was previously presented to the board for first reading on january 22nd i'd like to make it perfectly clear that while all all board member recommendations were reviewed and discussed not all reached a level of concurrence by the committee and therefore not all are included in the policy before you however that being the case the committee's work resulted in unanimous vote to move the policy to first reader and bring it before the board today again many heartfelt thanks to my fellow committee members for their dedicated efforts in bringing this policy forward i don't know of any committee members that have something they'd like to add um this is just commenting
247on the policy work we'll get to the policy right so i would i would beg to to give him a thought piece or time part yes madam president gotcha uh i want to commend you mr life for facilitating something that is can be extremely tedious something that can be extremely controversial as well as uh introduce dissension between members the facilitation that you did was beautiful it was timely and it allowed consensus so thank you for that thank you ms hummer did you have something on the policy committee yes yes just real quick so again um there was very in-depth discussion on this on all areas and enormous input from everyone i particularly along with miss ortiz i would particularly like to think india oaks who is um in her and her she was here earlier
248but in her role in the public she is a compliance officer and so she has experience with this and she gave us some very valuable input and i believe many we took some of her recommendations and i think that makes this policy significantly stronger so i want to thank her for all of her work and suggestions that she put into this as well thank you miss hummer miss alvi so i'll just like to echo the remarks of my policy committee colleagues but to add i want to express the importance of this policy um and the reason why i feel that we took sufficient time to really review it and make sure that everything was to the best that it could be before it came came to this diocese i mean particularly for students how important
249it is as mr gillan said to for us as board members to hold ourselves to this very high ethical standard because there are younger students out there who are watching this work and watching what we do and hope to have this position one day and the way that we carry ourselves makes a huge impact on that so i just wanted to add those words thank you very much with that stated uh miss ortiz if you could please just give us a uh sort of that uh top uh two second overview sort of overview sure i think a lot of what i was going to say has already been said so i will not be repetitive but i just wanted to point out that the policy encompasses already existing obligations of board members and so it's
250just in one policy so that we have one frame of reference and is in accordance a portion of it with state public ethics law that's the ethics piece of it which is the third section there's some professional standards so i reorganized it to kind of be very clear as to what's aligned with the state public ethics law versus just professional standards and uh thank you to miss antwine because she suggested that we update the um the title of the policy to be more reflective of what it has inside of it and so we have things that are in the handbook that board members already receive and sign to you know follow and then we have things that are aligned professional standards in according with the administration of the school system that in accordance with state
251law and so a lot of this is is aligned with state law and some of it with your handbook and again a thank you to mrs oakes because she did provide some really good feedback that i think helped to bolster and give more teeth to the policy and so with that one other thing i you know i looked at various sources obviously the state public ethics law was the primary source document and state ethics commission but also the state board of education so some of our language comes directly from the state board of education governance manual right and so for consistencies purposes so with that i'll leave it at that and i'd be happy to answer any questions thank you very much miss ortiz and i just before we get started i don't have specific
252amendments or comments to any one section i've reviewed it and if i do have additional i'll definitely share that out with you in advance um but um i just do want to personally thank you guys for this and as mr gillan had pointed out you know i too had a moment it was different and his moment in the spring mine goes back to my my campaign um when i was working on an issue actually with the one of the capital gazette uh reporters and had identified that would be nice if it would all be put together and so i want to thank our former president mr gilliland for allowing me the opportunity to team up with him to recognize something that i think was definitely worthy of this board's consideration so with that stated we
253have miss ellis and then miss schalke miscellas thank you first i can't help but chime in and thank everyone for your hard work on this um i i had concerns and was a bit uncomfortable with the original um presentation of this policy but um that's not that's not to be disparaging in any way but i what i my point is i am so appreciative particularly mr leib of of hearing concerns and and um and taking a real leadership role in um in moving us forward so i i greatly appreciate that and um that being said i have read through the policy i have a couple things to either ask or point out but but well i'll just get started so to reiterate um miss ortiz this is not new as far as any law or
254code we're already required to follow with board members um so it's intended to create transparency and acknowledge the existing law as this policy is a collection of existing law code and established rules for board members i wonder if we could reference the existing law or code that anything in here is coming from in the policy and i'm sorry if i've missed it but and um that's so that the policy remains compliant is not and is not deemed by anyone to be all-inclusive of the standards to which this body is held so in your purpose um i reference the state public ethics law in there and so that's the ethics portion of the of the policy which is in accordance with the law and then there's other sections where we specifically say in accordance with state
255law okay i i guess i was thinking um it would be helpful to anyone um reading this to have okay i'll i'll move in sort of to the next part of this that i to get perspective i thought okay let me see what the county council has and um and when i went to their website i saw um the only thing they referenced is the state law and then the duties of the county ethics commission so i don't know if do they have an actual code okay yeah i couldn't find it somewhere in all of my so yeah i mean they have it in code and so some of the language that's helpful because it's a line so right so we have the state public ethics laws and so um local bodies and state and
256local boards of education are required to have policies and regulations in place that align with the state public ethics law and so what you'll find is so this is anne arundel county just on conflict of interest and they identify all of their local ordnance codes that deal with specific issues that you know we also address here so all of the language is very aligned there are little tweaks here and there because obviously as a state official versus a legislator versus a county official versus a board member there will be differences in roles and responsibilities so those specific things are tweaked but essentially it's all aligned and ms crocodile had shared this little public ethics law booklet that the county used to hand out to employees so yeah between the county and then i have you
257know the state public ethics law and the state ethics commission breaks it down um further with specific guidance and as mr gilliland mentioned so our policy baf which is ethics and conflict of interest already talks about use of prestige and conflict of interest but it's almost like in passing because it the financial aspect really dominates that policy however the state ethics commission which is the state body who has oversight over ethics for the entire state including for local bodies they have a bunch of documentation and resource and guidance and language and they really spell out what is a conflict or what are common conflicts of interest what are common use of prestige issues that may come up because you know people may have questions and because the state regulations you know don't uh aren't as
258fleshed out so they really break it down they have a whole slew of opinions legal opinions on these matters as well and so that's where that language came from okay thank you so um so i i want to make it uh clear first of all that um i am fully in favor of transparency and accountability for board members i just want to be careful that that we don't have any language that is subjective and sets up a scenario that encourages the policing of fellow board members so that's where i think a few of us really took pause a few meetings ago so going back when i was on the county council website looking for their code again they um they quoted state law or reference state law and had the actual public ethics law article
2597 section 1 to 102 or something like that i would like to see anything that is in this policy um that comes directly from other law or code or um that it's specifically referenced i think it's helpful so you want a line by line reference of the law if it could be uh perhaps a no not a not a line by i don't want the law quoted i want it i want the the i want it named the law so it is it's in the purpose it's the state public ethics law if you google it it'll come up so the reason why we don't put code we've kind of stayed away from um stylistically from putting specific sections of the laws because they change and so what happens is that then we would be not
260you know would be something incorrect so the state public ethics law in maryland is very i mean well known for at least those of us that have been doing this work um you know legislative work and ethics work and so it's one of the strong probably the strongest strongest public ethics law in the country if not one of them so literally a google search will take you right there so that's the that's the name of it the state public ethics law and so that's how it's referenced well my concern is if that law if your concern is that we don't be too specific because it could change the wording that's in here is specifically from that law so if it does change we would change it that's my job is to right now we're in
261the middle of session it's crazy lots of bills so whether it's me or someone in the future that would be their responsibility to be keeping track of that and actually there are lots of ethics laws right now being considered by the general assembly that i'm tracking that i haven't uh don't necessarily may not impact us but depends on whether or not they get amended and so then as i do with any law in any of our policies so the vast majority of our policies are in accordance with state law pursuant to state law and so anytime the law changes we then change the policy same with state regulations so state regulations have been changing quite a bit lately and so we have to update them and so that's part of one of my many responsibilities
262is to stay on top of that and to ensure that we're aligned and that we're updating our policies and regulations to be compliant with state law and regulations okay and then a couple other things looking at section c um line b you tell me page number um page two of five second line on the page um it reads that could render the board member bias and unable to prioritize the interests of the school system i much prefer the wording the interests of the student staff and other stakeholders i'm concerned that i don't see the the board as here to prioritize the needs of the system it's the people and that's why we're here to make the system work for the people um that's what the rep school system i mean that's a stylistic thing when
263we say school system that's what we mean we don't just mean like central office or just stuff so that's right that's just i'm worried you don't mean just syndrome yeah that's just a style thing right um to me it's yeah i don't i don't know how other i'm i'm going to throw things out there right now and then i'm happy to wait for a second reading and we actually have other language i mean if there's consensus around something like that there's other language already in here that spells it out you know aacps students staff community parents guardians so if that's that would be a technical type change that i could do if there was consensus that you wanted to be more specific on that because we do have language yeah so um yeah so yeah
264under position um line four it says the best interest of students public education and aacps as a whole i just prefer that wording than what we have up in b that's technical yeah that's a technical change and i can just add that fabulous okay thank you all very much okay um and then the bottom of that page last item um i'm sorry i'm not even sure what i'm about to say i'm reading my note right now um oh so i agree with the spirit of this statement but i'm not sure how how it would be fairly enforced keep the discussions and board meetings focused on the critical issues of governance in order to have public sessions conducted in an efficient professional and business-like manner that's certainly my my goal my hope but i i don't
265know how i mean the last item so that language just as background so um was recommended by miss lv to have some similar language the state board has language um and so what we had discussed was you know they have the i kind of merged two different statements on the state board governance manual because so one part of this is the state board has refrained from comments concerning family members personal philosophy personal experiences in order to have public sessions conducted in a professional and business-like manner and so we talked about that and we talked about how you know the board meetings really shouldn't be about people talking about their personal things all the time but there will be times where that's appropriate and so we the policy committee members thought that they liked the second
266half of that statement but not the first half would be too restrictive and unrealistic because whether you're talking about you know community events or miss albee for example she mentioned her experience as a student member of the board and things of that nature that it would be hard to really come fully comply with that and so what we did is we added the other language from the state board where it talks about really focusing the meetings on the issues of governance and so merging that to really you know the point there was to ensure that the meetings are you know business-like and moving as efficiently as possible so that's where that language came from okay so i understand where it came from i i still have the same concern which is um how do so
267and it goes back to my statement that i don't want board members sort of policing each other that it's very subjective as to critical issues of governance um as far as what's being talked about in a meeting um i i i'm very comfortable and i think we all have had conversations with each other hey we need to get better at this and fully agree but to put it in a policy i'm a little concerned with the wording that it's a bit subjective so i think the conversation was you know it's a state board language they manage to uh run their meetings effectively and are able to you know comply with it and so i think folks were comfortable with that with the with the language and the intention again i'm not i'm not taking any
268hard stand on anything today i'll wait until second reader to really be concerned about amendments but um i'm floating things out there because i want people to think about this and then page three of five i item 11 third line i'm sure this comes from somewhere so maybe i'm wrong to be uncomfortable with this i agree with the statement but i'm it almost it almost could imply that board members are communicating and conducting business in other words i'm concerned about oma you know um yeah so that's not so i failed to mention this uh previously but board council was also involved in reviewing this and provided feedback and he didn't have any concerns with that or didn't raise any concerns i should say with me with that language and so that language is and i
269believe in your handbook and the superintendent's contract in some way uh some manner so i just i've heard a lot from the public that at least in the past a lot of members of the public have been concerned that that the board is conducting business and making decisions um and things out here are just a formality and i just want to make sure it's free yeah i think the word collaborate and conducting business are two very different have different meanings to them and that was well accepted and as a body we can't collaborate behind like we can't we can't sure you can so with the budget for example a member submitted all of their budget amendments in advance and saw them in advance so that's not conducting business there wasn't discussion discussion there were no
270there was no um you know opinions or you know or or any actions being taken it was just sort of like providing that information and everybody had that information in advance to kind of prepare so i mean that would be a good example i think of collaborating okay um and then two more things no one more thing no actually too sorry um page four of five um and forgive me mr grant and if i'm overstepping but i believe this is where you had made a recommendation that several of us agreed to um three three iii um engage in any conductor activity that would pair a board members impartiality or independence of judgment and carrying out and i i thought we tried to narrow this to quasi-judicial responsibilities because the concern that it it implies that
271a board member cannot have feelings or an opinion on something and even having in the past taken action on that um i mean you know several of us um ran on a platform we were very clear about how we feel about a certain issue and we want to make sure that again i keep going back to i don't want misinterpretation and having board members policing each other and and you know someone claiming well you met with this person 18 months ago so you're in you're partial you know that kind of thing right so that language was amended a little bit because before some folks were having concern with the word advocate in there although that would still apply but we just changed the wording um and so the whole part about impartiality or independence comes
272from state ethics and so there was conversation and we did consider that amendment to just keep it as quasi judicial and the policy committee decided to keep it as the full authority of the board and for example your legislative function of of adopting policies right you shouldn't be adopting policies that could result in a personal financial benefit or personal benefit to you so that's your legislative function right right and that would be in violation of state ethics law with regards to the executive function so for example a board member should not be contacting school staff to enter into a contract with a particular vendor that's going to benefit that board members child your children's school on a particular issue and then go in then if that contract comes before you as a board member and
273you're voting on it right so that would be um a huge conflict so on the executive side procurement matters are big issues you guys have contracts that you that you vote upon regularly you know i'd say every meeting and things of that nature and so that would be the the executive function of the board and so that's why after discussion the policy committee thought that it was wanted to make sure that all of that because there are different scenarios that can come up in the different functions i think the quasi-judicial one is the most obvious one when it comes to appeals but then you have a lot of other functions and decisions that the board makes in the legislative and on the executive piece which may not be as often as the quasi-judicial piece or
274as obvious but certainly can come up and so then the decision was to keep all of that just to make sure we're covering our bases okay and i i appreciate that like i agree with all of those reasons i'm i just have some concerns about the interpretation of the policy sometime in the future um so that's why i'm bringing out my concerns and finally and this is kind of a this is a side note but to me it's important to mention because this i i don't have a concern with it in the policy but uh the mention of the board ethics panel i actually uh had to look that up because i don't know who's on it and you know so i saw it on our website but there's there's no there's no information for
275the public on how that panel is um selected so if you look at policy baf that the board recently reviewed and passed there's a whole section on the board ethics since we i mean we have like biographies of the people on there it would be good i'm again i'm pretty sure the county council has something about how anyway i think it'd be great on our website to have yeah yeah i would say i'm happy to work with you and get us connected with staff to figure out how to modernize our ethics panel interface with the public um because that was actually one of my my driving forces too thank you do you have anything else thank you very much okay next we have michalheim and then miss antoine michelle hunt okay thank you so um
276first i want to thank miss ortiz and her staff as well i don't think her staff get mentioned enough and i know that they do a lot of hard work too mr live the policy committee for taking this very important policy back and having another crack at it and i very much appreciate your efforts in your consideration of all of our suggested edits i also don't want to be misunderstood in any way all of us must always hold ourselves to the highest standard i do however have several amendments i'm going to be presenting today to this draft policy is written i asked my colleagues to think about each amendment as well as this and current this current and future boards including the student voice which will soon be and all of us will except for
277the well the student by students but all of us um sitting up here will soon be um elected by uh voters of this county and so just be patient with me and my explanation of each of my edits at least three of these were previously mentioned by mr granny during the february 5th meeting and i agreed with all of them uh then and i will be motioning for each if he doesn't bring them up himself all right so let's hop in um so i move to specifically define in section c the phrase improper influence so because it's mentioned in the purpose and then at least twice in the issue so i think it's important to have a um a specific definition of that so that is a first motion it is second okay and so
278like i said this text occurs in section a and then in section b three and before and so our policies must always be you know specific of course and well-defined to avoid misinterpretation and also and most importantly to ensure consistent enforcement some of our current and future board members may not have a government background or a political background so mr live i took your advice after i spoke with you and reached out to mr gilliland and we spoke for an hour about this phrase improper influence or even the appearance of improper influence as it is what it means for government officials and states and state employees and i would still honestly be scratching my head about what it is and what it is not if i didn't reach out to my colleague who's a state
279employee and also has been an elected official and therefore the subject of state ethics laws in both capacities and as a board member so at a minimum we must the phrase and proper influence must be defined so that all current and future board members know what it is and is not an example of improper influence as defined in the maryland state i think so it would include such things as like i don't know receiving a discount on a good or service for voting a particular way that would be improper but improper influence is not listening to constituents students community groups and local and state elected officials or being a member of community groups and nonprofit organizations and so like i said i really want us to consider the strongly consider defining that in the definitions
280section because we're not talking about the financial since these are the non-financial ethical uh components um i think it's really important that we know that so we don't uh use so this phrase can't be used against current or future board members including our student member and so i'm just going to read an example so let's just take for example the craft and redistricting so i think we can all agree that that was a stressful time for several of us that was our first experience with redistricting at least as board members there were passionate voices on both sides of route 3 and most of us met with community groups and members of the community on both sides i assumed we all listened to everyone and we that we talked to and we took their points of
281view and a consideration when making our decisions and if the crosston redistricting was in your district or directly affected your district you were listening to your voters your people were any of us improperly influenced or have the appearance of improper influence of course not we were listening to our constituents because that is part of our job and our constituents were participating in the democratic process and lobbying for what they want and then once our minds were made up a lot of us talk to each other because that's what typically happens when a vote is forthcoming but what if a member or members disagreed with another member or members about the crafting redistricting could they then accuse another member being improperly influenced or having the appearance of improper influence because they just because they met with
282voters and listened to their concerns so my fear is that the phrase and question if kept undefined can be applied to any member for any reason at any time and our important part of our job is listening to our constituents listening to all sides of an argument informs our decisions on everything from voting on redistricting to voting on new courses such as the gcc and every elected you know person in this county state and nation ran on a platform and this platform likely included goals the candidate would like to accomplish if elected does that then mean that every member of the board now and in the future could be accused of improper influence if other members simply don't agree with another member's educational philosophy or stance on an issue and so um i just asked
283that we and this certainly goes uh for the student as well because they they also run on on platforms and uh and then um and then try to execute those if they are successful in becoming the um then you know a student member and so um we just need to properly define it and so that's where i'll leave that first amendment but like i said in the beginning i have i have several amendments that's the first one okay so um mr granted um and then ms antoine would entertain a friendly amendment i i agree with what she's saying and um i mean not it's the end all and be all but i have practiced law for 22 years i've never heard the term improper influence in any it's all over state ethics commission guidance and
284language and the state board of education uses it throughout as well then there should be a definition of it they don't define it but i would say that conflict of interest is defined and so improper influence would result in a conflict of interest the district that i was going to say is that would miss shanghai be open to using the term impropriety i think that's a much clearer term than improper influence i think that influence brings into it the kind of stuff that you're talking about taking into account our role as advocates and elected officials or appointed officials nonetheless we all represent whether we're elected appointed we all represent constituents and i do think the influence kind of makes it a little murky there whereas if it said to help help avoid impropriety or even
285the appearance of impropriety i think that's a much clearer demarcation of basically misconduct okay i definitely accept that so long as we change the wording in every place where it says influence and influence to impropriety and take out the word improper right that that would be my suggestion yeah that we replace globally improper influence with impropriety right and then and then define it in section c because i i think is as left unchecked undefined someone could come to someone else just because they disagree with that person and then say well you were improperly influenced because you had a conversation with xyz i don't have a government background um so like i said if i hadn't talked to my colleague to get educated on this i still wouldn't know what it is so you know i
286think we should include it in the definitions thanks for that anything else mr grandma okay um miss antwine um on on the motion um at hand a mine is actually yeah that's why i was saying that because i know that you had already controlled it off until she's finished yeah why don't i we'll do that i'll turn you right back on as soon as we're appreciated okay um moving along we have um i do have a question on on ms scholheim's um thing if we were to so improper influence it it does sound like you know there is a vaguety there but if the state law is using it the consequence of replacing that does that nullify the impact of the replication of it throughout so my only concern with defining improper influence when the
287state law doesn't define it is that we're making up a definition that's not in state law and this the state ethics policy is in state law you know i have the state ethics guidelines here and it literally says to avoid improper influence or even the appearance of improper influence and so that's my hesitation in defining something that the state hasn't defined and we're making up our own definition i think conflict of interest really covers it um and i would just say that impropriety impropriety is not quite the same i don't think as improper influence because the whole point of the state ethics law is to deal exactly with that the influence the improper influence of elected officials state officials local officials from you know interest groups and things of that nature and that's why it
288was passed and that's why it's so uh stringent and so you know i understand that the concern with subjectivity or the appearance of subjectivity but i always hesitate for us to define something that the law hasn't defined if we're basing it on the law that would be my only comment thank you so yeah i know you took it from state ethics law you took it from page nine and that section talked about improper influence in the form of a public official or state employees financial affairs in fact the whole sentence refers to the state business and reads quote is evident that the people's confidence and trust are eroded when the conduct of the state's business is subject to improper influence or even the appearance of improper influence so the subject of the sentence is states
289business the state ethics law is a 156-page document plenty with plenty of context around phrases such as that i believe this phrase was taken out and now is applied to a a policy that is not about is about the non-financial ethics components and so we are taking it out where it's talking about financial dealings and then we're putting it in here to talk about non-financial ethical components and so it is subjective in my view so we either need to define it and i believe we can under that i even came up with a with the definition that i will definitely speak to later if i'm if this goes through or we need to strike it because that sentence was just fine in the purpose without without the and you know we could just say the
290board recognizes that in accordance with state public's ethics laws this policy will help ensure the public of the impartiality and independent judgment of board members period that that covers it so like i said like that was taken out of page nine and the context around it was all financial stuff and it was put in something that talks by and large about non-financial ethical so i'd like to point out that the state board of education has the same language i know but they're not an alert and they're not financial yeah so so yeah i'm just saying like i'm i i see your face and i i heard your tone last time meaning two then we talked about this and this is not a stab at you your staff or the writing of this or the policy
291committee i'm just trying to make it as tight of a ship as possible so that it can't be missing michael yes later by this board or by car by future boards so okay um uh we don't have any more uh comments are there any public comments seeing no movement miss hell please call the roll miss ellis i'm sorry wait wait we didn't even receive that i need to know the motion yeah so i don't know where we where we left it well it it well we have a fur wait please let me speak here for a second we had a motion by michelle heim that was seconded that motion was not rescinded and replaced with anything and there was a friendly amendment that you had suggested a replacement of the language of the word improper
292influence to be your language and so that was accepted as a friendly amendment that's a word replacement that's fine so that is the motion is to have it defined under section c um that language so it is no longer improper influence being defined in section c it is impropriety uh impropriety being defined in section c um and so that is the motion um although there was discussion about um improper influence swapping out the motion is is as such i have a point of information yes sir i have a point of information before we vote on the motion just stepping back for a second from a larger perspective if we're governed by state law that has a provision on improper influence what is the effect of any additional language that we promulgate that says the same
293thing we're already governed by state law right so if we violate state law uh whether it be improper influence conflict even any we face the consequences what what does having it in this policy what does that add to that oh okay i think the reason and miss crocodile mr gilliland can speak more to this than i can but i think the point was to just because folks are unfamiliar with the state ethics law and we're not familiar with sort of the requirements under the state ethics law because our current ethics and conflict interest law is very narrow in discussing uh conflicts of interest and use of prestige the goal was to have sort of this one policy that encompasses the legal requirements as well as other professional standards so that board members would have one
294document to refer to and you know be informed about what the requirements are particularly in the law okay this is the same question follow-up so i guess i understand that for areas where we we will be extending whatever the prohibition is so you said there would there was an area that was kind of narrow in state law for areas that are actually basically co-extensive with state law wouldn't we be more transparent to the public instead of saying hey we decided to basically make up these rules and you know uh apply them to ourselves because we think it's a good idea which this kind of has that appearance wouldn't the more transparent things did you say the board members are governed by state law acts and have a link to where whatever the law is so
295the public can see we're actually governed by that law we didn't just decide as good governance to impose this on ourselves and in any areas where we decide to go above and beyond state law we would make that very clear and say the board members on separate section conflict returns board members are governed by state law xyz by the way we are deciding to go above and beyond that and add the following this document doesn't do that this document kind of cut and paste various things and it's not evident to the public what the underlying source of the of the enforcement is yeah i'm just saying that this is actually a little bit confusing to me when i look at this purpose you know it makes it sound like this is something we're doing ourselves
296because we think it's a good idea as opposed to here's the state law we're absolutely bound by that and now we're deciding to go as or we're proposing to the public by the way that we go a step further and here's and maybe there's a there should be a reason for that if it's not immediately apparent so that that ends my comment okay um mr gilliland um it looks uh i guess we're still in comment here mr gilland thank you and mr grant and i i i hear you i i think um this may not answer your question in its entirety and it's certainly not um uh i'm not necessarily debating this i i think one of the goals was to put this stuff in layman's terms too um because you know as we saw
297even last meeting or two meetings ago when we were discussing this when a reference was made i think it was mr alive made a military joke and you joke back you know you're going to take attorneys out of work away from attorneys because the cross-referencing and and and and everything that's necessary sometimes to follow law and i don't mean any offense to our attorney friends that can be so convoluted at times that you then put it into layman's terms where you you need it to be explicit enough for somebody who says you know what i see that's the boundary and i should not be crossing that boundary and i i i'm not saying that this is answering your question or or not but i i'm just at least giving a perspective as to where this
298evolution came from so to put it in layman's terms for anyone who may not be an attorney may not have a government background who needs to know don't touch the oven when it's hot or your finger is going to get burned and and so i think when some of this was spelled out potentially maybe above and beyond what was initially required because i think you made a good a good point there um that's really the purpose or the intent so if if that needs to be modified by way of of of comments and purpose i i'm i'm certainly open to that that that delineates state law from something that's beyond state law or more restrictive than state law but but again i think the goal here was for people who don't have a legal background
299or a government background you know here's the the police line do not cross it thank you mr gilliland miss shohan that definitely illustrates my point is that we're trying to establish a line that we don't cross and with the wording as it stated i don't know where i mean as a layman i i don't even know what that meant i was like okay so if i talk to a voter oh my gosh am i going to be accused of improper influence or even the appearance of improper influence i did google the state documents you are now aware and like i said the wording all around that sentence on page nine was about financial affairs and not the non-financial ethical components and so i definitely think we need to define it specifically in section c or
300strike it because that sentence is really good without the and and the other stuff and i know that we say improper influence or even the parents of improper influence in baf but that is appropriate because that that is the document that is the policy that talks about financial dealings et cetera and this isn't set up for that because we already have baf we already have the financial the conflicts of interest one so if we're talking about non-financial ethical components we need to again specifically define what it what what improper influence means could i to call my colleague and talk for an hour about that or or or strike it because it's applied i believe correctly in policy baf i'm a little concerned that it's not in this particular one because this is again the non-ethical
301components the non the non-financial ethical components okay um we we are discussing still the specific motion and i just want to kind of i know where it almost sounded like we were getting away from the motion and there'll be plenty of time to talk about the other stuff so um we do have a motion we're entertaining miss ellis and mr live thank you yeah after after considering all of the discussion i i i have to say i agree that if the sentence read the board recognizes that in accordance with state public ethics law this policy will help assure the public of the impartiality and independent judgment of board members improper influence or appearance of improper influence would indicate impartiality so it is already covered in the beginning of that sentence i know right now the
302motion that we are discussing includes i believe to help avoid impropriety but i i see the case for just ending the sentence after members i withdraw my friendly amendment and i'm totally fine with just striking the wording um okay well we have to dispel of emotion here and because we just ran we just jumped right on over so for the this is parliamentary no no no dis on anyone but we we have an obligation to follow parliamentary so there was a motion on definition section and so we are either going to debate that and then vote on it or we are withdrawing it and then a new motion can be entertained which are we doing point of order i'm sorry can i clarify something yeah because i'm not sure i i cause i might be
303confused i thought we were talking about the amendment in the purpose section she had her motion was to have defined original motion was to define improper influence and then a friendly amendment to change improper the word improper influence to something else occurred but the request for the definition for it to be included in the definition remains so that is the motion that we are on if the motion has changed we need to withdraw that original one if it is no longer germaine and a friendly amendment and reissue the amendment so if michael heim would like to withdraw her motion and restate a new one or somebody else she can yes can i do a point of clarification please so i understood her saying wherever that was referenced throughout the document that we would we would
304change that so if that's no longer a friendly amendment of changing a word that change is substantive and it's just a formality if we could just my request my request for clarification is this please um with with uh vice president ellis you are recommending an amendment to rather than the friendly amendment to put another term there your friendly amendment is to delete the the um i guess the term of phrase improper influence okay so my understanding was we were talking about the wording and the purpose and that's where mr grannon offered a friendly amendment to begin with and ms shawheim's amendment said changing that wording and or defining it in definition so i i'm still caught on the fact that i thought we were discussing the wording that is in the purpose and so i
305was recommending that we um so that was statements that were made after the motion um was granted and seconded and so you can i mean there's no motion that would have an or case scenario unless it was under a different circumstance so we wouldn't do one or the other and vote to do one or the other that's what here we would be here to vote for so as i stated we can either vote on the motion or michoahan can withdraw the original and restate it as as she would like or defer her withdrawn deferred to someone else to restate so i'm going to withdraw and replace it with striking the phrase from the purpose section on the second line so that the the the second sentence ends with members and the the text that would
306be would be um stricken thank you is and help avoid improper influence or even the appearance of improper influence because like i said this comes from ethics law which talks about financial stuff this is the non-financial ethical components do i have a second on that by the way second great okay uh just to restate this um because i think we've debated most of it um already mr lab is gonna be tripping on a comment so we will your motion is just the just for now is to strike um the word and through the word influence in section a correct yeah yes like i said well of course um so that is the motion it has been seconded mr lud call the question good do we need to vote on that no thank you okay miss
307hall please call miss ellis aye mr grandin yeah i for the reason that uh that is already governed by baf miss shalhan aye sam it's already nbaf miss antoine aye mr gilliland i i had a question that i was going to ask that i i didn't get a chance to ask it before the um uh the vote was called um about its reference with with regard to the state board of education and and so for that reason i i've got to abstain i i can't i can't vote on something that i'm not certain of because i didn't have my question answered so i abstain mr lied nay miss hummer nay miss quirketa nick nice i'm sorry i didn't hear you i'm sorry uh motion motion fails um four three one abstention michelle all right so
308i just keep rolling yep i'm gonna i'm just gonna keep rolling okay so keep going since that failed then we need to define improper influence in section c what it is and what it is not that's my motion second all right do we need to debate any more of that um so we're simply voting to define it you had mentioned that you had a suggestion okay i don't know how good it is we can just okay so i i guess what could happen is we could vote to define it and then that could come back to us okay okay i'm just trying to understand where okay um we have a motion and a second do we have any further debate on the motion to add the definition seeing none any nope don't see anything out
309out there uh miss hal please call overall miss ellis aye aye mr grandin aye ms shaw hines aye ms antwine aye mr gilland aye mr leib aye ms hummer hi miss um i'm sorry miss corcodale aye motion passes 8-0 okay um it's just just as a point of information that needs to happen before it can go out to the public for first reading okay so my next one is section d uh numeral one part four so i moved to let's see here i moved to to strike this text well actually i moved to to end the sentence at whole because i don't um because i i don't know how we're gonna define special interest group and does that like a like a non-profit like a a a a company an individual so i think it's
310a little subjective and so i'd like to end the sentence at poll so that's my motion we have a motion in a second and miss antoine i i agree with that especially after after the discussions that we had earlier i can see see that point i would also i don't know if this aligns with her spirit and intent but i think it should be become not four but but one in this case so you move it up to as the first priority for us sure we can do that we can reorder them i would suggest we do that as a separate motion because it's not necessarily domain to the emotion um so um okay i don't see any further comments on that um miss hal please oh we do have one mr luck just for
311the benefit of the public how about we read out you know what this what it is in in the policy and then how it would change so people know we're voting on it i'm happy to see what i'm saying uh-huh um out in tv land i'm sorry do you read the whole the whole section first read the original and she remembered i think that's a great idea so the original sentence is it's on again page two of five for those out there listening under section d roman numeral four the original sentence reads make decisions based upon the best interests of aacps students public education and acps as a whole and not those of any particular special interest group so that's the original sentence my my um motion is to end the sentence after whole and
312the sentence would then read make decisions based upon the best interest of aacps students public education and aacps as a whole period okay i guess i have a point of information i guess a phrase has a question to ms ortiz so i mean if we're doing this as a legislative function each of those terms should have separate independent meaning so if we parse that as edited by misham and i agree with our amendment by the way but the things that are left are aacps students that should be clear that's what we're all kind of sworn to you know those those are our ultimate bosses right that's who we're working for public education does that mean public education interest beyond that of aacps students yeah what is it is that public education like writ large somehow
313bigger than the current whatever it is 85 000 students or however many we have so it's public education as a board you're the oversight body of public education in anne arundel county public schools so that's what that would refer to and then aacps as a whole i guess i take that to mean all of the members of the aacps community who are not students yeah so you're looking at the employees um stakeholders the community so that's language that we use throughout other policies just to kind of encompass um the entire aacps community you could just have it really employees in the community hey i don't see any more um debate on this well i'm sorry i was just thinking of one last thing i mean can you can you think i i just want to
314make sure that i'm not you know kind of naval gazing i mean so any to put a fine point on it something like for example compensation of of school personnel could be viewed somehow as more aligned with aecps as a whole than the aacps students like i i'm not i'm not trying to be up to so i'm trying to really get at maybe to just stop at ascps students is where i'm going with this yeah so i think the the board has oversight of the school system and part of your oversight duties is to ensure so you know the the efficient and adequate and you know good operations of the school system and while students obviously are the priority of educating our students here in the county the school system is more than just students
315and so therefore you're making decisions all the time on you know whether it's teachers or other staff or even like curriculum for example right you vote on curriculum so there are lots of other things that fall under not just people or stakeholders but other decisions that impact the entire school system so i think that's what that's what we mean when we say as a whole it's just all of the decision making of the board and your in the decisions that you're making right when you make a decision when you vote it's your vote is based upon or your action items are based upon what you believe is in the best interest of students and the school system okay thank you okay um miss hal please call roll miss ellis aye mr granin and this is
316the motion just to stop at whole and strike everything after that uh uh yes because i think the term special interest is vague miss schoelheim aye mr gilliland aye mr leib miss hummer and miss corcodale motion fails 4-3 all right um uh my next one is on the should we should we have nine members to vote on this well i assume she's gonna come right back out i i'm still not nine i know it's gonna be more difficult to change things well we have a second reader i know we do um well let's go to the the hopefully less controversial then because i think i could get fiber on this so um from three section three b two three three three wait no um so it would be page five of five b uh roman
317numeral two um i would like to to strike himself or herself and replace it with themselves or some sort of they because we all means all and i don't want to make any assumptions about my current or future members gender identity understood i struggled with that because normally i'd say like the student and the students parents because we don't use like he she yeah i yeah it's a technical i didn't mention because i was like okay so that's a happy okay yeah i saw that and i was like oh yeah that was and you know that even if that's the best wording but and you know how i feel about like the other our other inclusive um guidelines sure no absolutely yeah yeah i'll find another okay point of information if i may i i
318just think that the way around that is it should be consistent with um b1 for and then get rid of a board member and then board members and then you can use uh plural yeah okay perfect thing all right see that no no i'm just you're funny all right um so can i can i tackle some of those yeah go for it all right so i thought that one of yours from before mr granin was on page five of five be item one and i thought that we it was to insert after interest and i'll read the whole sentence in its quasi-judicial capacity so then the whole sentence would then read uh 505 b um roman numeral one so it's kind of at the top of the the page yeah and um so currently the
319sentence reads board currently the sentence reads board members shall seek in an advisory opinion from the board ethics panel regarding a potential conflict of interest in accordance with this and any other applicable board policy so i want to amend that sentence to then read board members shall seek an advisory opinion from the board ethics panel regarding a conflict of interest in its quasi-judicial capacity in accordance with this and any other applicable board policy so that's my motion to add the inputs but to specify that in its quasi-judicial capacity is that what they're talking about here though i think i don't know i think so because this could be a financial conflict of interest yes but we have va af for that do we have a second home yeah okay so um we have miss hunter
320um i would be by just putting in quasi-judicial as mrs ortiz explained to us earlier about how the conflicts can influence on an executive or legislative as well and i think the quasi-judicial it the conflict of interest could occur across any of our um duties not just for um the quasi-judicial heart so i wouldn't be in support of that because of the reasons that she gave us before and the examples she shared with us okay mr grana yeah so for ms ortiz what conflict of interest would there be that's not governed already by baf so so again baf so this is this is an extension of the non-financial aspect of baf baf only makes a fleeting reference to use of prestige and conflict of interest the rest of it is devoted to financial matters and
321so in this policy um you know as was stated earlier the purpose was to kind of flesh that out to give examples of the things that would come up could come up as the use of procedure conflict of interest and so um as i had mentioned earlier you could have a situation where it's not a financial matter but it's a decision where a person has a personal a board member has a personal benefit that's not financial but another personal benefit and there could potentially be you know making a decision or it could appear that they're making a decision based on that very personal financial benefit so again if it's like a policy with very specific you know language or trying to have a particular policy on a particular issue that could somehow have a personal
322benefit for the board member or family member of the board member or if it was something like you know as i mentioned earlier on the executive side you know if you have a board member that's involving themselves in procurement matters that while they wouldn't have a personal financial benefit of a particular contract they would have another personal benefit of let's say having a particular service at the school of their child and they're involving themselves and trying to ensure that the school system enters into that sort of a contract so that wouldn't be a financial benefit but it's another benefit and that would be inappropriate and not governed by daf already so it is governed by baf and this explains how it's governed by bf i think the concern was that baf makes it seem like
323there are only financial conflicts of interest that could occur when really there are other conflicts of interest that can occur in accordance with the state public ethics law and so while the state public ethics law doesn't get into like all the details the state public ethics commission does and they provide guidance in all the different ways and while some of it is related to financial matters others are not and so that's where the other you know personal benefits to a board member that are not financial in nature i mean it with all respect i mean i think you started out your answer with it's not it's stuff other than financial baf is financial but then financial came back in so i mean just just to give the most basic example if i'm advocating for better
324lighting you know at schools of a certain age that haven't had their lighting updated and it turns out my kid's going to go to one of those schools in three years that's a conflict of interest no i think if you're trying to have your you know your child is in a school and your school wants a particular service or product and that's not available to any other school it's just a very particular thing so it doesn't have to do with lighting right because like lighting we should have appropriate lighting in all of our schools but it's a particular amenity that is that no other school system has the best no other school in the school system has the benefit of but you as a board member you know want to engage staff in trying to
325enter into this contract with this vendor for this particular amenity for your child's school or this particular service like let's say it's an after-school program we're already prohibited from engaging directly with staff we'd have to go through the superintendent so we'd have to we'd have to convince the superintendent that you know davidsonville elementary should have uh you know i don't know water beds or something like that and then you know before before we could get water beds then he would have to you know make the staff do that sure i mean even if you contact the superintendent about the request that would still be improper even if the superintendent ultimately says like no we can't do that that's improper that's you know in violation of state ethics and our policy that that action in it
326of itself would be an improper action okay but i said that that was an absurd example we think there should be a pilot program where kids should have ipads let's start the pilot program at davidsonville elementary what do you think about that mr superintendent he's either going to weigh it and think it's a good idea or not weigh it i i don't understand how does this come into play so then it before i could make that request to dr alato i would need to get an advisory opinion from the board ethics panel as to whether it's okay that i seek a pilot program that students get ipads i wouldn't say that that would be a conflict i don't i wouldn't say that having an ipad because we do provide ipads to our different you know
327some of our schools and our students not at davidsville elementary adult so i i somebody's getting an amenity that my kid's not getting um maybe that's a conflict i i just could can you articulate one example that's not a financial example well no i'm not asking you i'm asking the board i'm asking the board's specialist in this as i stated i'll state it again you have okay my question is not directed to you ms hummer can you give one example other than that's not a financial example so again if you if your child's school your child's middle school let's say the pta wants to use a particular product at the school let's say there's a particular app or service or amenity that they want that nobody else has nobody else uses the school system has
328not budgeted for it it's not something sanctioned by aacps and a board member is insistent that the school system meet with the vendor meet with the parents consider this contract and enter into this contract for the benefit of that school and that board member and that board members you know child that would be inappropriate presupposes that an individual board member could make dr otto do something that he doesn't think is in the best interest students which we're not able to do so it you don't have to make him do it the request in it of itself is inappropriate so regardless of the action which i you know know that dr lago would not move forward with that um the the request is inappropriate and unethical okay so how does an advisory opinion if something you're
329saying it's it's so clearly how does it advise your opinion from the board ethics panel how does that work how's that what's the mechanics of that this is the request made obviously the board member that's making the request is not going to presume that the request is inappropriate they're going to make the request to dr alato then he's going to say what i don't think that's quite kosher go seek an ethics opinion from the board ethics panel first i mean that's a possibility i don't work with the board ethics panel i know that board council does so he might be able to provide more insight on the functions of the board ethics panel but presumably you would have you could have a situation where the superintendent is saying hey listen you know i don't think
330this is this is appropriate board members i mean you have folks request opinions from the state ethics commission regularly on things that they're you know unclear about that may kind of toe the line so that's not uncommon have you ever seen in your entire tenure with the school system a factual situation occur that would trigger this provision so i'm not gonna comment on that okay i'm gonna take that to be no right because a board ethics panel anything that coming from the board ethics panel would have to be public no no okay how are those issued i don't like i said i don't work with the board ethics panel i don't staff them so i'm not sure how they do you know conduct their work and issue opinions and deliberate on those matters that's not
331something i'm involved in so i can't answer that it just okay um any further comment mr grantham uh yeah i guess our board counselors here if board council could you illuminate us on how the board ethics panel issues its advice mr burns and advisory opinions are they written are they oral are they informal is there any record of them vice president alice members of the board uh in response to your question uh first first thing to know is um in many years of serving in different legal capacities for the school system i can tell you it's a very small number of matters that have been referred to the ethics panel beyond its yearly review of the disclosure forms and things like that usually what prompts the panel to be convened and consider a matter is
332some sort of complaint or a self-request meaning a member is concerned about something and this happens in many scenarios in public service and wants to get an opinion ahead of time to advise them him or her what they're going to do again the number of times in this school system for this board and others in the system that have actually invoked the need to go to the ethics panel is a very small number and has any of those instances been non-financial i you know it depends on i mean if they've occurred already they've occurred under baf right if it's for that reason and also how you define financial for instance it may be something at the edge of financial such as you know there's a business and the family member has an interest in it
333although i would never gain from it that they could and they're trying to explore those edges as opposed to direct financial interest but having said that um your first question was what would happen you know what would happen and it is usually written i mean i've never seen it not be a written opinion and again i'm talking a couple decades worth of experience as directly working with the ethics panel over the last several years it's only been in the annual capacity there's not been one instance of an ethics panel being convened to determine an ethical issue or an alleged violation so there has been a recent opinion in the past when there was an opinion issued it was issued to the party or parties who asked for it it was catalogued and kept on the
334record for the ethics panel and wherever that was at the time and i believe that if there were not some basis in the law that required withholding whatever it said it may in fact be a public record so it would be sublime subject to public information again unless there was an independent basis such as for instance if it involved personnel matters and and you could have something like that but the ones you're aware of occurred under the baf regime and well and the numbering system that existed a long time before that i mean baf is i mean baf and his predecessor exactly okay yeah i i'm trying to think and i want to answer it accurately i'm trying to remember whether any non-va efforts predecessor ethics complaint per se that required an opinion from the
335panel had been asked for in the last 15 years i cannot think of one okay so i just want to make sure everybody's aware then our board council who has you know knowledge and experience with this actually did answer contrary to some of the murmurs up here that these advisory opinions are public they're public records so that they're they're not subject to they're not hidden subject to any restrictions that might apply to the individual case or redaction for a specific issue okay thank you thank you anything further mr grantham that you wanted to ask uh no well you have okay and uh mr gilliland and miss hummer thank you madam president i was just going to say very quickly baf you know people and i own a printing company and i've had to recuse myself
336on votes not because baf required that i do but there were instances when i had some of my suppliers appear on bids when when i file my financial disclosure form i don't have to note my suppliers i don't have to note my clients i just have to note my business interests and then i even note my non-profit board interests even though i get no financial benefit from the what is it four boards then i'm on now obviously we've not had to vote on non-profit issues but having said that i've recused myself on matters that i probably didn't have to but i i went above and beyond and and i think that's why b2 is here or which one are we on i'm sorry b1 sorry i i started wearing glasses three months ago and i
337already lost them so but um the that additional restriction again i i just think goes to that next level and and that's why i i think it's helpful to have it miss hummer yes so i just i will give a personal example that i didn't go to the board ethics panel but i actually went to board council to see if i needed to go to the board ethics panel there was an issue coming that had the potential of coming up that involved um board property that is near my community and based on community involvement so is to make sure that i would have accordance i was advised by council that i would need to i should recuse myself so i didn't take it to the board ethics panel but that discussion was had that would
338have been an executive function it would not have been in any way financial but it would have been a conflict so that was something to check on during my time on the board i know of at least one instance where we had a board member who did go to the board ethics panel to get an opinion on a potential conflict of interest that came back before she um accepted a a work type situation so there so there have been ones that have gone in and she came to board leadership and said this is my issue and i'm going to present it to the board ethics panel and she let them know and then she abided by their advice thank you ms hummer um i i'm going to just weigh in a couple thoughts that i'm
339thinking of if it may be helpful to the board in deciding their outcome is that um you know i got to thinking about what mr grannon said that well we're not allowed to do that already for the superintendent and i thought about that at first i said oh that kind of makes sense but then i got to thinking about the power of the influence which is the same reason why when you have a boss and you have an employee that there are certain things of assumptions of power that an individual has we as the oversight as as all albeit divided by nine are equally bosses and i would never want someone for me this is about the transparency to the people i would never want someone to have an impression that because they will be
340impressed that you are you're his boss so that that appearance to me would somehow i think be better served i've worked with ethics panels and ethics in the past in government in both state and and county level and i know that the value that even our some of our former councilmen like mr fink and our former county executive had in the in his executive roles have well served to make sure that the public knows full well that their board is always operating because i look at some of this language and how it's how it's functionary is to the person who may be observing in many of the cases and you weren't here for mr gillan's introductory statements but um you know we had as he mentioned a series of folks who uh were compelled to
341resign for ethical issues that were non-financial in nature um from the general assembly and in some instances uh to the best of my knowledge these came to light as a result of public and others and so from my perspective this is not about member to member because most ethics things come in from the public it reduces its i would think it would be naturally a reduction if the people knew within with in the more plain language you know as opposed to a simple state reference um to understand where their representatives boundaries are so from my perspective this is about you know just making sure that my people know that i'm not being influenced and so that's where i tend to land on on that side uh to air on that side um but i have
342encountered and i won't go into it we're already at 410 and i'm not going to go into personal examples but i have personally engaged ethics panels on that i've gone through extensive you know training most of the time it requires training and i honestly think that that would resolve a lot of board members too is because usually when you have these you also have training associated to better understand your role as a board member and then this stuff is more for the public to understand what it is you're you're under um which is why i'm never a fan of just referencing out in these in these matters because that is for us internally that is not out in public and um i have had experience where um this is before i sat on the board
343where you know a rhythm is trying to find out about ethics as it related to the school board and and that was like a three-day project and um that that's where the seed was planted for me um i i don't want to reiterate that you were not here at the time so in a lot of these manners it's such i'm i'm married to uh i'm tending to air on the side of keep in when possible and avoid that in its entirety because as i said i've never really encountered a lot of member member usually this is the exterior to the interior um that at least in my experience um thank you but i know we need to be vigilant about that of course yeah okay so i'll withdraw but i have others um so i
344will draw that motion oh oh okay so um i see the writing on the wall there um so but okay so then my next one is on the bottom of page two [Music] um d1 roman numeral eight um i like the spirit of what miss alvey was going for i do but i think this is very subjective text um so i moved to strike it in its entirety that's my motion anyone want a second okay so i got a second all right so my my my thought around this is what what specifically are we trying to address here um who decides what the critical issues of governance are to me it seems where a member can decide where if we have a disagreement on what let me just let me see here like my other
345emotions where a member or members can decide on what isn't is not critical when it really just boils down to a disagreement on an issue so a topic that is critical to ms alvey for example might not be critical to mr granin a topic that's critical to miss corgado might not be critical to me vice versa also what are the definitions of efficient professional and business like our definitions of those might be wildly different and so i just find this text to be rather subjective and therefore impossible to fairly enforce something that could be okay to have in our handbook but in our policy i'm i'm real worried about the subjectivity of that critical issues of governance being the predominant phrase that that worries me because critical to whom so that's my okay miss antoine
346um i would request that you please withdraw that one in the absence of them salvi who's not here to defend it and maybe we can discuss it a second read because we're unable to successfully defend it for her that's true okay so y'all be be mindful that this one will come back during second reader i will table it till then um all right moving on yep of course i totally get it um i i thought that i know that she has um schoolwork and whatnot to deal with all right so page three of five d one roman numeral ten so second thing second second little paragraph down from the top so i also moved to strike this section as um as well so my move is to strike d110 on page 305. if anyone wants
347to second great all right so what are we what is the author trying to address here how are we defining sufficient time thought and study is an hour sufficient is two hours sufficient what if you're a really quick study and you don't need an hour or two so what is um what is the definition of uh unethical or unprofessional bipartisan bias i i'm not sure what that means either and and who would be the judge of that so again this language to me feels rather subjective and can potentially be mis used by current or future board members and i i just i think we should just exit that's my thought a second we have a motion and a second discussion um okay i don't see any other discussion um i do believe this was one
348of the one submitted um miss michelle heim that you had submitted with along with yours with miss oaks no this was not these are not my words no that came from miss oaks when you had major requests you said to incorporate miss oaks's as well is this miss oak's words yes yes yes so for them on that um because of the previous email yeah no i i don't understand how we would define sufficient time thought and study so i'm in disagreement with that okay now i just wanted clarification because of the previous correspondence that you had provided to us i don't have any further i don't see any further questions okay so some of these yeah i guess i'm having a little trouble maybe it's just my you know there's a lot of text here
349and i'm trying to take it all in some of these are your statements that i take to be sort of for the good and welfare of the operation of the board let's just say for instance that it's stipulated there's no debate over it stipulated some board member says i did not give sufficient time thought and study to you know whatever issue x what is the consequence of that under this policy that's what i'm doing where where is the where's the shoe drop after x is invoked 4a violation yeah i mean that's a question for you ms ortiz so that would be something for the board to decide if you have a member that's consistently unprepared you know i can't speak for board or board leadership on that well i'm asking what does the po what
350does the policy provide for so this language came as miss corcodel mentioned from miss oaks and the policy because committee discussed it and they decided to include it in the policy and then so a shortfall under x just for example and again there's no debate the person says you got me i didn't devote sufficient time all all that flowery language does that then constitute a violation of the policy yeah you're in violation of the policy i think that may be an instance if you haven't you know read the materials before you and you have to vote on something maybe the pers you know the person should recuse themselves or abstain from voting if they haven't read the information so again that's something that you know board leadership or the board as a whole would decide
351whether there's any action that needs to occur there okay well maybe this could be resolved when we get to for a i guess where i'm going michelle is it doesn't it doesn't offend me to have this kind of you know general welfare kind of language what offends me is i guess when it gets to 4a you know it to me anything short of what's provided by state law for i don't know if state law provides or anything other than removal of what does state law provide for anything other than removal of board members does it provide for censure or sanction or discipline of any other kind other than removal so the law doesn't state that but it's common practice amongst boards and boards of education other boards and similar entities no but does this does
352that the law doesn't state does maryland state law provide for the state board of it i'm not talking about this the state board of education to take any action with regard to a local school entity board member other than removal that's a good question i actually i i think i can if the board member would like in our in our attorney's absence because we did have to go i i had a briefing yeah if the president knows the answer so um there there's two play there's two places which by which board members are uh the board as itself um has granted itself authority for disciplinary and the first exists in um the handbook itself and that is based on parliamentary so we are required to follow the standard parliamentary procedure it's in robert's rules that
353actually says that if a board member feels aggrieved or there is a violation then at that point they would develop a writ and on the diocese they would say that i feel that this person that board member x did something and then the board would then vote and depending on what it is what that action would be maybe it's accenture removal you know similar to what the general assembly does um these are not and most bodies have that uh take a variation of it and we've been blessed with not having that experiences shy a couple near near misses from time to time overall but that's already in place so this is just of which ones do we want to trigger that because those things already sort of exist between the parliamentary and the handbook and
354the some of the overarching duties and responsibilities that how it's conducted is parliamentary what takes place what the onus of the board to self-govern already exists in those overarching did i get that right yeah and just to add to that so i think i got that and i don't know every opinion of the state board but there aren't too many dealing with removal of board members but there have been and so while the state board as far as i'm aware of has not determined whether to censure a uh a local board member they have however upheld local board decisions to censure or discipline board member their own board members or they've kind of recused themselves saying that's the you know under the jurisdiction so that's part of the appeal what what is what is in
355state law is that any decision of the board and that would include a disciplinary action let's say you know you know you got upset at miss ellis for persistent behavior or maybe just a one-time thing and that's that self-governing of ourself of course um she does hog the day she does always talking non-stop but in that example my understanding is and and we can definitely verify this with mr burns but uh my understanding is is at that point if that motion is made she has a right to appeal that because she is the subject of the motion and that appeal would go straight to the state board of education because it's a decision that we rendered unlike the superintendent rendering and so the other option of course is for the board to say we're not
356sure we like this let's go take it to the ethics panel and that is where that brings value because you could ask the ethics panel is this something in line and then may it render the decision so the ethics panel can be utilized sometimes as a neutral body to minimize those concerns of member to member that are sometimes but that is just i i don't know specific references i'm going off of what my understanding and explanation and then my last statement then because i was asking questions and then ms ortiz deferred to you and i appreciate that madam president is with all due respect in his oaks and you know kind of where the spirit with this is coming from i think especially as the board is moving to a fully elected body we should
357actually be moving away from these things where board members can have different tools to vote in ritz against each other would this be a writ for a violation of d1ax for you know one board member saying that the the other one was quote swayed that's a that's a very loose term swayed by unprofessional partisan bias the board members are going to be directly accountable to voters in a way that appointees were accountable in the sense that there was you know there was a retention vote but there's going to be an actual direct election of board members and they won't be reelected or there'll be other actions that can be taken i think it's a bad idea to encourage board members to be voting out writs against one another so for that reason i'm going to
358be supporting uh with my vote uh ms scholheim's amendment to take this out i just think it's too it's too vague and it leaves too much room for mischief thank you mr um miss ellis and miss shawha thank you um so i'm a little torn here because i while i share all of the concerns i'm not so uncomfortable with much of it to let it float through the first reader for public comment but what i the the thing i'm having trouble with is the logic that from beginning to end where it's it's saying devote sufficient time thought and study to proposed actions of the board in order to base decisions upon the facts vote with honest conviction and not be swayed by unethical or unprofessional partisan bias of any kind how does devoting sufficient time
359thought and study prevent you from being swayed by unethical or unprofessional part there to me those are unrelated if the sentence uh ended with basic base uh do these things in order to base decisions upon the facts and vote with honest conviction period i would be i would be comfortable with that language at least for now to float it through and and get public input because to me it would be hard to censor a board member on this it's just sort of expressing a commitment of the board members to be prepared you can't make claims on how much time i spend at home reading through my packet but um so that for that reason i'm i'm not super uncomfortable with this except for the end of it it doesn't follow to me i i don't
360know how that how being prepared is what prevents you from being swayed and being unethical thank you miss ellis michelle um i noticed that we're without counsel for a guest for the rest of the meeting and i'm really really uncomfortable um making decisions like this without his without his presence because my next one was going to be about 4a and i was going to ask him a bunch of questions now i can't do that so now i can't go through the rest of these tables i think i'm going to table all the rest of my ones and we scampered down this rabbit hole before where we had a meeting part of a meeting and and we didn't have his presence here and and that didn't turn out to be a good thing if i recall
361and so um you know i i just think that we i'm going to table the rest of my i'm going to table this amendment this motion and the rest of my proposed amendments until next time but my i will go out to five yes i was just gonna ask that are we going to we're gonna see this with the definition before it goes to public out for public comments surely right when darren was still here and we voted to to define improper influence because i i think that we should definitely see it again before it goes out for public comment because we would need to we would we would want to see what that definition would be so so um we have a little bit of parliamentary i want to get cleaned up here so
362yeah sure so you're in good shape to be able to proceed next time and hold is actually a motion imposed on that and we can draw that with consensus but um the once emotion has been made and seconded it becomes the board's motion and so the board has to agree to hold it just like they agreed to second it um believe it or not so we have consensus well yes with consensus so i'm just asking for consensus for the whole so we can go on to the rest of your conversation about the other stuff opposition okay that is correct that that's why i'm saying that because we have to be clear outwardly too right and then i'm gonna i'm gonna wait until the next time we see this to do all my other motions okay
363sound sounds good um i'm sorry before i take you i i apologize i had i had removed miss antoine's um oh thank you very much um let me reiterate that i had removed miss antwine from the thing because we were on motions but it went miss antwine and mr live before we went into amendment so ms antoine please wait my question answered about whether or not we're going to see this again my apologies um so based on your policy setting a policy i have to have this up and posted within a certain time frame so i can't so if this is going on second reading i don't know that i'd be able to have do the appropriate adequate research to ensure that i come up with a legally sufficient definition to improper influence um you
364know okay so would the board be okay if what i'm hearing correct is that we in until we get that actual language that a placeholder with the phrase of what we are going to define with a with bracket brackets i believe or however it would be annotated because um we do have a policy on policy we just passed that um has a time frame and that was that that was part of our own will of board of amendment as a matter of fact so if um we're asking her a fresh request and it appears that she does not have enough information to ascertain if she can make the deadline that's in our policy so i i that's my suggestion is that we consider having the placeholder um because the more public time the better obviously
365and if we need to extend i guess we can extend obviously we have multiple readers we're still in the first reader here but i don't know if we need a okay so michelle heim i that is i believe the answer to your question so you're going to put it you're going to put it in with me with a placeholder yeah i can put a placeholder that has a statement saying you know to be defined on second reading and then i can you know yeah i can put that in there okay like in red or maybe not well it's all in red right maybe in blue or something i mean for the for the colorblind amongst us that that because that will allow you then to [Music] because if you see it beforehand it's not like
366you can vote on it via email so then that would just allow you to see the definition on the second my proposed second meeting all right and then you can vote on it tweak it discard you know how you would but at least we would have okay that works thank you okay i have miss antoine mr leib and then mr grandma miss antoine i think we should taper the whole thing so we're back we're back to the entire policy right so i i would like to make a motion that from this point we tabled all of our recommended amendments until second reader for so and so that's basically the i want to explain it but i'll make the motion first it has to do with directly with your motion ms antoine because i think i'm
367agreeing with what you're saying but i want this thing that will be in violation of our own policy the clock for public comment doesn't start until we post it for first reading so we could just as easily table this entire thing until the next meeting when we have a full board and we have our counselor and then the public has even more time to comment on it rather than putting something out there piecemeal that says oh tbd definition of improper influence that's kind of a big deal and we have a board member who's sitting with another five or six amendments that is intending to you know seek to change it even further that would give the public even less time to comment on it so i i actually make a friendly amendment now that i'm
368thinking about i make a friendly amendment that we ms entwines motion that way um ms alvey's here to defend her piece the council's here to answer any questions and the thing that goes out to the public is something that actually has the buy-in of the entire board which this does not so i move that we table it for the next meeting and then we're fully consistent with our policy and we're giving the public even more time to comment i accept that friendly amendment thank you okay right back at you next time so we have an amen amendment as amended and second can we reread that um because there was a little bit of dialogue in between so you want me to restate that okay so i motioned that we tabled the discussion on um item
369number 7.04 until the next public board meeting so i don't think we need a motion to close an item if nobody else is commenting but i just want to make that clear that i i think we may have gotten a little too far into the semantics but i i'm i understand the intent and the intent of the friendly amendment i'll just point out that myself personally i don't think that it's necessary because we do have still two more readers with lots of time and our new policy on policy triggers that any time a new amendment comes in whether it's in the second reader even in the third that that additional time for public comment comes in so i don't know that we need to sidestep anything in order to still achieve the utmost of transparency
370um with the idea that uh you know what i'm saying like i i so i would vote against it because it doesn't seem to if this had caused some real timeliness like our budget and it's in it's there's a window a cycle we have realistically i'm getting vibes and we have to make good decisions we are prolonging this and this can go even longer if i introduce mine we will be here a while and i'm not even amending what we had consensus on because these are this is information since i've studied more and more of the law that i wanted to introduce i i need to be able to introduce that with the full attention of the board and of staff so so what i believe we should do is give it that time and
371we can do that with at the next meeting well what i guess what i was saying is i just didn't think it needed to be emotion because there everything's already in place for it to occur and we have the decision of when to close out an item and if we're closing out an item then at that point it it will reappear next time instead of the 30 days and that's what we're doing two different actions though we're tabling it to so we're basically on first reader next time and we're closing okay um so so your motion then is to take table it okay because that's an exception of policy so do you would you like to add language to create that but it isn't and without my interpretation of the policy we're not violating that
372policy by tabling it and discussing it and bringing it back uh i'm gonna i'm gonna request to immediate stand at ease so that i can seek out the actual policy and spend a couple minutes to um with other attorneys in the room before we proceed um so that we are not accurate so so could we request though instead of standing at ease we move to the other portions of the agenda um that this is on the table so uh do [Music] she can hear in the back um i will just say the only thing we do have to do is a simple table um if we do anything else it gets a little weird by simple table motion but by just saying the word let's table this it will freeze it and and re sustain
373it as a first reader so that is the only motion that would need to be made so if you're open to the friendly amendment to limit your motion to just say i move to table item 7.04 that will address the continuation of the first reader and all of the intent that you had you and mr granny had both a spouse if you're open to that so if i if i restate it incorrectly correct me please so so i motion that we table item number 7.04 okay we've got a motion in a second are there any comments to the motion i i know we have a couple lights another yes we do okay mr live yes my inclination is to support the motion however as a suggestion in order to contribute to an efficient disposition of
374this matter at our next meeting i respectfully request that those having amendments and they're already prepared share them with their fellow board members and thereby have an understanding of where our fellow board members are coming from and what their intentions are prior to the meeting thank you is that an amendment to the table oh just a recommendation okay because i was gonna accept that can we can we table by acclimation we can but a couple people want to make comments so um i'm good by affirmation on that by unanimous yeah by unanimous consent so but i will just say that i do concur with mr live when and we have even several times today talked about needing to have information in front of us to be well prepared and so i would echo and as
375an encouragement as a president that it always benefits the whole board when there's an opportunity to do that that stated are you mr yes thank you madam president i again i i i support perhaps the intent here i'll just throw out the caveat there's no way in hell i'm going to be talking about this at a night meeting because i mean we're already at this approaching the seven hour mark after 90 minutes of a closed session and last meeting we were here until almost 2 a.m and if the six and seven hours is the new norm on something like this in an evening meeting when we're likely going to have a lot of public comment um i i just heard reference earlier today it looks like we're going to have some hot button issues on
376the agenda um for a night meeting and if if this is going to take so i would i would just prefer if if we could stipulate that it would be a day meeting that we would talk about something like this so mr gillen is proposing an amendment to amend the existing motion um to table to define it to be at the april daytime meeting yes do we have a second second okay so miss hal we are voting on mr gilliland's amendment to the original motion to table to april the third or first sorry unless we have it by acclimation it sounds like acceptance um do we are we good on that do we need to vote on that april everyone's in sports okay great and so done deal um and so the motion to table
377um let's just do this proper are we in consensus yes okay yes okay item 7.04 is officially closed item 7.05 to 14. i believe you're already in yourself i had jury duty so i don't have any bills for that require a board vote however there's a lot of legislation before you and i'd be happy to answer any questions on these bills or any other bills that you may be interested in okay thank you very much we have several comments we have miss ellis miss schaalheim miss hummer and miss antwine in that order miss ellis thank you and thank you ms ortiz just to make sure we have the latest most up-to-date information do you have anything to share with us about the hp 1300 yeah so the blueprint for maryland's future or the kerwin commission
378bill so um i've attended a few a work group or subcommittee meetings to review the legislation and amend it and we actually assisted maeve and pizzams that's the maryland association of boards of education public school superintendents association of maryland and the 24 cfos in drafting amendments to address the concerns that we raised in our testimony because we supported it with amendments because we did have some specific concerns surrounding the pre-k management and um some you know funding aspects of it and some implementation dates and reporting requirements and things of that nature so um matt stansky my colleague really took the lead on putting together and working with other colleagues and and identifying amendments and you know then mabe kind of pulled that all together and we presented them to the committee so the good news
379is that they accepted a handful of our amendments uh six pages worth but they really didn't accept a whole lot the pre-k is a bit of an issue with the private providers and the management and the cost and that sort of thing and so there have been some amendments incorporated into the bill they did address some of our concerns dealing with you know funding allocations and some reporting requirements um it just was voted out of the appropriations committee with amendments the chairs also had amendments and there were several technical amendments as well uh today and so i'm not sure if the ways the means committee has taken up the bill and so the thought is that they will move the house bill and um get that over to the senate and the senate will for
380sure have additional amendments and so we'll definitely have a lot of work to do in the senate to address some of our continued concerns and so you know i don't know if i mentioned this here previously but the expectation is that the governor will veto the bill and so the legislature has to have it before the governor by a certain date in the session for him to veto it and give them enough time to override it um so it's moving quickly i know that the senate is you know they're fully aware of all the amendments in the house and you know stakeholder amendments and things of that nature so um yeah it's moving it's moving along and and there have been several late nights and in meetings and reviewing it so thank thank you for
381that um so i i sat with you and ms hummer at the at the maid legislative committee so you saw all of those i did i did and so um some of them are extremely concerning to me that um so far they have not been incorporated and um so i'm gonna um i i'm trying to get a feel for what we can do about this um because i'm as a board member not comfortable supporting where this is heading right now without i mean some of these to me are deal breakers as far as the success of this bill and um so you're saying from what i'm reading and from what i'm hearing from you as well as mabe this is moving quite quickly yes okay so um i have a need um to speak a
382bit about it um first it's important note that i firmly believe that education reform is needed our students every student deserves the best education possible the blueprint created by the kerwin commission was developed after years of work i believe several good recommendations have come from that work and though i do have concerns about some of the models that were used to inform their work there's definitely some real i believe improvements to be found in in their recommendations when this board voted on several weeks ago on our legislative position i stated that i was cautiously voting to support the blueprint legislation but would have to look carefully at it once it was released we now have a 188-page bill that is in need of many many amendments before it is what our students need it to
383be i would i would support i would vote to support with amendments as we did but a few evenings ago on february 27th over 60 amendments were introduced to the education and economic development subcommittee amendments were speedily read through without the ability for subcommittee members to carefully consider them and when they the subcommittee who had to consider these amendments asked for a written copy of these amendments they were told they would not receive them until hours before they were to vote um combing through 180 and also if i believe the way they received it was the amended bill in other words were they able to see yeah and so yes how it was amended i was there that late night and it was a bit frustrating for everybody not just the members of the subcommittee
384because um you're correct there was nothing in writing and staff went through everything very quickly so we were all very furiously writing and then a bunch of us got together until about nine o'clock that night to kind of compile our notes and put together initial draft however uh leadership did provide so that was a last thursday night on friday um a summary of all of the amendments and written form to all of the subcommittee members stakeholders received copies of them and then over the weekend they provided what it's called a reprint and so basically the department of legislative services kind of incorporates all of the amendments so that you have a visual and kind of like how we use track changes it does the same thing right it shows where there are amendments so members
385did receive that over the weekend i was able to also garner a super secret copy and um so then they reviewed them again monday evening i was there again late and they went through and staff explained more in detail with the actual reprint there and actual copies of the amendments in front of them and went through everything in greater detail yesterday there was another meeting where the subcommittees met to again discuss review offer amendments and you know several subcommittee members on monday evening and then yesterday also had amendments and then today the appropriations so it's dually assigned in the house and the senate so the appropriations committee which is the budget committee and the ways and means committee which is the education policy committee both have it assigned and my understanding is that the appropriations
386committee voted it out today um i haven't had i haven't gotten i may have i don't know i don't have my i haven't don't have my phone to see my email but um i may have a copy of the of the latest reprint with the incorporated amendments but once it goes out of the committee then that stuff you know is all available online with all of the amendments it's expected to go to the full house by the end of the week for a discussion and my you know i expect that there will be long conversation and floor debates on the legislation right thank you so um i personally and i i know many share these thoughts i have concerns about what was in the original bill and what is now in the amended bill and
387i'll give some examples while we should all be in favor of access for all families to pro quality pre-k this bill will astronomically drive up the cost of of pre-k the way it's being the way it's written right now so in other words pre-kindergarten is is a system that has not been broken in a lot of regards the the problem the problem with the pre-k system is access for people who don't currently have access who can't afford it but what we're going to do is the way i see it playing out as it's currently written is going to be like colleges where it drives up the cost basically of pre-k for everyone and becomes a huge financial burden on the entire state and so as our as our state struggles with determining how to fund
388the state portion of the new funding formula there will also be a huge price tag for our local governments leading to increasing both state and local taxes in order to comply with mandates created by this bill one of the smartest people i know without a doubt even pointed out to me language in the bill that will lead to a miscalculation of the local funding mandated by the bill as it's written right now and this has been pointed out to at least one legislator and it's it still has not made its way into being corrected in the bill itself there again there are some great things in this bill certainly the requirement to pay our teachers as the masters educated professionals that they are yet i do not know any other profession where a master's educated
389professional is micromanaged to the degree that teachers are the blueprint should be creating a new model that cuts down on the bureaucracy bureaucracy but the reporting and the accountability piece will only serve to inflate central offices even more this is a huge concern for me i again i i have to point out the good and the bad i think you know the focus on college and career readiness is really really big but um there are some other things in that bill that i i just don't think they have it right yet um and so um just to um point out a couple things the us is among the top uh one of the top nations in the world when it comes to per pupil spending yet we are nowhere near the top in math and
390reading scores maryland is among the top in in the nation on pure per people spending so the point here is we cannot just spend our way to the top we must look at what we should do away with do differently than what has not worked for our students the blueprint should tell us more about what to do instead of and not just in addition to i greatly fear the long-term impact of passing this bill before it's ready there's just too much that needs to be addressed therefore i i i'm very very antsy about how this is being done in haste i would like to ask my fellow board members uh to reopen the vote on our legislative position now that we know what was in the bill which is what i stated when we are
391when we voted last time we didn't know what was in the bill now we do i would like a fair chance to to vote on the bill as i as we now know it to be we owe it to our students to carefully consider this very important legislation impacting the future of our community and to urge our state lawmakers to please get this right another thing i have to point out is anne arundel county which we have an obligation to uh to look out for is really losing out on the transition funding some some counties i believe are going to get some support there and we're not so i i'm not asking uh my fellow board members to vote any particular way on the legislation itself we all make our own informed decisions but i
392want the opportunity to vote on it again as i had stated weeks ago now okay we have a motion and a second so we had general comments so i'm gonna clear the general comments for the motion itself and take statements and debate on it so okay here we go miss antoine mr grannon and miss schallheim miss antoine so the the motion is to i think our position was in support before with the limits with amendments and now that we've had some scrubbing time and some studying time and some real lifetime we want to go in opposing altogether not we i'm saying you know i'm not i'm not suggesting to other board members you all have to reflect on that on your own but i think all board members should have an opportunity to take a
393position on this now that we know what is in the bill um so absolutely that's what i meant so so so what i would like to offer to you is because i had a set that i had shared with jeanette that would get to her as well is that if we do do this that we we present our our conditions or or whatever to to ms ortiz uh for consideration since it's going to be a position of the entire board so if i can quickly so so we supported with amendments because if you know john williams with maeve says often if you want to see it at the table you can't oppose with amendments so if you want folks to take you in so we've as i mentioned previously worked with mae pazzan and other
394stakeholders to come up with six pages of amendments tabled table format of amendments and so that has already been presented the bill hearings people hearing was on president's day ms hemmer and i spent the day downtown annapolis have a six plus hour hearing and so our positions already been made and in public and obviously the board can you know change that position and the only reason why i would caution it is because we've it's already been very public we have our written testimony they're in testimony it goes over a list of things that we have issues with and so what we did as staff here and with our colleagues is to really go in through the bill tooth comb and identify like the very i mean very specific amendments to address the general concerns that
395were raised in our testimony and so i think you know it would be it's helpful to be able to support with the amendments and have the whole slum amendments and and continue to work with you know the members of the house and then in the senate um we've already been talking to why say we i say you know it's acps and mabe and pizzam and other school systems have already reached out to members in the senate they understand you know especially ms ellis mentioned the pre-k that's a big concern of ours as well and so they're fully aware of the concerns that we've raised and so having that support with amendments allows us to continue to engage them and present all the the myriad of amendments that we've provided both technical and substantive to address
396um our concerns so then your your professional recommendation is that we not oppose but re um restate our amendments support with additional amendments so will not tell you how to vote i will say that having that support with amendments gives us the ability to continue to work with leadership the speaker of the house on this and the senate and the chairs of the committees on our concerns whereas typically when you just oppose a bill they kind of leave you out of the conversation and i've been able to be involved in those conversations currently because we supported with amendments gave them a general idea of our issues and then went back and provided very specific things and we you know we feel more confident that the senate will take up several if not many of our
397our concerns thank you msca is kind of in the same boat as well so miss ellis would you be willing to amend the motion on the table to rather than completely oppose to support with amendments since the question was asked of me i'm not i'm i'm asking to reopen the vote i'm not asking for a particular vote i i can tell you this that to me for sure there are amendments that should absolutely be deal breakers many of them they are about to before we meet again the house will likely have voted on this bill and they have already received heard our amendments considered them and they have not made it into the bill and i would also add well i've i've i don't want to sound weird i love mr williams he is he
398is such he um is so good at at explaining things and educating and and helping us make informed decisions um and i know he says that all the time support with amendments keeps you at the table but i believe and i can't remember what the issue was but it was just that our meeting before last there was a particular bill that he said i don't really think that applies in this case i think we can oppose this and they would be still be listening to us and i have to say anne arundel county did support with amendments and that was publicly known i would be very surprised if we changed our position that our legislators would not be interested in our input um so i that for me is not that does not worry me
399okay and i also know miss ortiz has amazing relationships and will continue to work closely with her colleagues if for some reason we did not have a seat at the table that those concerns would still be heard so i'm just giving you you know my own personal thought process but again i i would like the opportunity to vote on this because we voted on something we didn't know what it was before i i wholeheartedly agree with that my confusion comes in how do we get our new points now that we have new information back to legislation i mean so they've already accepted written and verbal testimony at the hearing on the 17th i suppose we could you know tell people that we now oppose it again my concern with that is well anne arundel was
400left out of the transition grants and i'm definitely not a budget expert so somebody stopped me if i'm saying things incorrectly but that was um the the school systems that received that funding were already receiving it's to make up for funding that they were no longer receiving that they're receiving on the current law anne arundel never had um a stake in that funding however there's other pieces of the bill where they did make up for some funding for anne arundel county and so like mr shaknovich and mr stansky have been you know have reviewed all of those things we're actually as far as funding in very good shape compared to most school systems i don't think you know assuming that we flat the county flat funds us for the next i think seven first seven
401years there would be no increase in in the funding that the the county would have to provide to meet the requirements under kerwin i think that kicks in in year eight it could be year seven either year seven or year eight so you know they did help us out in other in other areas um in dealing with local funding shares and things of that nature to kind of make up for other things so i would just say that okay thank you andy miss antoine you done okay yes okay i have miss shawheim miss hummer um and then um and then miss yeah eric is next yeah all right well the san twine already went so michelle heim miss hummer and then um mr granny and mr gilland so mr live closed out yeah okay so
402they went through the speedy process and amendments amendments amendments and now it's going to be debated on that on the floor can can more amendments be included then yes and so even in the committees the debate and amendments are presented kind of like you know here on first and second reading so similar to how we do things the legislature also has three readings of legislation the first reading is when it's initially introduced before has all of the bill hearings so what happens is when it receives a favorable committee report in this instance it would be a favorable committee report with amendments with lots of amendments that goes before the the full house in this case and the um the the individual the leader the floor leader for that bill would kind of go through all
403of the amendments and so um things are amended on second reading typically you have to suspend the rules due on third reading but it can still be amended on third reading so yes absolutely the bill can still be amended on the floor and so what my colleagues and i have been doing is you know reaching out to legislators on the house to see if we can get more amendments on the floor of the house and also already proactively reaching out to the senate leadership and members of the senate committees which is budget and taxation and education health and environmental affairs to kind of they already know what our concerns are they've had that list um for over a week so i'm still i'm still picking through the original is the original with all the amendments
404up on a website now too or not yet but i don't think once it gets voted out of the committee and it's on the floor on second meeting when you click on the link then it will show it with all the interliniated amendments and also there will be a separate document on the bill page that kind of shows all the technical amendments that were done okay and that's still the most egregious ones to us are the money coming to us for us to then manage private preschools right that was a big one yeah just the whole pre-k management yes it's a big deal and also like engaging 30 you know certain percentage of providers um and changing that more you know to students and i know for small counties that's a whole other issue because
405they may not have private providers what do you how do you i mean i can't most preschools at least in my experience have some sort of religious component like there's a really popular preschool at my synagogue there's preschools at lots of churches like it's just then we're we're managing religious institutions and kind of going into this area where they might want things a certain way because of the religious component and then work public education which thankfully doesn't is devoid of that it should be for unless it's for you know educational purposes the religious stuff so i i worry i worry a lot about that if you the private providers would have to meet particular guidelines of state requirements in order to be got it eligible okay they would they would address that because i see
406this as like the gateway drug to public monies going to private so one of the things that they've talked about is you know applying um our disciplinary practices that are that school public schools have to abide by um sorry i'm blanking here the non-discrimination and all of those things that public schools currently are bound by would also apply to private providers so they definitely would have to meet um state requirements okay and then the other thing i saw that kind of was troubling me so i was going through it and it's like okay so you're going to have this reporting arm looking that's this this group of experts looking at cte and this group of experts looking at this and the scope of exercise looking at that i maybe it maybe it escaped me it's
407a big bill and i'm still feel like i'm wading through it you know more like floundering through it there isn't any money to set up those things there yes there is or there is i haven't provided for it so there's a lot of accountability you know that was referenced earlier but um that was you know accountability is big for the governor and ensuring that we're not just throwing money at schools and school systems and making sure that they're being held accountable so there's a lot lots of accountability in the bill but yes they do provide for sort of the what we call the aib the accountability implementation board would have 15 staff and you know the members of the board to be able to each of the [Music] is separate but they all have different
408funding those are all okay okay so all right that's that's good because that was a troubling thing when i and stopping some things would fall under the aib some would fall under msde currently so so what is our what is is does it feel like we have um the ear of enough folks to get more through his amendments on the floor i believe we have we won't i don't know about on the floor but i do believe that we will get more amendments in the senate okay it's a large um there are lots of stakeholders that are in agreement of many amendments okay all right thank you that was all i have for now thank you michelle heim we have miss hummer followed by mr grannon and mr gilliland then ms ellis again miss hummer
409so as i think many people know i have been very closely involved in this from the beginning working with ms ortiz working with meeting with legislators i share many if not all of the same concerns that miss ellis raised there are some significant things in this that concern us especially around pre-k but also the accountability board i think we no one is opposing accountability but we want it we don't want it to be duplicative of things that we're already doing but also we don't want it to be sucking so much money out that is not going to children so i have mabe kazam msea and many of the local school systems have all been meeting together extensively they've combined and worked with their amendments they've been presenting it to individual members to the committees there
410were some significant ones um that were included in the original house ones we're still working i already have scheduled with some maybe leadership meeting with committee chairman next week to go over our amendments try and push these through we feel um that we are going to be able to get some things through having done this very closely on behalf of our school system and mabe for a number of years we will lose a great deal of of influence if we oppose this bill it just it will they will see us it's not willing to work it's the support with amendments that gives us the power we need to be able to come in and really make the case and have that um jeannette is if not the most one one is one of the most
411if not the most respected legislative person from a school system in the state she has the the ear of the speaker of the house she has the ear of she's been working for decades now with many of the people and has relationships if there's anyone that's going to try to influence so i believe we've got to continue to support this with amendments and making all of our efforts as i said next week my schedule is filled up i'm i have already have things scheduled and i know jeanette will be doing the same there are some good things in this bill there are some very concerning things in this bill some version of this bill is going to pass we need to have a voice at the table to get it as good as it can
412be for us and what we've also heard again and again from people is this isn't the end i think they're seeing that this is an imperfect bill we're going to try to make it more perfect this year but in the coming years there will be fixes and changes and we want to again be on the table and be on the record that we already brought those concerns so if in future sessions we can come back and say as we told you this is a concern for us so i've got to i cannot reiterate strongly enough that we need to continue to support with amendments so that we have influence in how this bill turns out thank you miss hunter mr grannon mr gilliland and then ms ellis mr grannon i seconded or voted to support
413the idea of reopening uh for mazella's as i would for any member up here regardless of what their views were just in deference to a colleague who wanted to express views on this so i want that to be clear then i have a couple of technical questions um how much time is left for further amendments to be advocated for by you as informed by our prior amendments to you so i think it's day 33 or we have third not day 33 we have about 34 33 days left in the session and i want to say that they have to get the bill to the governor like with at least seven days give or take in order for him to act or not act so we have just under a month to be able to continue
414to work so we we would convene again before it it's it's passage yeah so we'll pass out of the house in some form and i think house leadership is aware that it's not in the most in the most perfect or in the best form and they fully understand that it will be further amended in the senate absolutely so while it will pass one chamber it has to pass both chambers in the identical format and the ident identical form in order for it to then go to the governor so yeah we still have we still have time will we have will we have an opportunity to vote on the bill that comes out of the house before it goes to the senate so as the board like to revisit it yes because if we choose to
415yes if you choose to absolutely um it should work i'm expecting it to go by by no later than friday um and then it would be voted out and so then for the next board meeting we would have the version that's what is being presented to the senate understanding that the senate will definitely amend it further based on your work with the legislators i guess this is a two-part question what impact would it have on the delegation that represents anne arundel county if just for example something were to pass today that said we actually opposed the current bill absent amendments as opposed to supporting with amendments signaling we're actually changing our position we actually oppose it absent the amendments that we're seeking yeah so i think that's tricky because literally nobody opposed the bill there
416was no opposition testimony so certainly that would draw attention to our opposition i think that it would be difficult i think it would put us in a in a difficult situation because there are things that we clearly like in the bill and it's been this is three years right so those wouldn't change obviously they'd care about whatever the delta is right and so then it would be kind of odd to just oppose it based on things that we haven't gotten if we do support many of the things in there so you know i can't speak for our delegation i think you know they would have lots of questions i think it would put us in a difficult spot with leadership you know i'm not sure that i'd be able to reach you know or i
417would be listened to right i can always reach out to folks i'm not sure that but it would certainly it would certainly emphasize the amendments that that this board is endorsed because if every other board is supporting it you sure it could any other questions mr maynard all right i think that's it okay mr goodall thank you madam president i um i guess there are a couple of things that i i would just offer uh to my colleagues and again i want to so underscore the fact you know we're at the seven hour 20 minute mark um and and the hour is getting late i i was on the ways and means committee i was on the education subcommittee on ways and means and um you know so i've been through this and i i
418wasn't there for thornton but i was there post thornton when we had to actually implement uh what was passed in in um in the thornton bill um during either the 01 or o2 sessions before my time um i agree with much of what mrs ella said because the bill as it was drafted i think there were a lot of good ideas that funneled down into a bill that ended up being drafted very poorly and i think there's a lot in that build that um either should be amended out will be ended up um and and then i think there there may be a hopefully the poison pills are gone but there may be some things that we just have to you know hold our nose and and live with what and and some of those
419for me are are the implementation timelines um and then certainly i've got some concerns about how to pay for it and i've always said i'm not one person that's going to say i said this when i was there somebody who helped mentor me uh he's no longer with us but ted sophocles was was always very vocal in saying you can't always support something and then say you're against the funding mechanism that actually pays to support it so you can't have it both ways and so i struggle with how to pay for it because i don't want my taxes going up because i think i pay a lot of taxes already and i think many of us pay a lot of taxes already but at the same time i want some elements of thornton and i
420don't know how that's going to be paid for what we've also seen over the last couple of days now is that the senate budget and tax committee certain members of of bnt have said that the tax bill is not going to get out of their committee which means that the ways and means committee which is responsible for both the education bill as well as the tax bill um they may pass a portion of both but the senate's already said they're not going to pay for it at least with this this bill that i believe is delegate lukey has has sponsored to pay so nothing you know arm twisting all that's going to happen i mean so nothing's nothing's ever final until the vote but i i say this to say that we don't know what's
421going to happen the next two weeks are going to be extremely volatile more volatile than the dow jones right now and i at the end of the day think it's extremely imperative i think mrs hummer said it best i don't want to take street credibility away from miss ortiz because as the m is i'm all for opening up a re-vote and maybe hashing out some amendments and underscoring amendments but i think if if if there's three ways that the general assembly legislators look at these bills it's support it's support with amendments and it's opposed much the same way you know it's you know not coincidental that we we label them the same way here and that's how the committees get their thing if you oppose they don't want to talk to you they don't have
422time to talk to you um if you pose outright because they know that's what you believe and you're done but if if we support with amendments and then we even edit those amendments now or underscore a few of those amendments that that i think we consider to be poison pills or whatever the vernacular is we want to use that gives us the ability to have a seat at the table and it gives mr ortiz the ability as as legislators on these committees are voting and then as things get to the floor respective chambers on second reader and people are able to stand up and and amend i i i think miss ortiz has that seat at the table so long as we are support with amendments if we were to outright oppose she ain't there
423i use the police chief's word um and and and i think that would be detrimental to us and and to the county so i'm with mrs ellis on much of what she said because i've got some grave concerns about this bill the duplic duplicative nature that mrs hummer referenced the fact i know we were getting the semantics on the budgeting but you know i mean it's late and i don't care what i say anymore but you know the fact that we don't have mike bush anymore anne arundel county got hurt in this bill because we don't have the speaker let's call it what it is i'm not going to sugarcoat um you know we've we lost ed degrange in the senate it was very powerful we lost mike bush in the house he was extremely
424powerful and we're seeing a consequence of that now as things go to baltimore city montgomery prince george's county not knocking those counties those legislators are doing their jobs but unfortunately to get something we need to have seat at the table and we cannot take away ms ortiz's street credibility down there you're one of the best you have been for a while and and we need to give you the tools in your toolbox to help you continue to be the best thank you madam president thank you mr gilland um miss ellis and then mr lab miss ellis thank you miss ortiz what is the earliest that the senate could be voting on this oh so it already had the bill hearings in both the house and the senate so that doesn't need to happen so they'll
425start looking at it as probably early next week through the subcommittee process in which um the education subcommittee of the ehi as we call it and bnt both of their education subcommittees will likely do it in unison like the house did and start going through the bill as as i mentioned though you know it's the the good thing is that they will not be seeing our proposed amendments for the first time they've had them for about just over a week and so whereas the house just received them when they received them to consider them so they've had you know they'll have more time to review our amendments and those of other stakeholders and uh deliberate on them i will say that when it comes to education matters the senate has been much more helpful to
426school systems than the house has and we have a great relationship with the leadership um you know and he who deals with uh the the education policy legislation uh senator pinsky from prince george's county he has been extremely um helpful and we have senator simon air on that committee and then in budget and tax the new vice chair senator rosapep and we have senator alfred also on bnt and so we can always you know work with them unproposed amendments and so sorry that was very long-winded but i don't think they will be voting on it next week you know i think maybe in a couple of weeks even that i think would be kind of soon but i don't think it would be earlier than two weeks from now so you feel confident that we
427will meet again before the senate votes i mean i do i you know the legislature it's a as a mr gill not outside of your blood i'm just asking volatile right now so i think they want to take their time to be able to review and they do have a little bit of time and so um and lots of amendments to consider what i can do is provide through a board office a list of all of our proposed amendments that are very technical and substantive and as soon as the the version of the bill with all of the um committee amendments right just i will notate that it could be amended even more on the house floor but as soon as that's available i can make all of that available to board members so that
428at least you have that and you can see and then certainly you know as a board you can reach out board members to members of the delegation you know and identifying those amendments and those concerns because you know the accountability and the duplicative nature of some of the things or just like lack of clarity of like where do we start with the hierarchy between state board mse the aib the ig's office right like who's who has the true oversight i will say that given the most recent amendments it seems like the aib the accountability implementation board is really gonna have the general oversight um so certainly those are things that we continue to talk about continue to push and um but i'd be happy to share you know what we have right now so that
429you can know exactly what it is and obviously if you identify other things that were missed you know let me know i'm actually i believe there are a lot of things i i've been in communication i mentioned earlier one of the very smartest people i know is a teacher who has combed through this bill in a detail that i never could and there are many many many very very important questions that need to be addressed for this bill to be good for our students i and i firmly believe that so for my fellow board members i i don't mean to make this about me in any way but i personally have a need to come out on the right side of this issue because it feels to me like this is just so far from
430where it needs to be and it's moving in such haste and the the consequences of this are are astronomical in terms of education policy and and um and the price tag um on our citizens so i would be comfortable holding our position but i am fully prepared to revisit this in two weeks and i if if this is not heading in the right direction i respectfully request that my board members agree to another vote on our position even if it's futile because it'll be so late uh this is just way too important but thank you you have been i know you're representing us well and i know how much it takes out of your life during these uh few months and and you're certainly doing a great job explaining and keeping us informed so i
431really appreciate that thank you i appreciate that and um you know if i if i'm finding out that things seem to be moving faster than what i anticipate i will certainly let the board know i appreciate that ms ellis um based on that statement are you withdrawing the opener for today's purposes and um then we can just simply put it on the agenda for next time i believe there's enough change that has occurred to substantiate a reopener without any parliamentary obstacles so if that is the case then we have dispensed of miss ellis's issues and we are back open to general items of legislation um i have miss i don't know if miss hammer and mr grannon wanted to speak uh to miss ellis's or not um i had a very quick point of information
432but president corcoran you basically said what i was already going to say just to be clear any two board members can set an agenda item and i would support ms ellis in making that house bill an agenda item for a separate board vote as i would support any board member who ever wanted any agenda item frankly so there will definitely be an opportunity for us to vote on this again yes yes okay and we do have i believe um at least one more question on items of legislation for you ms ortiz miss howard just called them two years ago um yes so the very first bill on page two hb0868 we have no position on this i have a concern about this bill yes i'm sure page two of our legislative program the very first
433bill hb0868 state and public school holidays this bill would designate september 17th for constitution day and citizenship day as a legal state holiday and a public school holiday we have worked very hard to try to get bored oversight of the account of the our calendar that that we can make our own decisions this adds another mandatory closing day and we already have a very hard time fitting in what we do now without having to go till january june 30th and so i would actually i make a motion that we change our position from no position to oppose this so that we do not add another additional required closing day to the school year second okay we have a motion and a second to move to oppose any discussions i only have one suggestion as um
434and it's probably not part i don't know if it needs to be germaine to to the motion or not but i would hope you know how we say why we are opposed well although while we recognize um you know the stuff that's good of intent here that the the local board stuff is that something we need to add into the motion that's that's right that's the translation that you make of our members right but i would say we you know it would be really focused on that one day and not the um identifying american indian heritage day because we're already closed on that time kind of looking at this well yeah most people are recognizing that columbus day is no longer one of those things um okay that was my only question i did i
435don't think we have any more questions or anybody left here of audience so miss hal please call roll miss ellis hi mr granny aye ms shawheim i am definitely an and i but i also like to say that keeping it in our control allows us to make those decisions if we wanted to exactly and so mandatory yes so definitely an eye but that i do recognize the good in this i just wanted that to be on the record yeah mr gilliland if it was labeled monique jackson's birthday then i would have said i definitely i i would oppose but in this case i will say aye mr live miss hummer aye ms corketto aye motion passes seven zero she's kind of a vigil okay she really is okay i don't see any more motion on
436items of legislation thank you so very much miss ortiz and extra kudos we are we're definitely rolling in we've got a couple more items to clear off of our off of our calendar here item 7.06 rippling woods elementary school replacement schematic design dr alato yes ma'am i recommend board approval of the rippling woods elementary school replacement schematic design second we got a motion in a second um and does look like we have a couple questions is there any information you wanted to share in advance lisa seam crawford director facilities kyle roof supervisor planning design and construction i just wanted to let you know there's a prototype design so okay it will fit with similar to jessup rolling knolls great thank you guys so very much y'all are very much much busier than than you know
437a look back at 10 years ago i can well imagine so your continued continued gratification we do have a couple questions we have michelle han followed by miss hammer michelle hello good evening goodness um thank you for putting together these three um i don't have a lot of i just i have one question but i also want to say that um i admire your post-its uh because you've seen my binders with you know when you give it thicker ones there's a lot of them um but i'm getting i'm getting more streamlined now that we've done this a time or two but i i had one question with regards to the floor plan i don't know what pages i guess it's page 11. yes it's page 11. and i assume i know the answer to this
438but i just want to be for sure is kindergarten part of the one two three four five six seven eight classrooms that are designated as early childhood correct that's what i i was hoping that you'd say because i was i was like wow that's a it's a lot of pre-k if not okay so we assumed that what four or five of those would be kindergarten and the two would be pre-k or is there pre-k at all on this particular site sorry yes there is pre-k okay you can never find them when you need it seven total we don't split them out so i believe there would be five kindergarten and two pre-k okay great and then my only other question at least for this one is that i looked at the you know we have
439our existing map and then we have our proposed and i'm just gonna point out there's a there's a lot more trees on the existing than the proposed and i i don't know what we're still mandated to do with because i didn't i didn't read in depth of the forest conservation now law but um i get that these you have to you know cut down some trees to make these changes and you know the result is a as a brand new and shiny place for our students which is great but i just wanted to to state that you know if there's if there's a way to plant more trees because we're taking you know we're getting rid of so many at least i don't know if that's decorative i assume that that's actual real forested areas
440that um that we just plan as many as we can when we um after when we do this project do we are we still trying to do that as a new forest conservation bill limited that we're subject to that okay has but is the new law like is it few is it fewer trees for the for the size of the are we going to be planting more trees or less streams as a result of that law with regard to this in the other projects or more the assumption would be more good okay i just want to just be sure okay all right so that was my only those were my only questions on on this one thank you so much thank you miss honor i just want to say uh all three of these are
441beautiful i'm so excited for these schools but especially for rippling woods i have visited all three of these rippling woods desperately needs this and it's is the the as you all have made amazing progress over the past years and we've been tackling our most challenging school projects i think this is one of the last most challenging ones and so i'm thrilled for rippling woods that they're going to get a new building there it will be much more educationally appropriate for all the kids there okay i don't see any more um we have exactly five so didn't i us five or no one's allowed to leave until the one needs to return but we do have enough for vote um do we noticing no public comment miss hal please call roll miss scholeheim aye and thank
442you so much for your work mr gilliland hi mr live miss hummer hi miss ellis mr granin what is this rippling words oh i'm going to abstain miss corcodale aye motion passes for zero okay next item 7.07 is the quarterfield elementary school replacement schematic design dr arlotto yes ma'am i recommend board approval of the quarterfield elementary school replacement schematic design [Music] we have a motion in a second um steven crawford any comments from staff to show no once again it's our standard prototype design okay i have one question michelle hunt hi thanks again um and again with the you know the making sure we we plan it replace as many trees as possible but then what the other thing that struck me on this one and again all of these are all three of these
443are great and i'm very also very excited for these schools but this one went from page 3 to page 43 and so i wonder what are we missing what what exists in between page 3 and 43 or was it was it a typo so there's two different versions of this plan that we submit to the board one is the full version and one is the slim version so this is the slim version that is the slim version the full version contains all the text and you should have received both up at the board office there should have been a copy up there okay all right okay so it's a it's a hard print out and it's in the back okay got it got it got it and so just just be just give me the
444cliff notes is it is it all the the white the what occurs in each room in terms of like the storage and the square footage and this and that and the other we provide a summary table and i think uh you may not have that in the slim version but there's a summary table of how the space is utilized then it breaks down existing proposed both site and building what we're thinking about as far as hvac equipment in the building and then uh what our initial sustainability stuff is oh yeah sure that would be lovely thank you so much and so are we i thought i thought it didn't happen until like the design development but all the all the green stuff that you know i care deeply about is that in the next that's
445still in the next round that's the right we do our schematic design we do our initial thinking in the schematic design we develop options and then in dd phase is when the engineers and architects really drill down and figure out what's the best option for us okay and and and that would include all like geothermal and solar and all that good stuff that you know i care about okay thank you okay uh seeing no more comments and nothing from the audience let's now please call roll miss ellis aye mr grannon all right miss schallheim aye mrs um mr gilliland aye mr leib miss hummer and miss crocodile aye motion passes 7-0 item 7.08 hills mayor elementary school replacement schematic design dr alato yes ma'am i recommend board approval of the hillsmeer elementary school replacement schematic
446design so moved second we have a motion and a second uh anything to comment nothing other than another prototype another well-deserved prototype design okay nisha alham just one question i noticed that and maybe i hope it wasn't my eyes because then i definitely gotta go back to the eye doctor but um i thought i i thought i saw that the state rated capacity was higher before than it is after was i am i met michelle hanyu oh my mic i apologize okay so i'll restate it because i know people in the room heard me but probably not at home so um i don't know if it's my eyes but i thought i read in here that the state rated capacity was higher before than it is after is that that's correct but it's only slight
447okay is that i mean i'm sure that takes into account you know enrollment projections and so are we are we thinking that it's going to stay at a level that even if it's just slight that we we're not in desperate need of those extra exercises based on the adjacent schools we feel that that number is adequate perfect thank you hey seeing no more comments or questions myself please call roll miss ellis aye mr granin aye ms shawheim aye mr gilland aye mr live miss hummer miss kwerkido aye motion passes seven zero thank you and uh item 7.09 is the filling of vacancies on the executive committee of the county-wide citizen advisory committee for the board as i had mentioned in brief i believe in two other earlier subject matters we are experiencing lacks of quorum
448um with the cac which means they cannot really genuinely conduct business so to the level that we need them to and clearly with some of the outcomes of this afternoon the recognition of filling these vacancies as quickly as possible we did expedite not the term of the application process but the front end and the back end of that to the extent that we were able to um following the pilot within the minds of following the policy and so this item is up here as a normal you would have a packet and i recognize that but i would ask the board today to consider that we move these folks forward so that they can be prepared for the very next meeting they only have three meetings left and so this could a delay in this could
449potentially limit their ability to participate in the april um if not all together so i'm respectfully asking that we consider under limited circumstances of information to move this forward so moved second time okay just a little bit more background the same process of the nomination committee that had been followed your president did attend just like your president has attended in all priors including uh with this group and um we had it it landed very well there's there was nothing contentious about any of the applicants we we were blessed with 56 applicants and so i know that citizens are willing to have engagement and so i look forward to whatever we decide today to having a fully restored cac so we can continue the good business with that stated do we have any comments from board
450members ms scholheim so just for the record of course i support fully uh having a fully staffed cac that's not what my problem is about at all my problem is about i mean i wouldn't know any of these folks if they came up and said hi to me on the street and i didn't see their applications in last spring we were all we were given all that material and this was published on an agenda and the public knew about it before the day of and all of that so i i'm a no for those reasons i hope that going forward i've been heard you know last spring we were given all the the applications even even even though the the the committee meets as it does and um and i'm still waiting on the cac
451policy review to come out of policy committee um as well um because i definitely think some things need to be changed there but i i cannot support just a list of names i i would need to see their applications alongside all the others just as we did last spring i'm not sure why they weren't provided today or because if it's the rush i was told that that wasn't customary but i thought we made it customary via us getting those less springs so so i'm a no and that is why not because i want to hamstring the cac in any way but because i i'm not a i'm not a i'm not a rubber stamp so and i don't know these folks from anyone else okay i don't see any other comments um from board members
452or any other uh mr graham i'm gonna comment and say that i am i am gonna vote uh to approve these based uh on my trust in president corker's uh observation of them and that kind of thing but nonetheless i do i do hear what ms shaw him is saying and as a matter of process i do not support the idea that the board should be pushed to vote on things without having the full opportunity for all board members so in future i i think we should do that um i'll just say before we go to vote that i'd i'm looking forward to our renovation of the cac because of the policy because i think we'll be able to address a lot of these contingencies maybe even can include considerations for something like at having
453alternates voted on in advance at the beginning of the year for those for those opportunities um and and i did i i felt very rushed even in the the whole you know we went from meeting we went from the scheduling of started thursday to we met you know it was it was very fascinating but i also recognize um and spent some time with miss howard to get a better understanding of why why this is unique and so um i i do concur with you mr granite on that um miss hal uh please call roll miss ellis aye mr grandman all right michelle heim nay miss uh mr gilliland aye mr leib aye ms hummer aye ms quirkedale aye 6-1 okay um item 8.01 the monthly financial status report um there is uh this is just
454a review item so um if there are questions we can bring staff up um i'm not seeing any going once going twice okay item 8.01 is now officially closed item 8.02 the award of contracts once again this is a review item only and we can bring staff up if there are questions seeing none okay um this meeting is officially coming to a conclusion and before i request a motion to adjourn just a couple general announcements the next general board meeting is wednesday march the 18th 2020 at 7 pm policy committee will be meeting earlier that day at 3 30 pm here in the board room and after thereafter uh between that and the meeting the budget committee will be meeting on wednesday the 18th at 4 30. um a special board workshop has been scheduled
455for next tuesday march the 10th at 6 pm here in the boardroom and just as a general reminder the public is welcome to attend but no testimony will be taken at that time okay um so to correct policy committee will be meeting at 4 instead of 3 30 as originally published on the agenda the um changes will be made in accordance on the website and all the other notifications as such and i am now willing to entertain a motion to adjourn all those yay [Music] do you