001so my do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] my [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] oh yeah [Music] is [Music] so [Music] so do [Music] so [Music] welcome to this meeting of the board of education this meeting is being televised live on aacps tv and live streamed on the internet general information and protocols for the meeting are posted on the sign by the doorway as the end of the room so please make sure you read those if you have not already and now please rise for the invocation oh god we pray to administer that which is just in all educational policies being ever mindful of your guidance stir us to action with love wisdom and understanding the pledge all right item 2.03 is approval of the minutes and they'll move all right do i have a second
002if if there are no comments we'll approve the minutes by consensus all right item 2.04 is established agenda order and mr grannon this doesn't change the order but just i think there's a mistake concerning item 5.06 just so there's no misunderstanding pursuant to uh the board's last vote on that issue that that's an action item not just an information item that is correct and i was going to bring that up when we got to that item it is that one 5.06 is an action item okay all right if there's no other comments the agenda stands as written um item 2.05 is board recognitions and we do have a staff presentation good evening president hummer vice president gilliland members of the board and dr arlatto i am chris truffer regional assistant superintendent for the south river
003and arundel clusters and it is my pleasure to present this evening's first recognition before i go any further i'd like to ask the members of the board and dr arlatto to please come forward uh there is no question that the primary mission of any educational institution is to instill in its students the academic knowledge needed to be successful in college and career as importantly however is the need to partner with parents community groups and others to build in children a sense of purpose outside the classroom and a desire to uplift others to make our communities better places to live when we see that happen it is simply awesome and tonight's first honoree is the epitome of awesome spur to action by a family tragedy event the opioid related death of her cousin hunter in 2016
004penelope chandler looked for ways to help the crofton woods elementary school student decided she wanted to show her love for first responders and when she became aware of grants from the crofton-based group kindness grows here she had a vehicle to do so penelope whose project is called hope hunters named after her cousin applied for and won a grant with it she made and passed out goody bags to first responders who serve our county in so many ways every day including helping those struggling with addiction the first responders also got certificates and more than 100 cards from first graders at crofton woods elementary at that event penelope told the honorees this we wanted you to know you are loved by everybody even people who have died we hope more people can live because of your help
005thank you for being a hope hunter every day in our schools children look to adults as role models that's just the way we're conditioned to think sometimes though role models come in the form of seven-year-old first graders who seize opportunities to spread kindness that both reassures and inspires us all penelope is here tonight with her parents erica and jim her brother sawyer and other family members and friends who wanted to support her also here with her is her teacher kristin elder her principal lynn beerus and assistant principal carla bona as penelope and her parents brother teacher and principal and assistant principal come forward please join me in congratulating her for awesome work way to go penelope thank you there you go congratulations [Applause] yes so president hummer vice president gillen dr alato and members of
006the board good evening i am michelle batten assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and i am here along with eleni dykstra coordinator of visual arts i have the pleasure of introducing this evening's second board recognition members of the board and dr alato as you know and as you have seen firsthand we have extraordinary talented artists in our school system we are here to recognize one of those students she is the winner of the dr martin luther king jr visionary kids contest selected from middle school and high school students from across anne arundel county as part of the contest held in conjunction with the dr martin luther king junior memorial breakfast and sponsored by anne arundel county public schools the anne arundel county arts council and the dr martin luther king jr memorial breakfast committee students
007in grades 6 through 12 were charged with creating pieces through film visual arts performance or creative writing the theme this year was realizing the dream the time is now dr king spoke of a world in which people are not judged based on the color of their skin but by the content of their character these young artists conceptualized that idea through their art form and they did so brilliantly on monday dr martin luther king jr's birthday dr arlatto sponsored 10 visionary kids contest students to attend the mlk breakfast this was an amazing opportunity for the students to experience the far-reaching vision that dr king advocated for during his life the following high school senior will receive a one thousand dollar scholarship to the college career or technical school of their choice sponsored by the mlk breakfast
008committee naomi jarrell from northeast high school for her artwork titled brothers or fools which was has beautifully captured the theme realizing the dream the time is now in addition to our talented student naomi and her parents we also have joining with us tonight to celebrate dr mr eugene peterson chair anne arundel county dr martin luther king jr breakfast committee jackie also member committee member mr jason williams northeast high school principal mr william morin northeast high school visual arts teacher and my miss maisha walker specialist for school and community partnerships with the office of equity and accelerated student achievement as they all come forward please join us in congratulating this incredible artist oh i have some friends [Music] do you want us to go up or do you want us here here we go [Applause] yes
009all right get everybody up item 2.06 is school and community highlights anyone miss shawlheim miss antwine [Laughter] so good evening i just want to quickly uh say that district one in education is getting it done i have had the blessed privilege of visiting of that i think in our county in district 1 students that live in district 1 attend nearly 22 schools in anne arundel county i've had the privilege of visiting tomorrow we'll make about 20 of the 22 and these students the teachers the administrators are just incredible i am so impressed that i'm going to do something that i haven't done in a little while i'm going to prepare an after-action report to include the highlights the joys the fun but most importantly the emphasis on family on education and community advocacy these students
010deserve so much and they are doing great things so thank you all for the opportunity michelle hunt well a bunch of us attended the dr martin luther king jr memorial breakfast which was fabulous and in addition to that i continue to volunteer and draw math facts and do language arts tutorials with students at folger mackenzie and it's been a busy couple weeks and um i believe with dr arlatta we're going to see a little video in a minute of a fabulous opportunity that we had last week so i'm going to hold off on that and let you shine on that one but i did want to call out that um we learned recently that a former board member from the steps from the 80s 70s i think actually 60s and 70s passed away recently his
011name was george asaki and he was president of the anne arundel county board of education as well as the maryland state board of education and he had a very impressive background he actually was a japanese american and served time in the internship camps and then served in the us army and became was part of military intelligence and then he served his community as a pta president and a board member and um i didn't know him but i i really appreciated his service when i read his obituary and i just wanted to to point that out to people that that's some of the legacy of our county that we had here and thank him for his service to to this county and the students of this county so so um dr arlato superintendents update yes ma'am
012thank you very much let me begin by just reminding the community that the community meetings scheduled for the chesapeake cluster for the chesapeake cluster had to be rescheduled because of weather and that meeting will now be on january 30th and we've changed the location to chesapeake bay middle school at 6 30. so again the community meeting for the chesapeake cluster has been rescheduled for january 30 and it will be held at chesapeake bay middle school at 6 30. last week i certainly had the privileges i do each and every year to attend the annual harvest for the hungry kids helping kids award ceremony at the anne arundel county food bank our schools participate each year in collecting food and raising money to support the food bank and those in need throughout our county the schools
013are joined in this endeavor by the team here at central office as well as the team at our maintenance facility at fort smallwood as well as mids from the u.s naval academy each year the food bank recognizes the hard work and dedication of our students and staff and recognizes those schools that raise the most money collected the most food and those that had the most food and money combined this year south river high school won all three categories by collecting 8 pounds of food for collecting 14 788 dollars for a combined food pound total one dollar raised equals eight pounds of food of and twenty six thousand seven hundred and twenty five pounds of food the other schools that were recognized were nantucket elementary benfield windsor farm crofton meadows and crofton elementary south river high
014school as i said severna park high central middle piney orchard elementary crofton middle crofton woods elementary chesapeake science point charter seven river middle southern middle davidsonville elementary and millersville elementary this is ladies and gentlemen a really important part as i say each year at this ceremony of the work that we do with students that our students do that will never show up on a transcript um it's never going to show up on a report card and teaching students about empathy and teaching students to recognize the need in their own community is a really important part of what we are working with our students on and this endeavor and the fact that we do this each and every year it becomes a competition for the many schools uh is really wonderful we're glad to continue to
015partner with the food bank the food bank also recognized you ladies and gentlemen the boards of educate the board of education for your work um in continuing to promote this work and so i was presented with this plaque on your behalf and so i want to present this to mrs hummer thank you outstanding well done it was nice to have the board recognized i also want to let you know that the food bank recognized mrs teresa tutor for her support and dedication to kids helping kids campaign by awarding her the first ever exceptional action through service award you are wonderful thank you and lastly something that was really exciting the executive team gathered at old mill high school last week on this past friday to pursue to participate in the unified pe dance and leadership
016showcase this was an amazing day for all of us but especially the students those with and without disabilities thanks to the office of health pe and dance the special education team and all the teachers and tas that made this wonderful wonderful event come to life mrs hummer and nishiray were able to join us for the day it was a little exhausting because it was a lot of work it was a lot of fun but words don't don't won't serve the event well and so i just like to show you a quick minute or so video of some of the things that transpired this event is a showcase of the great work of our teachers and students throughout this first semester at broad neck high school old mill high school meade high school chesapeake high school
017and annapolis high school to see all the kids working together this is such a great moment for our school system just that we're adding access and accessibility for all of our students to learn and grow from each other it's a great day [Applause] it's amazing just getting to know all these students getting to do these activities and getting to know what the curriculum is really like and the importance of this program really is to make sure that all means all in our county and that we're providing services to all the students and making sure that we're including everybody and exciting everybody in the right way this is really an opportunity for our students to work on advocacy leadership communication creativity all together with a structured curriculum in place [Applause] thank you to the team that
018was wonderful um so the unified dance and pe class those classes through the hard work of our health and pe team um and those classes were approved by the board last year and so they've been rolled out this year and they're going to continue to be rolled out to our school all of our schools and one of the best descriptions i heard of them was that as much as the learning is going on in the classroom what the students say are children with disabilities our students with disabilities and our children students without who are in the class they all say the best part of it is the friendships that they've made that carry outside of the classroom and it really was amazing we had representatives there from the state department of education and from the
019national association for pe and health teachers all there to observe because we are a model for this type of class that they want to emulate and expand to throughout the state and throughout the country so it was a great recognition of the hard work that's being done here and it was great fun it was just a wonderful day mr i just want to add to that that it was again an amazing experience and you really got to know what all means all as you saw those students as ms hummer said just connect and build those relationships with other students i think it was a great opportunity for not only me to learn about but for the other students as well there to just experience those the activities that we went through and i just want
020to thank the executive team again um some of your dance moves were quite awesome just have to say but yeah it was amazing thank you um item 2.08 is a policy committee update mr uraya thank you so the last policy committee meeting was on january 16th from 1 to 3 p.m roughly so we went over three um policies the first two being policy dk financial fraud waste and abuse and j-a-b-r-a which was the assignment and transfer of students to a school so those first two policies really were just cleaning up catching up with state law updating and just consolidating or rewording essentially the last policy we went through was gcc or jcca which was bullying cyber bullying harassment and intimidation hazing and bias behavior and so that is a project essentially that the policy committee
021is going to begin we're supposedly um thinking about splitting it up into different segments specifically um branching out on harassment and specifically maybe writing a policy on sexual harassment as well as specifically creating a policy on bias behavior just to think because we think those are two topics in our county that are really important and we should really write these policies to signify the importance of labeling those specifically and um also in those policies we're going to be specifying more directions in them essentially so our next meeting is february 13th yep thank you okay item 2.09 is the crass report good evening president hummer members of the board and dr arlatto my name is savannah quick i attend northeast high school and i am secretary of education for crasc on january 10th cross held a
022middle school leadership symposium this is the second in a series of three events focused on developing middle school leadership for the school year students attended sessions facilitated by crass leaders on topics such as leadership styles communication skills and organization and time management later in the day senior members of crass reflected on what they have learned through high school by reading letters addressed to their freshman selves our junior members then participated in a question and answer regarding their experiences in high school everyone had a great time taking photos in the photo booth at lunch too we would like to thank brooklyn park middle school and chesapeake arts center for hosting our final middle school leadership event will be held at in march at george fox middle school in three weeks krask is holding a general assembly
023at south river high school for the purpose of ratifying our revised constitution delegations from all middle and high schools have been invited to attend nominations are due march 1st completed applications are due march 7th including essays and letters of recommendation crafts will host two campaign clinics to assist potential candidates the panel interviews will be conducted on march 18th where three nominees will be selected a student-moderated live debate will take place here on april 4th with the three finalists finally elections will be held april 11th this is a privilege that kraft takes very seriously we value the full voting rights that miss uraya currently holds on the aacps board of education on january 10th nine members of crass had the pleasure of attending a meeting with stacey corbilak and the transition team for county executive stuart
024pittman the team was seeking student input into budget needs class size reduction and mental health resources including counselors and psychologists remain at the top of our concerns we see smaller class sizes as an opportunity to build positive student-teacher relationships with regards to mental health most studies cannot agree on a staffing ratio however they all agree that the number of teens experiencing depression and anxiety are rising providing additional resources will make it easier for a student and maybe even a teacher or staff other staff member to access someone in their time of need one school psychologist per high school is just not enough on monday six members of crass attended the martin luther king jr breakfast at lafontainen blue in glen burnie it was a wonderful morning of awards speeches and inspirational singing from old mill
025high school students it was a great way to spend a day off school we would like to thank dr alato for this amazing opportunity as semester one comes to a close we would like to say good luck to everyone taking quarterly's finish strong i appreciate the time to give you a quick update about what's happening in crass thank you thank you spain item 2.10 is the pta report no report okay all right item 2.1 one is we have a special presentation for a short presentation from anne arundel county chief administrative officer ben burge in anne arundel county acting budget officer jessica lays as the board continues deliberations on its fiscal year 2020 operating in capital budget requests the board of education led by mr bob leib has asked to be provided with updated information regarding
026anticipated county revenues for the coming fiscal year mr live thank you for your suggestion mr burge thank you very much um president hummer vice president gilliland superintendent arlatto members of the board thank you very much my name is ben burge i'm the chief administrative officer for anne arundel county i bring greetings from county executive pittman we appreciate this rather unusual request that came from the board it's not often that we come and talk about the budget but given the the board's new model being a largely elected board now and the county executive wanting to establish new working relationships we thought this was a good opportunity to come and present to you on a personal note this is a tremendous honor for me as my wife teresa served nine years on this board uh one is
027uh president of the board so i really appreciate all the uh and respect all the hard work uh you do with the board and serving the students of anne arundel county i am joined by jessica lays our budget officer who is going to discuss some of the challenges and constraints and opportunities we face heading into the fiscal 2020 budget despite these challenges though we look forward to working with you and as county executive pittman likes to say continue to make anne arundel county the best place i will now turn it over to ms lays good evening so i handed out this presentation on the fiscal update i want to kind of walk you through the fy 18 end of year results the current year's budget what our estimates are on the current year and then
028look forward to fy 2020. so starting on slide three i'm going to bring you up to speed with the result of the 2018 operations as you can see we generated 5.1 million dollars of fund balance after operations this is larger than what we anticipated only because our revenues exceeded the budgetary amounts and the appropriations were not totally spent so when departments or boards spend less money that money gets rotated over to the next year we had anticipated when we built the 19 budget that we would use about 58.6 million dollars of fund balance so that gives us a outstanding balance now of 31.2 million dollars after 18's operations that money is one-time money so it can't be used for recurring expenses like pay packages or new positions it's usually typically used for pay go in
029the capital improvement program we've also used it for ope contributions revenue reserve contributions or buying capital outlay items such as like a fire truck or vehicles that might be needed in public safety if you turn to the next page on slide four one of these items that we tend to put a lot of one-time money into is the revenue stabilization fund which is also known as the rainy day fund in fy19 we're hoping to put an additional 6.5 million dollars in this fund for a total balance of 71.2 million dollars there's a legal limitation on this fund that we cannot have more than 5 percent of our estimated general fund revenues which is approximately 76 million dollars but we are trying to top out the fund um as you all know when we had a
030recession back in 2006 this fund was very useful to have in order to bail us out of very tough times with that said i want to move forward to the fy 19 general fund the 19 budget was 1 billion 589 million dollars which was approximately 71 million dollars over the 18s approved budget or 4.7 percent if you look at slide 7 i give you the breakdown of the categories of revenues because we are required by a county code to have a balanced budget our revenues and expenditures will always equal each other we have made three main resources to tap into on the revenue side the first would be the property tax which makes up about 44 of our overall revenue and then we have the income tax and the recordation and transfer tax the combination
031of these three revenue sources make up over eighty percent of the county's revenues moving on to slide eight we provided the operating revenue performance for both the fiscal year 17 and the 18 by category and as you can see through the categories we've over achieved or increased our revenue estimates and received more from fiscally to fiscal year the bottom line from 17 to 18 increased 39 million dollars in fy 19 we've estimated revenues to be at one 1 billion 531 million dollars as far as to date on page 9 i'm going to run through the three major categories and tell you where i think we are in fy 19. on slide 9 we're going to talk about the property tax estimate of 694.9 million dollars this is in line with our budget currently this is
032one of the easier revenue sources to predict because it is capped to the cpi so it's not going to grow any larger than the cpi plus the new construction so at most we're going to see a three percent growth from year to year on our property taxes the state department of assessments and taxation gave us our november estimate and based on those assessments we were right in line with our original estimate we were slightly lower in our anticipated abatements and reductions but we picked up a little bit more new construction in the most current estimate so as far as today our revenue estimate in this category is right on the income tax for fy19 on slide 10 is 100 or 518 million dollars and this is in line with our 19 estimate as personal income
033growth has been approximately four percent we've calculated in this both a federal tax change of about 4.5 million dollars and over uh or other distributions coming in about two and a half million dollars greater than what we originally anticipated liquidation and transfer taxes um are estimated at 102 million dollars in fy 2018 we saw a very strong robust growth in our real estate activity we've definitely started to increase the housing market is booming again and we have more sales we're expecting fy 19 to remain pretty much the same as the 18. our mortgage rates are stable but we're unsure about what the feds are going to do and we might see an upward trend in those rates our existing home sales and our inventory are slightly lower than what we anticipated but overall we're okay
034with our estimate in this category on slide 11 you're going to see a graph that illustrates the history of the receipts of recreation and transfer tax the importance of this graft is to point out that in 2006 2007 we had a housing market boom where the county collected over 130 million dollars in this one revenue category but then in 2009 we crashed and during that crash we only recovered about 50 million dollars so this slide specifically explains why when we do the budget we use a hundred million dollars as our baseline because anything that's collected over that hundred million dollars may only be one time so we don't want to create new positions or pay packages or obligations in a recurring basis on a revenue source that could very well not be available in the
035future um so even though back on slide eight i show you that i'm estimating 110 million dollars in recordation and transfer taxes i don't want to count 110 million dollars in my recurring revenue for fy 19 or 20 because we might not achieve that and we learned our lessons from the recession that we don't want to have to furlough or cut pay or reduce position counts that we really want to rely on the true recurring revenues the next slide on slide 12 shows you the two major components of this recreation and transfer tax estimate which is the average prices of homes over the last 20 years in comparison to the number of units that are sold so as you can see in this graph currently we've got the average prices have been slightly higher than
036what we had in the previous two fiscal years but the number of units have been lower so they cancel each other out we're not going to see a large increase in our overall estimate for recordation and transfer taxes moving on to the expenditures for fy 19 i have a chart on page 14 that illustrates the expenditure categories as we appropriated them in the approved budget the board of education gets a little more than half of the county's revenue sources with followed by the public safety units that are about 20 percent of our overall budget site 15 gives you the board of education's county funding in the different categories uh there's a direct funding piece that many of you talk about that's that's the line item detail that this board goes through from the superintendent for
037approval last year we at the county funded 687.1 million dollars of that request but in addition to that direct funding the county is also funding your debt service for the capital projects on school construction which is 81.3 million dollars that 81.3 million dollars is 58 of the county's overall debt service debt service well that is what we use to pay the principal and the interest on the money that we borrow in order to build the school construction the major capital projects both on the county side and the school side we also funds through school health the nurse program that is administered by the health department at the county that program is 14.1 million dollars those are the nurses that are placed in the schools as well as in the administration and then we have the
038school safety program which are all the crossing guards that are funded through the police department which is 5.5 million dollars so altogether the funding that the county is providing for the board of education is 788 million dollars which is 51.5 percent of the overall county budget looking ahead 2020. so preliminarily we're just starting our budget process over on the county side we're expecting a similar performance on the revenue side nothing is indicated very early on that we are going to exceed our revenue estimates by an exorbitant amount of money we do think we will have our normal incremental increase of 40 to 50 million dollars but that 40 to 50 million dollars only goes so far when you have non-discretional increases within your budget and what i mean by those non-discretionary increases are the things
039that we certainly just can't say no to we've got to pay our debt service so we have an additional 8.5 million dollars of debt service on the new authority that we took out to do the current capital projects that we'll have to pay back in fy 20. we also have our maintenance of effort requirement that legally we have to give to the board of education we have benefits like pension health care and ope that have legal requirements to be funded we have pay packages that we promised in fy 19 to all employees county employees board event employees that have a second year impact so for instance on the county side we give a merit i get that merit on the my anniversary date the county's only paying for the portion of the year that i
040actually got my pay increase the next year has to pick up the remainder of that so my anniversary dates halfway through the year it really only cost us half of my increase in year one so next year i have to pay the second half of that pay package and then in addition we've got some union agreements that were two year agreements mostly on the public safety side that we have an obligation to pay that second year of the agreement so all of those things already add up to 50 40 million dollars so it doesn't leave a lot of recurring money on the table for future use and then we have all these uncertainties that right now our office has been struggling with what is going to be the economic environment in fy 20. you have
041a lot of economists that believe that we're headed into another recession that's why it's so important to have our revenue reserve uh filled up and to make sure that we make smart decisions going forward we also don't know what the federal government actions are the taxes could change the interest rates could change all that have an effect on those three main revenue sources that the county brings in we know very little on the county side about the current commission and how that's going to affect the local jurisdictions obligation we know that there's money coming down we know that the state doesn't have the money to fund the the other half of that or the ratio of that and that will fall on the county we have nothing set aside right now to meet that need
042so with all those unknowns and the uncertainty of the future we try our best and we will keep being challenged we're trying to balance the county's resources with all of the county's needs to best meet your needs and our needs without breaking the bank thank you very much are there any board questions okay miss corker now first congratulations miss lays on your appointment um i know you're going to do an outstanding job for the county i just had one question at the very end on the economic environment as it relates to our reserves the amount of down downturn that they're anticipating is it are they anticipating equal to greater than or less than as of right now knowing it's a moving target okay so right now the revenue reserve fund has about 71 million dollars
043in it in f by 19 or fy 09 and 10 we drained the reserve fund by thirty two and a half million dollars those are the same years that we furloughed employees and that we eliminated pretty much more than fifty percent of our vacancies we started building back up that reserve in fy 12 by putting 5 million dollar increments into it until we got to where we are now the intent of the previous administration and i believe the current administration is to continue to try to maximize that reserve so that we can put into it as much as we're legally required to put into it in preparation for the day that we need it now we can only tap into reserves when revenues underperform what we anticipated and there's no other means of transfers so
044we have a cao contingency account that is also considered a reserve that's where we put our day-to-day reserves i don't know how much it's going to snow this year so i don't put 10 million dollars in dpw for anticipated reserve i put it over here in the cio contingency account and therefore when we do have snowstorms if we have a bad winter we transfer out of that account into the dpw account this account only gets tapped into when we hit things like the recession and things like the recreation and transfer tax bottom falls out we have an estimate in the budget of 100 million but we only receive 70. that's when we would be able to tap into this thing use it okay are there any other questions all right thank you so much we
045really appreciate you coming out as we move forward next 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 time to others a tone will sound when time has expired the board asked that comments remain civil and appropriate for the various audiences that may be watching or viewing this meeting student specific and personnel matters are confidential and cannot be discussed in this forum it is not the board's general practice to engage in question answer session with speakers for the record please give your name before speaking and handouts should be given to the board assistant and so we will begin i will call you up in groups of five here
046we go rita alvey sarah davis adelia davis hector rodriguez and russell leone go ahead and read it good evening my name is rita alvey and i am a junior at annapolis high school however today i would like to speak to you as a student in the international baccalaureate program my journey in this program began in the fifth grade when i was selected as an out of area student to attend annapolis middle school although the trek from crofton is difficult to this day i'm grateful to have had this opportunity as the program has allowed me to grow as both an individual and a member of my anne arundel county community the core of ib lays in the values which are instilled in students through the rigorous curriculum known as the learner profile traits including risk taker
047open minded reflective and many more these traits unknowingly have become a part of my personality due to my participation in this program over the years ib has allowed me to to develop these skills in various ways such as creating a children's exhibit for local libraries and elementary schools about the influence of minorities on us history as well as the opportunity to attend the ivy world conference where i had the life-changing experience of meeting students from all over the globe ivy's greatest gift to me has been the classroom this year i began the ib diploma program where i realized the value of this gift this gift is in my history classroom where i am taught that history has many perspectives while immersed in studying european influence on the ottoman empire or in my english classroom where
048i'm free to discuss race religion relations as my teacher explains the power of rhetorical devices it is even in my math class where i am taught to not simply memorize formulas but rather ask questions based on the little i do know to solve often frightening problems these daily experiences have not only encouraged me to give back to my school and local community by taking on various leadership roles but prepared me to have the skills to thrive in them to fulfill this great social responsibility of which i am now aware i bri ib breeds lifelong leaders right here in anne arundel county therefore i ask not only does this program continue to have the means to succeed but expand to benefit as many students just like me as possible thank you thank you ready [Applause] okay
049good evening members of the board my name is sarah davis i'm the mother of five children we're a military family and i'm also a person with a disability as are my children today we are here to talk about my daughter adelia who is here with me adelia has a a range of diagnoses she is a very unique child she has autism and dyslexia cerebral palsy hypogenesis of the corpus callosum chiari malformation hip dysplasia and and other challenges related to a genetic difference a few weeks ago she broke her wrist when she fell due to her cerebral palsy because she also has some differences in her bone density this afternoon she showed me that she will be needing to go back to the gi because she's having a colic stool again so so she she is
050a child with a range of challenges and last week anne arundel county public school dismissed this child from an iep they denied her the legal protections and educational support that children with disabilities are entitled to receive before you i've just passed out is data stacks of data data that was ignored in making this decision you'll see before you a neuropsychological evaluation from one of the best hospitals in the country you also see before you a developmental pediatrician evaluation from a different best hospital in the country and you will see letters from the various providers who work with her describing her challenges and her needs for support you also see before you and i ready report which was done by anne arundel county public schools and shows that she is reading below the entry level for
051kindergarten well her reading pre-reading skills and i ask you as board of ed members if this child does not qualify for an iep who does why are teachers forced to choose between serving children as they came into this profession to do and maintaining their silence at iep meetings in order to support the agendas of people above them we need change change for my child and for the many children in anne arundel county who are experiencing these barriers to appropriate supports we need to take anne arundel county from number 18 funding special education in this day to number one our children deserve nothing less and we need to rely on the research that is out there the tremendous research of which i've included one tiny piece showing that we need to identify our children early and
052we need to make sure that they're getting the supports in a timely way we do not need to leave this child or any child's future up to chance to the hope that maybe without the proper supports they still might just succeed or maybe their parents will step in and pay for those supports we need to make all really mean all thank you for your time [Applause] thank you miss davis [Applause] my name's atelia and i have dyslexia and i want to learn how to read and um please help me and i like it's just like me thank you adelia [Applause] i just i want to share that on the special education citizens advisory committee is hosting a guest speaker on thursday february 7th on strategies for supporting children with dyslexia with megan mcgowan she came
053last year as well she's an excellent resource and an expert on dyslexia and dysgraphia so i encourage all parents to come to the ccac meeting on thursday february 7th ms schallheim i've heard stories like sarah's and and from many many others while i was on the campaign trail and i want to suggest that the policy committee um start having a look at um all policies related to ieps and 504s so on the record i would like to start looking at that thank you mr rodriguez how you doing miss summer uh my name is hector rodriguez members of the board how are you doing this evening um so forgive me in advance for not being in the proper attire as well as my little note card here full of notes um but i didn't realize this
054was going on and as a concerned parent i rushed through the internet to try and find something where i could get my voice heard right now my grievance is with marley elementary school and the code of conduct my child who was 10 years old has had eight violations that i could find in the code of conduct against him i've been told by the principal that there is a contract of conduct that he and the other student can sign but they are to remain in the same classroom to me this is this is not acceptable um just to go down the list of just a few of these um eight incidents we're talking about bullying cyber bullying sexual harassment inappropriate use of social media and then not to mention the fact that he was told that
055this child hopes that my child can die that was lastly and i can't find that in the code of conduct um i gotta be honest so as a military service member i bought a house england in glen burnie and i didn't realize that i was going to encounter these types of things at this school so i'm kind of just stuck at this moment i asked if my son could get a transfer to an even closer school that we're just not zoned for and i was told the superintendent would get back to me haven't heard anything back i'm not sending my child to that school until i get a response that is appropriate um so i'm just looking for your guys's guidance as board members and hopefully i can come to some type of uh some
056you know just trying to figure this out for my kid mr rodriguez would you do me a favor and take a minute to meet with dr luke corelli our associate superintendent for school performance so she could talk directly about your concerns thank you yeah no thank you miss schallheim dr oletta what is the general policy when when when things like this happen between children and class and it's an ongoing problem do is it our um do we commonly then separate those those two individuals to protect the safety of both children that's a that's a really wide-ranging question because it's all very dependent on the situation and the children and their histories and their needs and so every situation is different but we absolutely have processes and procedures and protocols that we follow for the safety
057of each of those children if there is if it is determined that it is bullying or maybe it's just a one-time event where the students had a had a negative encounter but it wasn't bullying per se but it was a negative encounter those would and should have consequences and then we try and bring some resolution to it how can we resolve this for the students our first focus is to keep all schools and all students in school right it's not to remove them from school and exclude them from school our first focus is how to keep them in school all students and sometimes we want to try and bring the students and so they can work out their differences and that's the reason we've really gone to restorative practices and restorative justice where students can
058make an apology if they've offended a person or offended others in a classroom or in a school each one of those doesn't work in every single case i'm giving you sort of a range of some of the tools that we use to get students to encounter each other well thank you for that um i i don't think it would be appropriate to discuss the follow-up to this particular case in open session but i would like to request that we remain apprised of this particular situation so we can determine resolution okay i can't i can't guarantee that um because i just don't know anything about the kids no i know but and so if there are things that come forward where then there are appeals made and it's got to come to the board i can't
059give you information in front of that that could keep you from then having to recuse yourself from making a decision typically i would say sure i'd love to update you i just don't know anything about this case in particular i've not been contacted about this case in particular but i'm getting ready to find out oh yeah he said he i did this i'm trying to have not been contacted about this case and now i've got somebody that's going to follow up great thank you mr antoine so mr rodriguez made a final statement that he is not sending his child back to school which puts him in an immediate position of truancy uh could uh does this this is for dr lotto when parents have made that type of decision for the for what they perceive
060as the safety of their students are they allowed to do makeup work and get more support so that they won't be in a situation of truancy i i can't change the truancy part but we can work with the parent to try and bring the student back into school or create if there's some sort of medical documentation where we can get home and hospital services so we can continue to work but i can't change the truancy the start the student is either in school or not in school it's kind of state law um but we want to work every case is different we want to work with a parent to find a way to get we'd send a ppw out social worker counselor can we sit down and talk can we bring the parent in can
061we get the student to re-engage back in school um we we want again as i said earlier we want the students in school that's what we want that's where they're going to be most successful mr leone good evening president hummer vice president gilliland dr alato and members of the board i know the last couple of times i've met before you i haven't actually greeted you i had so much to say um but tonight i want to bring some good news from schools and i want to also thank you for the for the times that you've been listening to our teachers over the past few months we really do appreciate it but you know we are all about our students too and so in the past couple of weeks i've had an opportunity to go out
062to some schools and i want to just highlight a couple of those myself i love that you guys do that i wanted to do that as well so first of all i wanted to acknowledge mary moss academy they invited me out their students were working on a great pbl projects between grade levels and they're working through the the lens of social justice to improve their communities so they're developing a recycling program for their school another grade is working on honoring the namesakes of their academy and the final grade is working on actually designing and building a boat ramp so that they can use that to launch canoes from behind their schools and i had a chance to go out and they had presentations and models and it was great to see them working together and
063doing these presentations to people they didn't know coming in another school that i got a chance to visit was um school i used to teach in suburban park elementary and mrs hayes there invited me into our class to work with students on writing and these fifth these fifth graders are working on argumentative writing the really neat thing is they're also considering counter arguments so it's really great to see them balancing those point of views and saying i got my argument but what's somebody going to come back at me with before they even come back at me and so that's great that they're really showing that kind of critical thinking as they're they're developing their writing and then today i had a chance to visit edgewater elementary and they had a day read with me program
064and i know there are some members here in the audience that were also guest readers and that was an incredible um school-wide event that um that they were fostering that love of reading and i know even as i walk down the hall some people are saying you know we got to read to a service dog today and that's just great to see that these kids are really engaged and i applaud the teachers that are working with them the administration that are allowing these programs and i wanted to just recognize that this evening so thank you very much have a good night thank you russell i know you enjoyed getting back in schools all right our next group aaron snell janet norman corrine frank and india oaks good evening dr arlatto president hummer members of the
065board thank you for your service and all that you do for our students and our community um i wanted to speak tonight as a parent and also as the president of the hillsbury elementary pta um we were here we're here tonight to just speak in support of dr arlatto and his team putting the hillsboro feasibility study in the budget we're very excited about that i have said in many times in classrooms in the summer beginning of the school year and i can't really hear the teacher over the buzz of the air conditioning units and so just that by itself having a new school where we could hear the students can hear more easily will be a huge benefit to our kids as well as having a gym that might be separate in the cafeteria so
066we're very excited i just wanted to express our support for that just as a parent myself i wanted to just weigh in on the budget and i wanted to thank dr arlan and his team and just my support expressed my support to the board for the additional teachers the additional special ed teachers language acquisition teachers and just wanting to remind as i know you know about the mental health supports and just wishing that there were more mental health providers for our students and worried about the kids in trauma as you know in our school systems i also wanted to just highlight to the work that the school system is doing related to diversity equity and inclusion the new course that is being looked at tonight as well as other efforts to have kids and teachers
067reflecting on implicit bias and so i just wanted to thank you for that work as well so thank you for remembering hillsmeer and for all of your work thank you miss nell miss norman good evening janet norman annapolis high parent and parent of a graduate i've learned quite a lot from the military veterans in my life as the granddaughter daughter spouse and mother of veterans they've learned in their military leadership training a valuable lesson from von bismarck a bad plan that is well executed will yield much better results than a good plan that's poorly executed i ask you to keep this in mind as you oversee aacps implementation good intentions will not make something succeed accountability and proper planning will this past tuesday bus 119 was stopped dead in the middle of forest drive at
0687 a.m with emergency responders tending to it had that bus had additional children to pick up who were waiting for a bus that would not show up in 20 degree weather those kids would never know they would continue standing there had that bus not started in the cold weather or been in an accident those kids in the 20 degree weather would never know nor would their parents i urge you to add into the budget the where's my bus app that pg county uses that all our residents and children deserve it's the well-executed part of the transportation picture that you need to attend to and oversee and require this from the administration um it's hopefully a step toward safer and healthier hours and transportation for all of our students in addition on the short notice two-hour
069delayed opening day suddenly my high school child who's driven to school in the morning in order to get 20 minutes more sleep and takes the bus home in the afternoon could not find what time his bus pickup information was for his stop that was being delayed by two hours because you've removed that from the aacps website you're requiring that parents somehow call in to the trent and try and reach a transportation specialist to find out bus pickup information you're asking for another body in the transportation department which is entirely almost entirely run by pick up a phone during business hours and try to reach someone this is not an efficient means of operation you should not be spending the body you know the money on a body as every business around the country is showing
070you that they provide information on the website they provide it 20 different ways for you to find multimodal information you don't have it remaining in phone call someone and see if you can reach them in any timely fashion that's just not efficient i would also ask you to better publicize the address for your email addresses apparently the address board office at aacps.org reaches all of you efficiently but you would never find that because it's not on the aacps website neither is dr alato's address on the website that you can find within five minutes so i'd ask you to attend to that for better transportation and and other features thank you thank you miss norman ms frank good evening members of the board i am here again tonight to advocate for the reversal of the late
071school start times i know that this is not something that would be a quick or easy process but i still urge the board to reconsider whether or not we are getting what we hoped when we started this program let me make one thing clear i am not a morning person i like to push the snooze button as many times as possible during the morning and part of me cringes as i stand up here and ask you to make my morning earlier but i do make this request out of an interest in part for my children's safety as the evening can be dark and create dangerous conditions and also in part because i believe the play time for young students should be prioritized over the 13 minutes of sleep for teenagers many studies cite a required
072minimum of one hour of play time for young children if anyone would like that information i would be happy to send it but i would imagine you're all pretty up dispute on that it is generally accepted and understood that children require this time recently a parent reached out to me and i was made aware that aacps does not prohibit teachers from using reduced play time as a disciplinary measure and that her child was recently denied part of his recess i do want to thank president hummer she reached out to me on facebook and it was very unexpected but welcome she provided some of the policy that i was able to look through aacps does discourage this disciplinary tactic and i was provided with 60 other alternatives but the practice is still allowed i would very
073strongly advocate for the removal of this policy i understand that discipline is important and i am tough on my kids i was partially raised by grandparents who lived through the great depression and some of their sayings and practices definitely carry over into my own parenting i am especially close to my grandmother but growing up my siblings and i learned you do not mess with my mum i do but i do not deny my children food i do not deny them clothing to correct their behavior and playtime is also a necessity if students were provided with over an hour of play time during school hours and some of that time was restricted i would support that decision but students have only 25 minutes of play time 25 is not even half of what is needed and
074necessary and to my first point when these students arrive home for the most of the year they do not have any other opportunity to play outside i would really really strongly urge you to consider looking at this harmful policy and consider reversing it i thank you for your time thank you miss frank mr ellis [Applause] miss frank thank you i'm sorry thank you so much for your um testimony um i i'm aware of the uh research on playtime and um yeah i figured you would but yeah that's a big concern um i don't know if you're aware there's also a lot of research on uh the requirement of sleep yes um so what you're advocating for is is healthy play time for students correct so um impacting uh school hours for other students doesn't necessarily
075have to be the only solution no if you could provide that hour i would certainly be a lot more right okay malleable thank you thank you michelle hi there thank you so much for your testimony um what uh what time does your children's school currently start um we are allowed to start drop off at 9 20 and i believe it starts at 9 30 or 9 35 so it's so late starting elementary school and we're talking about one other elementary school that starts after us okay so we're the second latest yeah yes well i've already been on record many times is saying i agree with this very much um as and um the increased play time as well uh yeah i would really appreciate if you guys could look into that we'll do thank you
076okay miss oaks good evening india i just want to first say thank you to all of you both new and old it has always been a pleasure being at these meetings but the questions and discussions you have all raised the last eight weeks has motivated me even more to look past just my own school or cluster at the larger picture of our school system which brings me to an area i feel is very impactful and full transparency to the public and that is the board meeting minutes thank you to whoever posted the minutes from the december 5th meeting online today but i also want to point out that i had been looking for those minutes for weeks including yesterday and yet took 35 days after they were approved to be posted online more importantly board
077policy bcf states that board meeting minutes must be accurate and a review of the last two posted are anything but accurate minutes from both the december 5th and december 19th meetings are marked as unapproved and the december 19th meeting minutes are still showing track changes both sets of minutes also have left off multiple names of people who provided public comment on agenda items and yet included names of people who signed up to speak but did not actually provide any public comment of equal importance at least as if two o'clock this afternoon the december 19th meeting minutes do not have a summary of the closed sessions that occurred before and after the open session and while i know minutes are not meant to include every sentence uttered the december 5th minutes left out a very important
078statement that president hummer made stressing the need for the board to be fully transparent which i think would boost public confidence in the board by those reading the minutes these things may seem of small significance but as someone who has been on boards of many non-profits i know firsthand how much the accuracy of minutes can have in communicating with the public and that is even more important when a public school system is involved please take steps to ensure all minutes are accurate and posted in a reasonable time frame thank you miss oaks we'll look into that all right so next um item 4.01 and 4.02 are consent items award of contracts do i have a motion to bundle these items i have a second second miss connolly call the roll mr gillen bundle mr granite
079it's corkadel hi mrea hi miss humber aye nine zero emotion passes dr allata your recommendation yes ma'am i recommend board approval of the contracts listed on today's agenda 4.01 and 4.02 okay have a motion second are there any board questions or comments on these items is there any public comment on these items all right miss connolly please call the roll mr goldman aye ms strongheim aye mr leib aye ms ellis aye mr browning miss corcordo aye ms sharaya hi miss hummer aye okay eight zero one absent all right item 5.01 except superintendent is oh i'm sorry wait am i going the right place okay i have the right page in front of me okay sorry um superintendent's recommendation on redistricting in accordance with board of education policy jaa and administration regulation j-a-a-r-a the superintendent is
080required to submit to the board his recommendations for redistricting the board pursuant to policy jaa and administrative regulation j-a-a-r-a will review the superintendent's recommendation along with any board member proposals and determine which options will go forward to a public hearing on redistricting i want to stress again that this is not a discussion today about the which redistricting plan will be adopted this is a discussion about which plans will move forward to public hearing for additional input from the public doctor arlato your recommendation yes ma'am i'm recommending to the board redistricting the crofton area school attendance boundaries and subsequent changes to portions of the arundel and south river feeder systems uh attached as you see attached in your um documents okay do you have a motion a second okay all right miss ellis thank you i'm
081going to try to explain this it just bear with me a little bit we just had a workshop last night to be fully informed and first of all i want i want to thank everyone who was here to inform us thank you dr elatto thank you aacps staff mr boniface that was a very valuable workshop for for us to gain a lot of information on this whole process and and how we got to where we are now um so i would like to propose sort of bundling four options what i don't want to do is vote on which options to put forward individually because i don't think it's our position tonight to choose our favorites so here's what i propose and i want to explain why um i would like to propose putting through dr
082arlatto's recommendation for public hearing i would like to put forward um are there do we have slides sorry they're all separate they're all separate okay that's fine i just want everyone to understand what what it is i'm suggesting or proposing so first would be the superintendents recommended redistricting which is um if anyone's familiar with the um redistricting committee's work um it was i believe option four um from there i got that right yeah option four with some tweaks the timing um yeah there were some adjustments by dr arlatto um i would like to also put through for public hearing um option four lj that came out of the committee with it's been slightly revised with similar revisions having to do with the timing it wouldn't take place until 2020 and it also uh would stipulate
083that excuse me that the um some of the communities that would go to crofton schools this would this would change once we whenever that would be would get a new elementary school in on the west side of route 3. another option i would like to put forward is i believe it was sorry i should have group one option one um and i'm gonna go back in in a moment to explain why i included each of these but that was also an option that was explored by the redistricting committee and a fourth option i would like to explore and put forward for public hearing is to expand the scope of redistricting to include all of the arundel feeder schools and now i'm going to go back and explain why so dr arlatta's proposal that absolutely i
084believe should be go for public hearing i think we need to hear input from the community of why they support or oppose that option this is the option that largely came out of the work of the committee this is what was recommended by the committee and i know that that committee worked very hard to to to get to that point the reason i am proposing to include option 4 lj is because a couple of reasons but one of them is it was the first option that had the most support when they went through their process so there there was definitely a lot of support for it and when all was said and done and the committee came down to choosing between two plans the votes ended up going basically along um community lines where crofton
085communities voted for option 4 and communities that are from odenton voted for option 4 lj and since all of these communities are impacted i think we should put them both through for public hearing the reason i would like to include the third option option one group one is because i have heard from various people involved who were on the committee and other parents who were involved in the process that this option seemed viable to to many people and i've actually heard support from both people in crofton and odenton so i want to explore i want to put it to public hearing to hear if this may possibly be some sort of a compromise that maybe would work better for everyone and then finally the reason i want to explore expanding the scope of the redistricting
086is because something i've heard from numerous members of the community even back when i was a candidate for office was there was a concern that these other schools that their families will be impacted by the redistricting that because their kids are going to be going to arundel middle school in arundel high school so they are impacted that they couldn't be at the table and so i want to suggest that if if they would like to give their their input that they should be at the table and that we could potentially look at a wider redistricting if do we have the slide of the current boundaries for the arundel feeder so if you look at the current arundel feeder and you look at the boundary lines there's a big big concern among members of the odenton
087community that option for the superintendent's recommendation is going to put an excessive number of students over over on to the west side and into the arundel feeder and there's concerns about overcrowding arundel middle school and there's a big concern from members of the um communities the new communities um that are being proposed to be moved over to piney orchard elementary and the concern for them largely is taking a road that is first of all traveling a farther distance to their elementary school but the bus is also taking a road that frequently floods and if that were to happen there's their students would then have to go over our east to route 3 and up and all the way over to piney orchard so if you look at these boundary lines you can see that there's
088um there's communities right next to piney orchard elementary school and as a matter of fact i believe they used to go to piney orchard elementary school into until a redistricting a few years ago and again when i was a candidate and i met members of those communities that was a concern of theirs they purchased property there to go to piney orchard elementary school and now they don't i also look at the boundary lines and i see that there are that wild chapel elementary has communities it's basically in their backyard but they're going to four seasons so i see some opportunities some potential if the if the community is if they would like to see this happen i think we should hear about it i see some potential where families could be moved back to piney
089orchard elementary and then opening space in wild chapel elementary um families from four seasons could potentially then move to wild chapel and then we have a school four seasons will be much closer and hopefully much more agreeable to some of those um new community members that would not have to go up and around all of those schools to get to piney orchard elementary so for that reason i i say we put together the or put together these four plans put them out there for the community input and that will inform our decision i believe um it has also been suggested that perhaps we could grandfather in members of uh what is it b and c to be able to continue to go to crofton schools only those who are already attending them which would not
090um be a large number of students um they would go to schools in crofton um but the suggestion was that they they would end up at a arundel high school because that's where they would go now so there's several options here to put forward and i think we should put them all forward so that the community can give their input i second yeah mr raya i shall have a question miss ellis um because i'm for taking more plans than one to get more feedback on more than one plan since more than one community is affected but um i'm just wondering i i know you don't have the software but did you like create a something that shows the different boundaries just because i know that from feedback um at our redistricting work redistricting workshop we
091have to be like very specific on what we're saying so that because if there's any discrimination yeah my fourth option is is not for me to propose exactly where those lines would go right now but is to propose expanding the scope because they were not at the table for this process so that is my fourth option dr aladdin while as the board will continue this conversation debate excuse me i want to share a couple things first is i want to remind the board that the purpose of the redistricting that took place was to create attendance boundaries for a school that doesn't exist it was not to balance out the schools in the arundel feeder system it was not to balance out the enrollments while that will be an important something to think about for the
092future i want to remind the board that the purpose of the redistricting was to create attendance boundaries for the new crofton area high school that doesn't yet exist that was the primary purpose regarding your suggestions i think bring whatever the board decides to bring forward for public input and public hearing i think is great your fourth option is not a plan and the current regulatory language says that the board must vote to bring forward an actionable plan and right now you have a concept awesome but you can't bring a concept forward to the public because we can't explain it right it doesn't exist yet and so that's where we are right now i did have a conversation with your board attorney earlier to make sure that i understood this correctly but you can't you can't
093suggest in a thought or a concept it has to be a plan that's actual because we the team are going to go out to the public and explain it and we want to explain it exactly the way you envisioned it and the way you plan for it and right now there isn't a plan so i just want to let you know that the first three that you offered great you can take any and all those forward but i don't believe based on regulatory language that you can take forward you can take forward a thought or a concept of what it might look like we have to take forward you have to vote on a a plan that's actionable mr granny um i had initially uh pushed my button to say one thing and so i'm
094going to save that for the second part um i guess just i'll just briefly say in response to dr alato's comments i guess it's it's really up to the other board members to determine whether ms ellis's item number four is sufficiently articulate to take forward and it's not up to him to decide that as to as to the other items that mizzel has put forward i just make it abundantly clear i would like to offer a friendly amendment so it's very clear that there would be a fifth option added to the four that you proposed and the fifth option would be and this is again a fifth option to take forward to public hearing that the existing students in 1038 b and c which i believe number 85 that those families would have the choice
095to keep their kids in crofton or to send them to piney orchard and it would be up to them either way those students would still end up in arundel high school so that's that should be captured in the minutes that's exactly what the fifth option is thank you for clarifying that yes i did not take articulate that the way i wanted to thank you darlata mr grant i want to be abundantly clear that the concept here is that we have to take this out for there will be a public meeting of which our staff will answer questions of the public of each and any of the options that have been plans that have been moved forward by this board so they have the most information they're able to ask questions of the staff and then
096they can bring their concerns or thoughts or support to the board during the public hearing and so i want to make sure that my staff can explain exactly what it is the board wants or that miss ellis has in mind right now there isn't a plan that we can explain and explain well for the public and we owe them that and so i want you to be very very clear that's that's my concern is it's not an actual plan that we can explain i also want to share um and remind that your if this is something the board wants to do and look to balance out the elementary schools then go to redistricting you could certainly suggest that we go through a redistricting process go through the board policy and regulatory language and look to
097redistrict all the elementary schools to balance them out remember that's what we did well this current board wasn't part of that but we did that with the annapolis cluster we went through a registering process to balance out the two middle schools and several of the elementary schools over a couple year period to balance them out so if that's something the board wants to do you could certainly move forward i would like to or the board would like to go through the redistricting of the arundel elementary schools for balancing sake okay i haven't waited so your option for um is to expand utilizing all of the feeder schools for for arundel yes so um yes that is that is my uh fourth option that i'm i'm proposing um this does involve creating the crofton boundaries because
098we have a situation and it has been said i don't know how many times by members of the committee by aacps staff that we don't have an ideal plan that there's problems with all of the current plans before us and while i don't believe that we could have a perfect plan i believe there if we were to expand the scope of the redistricting we could have a better plan and that is something again i i would want community input to see if uh if they would like to see that but so um to the point that the purpose of this redistricting is to create crofton boundaries we have communities on the west side of route 3 from the south part of the school district that are in in all of the plans in what they
099feel is a very bad situation to have to take patuxent parkway road patuxent parkway to piney orchard elementary school there will be times where their bus will not be able to take that route and they are suddenly going to have an extremely long commute to go east to route 3 up route 3 past all of these other elementary schools in odenton to get the piney orchard this could be a win-win for many communities it could put piney orchard communities back in piney orchard elementary school it could put families that are right near um wild chapel elementary right next i mean i'm sure the students could walk there they could probably see the school from their house and then um the whole purpose of this though is to create a better situation for the community to
100the south that are very very concerned about having to make that trek to piney orchard elementary okay so so the reason i one like i asked the question was because dr lotto uh early on you said you you went to our board council and got an explanation on option four so i was wondering if council could just share that explanation with us on the record please pardon my antiquated technology this is the laptop i have uh president hummer dr a lot of members of the board uh dr lotta was correct and that he did ask me to be prepared in case that anyone did bring forward any options that were any uh in any way touching on the regulation or policy that he alluded to and in fact i think there would be some concern
101uh with respect to option four of the five that have been discussed in that your regulations um which are your rules that are out in the public that you are supposed to follow and we've we've had this dialogue before about the cardi doctrine and other things that apply that the public expects has an expectation that you'll follow your rules and regulations and i think it's my job to not only guide you with that but also help prevent perhaps the risk of litigation down the road and redistricting is a fervent fertile ground for litigation and one of the biggest missteps pointed out by the state board and the courts is failure to follow your published regulations i just point out to you that the concern i would have with four as i understand it moving forward
102now as part of the proposal in this registering cycle versus as a future redistricting idea is that you have to have by january 30th what schools are being redistricted under your proposed plan or plans that go forward what i mean by that is not the ones you're choosing finally but what the plan is and i'm reading from your rules at the meeting when the superintendent presents a recommendation or any meeting thereafter but before the end of january the board may propose that a school or schools be redistricted so in your options one through three and i believe in option five we have specific information detailed information about if you approve them after the hearing process what would be redistricted i don't believe in option four unless i'm mishearing it that the specific school boundaries and
103school redistricting are out there yet in the public and if that's the case then you would not be in compliance with the rule it goes on though that's not there's two references isn't that january deadline if we're talking about the fall not if we're talking about fall of next year oh no yeah i'm referring to your process you're in right now for what you are planning to bring to hearing by the end of this january but that january is if these changes would be implemented this fall not fall of next year one of the artists following the policy that's a that's a question no okay i i think i hear if you're asking the way your rules are set up is you go through a process that's based on the superintendent recommend recommending redistricting so
104for example if this fall dr alato had recommended nothing it just happened to be a year where there was nothing on the table you wouldn't mean be in this process because your rules require recommendation for redistributing from the superintendent that triggers the entire process by which you had a committee it involves detailed actual required participation on the committee and it's based on this published recommendation of what you're trying to do and i think dr law alluded to it's to set the boundaries for a new high school that's the process you're in now that's the only thing i'm talking about that process has a january thirtieth deadline by which your plans for registering schools have to be put out to hearing there's a briefing and then a hearing right then you have your april deadline what
105i'm letting you know is i'm not telling not telling you what to do i'm letting you know that your rules say in two different places that by the end of january you must put out for hearing plan or plans that say what schools will be redistricted so what i mean the reason i i'm giving you the guidance miss antoine's asked me to come up here is that if if option four before january 30th does not say these schools ought to be considered for redistricting right then they would fall short of the mark in here so that's all i have to do is add the names of the schools in in your opinion from what you're sharing and what i'm what i'm saying is your language that you have to follow is and i'm not counting
106revisions that come after the briefing up until april i'm simply saying that your end of january deadline okay is that four to be considered you have to state what schools will be redistricting now again you have options but each option as i understood it up to now the options one through three and i believe as mr grant imposed option five they state what schools would do what they're detailed enough i mean that's the best way to put it the detail is there and if that's what i think dr aladdin was saying is the details lacking on option four not to say you could not seek that as part of next falls cycle should there be a recommendation but if i changed option four to specifically say we would look at redistricting all of the schools
107in the arundel feeder and yeah i mean i could list them right now i could name them if that's necessary but i'm just asking what i would suggest the only the only the only two concerns would remain from that would be whether or not the board feels that the boundaries you're saying the schools be redistricted in the plans that are before you one through three it's not just these schools will be redistricted it's exactly what will happen with those boundaries right so if you were to do that with four then i think you would be in in that level the same as other three your second piece though you're still i still would have a concern as counsel and that none of those suggestions had gone to your committee and and that committee had a
108charge for this false cycle that took you to this point in time and i would simply say i would caution okay i have maybe there will be someone testifying tonight i don't know i have been told that it was brought up among the committee but it was not given to them by the superintendent to be able to consider those other schools the board if other members of the board are with me could determine that this the scope of the redistricting was too narrow for our committee that's my concern and it would not be my place to advise you until you get there whether or not i think it meets uh your regulatory requirements my caution to you is that it appears that there's a difference between four's plan or whatever you want to call it
109and options one through three as plans but if four is not actually acted on and adopted by the board after some future public hearing that isn't any legal infirmity to its lack of specificity just moot if that's not something we actually do then it doesn't matter and no one can challenge it no i'm referring to whether or not it's the issue is is can that be put forward as a board redistricting plan for hearing as of april 30th and my concern would be is if you put it if you put option four forward as a plan i believe as it sits today it doesn't match the others with the specificity your regulation requires that's not to say that as you develop let's just say you put the other three four or the the four out
110of five forward for hearing as part of that hearing could you incorporate your concerns about whatever the concerns are and for sure that might be part of what informs what you do but my concern is it's not a this is what dr arlatta's point was it's not a plan and the plans are what you're supposed before by january 30th we're sitting here january 23rd i'm just talking about what what's there right where does it say that it has to be specific wait everybody's out of order please wait to be to be called on miss shaw home where does it say in the regulation that it has to be a specific plan because i'm not seeing it in the regulation can you refer to like the page number and for the record i apologize if i
111did it i'm referring to uh regulation j a a dash r a all right and under d two and again you have to read all this stuff together at some point but for now we'll parse it and i'll say that it starts off with the board having received the recommendation the superintendent shall establish schools and determine the attendance boundaries of all schools number two it sets forth the time frame at the meeting when the superintendent presents a recommendation or at any meeting thereafter but before the end of january the board may propose that a school or schools be redistricted again when i say when i say plan what i mean is the school's identified for redistricting that's all i'm that's all i've said okay and then it says this the board shall review the superintendent's
112recommendation any board members proposals and determine their later than end of january in each school year so actually it's january 31st that such board action is to be considered which schools premises s close parentheses which schools shall go forward to public hearing for school widgeting so again don't don't want to overstate what i'm saying as long as schools are identified for redistricting each and every one that would be affected like i believe they are in options one through three and i think to some extent through reference of five then then it may be that they pass muster and and i'm not gonna be predictive i'm cautioning that that's the requirement mr lott thank you mr burns uh my concern with option four is presented by my colleague is that all the other options are the
113result of weeks and weeks and weeks of debate and research and back and forth amongst our parents the representatives of the communities and the schools involved and it took them all fall to come up with the recommendations that they put together voted on and then determined which one to bring forward to the superintendent and i don't see you know how in a shorter amount of time that we can do what is just by the folks that we're adding throwing into this process this late in the game and to think that it's going to be a as detailed and as deliberate of a process as it was then and i also think it sends a tremendous negative message to our parents and the citizens who have worked in cooperation with each other despite differences despite disagreements
114to come to a very difficult position and so i just would not be able to support something like option four there's not enough meat on that bone to know what it means just identifying the schools doesn't let mrs jones know that perhaps her kids are now going to go to four seasons instead of watch apple i mean we don't do that in a matter of days or in a matter of just a couple weeks you do that in a very deliberative and and plotting way to ensure everything comes to the surface so that's just how i look at it miss porkadel [Applause] uh two things first i have a point of clarification mr granite had mentioned the option to delay and i've heard that i heard that last night at the work session too that
115we're not compelled however my understanding of read and maybe this question is not from mr burns but for staff my understanding is one of these options that we are putting forward does have a compelling a compelled to initiate the redistricting of some of the elementary schools to take effect prior to the opening of crofton high school is that correct in my understanding or could we get could i get a clarification from stat on that please it is my understanding that the superintendent's recommendation uh eliminates any redistricting effective redistricting actions in effective september 1 of 2019 all the superintendent's proposals would be effective september 1 of 2020. i'm talking about the lj right now and right i'm going through those in detail option two modified or revised i think version two revised i believe there's a
116clarification in there that makes all the effective dates and i'm scanning through here pretty quickly it makes all the effect dates also a september of 2020 implementation not a september of 2019. you are correct in an earlier iteration of this option too had that the third option which is option one version one or whatever that is that still has a 2019 implementation element uh to it and option four um i can't answer because i don't have enough information to answer that and option five would need some clarification of both the effective date and later in the discussions just to make sure we captured mr grant and sentiments fully it's my opinion that option five should be expanded upon to also designate what your intentions are for the middle schools so if we can get an
117effective date relative to mr grandin's option and his intentions for the middle schools then i think option five will be clarified as well so mr burns then beca based on process of our procedures taking uh taking option number three as cited on there which is the group one option one plan to public hearing then compels us to the confinement of our timeline absolutely in in doing so if we're to follow our policies and procedures because if they're commit if they're counting on redistricting occurring in the fall of 19 then we would have to complete our cycle as scheduled now yeah if you're talking about your completion date of april 30th for something happening in the fall i think that's the best read okay thank you very much for your clarification if i could clarify one
118thing the option two which is the lg version two that is not what the committee had looked at there were modifications that were put together with you know the minority member i think five five people that basically came forward they moved one of the neighborhoods 1038a to a different school so again the committee itself the 18 people never saw this modified version i just want to be clear on that so then i i would suggest if we're putting all of them on the table that we would include the original option for lj and not just the version two if we're going to shake out what uh truly uh miss ellis's intent is i would want to i would want to add that please so i just want to throw right now we do have a
119motion on the table for to vote on all of these at one time and i want to state that i believe that there's enough discussion on these and enough public input that we know that we have from the community that each of these be considered as a separate motion to be voted on because i think that the public will want to speak on them separately so i'm just saying that if it moves forward to vote i'm going to vote against it because i believe each one should be voted on separately and not as a group of all five um mr granite okay uh i've got a question of mr burns and then i've got a uh two comments so i'm gonna say three things my question of mr burns is what is the consequence if
120the board were to send forward ms ellis's option for and just assume that it was determined to be legally um insufficiently detailed is i'm gonna ask a question as a part of my question wouldn't it just be that that option falls away and that's not one that we can act on it wouldn't be that sending one indefinite portion of five parts somehow taints the whole process i i again just like i caution being too predictive i caution forecasting for those who may want to challenge your decisions before you've even had a chance to make them i don't want to give too much of a blueprint but i will say this one thing you have to be concerned about is any action you take you know that you move approve and vote on um becomes a
121board action subject to appeal and so for instance you could conceive of a situation where you're trying to move forward with some sort of registering plan or plans to hearing and be tuned out on april 30th because you've moved forward something that somebody thinks you shouldn't have moved forward they file an appeal that that's one possibility second possibility would be that you eventually get to the place where you adopt the registering plan that some somehow some way again not being predictive incorporates option four as it currently stands could that be poisonous to the entire redistricting plan to adopt i don't know would i take that position probably not but that doesn't mean somebody else wouldn't okay so in response to that and i'm still gonna make my other two comments in response to that i
122just want you to know miss ellis that i was supportive of your prerogative as a board member to put forward option four frankly without interference from the administration in this in this meeting i don't think that was appropriate and have it be determined later on at some time if there's something wrong with that that's fine but i don't think you should have to debate on this on this day as here uh with the superintendent over whether you want to put something forward so that's why i was doing that i am not supportive and i will not vote for in the end something that broadens the scope of redistricting and i think based on mr live's comments that's two right there so you might see that there's not going to be enough support for that now
123the third thing i'm going to say and then i'll be finished is to clarify for option five is if i can if i can read that so families of existing students in neighborhoods century b and 10th grade c would have the choice between staying at crofton elementary school or move to piney orchard elementary school comma and then attend the applicable middle school for that elementary school i think that clarifies everything with that and you have the date issue and the date issue to um they know they want their child to move their tiny or should why should they be able to do that as soon as possible so i think the question is going to be is do they it's when they own the house do they have children registered are you going to look
124at i'm talking about existing 85 students but effective when if i'm buying a house today would i be granted would i be part of that or is it would it be after april 30th the me you know you got to pick a day that it's effective of the students that would actually live there that's we have to be able to define that january 23rd i'm not talking about people in the future i'm talking about people whose kids are in school now i don't want them taken out of school unnecessarily i would just suggest that you actually put effective january 3rd students at our register just to be clear i think it would be easier for at least for us to tell the public with it that's right thank you miss ellis okay i have um
125several things i want to say or ask um first of all i keep forgetting but can i request that we put our redistricting policy to the policy committee to revisit that that's noted thank you okay sorry i've scratched all over my paper um the idea first of all that we would that we would go through with current options and then be able to go through another redistricting request that that is doing it piecemeal and i think that that could very negatively impact families creating multiple redistrictings in a very short amount of time and i'm trying to avoid that i'm still i'm looking at the regulation i'm hearing it as you read it and reading it again myself i i don't see anything in the wording that that speaks of specific plan um as far as
126mr leib's point and again i've said numerous times how how much i i commend the parents who went through this very long and difficult process we are not doing a disrespect to their work because these other schools were they they were told they i know it came up so i i can only assume there was interested interest among the committee to look at these schools but they were told that that was not an option and so i am trying to correct that again also as someone who was reached out to by many members of the odinton community there seemed to be interest in those in families at those other schools to be at the table and so um i don't think it's doing a disservice to their work to to look at that um again
127maybe we will hear testimony tonight but i believe it did come up in the committee and they were told it was not an option i would like to give them that option so that that is why option four is part of my plan to put forward um sorry i just want to make sure i don't miss any of my points uh future register so i'm again hearing that if i were to name that option my fourth option would be to expand the scope of redistricting and therefore consider for redistricting the current schools that were involved in the committee and including wild chapel elementary um four seasons elementary in odenton elementary and arundel oh arundel middle school was there and um there was one more concern oh i it was my intention to amend the third
128option to be effective the fall of 2020 so i would like that corrected um i just i want to go back and address something that um that mr grant said before that he didn't think it was appropriate for dr alato to weigh in on this dr alato has a statutory requirement to advise the board which is what he was doing on this he was advising us he was not saying he was advising him of the his reading of what policy regulation was so he was in line for what his role is to the board not telling us what to do but giving his advice just as his recommendation for redistricting as part of his advice i have to say that my understanding of the policy and regulation would be that if we put forth this
129plan to expand the scope of redistricting then we're putting out there as an option to to me that would say if that plan were to be adopted if it went to the hearing and then it were to be adopted that would halt any redistricting this year it would have to go back to the committee in the fall to a new committee in the fall and start over and the redistricting decision would not be made until next spring that that is what redistricting would mean because there would not according to our policy and regulation to follow what we currently have in place that we are bound to the redistricting would have to begin again in the fall so i want to put that out there that again i could not i do still believe that these
130positions should be put out separately and i would have to vote against moving any of these forward or this motion to move forward at this time because of option four mr live mr grant could you clarify for your option do you mean that to apply to uh the superintendent's recommendation and to apply to option 4 lj and to apply to up apply to everything that we've talked about all across the board not just lj okay thank you yes correct and if i could just ask miss ellis if in deference to your colleagues and to just get this issue moving would you be amenable to having the board vote on options one through three and five and then vote separately on four and then we'll just see what happens sure i just want uh i want
131to remind everyone and make sure i understand the policy the regulation correctly after the public hearing we can come up with a plan that is not one of these that we're putting forward correct that's correct correct in fact there's a there's a clause in your policy about taking advantage of all the data and information that you've received up to that point in time i'm simply trying to give the public the opportunity to weigh in on my fourth option if that is something we determine in the future would be the best and can you okay okay just caution remember though if you come up with this gets back dr lauda's point plan is reference in here because if you come up with a proposal let's say between your briefing first hearing but before the deadline that
132is different than what went to hearing then you have to have another round of hearings correct so so what do you mean by a round of hearings we have to have another meaning another hearing right round of meaning the process i i think it's a little unclear whether you have to have another briefing before the hearing but but i think that's the better practice i also want to make the point the easiest thing in the world would just to pick something and move on as far as the work goes we're in this for the students we have we have to do this right and so i please bear with me everyone i i hope to get enough support we we just have to do what's right for our students um and oh one more question
133um so miss hummer said if we added another um if we added other schools to the plan we would have to let me ask if i'm getting this correct if we add if we expanded the scope of the redistricting you're suggesting we have to halt and start the process over i i believe you would because you're looking to redistrict you're looking to put do a whole new redistricting so you would have to this is just saying if all the other plans were rejected let's say all five plans went to the board meeting and the next and then when it came time to vote on the final plan if option four was voted on to me that says that we would have to start a whole new redistricting process because go through the committee because there's
134no boundaries there's no plans there there's no no definite things that you would need to put get the committee together and make go through all the criteria we have in regulation and make sure that it it all followed through that's my reading of it that would be my understanding what is your reasoning yeah i don't i don't know if it's 100 clear in that regard i think you i think what's clear is you're supposed to identify your schools just as with any plan and and again we've plans mentioned several times throughout this that's the word that folks use to talk about this collection of change borders established borders schools affected et cetera that's all part of a plan if if you read the regulation simply by its words it suggests that by january 31st you're
135supposed to put out for the public for the briefing in the hearing process planner plans if if you were to get to the end of that process and develop a plan second hearing all of that that somehow looks very different than any of these it doesn't automatically violate anything in here but that doesn't mean the concern mr live expressed or that ms hummer's expressing which may or may not be legal concern but doesn't mean you would not have had the issue with no committee having been convened i don't know where that will go the lack of that process you have had it you have had a committee meet they've developed a recommendation your superintendent is recommended to you that's what his job is it's actually in your policy it says he's supposed to make these
136recommendations he's supposed to give you advice but from that point forward up to april 30th it's kind of now the boards okay so i i just want um to remind the board one more time that we're we're not choosing a plan here tonight we're just putting all the options out there for the public that way we can hear from them what they would like to see mr ray i understand ms ellis that your intentions um come for the best of the students but i would also advise that we vote on options one and three and five and then four separately just so we can have more discussion specifically on four and get those other options voted for since i i believe that most of us want those options and then just to leave option four
137so that we can have that discussion separately and just continue to move forward mr antoine i i have to go back and and agree with um with what miss hammer shared i think we should vote separately on each one um in order to move each one forward and not together michonne i wanted to stand by my second of the initial um plan not to vote on each item separately unless you choose to amend that um i also wanted to commend the committee for all of their hard work and all of their hours and i know that one plan rose to the top at the end and that's the superintendent's recommended plan however i get emails emails plural like dozens daily that suggests to me that not everyone is happy with the recommended plan and that
138in fact at least half of the population wanted to see some version of 4lj go through so um you know and that was the one that was you know the the favorite until it was pointed out and my it's my understanding at a late hour that um about the non-contiguous boundary but i also want to point out that the regulation says that you know that that various things have to be considered and neither plan addresses every single one of those i just want to reiterate again that we're not debating the plans or the benefit of one plan over another we're not so pointing out that we're voting on which plans to put forward in the statements have been made about four have been concerns about whether that is an appropriate according to regulation put forward
139so i just know i can continue um but others have been able to speak and express themselves and so i'm doing so as well so i just wanted to put that out there that i'm in favor of you know having second in your motion quite some time ago to move forward on that in some way unless you choose to amend it thank you miss corcodell i'm going to request that we called a vote there's people here who want to testify so if we could wrap up our comments and allow them to speak for before we vote just so we can get this right from our end can we ask three clarifying questions yes please so the first thing is um directed to mr granin we've done some wordsmithing to what to capture what we think
140you've articulated and i want to make sure that that's not exactly what you said so we've modified it slightly but i want to make sure that represents your intentions okay madame president point order because i don't want you straight from alex pardon me you you had a motion that was seconded for four options to move forward there was a friendly amendment made which now we've just heard this represents it but from a parliamentary standpoint that has to be seconded and voted before it can be part of the main motion so so so while you get your questions answered i want to make sure you understand is you have not i don't believe there was a second to the friendly amendment and that really is the proper process if you end up wanting to take any
141comment combination right now is four plus potentially a fifth second so there's a second all right and then you have to vote on that because it's the body's motion miss ellis's motion that was second it belongs to all of you now there's been a friendly amendment you would have to vote to add that to her motion all right so miss connolly call the role please to add option five to the miss ellis's motion mr gilliland all right saint juan hi sean hi he's live hi mr ellis hi mr grandma aye aye nine zero motion pass thank you now you are at the place where you have all five options as part of your emotional cells mr mr segment and again just for the sake of i mean this is going to be the public record
142so i want to make sure to you know your secretary has captured us correctly and everything so this second question is addressed to you ms ellis um with respect to option four uh you recently added a second step a second sesh sec sentence to option three making the effective date in the fall of 2020 was it your intention to add that same additional clarifying slash modifying sentence to four as well correct yes that's what we thought we didn't want to be presumptive thank you that's my second question my third and final question is i we thought we heard but we we're not sure madam president where it went option two is option two revised by a individual citizen this is not the option uh two which is for lj so this is not 4lj to
143went to committee as mr stewart said this is 4ljs modified by an individual so that and then somebody said well we should take the 4lj that the committee saw and we are unclear why i said suggested that based on the criteria that miss ellis has just announced to the public that based on the criteria and the causality that we should be adding an option number six to include the original for lj out of the same fairness and respect because 4lj version 2 my understanding was not part of the committee okay so i can't answer that well and i just say that can be you could make a motion to add this to this motion or we could consider it separately after they were tweaked minorly by by the same people who authored option four lj
144there was a group of them that came to a consensus on the revision that's very and they're it just it just addressed the dates and one other i'm sorry it was it was called it was called to me that's why i think i should be answering i was asked what my intention was with that so i think i need to clarify what my intention was with adding that plan right i know and then i right so because my intentions were called a question i'd like to answer and so uh my intentions were to um put forth a slightly more practical version of what was in the committee that did get support in the committee the committee has done their work just like option four has been revised by dr arlatto i'm putting forth a revised
145version of for lj mr live [Applause] i just go back to mrs hummer's uh concern or statement regarding the possibility of a whole new redistricting effort uh i don't know how correct i am but i think of this and and dr alato mentioned it the charge that was given to the committee the charge given to the committee was you know redistricted high school and as i understand that the committee looked at any school that had students attending crofton high school so with option four with what my my colleague would like to put forward it seems to me that redistricting charge changes and therefore in many ways it morphs into a whole different redistricting effort in that if you're not just redistricting to establish attendance areas for crofton high school from all the different people that
146have attended crofton schools you know for many years now you're saying let's look outside of this new crofton behind the crofton school system and see what we need to tweak and balance in the arundel feeder system to more or less make it all balance and that's a whole different charge and so not being a lawyer but knowing there are lawyers out there who want to argue anything i believe that does give a grounds for challenge in the future and that you know plus you know i'm i was one of the ones that mentioned when my colleague initially put forward for the workshop that we had time because it didn't go into effect for two years but that decision was a very i think of a thoughtful and well-meaning decision by the superintendent and the previous
147board to initiate this redistricting ever in time to have this all come to fruition this is something that's the first time it's happened in 35 years that we build a high school and we wanted to let people know as soon as possible what is going to be going on and so all i'm saying is if the result of what we're doing tonight ends up with a plan being adopted and it's challenged and it wins then we have completely lost that opportunity and that the superintendent allowed us to have in order to let our folks know and our families know as soon as possible how it's really going to lay out that's all you're ready [Applause] motion be severed so that the board can take up as a bundle options one through three along with option
148five which applies to options one through three and vote on those and vote separately on option four second ask mr um mr burns i'm sorry mr burns i'm forgetting your name um can that amendment be made to the motion that stands to sever it it's to make that amendment to the motion yeah i i i don't know if we it wasn't referenced as a friendly amendment but i don't think i think what you're doing is moving severed isn't a word that necessarily appears in in in the rules as i'm reading that apply here but i think he's mr grant is making a motion to amend the motion and that requires a process in which as we just went through with the friendly amendment and it's been seconded i heard that so so everyone is clear
149all i'm doing is giving us the ability to vote as a group on options one through three and five and then separately option four if anyone disagrees with that and really wants to vote on these one by one they can vote against that if five of us say we're satisfied we've talked enough deliberated enough to vote on one through three and five together we'll take a vote on that if it passes by five it's passed then we can vote on option four and and if it doesn't pass then you would be back to your original correct all right call the role miss connolly this is the voting to to to separate the bundle so that it would be options one through three and five voted on as one and option four voted on so considered
150separately but as proposed no other content changes because it's as proposed by miscella's motion still in other words the options are all the same okay miss connolly mr gollum hi miss antoine nay michael hi easter live nay no this hummer nay okay that's one two three five and the positive four in the negative five and separate so we should immediately vote on that no we we have a num we have public comment that would come on this um it's now if the board discussion has ended it's now time to bring miss ellis lights stolen but then we have a number of people that have been sitting here for some time that do want to speak on this miss elvis um actually no i i had i have a comment for option four but i guess
151i will bring that when we're voting on that um and so uh currently the public comment is on the bundle that's on the table am i correct it is the redistricting yes they can be on this motion they can be but this bundle that's on table they can speak on anything that's in the bundle because that is and so if they have something to say about option four whether that be later no it's because all these options are on the table so they can speak on anything that is they can speak on anything that's before them at this point so i will call in groups of five jonathan bonifas aaron chadwick charlie fleshman sam draviglini and brad rainey wow all right good evening president hummer vice president killen dr a lot of members of the
152board uh for the record my name is jonathan bonifas you know me as the chair of the crofton high school redistricting committee but i'm also the leader of bill crofton high school effort chair of the crofton chamber um of commerce education committee and most recently the uh community liaison for delegates at south who is a member of the house of delegates education subcommittee um i'm here tonight wearing all those hats and on behalf of a lot of parents and community members here in the and in the greater crofton area asking you to please stick to the redistricting timeline and vote tonight to send the options one two three and five forward we we specifically support the superintendent's recommendation and any of those others that were brought up in the committee did say delegate sid saab
153asked me to relay his support as well for that um we on the redistricting committee saw firsthand the angst and anxiety placed on the community by the mere discussion of possible scenarios for redistricting parents from all the committees being our communities being considered and many from ones outside of the scope came out in large number over five weeks to tell us their thoughts many were emotional some were heated uh committee members were accused of being bought off by developers of being racists of being pawns of the school system and many more it was nasty at times but many many were civil and respectful and just wanted their voices to be heard through it all the 18 member committee worked together formed groups to examine the different options and then came back together and passed the
154plan that the majority thought was best discarding the hard work of that committee by you know going with option four that was brought up tonight you know and um would not only be a slap in the face to the community but would also put all these communities back in limbo waiting yet another year to find out where their children will be attending school many decisions such as participating in the lottery for stem or other magnet programs are made by students and parents in the early part of their eighth grade year for crofton students they will be weighing those options this fall so please vote tonight uh to bring the options uh one two three uh and five uh you know that you discussed here tonight forward uh there you uh to public hearing there you
155will hear what we on the redistricting committee heard for five public meetings uh the voices the students parents and the communities and then you can make your decision and vote in april uh one thing i did want to add was that we did hear from many other communities in the south river feeder system we heard from people in the southern feeder system the old mill feeder system and the arundel feeder system all those and i actually had somebody meet uh reach out uh to me from the mead feeder system so if you want to just expand it to arundel don't forget old mill southern south river mead and the rest that's going to be one huge committee so we do have um some board comments but i do want to remind the board that this
156is not really supposed to be a back and forth we're hearing from the public we're going to have a hearing as well and so i i would urge board members not to be questioning or or trying to refute everything that the public may be saying that we'd be listening and this this is part of our public hearing as well ms scholheim hi there and um thank you for your work on the redistricting committee i don't think any of us are scheming to delay this a year despite remarks on social media et cetera that's not i don't think that's any of our intent and just like you we we want what's best for the kids in the community and we want to make sure voices or at least from my perspective we want to make sure
157that everyone's voice is heard miss antoine i just want to share you already know how how i feel last night you you took the time to share some very intimate details with us that helped us to make the decisions as you see right now but i want to remind um those that were not well those that are here and were there and those and the rest of the public that we were actually requested to introduce another plan if we had another one last night and so that plane is being introduced to go before the public that's all that that's happening right now uh just a clarification um i i don't see us in any way not sticking to the timeline my understanding of regulation is that we can we can create a new plan based
158upon the public hearing so we're just trying to put all the options out there to give the community input but it is not my intention at this time not to stick with the timeline i believe we're doing that because we're putting forth plans tonight so i i'm it's just a clarification i think we're miss corkado first mr boniface i want to thank you for your continued service in the community um from the first day i met you you've been out making sure that the best interest of your community without having negative impacts of the other communities around you i know that you're in your heart and i as well as those other committee members um i did i couldn't always make them right on time at seven o'clock but i i was right there with
159you and i know that uh in the audience listening and so i do want to say that yes a lot most of the people just about every single person i recognized working with you guys in the committee and at the very least testifying that have reached out to our board at least to the hole and um to that effort i just want you to go on record real quick because i want to make sure that we can get to everybody there's there's quite a few so i'm just going to direct my questions just to yourself as the leader um could you um expand just very in brief with a few sentences as to the extent that you went out with the communities at large for those who cannot make the meetings because i know you
160guys met with people too that is kind of skimmed over in the record to make sure that my fellow members truly understand that it was not done in a vacuum of just a principal picking a couple committee members and whoever could make it on those nights just so that we have a clear understanding of the extent of your hard work i mean we did get all the correspondence from uh that was sent to the principles of all the schools involved uh forwarded to uh the committee which we forwarded along we put into a google drive folder and we did get all the emails from the public that came to us personally we made those all available to everybody on the committee so just as you're receiving all those we did receive those over five weeks
161as well and uh you know some were positive some were negative and and everybody wanted to be heard but it's redistricting there's no way to make everybody happy somebody's gonna come up on the short end of the stick in this and and we knew that going in uh we were told that by aacps and uh that's how it worked out thank you not a problem miss chadwick good evening board members my name is aaron chadwick my husband and i have lived on evergreen road which is behind wegmans for nearly nine years school district school zone 1038c i spoke at the board meeting on december 19th some of you may remember me or my son who was running in circles that was us at that time i spoke to all of you and gave you data
162that my husband and i put together in folders hopefully you had time to review that information today i want to talk to you as a mom a mom of a first grader and future school aged child when we picked our home we picked it based on location the proximity to both mine and my husband's jobs before we had children before we talked about schools today we have a first grader at crofton elementary she talks about her friends her teachers and all the people she meets she attends before and after school care at a daycare where her brother goes she says hi to him every day and she proudly says to her friends that's my brother when they're at daycare together now we are discussing with her the possibility of changing schools changing teachers and changing
163daycares my husband and i have even discussed moving to stay in the crofton district on a daily basis she asks me which school she might be moving to so she can assess who she knows at those schools because she has friends at all the crofton elementary schools i want to remind everyone what i discussed at the last meeting there is no direct route from our house to piney orchard elementary school most crofton day care centers do not service odenton due to scheduled conflicts with the crofton schools in fact our daycare services all other nearby elementary schools except piney orchard i understand that the closest elementary school might not work but piney orchard elementary is not the second closest the third the fourth the fifth the sixth it is the seventh farthest elementary school from where
164we live it would extreme it would result in an extremely long bus ride for our students which is detrimental to their school experience they will have to get up earlier get home later and lose sleep and lose homework and activity time also bus time is the least structured time allowing these children to have copious amounts of unsupervised idle time on the buses the bus route if you'd like to talk about contiguous borders send 1038c to crofton elementary or nantucket if not non-contiguous we can go to meadows or woods 1038c should be considered separate um sorry um it seems like transportation issues from 1038c to piney orchard were not investigated or considered by the redistricting community my husband and i never received letters or notifications of any kind regarding the proposed changes up until recently the
165school budget school board should focus on making school a safe and enjoyable experience for all students students and 1038c to pioneer orchard elementary is a disservice to the students and a detriment to their welfare i know there is no immediate solution and you're trying to make the best decision with the information you have and regardless of your decision i'm standing here today to talk to ask that 1038c stay somewhere in crofton as presented option five my only concern is that it talks about existing students my child it doesn't talk about my you know future students staying in that school thank you miss chadwick miss miss fleishman good evening everybody um my name is charlie fleshman i was a parent volunteer on the redistricting committee representing crofton elementary school i just want to state for the
166record the forks of the forza patuxent is a small community within 1038b um and our community and me personally are not okay with being pushed out of crofton schools we'd like to request to be grandfathered in to continue to attend crofton schools our rural community is not a development it is a static established homes there will be no growth in housing and bus transportation would essentially stay the same as it always has been bus number 23. um i live in the part of 1038b a small community i accepted the volunteer position as the redistricting community thinking it would be a great opportunity to learn the process and give our area on the west side a voice inside crofton now that two rivers is developing single-family homes 1038 b only suggests that two rivers are the
167only residents and growing community in that area i did question and request a breakdown for our community and scott schuler obliged by breaking down the numbers off conway collins graceford meyer station and south patuxent i did speak out numerous times for the forks of the patuxent in the overall areas of 1038 b and c this area has been districted for crofton elementary crofton middle arundel high school for over 40 years my husband attended all the schools he's 44. our children have created foundations of friendships and crofton and all around same for extracurricular activities i want to clarify a few things up last night stated at the time of the voting on the redistricting committee when it came down to the two plans i abstained both more so as a stand-up for my community and to
168show my disagreement for pushing all the new development on to the west side and when we reached the final plan to submit to dr arlatto i at least requested a few grandfathering clauses into the plan and to have it start in 2020 the grandfathering was dropped i chose to look at every angle process area in my own personal community community and my children i never mentioned that i was an agreement to our community to leave crofton schools i was more under the impression that we had no other alternative and it seemed the direction that was going i agreed to stay involved in the arundel side and the plans for west county elementary school since it will directly affect our community in the distant future a side note there are discussions of parcels of land to
169be obtained for the west county elementary and it is on the cip however nothing is bought yet there are no sketch plans and that is it it's a long way away i'm the president of our forks of the patuxent association our community also has a covenant agreement that i believe would contest these plans delaying it even further um covenant agreement with two rivers the developer that's there now um i do feel the redistricting process was pushed rushed and should be reevaluated or i'll do a little addendum to add additional scopes options to the agreed-upon plans such as five thank you miss fleshman thank you mr travis glean oh i'm sorry can i oh just for clarification um are are you the the only committee member on in odenton on the other side of route three
170that on the other side of route three that did not vote against option four on the other side of route three yes the other crofton elementary um representative also did not but she's on croft inside right okay just thank you no problem mr travaglini how you doing you pronounce it pretty well it's actually a silent g traveling but sorry ah no that's all right um so i also live in the forks of patuxent um in the area known as wilson town which is passed beyond the two rivers uh community back in the woods uh so that is part of 1038 b i have a daughter in second grade at crofton elementary and another that will start there in the year 2020 unless you know things uh change and then there's also a possibility that they
171could be redistributed again if there is another school built in our area overall i think the board should not hastily make any decisions or be pressured into adopting any of the current proposals if they have serious doubts or concerns about them and i hear a lot of doubts and concerns about them um you know maybe perhaps the simplest solution is merely sending all the currently districted crofton middle school students to the new high school and addressing capacity issues later with new schools and renovations and an expedited mayor could be an alternative i don't know but i think it's something the board could consider either now or in the future but i'd like to make a couple of points the proposed redistricting and shuffling students around is not a sustainable solution and may cause more problems
172than it solves if any of the proposed redistricting is adopted will still have capacity issues the registering effort is essentially rearranging deck chairs on the on the titanic capacity problems with one school are shifted to another and instead of fixing the problem the problem is merely being shifted elsewhere and the ship is still sinking this is not fair to our children the real root of the problem i think we can all agree on is um is that the area needs more schools and more capacity so i hope that is strongly considered by the board like i said either now or in the future and i think that's a better solution than shuffling our innocent children from school to school another point i want to make is root three should not be considered as a universal
173boundary because it is impossible to avoid route three uh no matter what buses and children's will will have to cross route three or use route three if areas are shuffled around to different schools or remain where they are uh for example there are areas in the proposals that have children attend schools across route three and when patuxent road closes as it often does buses will have to use route 3 as an alternative and then my last point is the the forks patuxent area is more more contiguous with crofton than it is actually with odenton um for my house it's four miles to crofton elementary but six miles of piney orchard with it five miles from crafty middle but nine miles from arundel middle our children attend school in crofton we go to church and craft
174and we shop in crofton and many generations in the fox patuxent area have always done so so um thank you for hearing me out and that's it thank you mr travolini did i say it right good evening my name is brad rainey i'd like to ask the board to look much more closely at option one group one option one back in 2015 the zone 1046 was redistricted from nantucket elementary to crosston elementary this option would now move zone 1046 from crofton elementary to crofton meadows while this is a six year gap and wouldn't impact any one student it would impact parents who will be forced to join a third school community if they have kids more than three years apart as many of you are parents you know how important that is to have a
175relationship with the teachers and administrators at school i'd like to ask you to not force those parents to make another make a third set of relationships also uh the the plan increases the non-contiguous areas i know that's not a requirement for redistricting but it would force 1046 to travel through zone 1045 which is still scheduled for crofton elementary and it will also make 1038c students either spend time in traffic on round 3 or use the johns hopkins rydell corridor and bypass two elementary schools by a third of a mile option one is also the only plan by its own numbers that leaves two elementary schools still overcrowded none of the other plans leave more than one school overcrowded and we would just be back here again and finally the committee the community committee recognized this
176back in october as you've seen and as i've heard tonight there were no votes for this this proposal when it was brought up towards the end of the session it wasn't voted on because it puts an undue stress on parents and children uh and it will lead to continued overcrowding and mortar resistant meetings um so i urge the board to take group group one option one off the table and fully support one of the other plans thank you mr rainey our next group kristen camaniti samantha weaver benjamin sunberg john sunberg and carolyn fumey dr alato president hummer vice president jill landon board members i came here with some very articulate comments and man i don't know if they make sense anymore at this point or not so i will do my best to try to
177make sense of the conversation that has occurred here tonight as well as the thoughts that i've been having for many months uh i'm kristen kamenity and i'm a mom to four kids ryan who is in third grade at nantucket zachary who's in kindergarten also at nantucket connor who is four and tessa who is seven months i was also a member of the crofton area redistricting advisory committee and to say that i have a vested interest in this community is an understatement so i'm hearing so many things there's a couple different points um that i would like to make one thing came up at the very first redistricting meeting when state senator ed reilly stood up and he said if crofton high school opens at or near capacity then this committee will not have done their
178job and i just want to make clear that he couldn't have been more wrong if crofton high school opens at or near capacity it is because for far too long development has been prioritized over our children in the crofton area so please do not anybody allow themselves to think that the committee or dr arlatto or any of you haven't done your job if crofton high school opens at or near capacity and throughout all of the redistricting process we heard over and over again from the crofton community which to be clear includes large parts of of gamrals that despite the overcrowding they want to remain as one community keeping all of the crofton elementary schools together to address some of the points as far as whether including other schools would restart the process your policy specifically
179states that the redistricting advisory committee members shall be two parents or guardians from each affected school who are familiar with the impacted school communities and able to represent the school community community's views and concerns so if you included other schools you it seems to me based on policy i'm not sure mr burns can correct me that you need to reconvene another committee to allow those parents of those now included schools to have a say which then negates all of the hours and hours and hours of work that the committee already did which brings us to dr arlatto's point which was that the purpose of this committee was to establish the boundary of croft in high school and you can do that and then reconvene another redistricting process that includes all those arundel elementary schools to
180figure out how those children should most be should best be redistributed so this is a complex process there is no perfect answer there's no easy solution but i would ask that you a keep in mind not to make this exceedingly complicated not to prolong it for the public are we deserve as a community to know at least what high school our kids are going to go to and you can do that right now you can determine which elementary schools will feed to crofton high school which elementary schools will feed to arundel high school and which will feed the south river and then figure out the elementary schools after in fact but at least give us some answers by april 30th thank you miss weaver [Applause] dr roloto president hubbard board members my name is samantha
181weaver i'm a proud parent of a third grader at nantucket elementary and i also currently serve as the nantucket pta president i attended every redistricting meeting and while i was not a committee member i poured over the data and numbers made available to the public i spent weeks developing spreadsheets and calculating capacity charts i scrutinized to the individual student every plan presented by the committee and i was not alone many community members devoted countless hours for five weeks to help find review develop a redistricting plan that would fit our community needs many many more attended the redistricting meetings and provided public testimony at the end of the day the redistricting committee and the community as a whole was tasked with solving a math problem that has no answer with the over development in our area
182there is simply more students than there are seats however the plan approved by the committee and adopted by dr arlato is the most equitable and fair solution it allows for all four crofton elementary schools to attend the new crofton area high school it shares the overcrowding equitably and aligns possible future overcrowding at elementary school level where there is relief on the horizon with the future west county elementary school i am aware and you have heard that the from piney orchard parents about the enrollment projections over the next 10 years and the viability of expediting the new west county elementary school in a time to meet the needs of those projected enrollment rates and to that point i would ask this board member to consider this redistricting a two-phased approach keep this phase as it was
183designed to be about creating a crofton high school feeder system adopt the districting changes in dr la doctor orlado's proposal that will not take effect until the 2021 school year this allows for a phase 2 redistricting process next year this phase will in this phase the elementary schools in the arundel feeder system can complete a com a review of their own boundaries create a redistricting process that equitably aligns their overcrowding in a responsible district and responsible districting both phase one and phase two can start in the 2021 school year it is almost like plan four but basically cutting it down so instead of having a 26 person committee which if we do have to go back to committee that's what we're looking at we would keep the original committee we have now and a small
184eight eight-person committee to decide or to develop a plan later please do not let the hard work in this method all elementary schools in the feeder system can be included and have a voice students can be districted to one feeder system that they will continue to until graduation the answer of who will be districted to crofton high school will be answered please do not let the work of our community invested in this process be for nothing move forward with the redistricting process and vote to take dr olado's plan to community briefings and public comment thank you thank you miss weaver [Applause] hi my name is benjamin leon sunburg i live at the wall trap of villas and i'm in 7th grade and i go to crofton middle school i've been the new kid once already
185and it sucked and i needed to make new friends and step out of my comfort zone i made a lot of great friends so the idea of having to be the new kid again and making new friends makes me feel scared sad and mad um i would like the decision makers to take in to consideration the feelings of the kids like me and numerous others and i would like i would also like the decision makers to re-evaluate the options given and please and let us just stay with our friends and be happier thank you thank you benjamin [Applause] um with the short amount of time please excuse the lack of eye contact good evening board members i would like to thank you for the opportunity to talk this evening my name is john sunberg and
186my family and i live in the village of wall chapel my son benjamin is set seventh grade honor roll student at crofton middle school my son went to a bilingual school in d.c from peak pre-k to fifth grade and the kids from the suns elementary school were going to a lot of different schools for junior high and had we stayed where we were he would have only moved forward with one friend junior high was the perfect time for us to make a change with the least impact on our sons socially and emotionally as my son was preparing to go to junior high we had to find the right school environment for him and continue to grow and thrive we did a lot of research and we ended up in anne arundel county and then narrowed
187it down to crofton middle school we spent a while looking for houses and really wanted to move in the triangle area of crofton then we started house hunting while prepping our own house for sale we started making offers on places we were interested in however the offers were contingent and sellers were not interested in waiting for our house to sell so we started to run out of time to get benjamin enrolled we did our research on the area that was being serviced by crofton middle and would later feed into the new high school instead of us moving into the exact area we wanted we needed to sacrifice in order to get our son registered for school so we ended up moving in not into a single family home in an established neighborhood like we wanted
188and had our hearts set on and coincidentally would still be in the boundary addresses but into a new construction townhome in walchappelville's it wasn't where we wanted to be or the type of home that we wanted but it was in the boundary and there was no issue with waiting until our home sold the change was difficult for our son but he adjusted and finally has a solid group of friends that support him and care for him the point that i'm circling we're in right now is that we did our homework we did everything in our power to ensure the path forward for our son and now after purchasing a home for half a million dollars to ensure that we were in the right neighborhood um the community lines are being redrawn on us to be
189frank after the investment in the community with the purchase of our home it's devastating news the sole driving factor of our move into this house was the schools we do not want our son to have to start over again making new friends at the most vulnerable time of his life going to the ninth grade is a 14 year old in the middle of puberty trying to break into cliques of kids that have been going to school together since kindergarten it's not what we moved here for everything about the redrawing lines is bad for our family i also feel the need to call out diversity of children in our neighborhood my son is biracial and contributes to the diversity of the school and we have a broad mix of races represented in our small neighborhood something
190that is lacking in crofton my son even noted shortly after starting at croft the middle he had never seen so many blonde people in his life not the same diversity he was used to going to school in dc we support the 4lj option moving forward to keep our 1038c community going to crofton high our community would be of minimal impact on the school but the proposed changes would be a major impact to all the families living here thank you for your time good evening my name is carolyn fumey i was the arundel high prep on the redistricting committee i've been before you about six times since december 5th i just want to talk a little bit about mr stewart's comment that 4lj or 4lba version 2 doesn't look like what it looked like before the
191committee before the committee all the plans um would go into place in 2000 2019. um when dr arletta took a look at the committee's plan he changed that to 2020 he took out the grandfathering and he had 1038a go to crofton woods we became came before you on december 5th and we gave you a 4lj plant we tried to mirror it as closely as possible to dr arlettos so that plan that we gave you on the fifth had a 2020 date it had 1038a going to woods um the only change we have made now is we went to the workshop last night and we listened to you we listened to your questions we listened to the aacps comments mr stewart said his issue with 4lj as we had given it to you was that 1038c
192stayed in crofton forever so we gave you a version now that says 1038c will go to meadows until a west county elementary school is built and a feasibility study is done at arundel high school rental middle school and any renovations need to take place what that does is it says the rental cluster will welcome 1038c but we need the infrastructure in place to do it dr aletto's completely right the purpose of that committee was to draw the boundaries for crofton high school but we also looked at the overcrowding at crofton elementary and two new neighborhoods moved from the crofton feeder to the arundel feeder the only schools that took two new neighborhoods are arundel feeder schools that's why we ask you to take option 4lj version 2 to public hearing thanks for your time okay
193our next stacy montana andrew green ross i'm sorry i can't read the last name um diana mcmullen and leah jaspers stacy montana that's me can i begin yes okay hi my name is stacey montane and i'm the vice president of arundel middle school pta i was also on the crofton area redistricting committee i'm here to ask you to vote yes to take option 4lj version 2 to public hearing today arundel middle has 1051 students with a capacity of 1071. in 2019 arundel middle is slated to have 1074 students that's over capacity this is before any new students are added from 1038 bc or odington town center arundel middle already has four portable classrooms in constant use and the students have to walk outside to access them placing both 1038 b and c in arundel middle
194will place us well over capacity at 116 percent per the aacps strategic facilities utilization master plan final report dated august 31st 2015 it stayed a utilization above 110 percent was considered inadequate last night aacps office planning office told you that four seasons in wall chapel were not included in the committee because they are over or at capacity and could not take 1038 b or c these schools feed into arundel middle aacps is using the high numbers of these schools to explain why they can't take a single neighborhood but are ignoring the fact that those at high enrollment numbers high enrollment schools coupled with new neighborhoods are the exact reason ams will be overcrowded i know that ams admin has met with an aacps architect about splitting a room to give us two additional classrooms it
195doesn't look promising mr chaknovic said he supports a feasibility study for ams however it is not in the 2020 budget not in the cip and not a recommendation in the superintendent's plan arundel parents have no assurances that a feasibility study will be done if aacps is committed to it why is it not in one of those places mr stewart stated that arundel middle is getting a new roof and bus loop we received a standard maintenance roof however the bus loop was postponed for 18 to 24 months if not longer that's still not in the 2020 budget or the cip these long overdue changes are not changes that give us more classrooms or room for students to eat lunch or conduct science labs the problem is enrollment numbers the only thing that will solve this is
196less kids or more space the solution is in addition to the school but but again that is not in the cip or superintendent's recommendation option 4 lj 2 gives us less kids until an addition can be completed it is clear the arundel cluster is taking the majority weight of the overcrowding that affects everyone it seems only fair that crofton schools share some of the weight as well until an addition is built at ams mr gannon asked why 1038b and c's family can't stay in crofton both mr stewart and mr boniface stated that they won't fit in crofton middle the arundel cluster would welcome these neighborhoods if space permitted unfortunately without an addition renovation ams students are already in portables where will everyone fit ams has having great success the principal was awarded maryland middle school
197principal of the year test scores are up and has a great group of faculty and staff the overcrowding could be detrimental to all the strides that ams has made for example increased students narrow hallways is already problematic recently a teacher and a student collided the teacher was injured and resulted in a dislocated shoulder what's at fault lack of functional space please vote for lj2 thank you miss montana mr greene good evening my name is andrew green and i'm a resident of of course 1038c i'm here to voice my support for option 4 lj my son is currently in 6th grade crofton middle school and will be entering the eighth grade when the redistricting begins sending him to arundel middle school nearly all of the friendships and relationships he will have worked so hard to develop
198in sixth and seventh grades at crofton middle will practically vanish as he will no longer be graduated with his peers he might as well go to school in california because that's about as many people as he will know at a rundle additionally my son has an iep and receives special education services the instability of his services merely compounds the problem of losing his friends it is my understanding that currently both option 4 and option 4 lj meet 12 of the 13 factors in the redistricting regulations while option 4 lj may not meet the contiguous boundary provision option four has no provision for grandfathering considerations for students currently attending schools in an area proposed for redistricting it is also my understanding that there are several boundaries within aacps that are not contiguous so i do not
199see how that would be a deal breaker so while it may be true that no plan would be perfect and if one of the original goals of the redistricting was keeping students together and if that remains a true target then option 4 lj clearly rises to the top as the best solution my son who understandably did not want to speak here tonight asked me to give each of the board members a copy of a letter that he wrote expressing his thoughts if you could pass those out for me please oh you just did okay thank you all right i'll leave those for you to read and i'll just say thank you for your time and consideration thank you mr green [Applause] ross and i'm sorry i don't want to butcher the last name it's all
200right even if uh my handwriting was great it's still horrible uh my name is ross thulier um i'm a father of three girls they all go to uh or two of them go to nantucket one of them is scheduled to go there in two years um my concern was just that there were rumors before that nantucket was not slated to go to crofton high school i'm glad to see that this option four that it is now um and i just wanted to just express that uh you have my support any option that includes nantucket going to crofton high school um that's the reason we stay in crofton it's not cheap it's getting crowded but the schools are amazing so thank you thank you mr thuria miss hun um yes i heard that rumor too and
201it's exactly that uh a rumor i don't know how that got started but i don't think any of us have ever spoken to about removing nantucket from the crofton feeder system ms mcmullen bring this back down hi everyone i'm diana mcmullen i've spoken in front of you a number of times i am a parent of a first and fifth grader at piney orchard um i've had some back and forth with you guys today um in regards to the numbers that were presented on slide 48 and last night's workshop um and kind of just the gist of what i wanted to talk about today was just the numbers in general the bottom line is that there's just too many kids and not enough seats in both the crofton area and the arundel area for everything that's
202going on i understand that it's not a problem that was generated here there's opz you know planning and zoning issue with the way seats are accounted for and hopefully something can get done to help deal with apf for that but my point is that the numbers are very hard to follow and fact check because they're constantly changing i presented to you via email earlier today the plans the three plans that are moving forward broken down using the numbers that were presented to the public at the public meetings and including the projections during the process the committee was told not to use the projection numbers don't look at them they're not correct but then on slide 48 that was presented in the workshop there's projection numbers but there's no backup in the public record for where
203any of these numbers are coming from and you know we've been told that this is supposed to be a transparent process but information is being presented and then not followed up on and it's very hard um you know as the pta president for um nantucket spoke earlier we all have spreadsheets too we're all trying to figure these numbers out too and when the numbers aren't being passed along we don't we can't hold the board of ed to account which is our right as citizens and as parents some of the places that i know i'm a civil engineer i work with developers i work in development i have for almost 20 years in anne arundel county so i'm familiar with the resources that are available to the public i know that there are numbers there are
204seats missing out of the 1038c projections they don't include the monarch apartments which is almost 300 units and i can't believe that zero students are going to be coming out of there that's only going to increase the number of students coming out of 1038c it also discounts all of odenton town center development which is quite significant and these kids will be going to arundel middle school if we included the other elementary schools would we get a true view of the numbers that are going to arundel middle i think we need to look at all of the development that's atta that's going to be impacting all of these schools that the plans are pushing uh crofton students into the arundel cluster we need to make sure that we're looking at apples to apples um so we
205are hoping that you push uh plan for lj forward and then hopefully we can go through some type of investigation to have all of the numbers thank you thank you miss mcmillan miss shelton i am very curious as to why the numbers were so off as well and i would love a full explanation about that because it does change things it changes the percentages it probably um impacted or influenced um the committee members because you know if they were incorrect then the percentages were off and it could have swayed people one way or another so from acps staff i would love to know a full explanation as to why the things are so off thank you good evening members of the board and dr arlato my name is leah jaspers and i am here on
206behalf of piney orchard elementary school i was a member of the crofton high school redistricting committee i'm here to request that you move plan 4 lj version 2 to public hearing with dr alato's plan as you make that decision tonight i want to ask you to keep the following key points in mind the superintendent's plan did not include any of the committee recommendations that address arundel middle and its ability to handle the influx of students from crofton middle and odenton town center arundel middle school improvements are not on the cip and they are not in the superintendent's budget this places in any improvements to arundel middle several years out at best the county does not have land for two rivers or west county elementary school and although this project is in the cip and is
207scheduled to open when my kindergartner is entering seventh grade it is realistic to think that without land for this project it could possibly be further delayed crofton high school will not contain four grade levels until the year 2022 almost four school years from now i believe it is extremely premature to move to crofton neighborhoods neighborhood 1038b and c to the arundel feeder system for the 2020 school year we are willing to take one of these neighborhoods two seems truly unfair this decision should not be based on simplifying overcrowding by consolidating it to two buildings which we heard last night we should be talking about the learners in those seats as a former classroom teacher i know firsthand that there is an impact on students and learning when schools are massively overcrowded utilizing as many available
208seats as possible is what is best for students i would like to fast forward to the year 2020. in 2020 crofton schools will have seats for neighborhood 1038c at crofton meadows crofton middle and crofton high arundel schools will only have seats for these students at the high school the elementary school they are assigned to will be overcrowded in addition to the middle school that may or may not be in the cip at that time those of you who value the committee process and believe that the committee plan takes precedence over all other plans please acknowledge that anne arundel county public schools has not opened a new high school in over 30 years there was significant debate over numbers that we were or were not allowed to use and an unequal membership on that committee that
209was biased to one feeder system arundel high school feeder truly was underrepresented please bring both plans to hearing so that both feeder systems can feel that from today forward they had equal representation and ability to participate in the redistricting process i also implore you to further examine the numbers and their accuracy for any plans that move forward based on tonight's vote thank you thank you nicole kotschwar tammy simpson irene savares jerry walker and steven hours oh jared okay all right um bonnie schofield good evening my name is nicole kochwar i'm a future nantucket croft and middle and high school yet to be determined parent i say future parent because my daughters are four and two um i would like to dispel the argument right now that arundel didn't have a say in the redistricting process
210or rental feeder schools such as odenton four seasons watch apple my kids are not even in school yet and yet i know that they are scheduled to go to nantucket they are scheduled to go to crofton middle and so arundel middle represents those students all parents who have students that are our kids scheduled to go to school should know what their elementary and middle schools are and should attend the meetings just like crofton did for five weeks and sat there and listened and debated and did their own research and testified so i'm for you to just please consider that um i do feel that all communities have had a say if you include the other elementary schools and a whole new redistricting process that is just adding additional parents and changing their boundary lines but
211the middle school boundary was there everyone could have had their voice heard during the five-week process that being said i also believe that crofton does as people have noticed there's a lot of development issues all the way across the board crofton has its own development still going on being built currently um scheduled for the capacity that is currently open at crofton meadows the writings i believe is scheduled for crofton meadows and so i understand everyone is feeling the pinch of over development i really think a two-prong process is the best case here please move forward with the superintendent's plan in the redistricting committee's plan of option four to let crofton high school have its high school to let crofton have their high school that they've waited so long for and then have a redistricting in
212a good consideration and allow all those schools to voice their concerns in their own redistricting on the other side of on west on the west side of three because you do have schools over there like oden sitting at 80 capacity that you could spread some kids around over there and i do implore you to look at the stuff for a rundle i mean all schools in our county need to be looked at and it needs to have a bigger picture but the goal here was crofton high school and so i implore you to stick with that and let our community enjoy the fact that we're getting a high school thank you thank you [Applause] good evening my name is tammy simpson i currently reside in gambles which interestingly enough depending on whether you live by
213target or home goods determines which feeder system you go to as my son has attended both crofton middle and arundel mill i currently have a fifth grader at four seasons who will be transitioning to arundel middle in the fall and an eighth grader at arundel middle who will be transitioning to the high school and one thing that i do want to clarify from the previous speaker is that as a current parent of four seasons no information was sent out about this redistricting project process to any parent at four seasons and i currently live in summerfield village and i did most of the information sharing to my neighborhood because a lot of the information was not shared with four seasons parents as a parent of the arundel feeder system i am very concerned about the current
214recommendation to shift current croft and school students into a already crowded arundel feeder system the staff at arundel are great they do the best that they can but the school is very crowded to the point where as mentioned before there are four portables outside the portables are not gated and students have to leave their school building to go outside into an unsecured area and then wait for a staff member to come open the door to enter the main building once again initially i was excited about the prospect of a new high school coming into the area but now i'm very concerned with the justifications being used to populate this school and the recommendations that would ultimately flood the already growing arundel cluster with all the development that is coming somerfield village is getting 110 new
215houses and i'm not sure if any of those houses were included in the data collected the crofton gambles area is over developed and solutions to educated current and future students should be based on common sense zoning such as the proposal submitted by the arundel cluster we do our students a huge injustice by placing them in overcrowded classrooms and school boundaries that do not address the needs of the entire area versus which side of route 3 you live on i cannot support any plan that would re-zone students who are currently in crofton schools into piney orchid and then subsequently into arundel middle and i respectfully request that you will continue to allow option 4 lj2 to come to public hearing thank you thank you miss simpson mr barry good evening everyone my name is irene savares
216and i am a high school science teacher and i live in pine new orchard i have two small children my eldest is going to begin kindergarten uh in the fall and i'm here today to express my strong field support for option 4 lj version 2. um i attended previous meetings and my husband addressed the redistricting committee in the final october meeting as an educator i cannot stress enough how important those elementary middle school years are from experience i have seen multiple multiple cases where students struggle in high school because they lack a solid foundation by putting elementary schools over capacity we are making it harder for teachers to deliver quality instruction and also for kids to get the support they need in the classroom option 4 lj version 2 does not add any burden to
217current elementary school capacities and still allows the crofton kids to stay together it's an obvious solution and quite honestly i don't even know why that one wasn't brought forth in the field of education we are constantly looking for ways to implement more equitable practices for our students putting our kids at an unnecessary disadvantage by overcrowding is not equitable while the entire odenton gambles community celebrates the new high school we don't think it is fair for the redistricting burden to be explicitly shifted to our side of route 3. this puts our kids through unnecessary difficulties during the most impressionable years just so that the crafting community can be the sole beneficiary we hope that just as we are supportive of the new high school crafting can be understanding of our hesitation as odenton residents to be
218the only ones that have to give something up in this redistricting thank you for your time thank you for your consideration and thank you for the opportunity to speak here today thank you mr varus mr alex is it is it ours good evening members of the board i'm stephen hours um and maybe i should say good night given the time but anyway um thank you for the opportunity to uh to speak with everyone here um i am the father of a nantucket child and um another one who will be in nantucket before too long um and i do appreciate uh the the discussion of trying to keep the the crofton area elementary schools together um i do appreciate that effort that was made and all the effort that was put into the work group that
219was done before the committee that was done before i do support the superintendent's recommendation i am concerned about the new idea that has been brought up tonight regarding opening it up to new schools and start kind of starting over from scratch to some extent um i'm concerned that that will delay the decision-making uh substantially and limit the ability of people to put a lot of public input into into things at this point um so i do recommend that that people go ahead with one of the more developed plans um and of course i do support the the superintendent's plan but but at least go with one that can be moved on quickly and through this this process rather than putting it to another year uh thank you very much i appreciate it thank you mr
220hours ms scofield good evening thank you for your time and for all of your work on this uh my name is bonnie schofield i have a daughter who is currently in third grade at piney orchard and another daughter who will begin kindergarten there in the fall so my girls along with so many other children will bear the brunt of the overcrowding both at piney orchard and at arundel middle looking at the documents the board was presented with last night i was shocked at the projection numbers those numbers matter they matter because they represent students trying to learn they represent chil they represent children they represent my children we understand there's an overcrowding problem and in piney orchard norendo we've been willing to do our part to help accepting to the whole two rivers area but
221to also expect to bust children all the way from watch apple to piney knowing that piney would be at 137 capacity by the time a new school opens if it opens on time while the crofton schools remain at 100 or 104 percent is incredibly unfair it says that overcrowding and crofton must be alleviated but it's fine to massively overcrowd the arundel schools that's valuing the education of children and crofton to the direct detriment of others i urge you to look at these numbers and act in the best interest of all students plan 4 lj version 2 if it's group 1 option 1 i appreciate the effort to include the other arundel feeder schools who were not represented but are affected by this process they were not given a voice and certainly not equal voice so
222thank you very much thank you miss scofield dwayne boyd and john lucas did you say dwayne boyd first yes superintendent arlato and president hummer and board members my name is dwayne boyd i spoke last time i live in the villas of wau chapel represented by 1038c and my prepared remarks have changed based on what's come to light tonight so i want to thank you for one convening and having a special session last night and really considering how this is impacting everyone i am in favor of the options one two three and five going forward i think that that will give us all the opportunity to have our voices heard i also want to have opportunity for us to unite as a community because what i've seen tonight is a lot of divisive talk around people
223who are on the committee people who are on the committee if you live on this side of three if you live on that side of three all of us have done the same thing we have moved to this community solely to provide our kids the best education possible i shouldn't be disadvantaged that my selection took me to the other side of three what would make better sense is to see what in that school the schools that are closest to me that would best serve my children i don't want anything different than all the people who sell on the committees all the people who are supportive option four i just is disadvantaged because i moved on the wrong side of the street with the same expectations as everybody else has had that their kids are going
224to go to the crosston feeder system i've done nothing different so why am i now being disadvantaged why make the exact same choice for my children i think it's unfair and in terms of the committee saying that they have the opportunity to go forward there wasn't a clear path to what the outcome was i wasn't vocal previously because i kept on hearing for lj was going to be successful and i was okay with although taking my children out of crofton elementary i was still going to be a part of the croft and feeder system and then there was this vote where they were talking about the non-contiguous boundaries being the issue so it wasn't even forwarded and then now yeah now i'm paying attention of course because prior to that i thought that i was
225going to be fairly represented so instead of us going back and forth if option 4 is the best take it to public hearing let the public decide if option 4 lj version 2 which i support is the best let it go let's get past all of this not in any way disrespecting the work that has been done but it doesn't negate the work that has been done if that's the best plan it will prevail we don't have to fight about it now let's take it to the public hearing so that everybody has a voice and everybody could be represented my last point is this last time i was here i talked about diversity and i heard that your numbers were provided to you i don't have the numbers so i'm going to trust that you
226guys are assessing how the crofton high school will be impacted around diversity under option four that's going forward thank you for your time thank you for your consideration and i'm sure you'll see me again thank you mr boyd mr lucas miss antoine i just want to make a quick comment uh what what you said about the diversity numbers we definitely took the diversity um recommendation from you well and the staff took it very seriously as well i want to emphasize that it is for um from what i'm understanding the staff shared yesterday that that those numbers will only be shared with us for for various reasons uh legally so that is why it hasn't been presented publicly mr lucas um good evening i'll try to keep this short because i think i'm the last one
227president hummer the board citizens i moved my name is john lucas i moved to odenton about five years ago i have a two-year-old daughter who will be attending piney orchard in a few years very concerned about the overcrowding that everyone is projecting to be significant you know one of the reasons we moved to this area piney orchard in particular was that the schools were very nice and highly ranked i think um i guess to get down to the bottom line i just want to add my voice to the sort of swelling chorus of support for option four lj version two i think it's definitely the fairest option um in terms of who is going to bear the brunt of this overcrowding that i think everyone agrees is a fact so the idea that piney orchard
228would be forced to to take these two additional neighborhoods i think is totally unfair the idea that i think we're definitely willing to accept our share of the burden which option 4lj version 2 does uh and you know we'd be taking 1038b and i think that uh crofton needs to do its part and take 1038c um one of the videos that was played hours ago at this point um and and it also i one of the things that was mentioned was this idea that all means all and i know that uh several other people have echoed that throughout the course of this evening and i think if that's really an animating idea that's important uh to this body then that means that the burden should be shared equally between uh districts so thank you though
229[Applause] i'm chair since uh i believe that was the end of the testimony i call vote no wait no more no more pub no more public comment all right we will vote on the uh the motion we've already been bundled right pass it or not well voting on that well that it's been moved to two the amendment was so the first one is the bundle that would be option one two three and five to move on to public comment i mean to public hearing so miss connolly would you call the role please this is voting if you are voting to move options one two three and five to public hearing mr gilliland is antoine aye ms shaw aye mr leib nay hi mr granny aye ms corcodell hi mraya hi man miss homer i so
230that's eight one motion passes so the options one two three and five will move on to public hearing then the next motion is option four which is let me make sure i may expand the scope of the redistricting to include odenton elementary four seasons elementary chapel elementary to the nine schools considered by the committee changed to be effective in the fall of 2020. miss ellis yes i'm i'm going to be brief i i know we've had a lot of discussion and um it is time to move forward um i i just want to make a couple comments about this proposal um based on things that have been uh said this evening um i i do not see this proposal as starting over there is room in our our regulation indicates that that we can come
231up with a plan that works best for the students and it was brought up by a parent from i believe as watch apple elementary it was one of the odinton schools who did confirm that they were not aware that they had a voice because they never received any notification we're not voting for this option we're voting to put it forward for public uh input that's all i'm asking we're not starting over and i want to give a final reminder that anything we do here this evening certainly anything i'm doing this evening i believe is true for all of us is absolutely a direct result of the committee's process the committee has done an invaluable service to the community and i really appreciate that and now per the policy it is our job to determine what
232is best for the students thank you mr grandin i call the vote on ms ellis's option for miss conley would you call the roll mr gilliland no ms antoine yay michelle heim hi mr live hey miss ellis hi mr granny hey it's korkadow nay and miss uraya don't forget me molly miss hummer nay so that's three in the affirmative six in the negative motion fails three six thank you gentlemen we will we will be announcing when the public hearing will and public briefing will be at a later date okay no that's the staff okay all right item 5.02 is administrative personnel appointments dr arlato your your um recommendation yes ma'am i recommend board approval of the personnel listed on the attached sheet be promoted and or appointed do i have a second second mr live
233um are there any board questions or comments okay ms connolly would you call the roll sandwine aye shawheim aye mr live miss ellis aye and mr granna miss corcodale aye sharaya hi miss hummer hi non-zero motion passes our next group are policy revisions item 5.03 is graduation requirements this is a second reading um ortiz good evening for the record janette ortiz legislative and policy council policy iic graduation requirements is before you on second reading you received we received several uh public comments that were provided to the board in your board packets and then since then we received this is one of those instances where the public comment period ended after you received your board packets but before this meeting so we received some additional public comments that was were shared with the board as well
234so michelle i would first like to say that i believe in the spirit of this course but i've been getting a lot of emails and i myself have my own concerns about execution the right teachers being chosen for example a student that took the course recently um like christmas music was played the whole week of hanukkah for example and cultural cultural theme awareness with varied cultures needs to be included and the curriculum that encourages um the teacher to mix up the discussion groups and i just i just want to make sure that it's implemented properly or we've lost this opportunity at such a late hour ninth grade to instill what is the spirit of this course so on record once again is having some pretty grave concerns about implementation about what some of the students
235experiences have already been because they've been communicated to me and they were disturbing and just to make sure that we're doing this right so i wanted to reiterate that i also had some concerns come in about this course taking away from ib or other magnet courses and then to reiterate again and again and again that teachers need adequate training because this is a sensitive class discussing sensitive matters and i i don't i would hate to because i'll be here a while have this go through and then receive in mass more the concerns that i've been receiving as a trickle today so i just want to make sure that's clear and that it doesn't create a lesser than situation for those who are not part of the majority because as you well know i'm very sensitive
236to that and i have my eye on this very closely and i just thank you for your time again if i could share we want to make sure this rolls out and well and that it is successful also and so the teams have already met with all the high schools teams including the principal and teachers that will begin the implementation they've already started meeting and started planning um and so we want to get on this early and often so that we have a successful rollout as well so it's conversations that the team is having already with high school principals before we've even released the course for choice by students and it shows up on their schedules and so there's a lot of planning going on that will go throughout the spring and through the summer
237to prepare for the rollout we want it to be uh successful we know that that's an important aspect of the the need of the course but ultimately the successes is how the students are engaged um and so we have to plan for that and so the planning is already begun by this team and i appreciate that and again it's the spirit of the course i'm thrilled with again some some comments came in for kids that recently took it from parents of kids that recently took it and expressed some concerns regarding um you know over the holiday period having it being very very one note very biased and then sort of um playing christmas music the whole week of hanukkah for example separation of church and state is important and again i just want to make
238sure it's done right i believe in the spirit of the course thank you so much thank you mr antoine so i i want to make sure we don't say the spirit of this course because this is a strong curriculum so it's an application and not something that's ideal it's been applied and we've accepted it as a course to be put on uh into our curriculum we voted on it to be a course in our curriculum but not a graduation requirement it's what i understood but beyond all that the diversity that is within our schools goes beyond uh ethnicity religion otherwise so this course is is going to expose young men and women to some things that they are not normally exposed to until they are adults i love this course for so many reasons i
239also understood that if it was to be made a graduation requirement that the requirement portion as compared to the actual i would say debate portion would be separated where the requirement would be more theoretical than um and then the debate would be an option for the for the students to opt in is that correct or incorrect no that isn't the plan the plan really is to have a one semester course that's very student-centered engaging in problem-centered critical thinking where students really spend the beginning part of the time learning how to actively listen to consider others feelings to learn how to converse with one another and communicate those i'll call them 21st century performance skills as well as communication skills and then talking about community what it means to be a part of a community both
240inside a school and inside a town a region and and then what it means to be part of other kinds of communities whether they be sports communities or your church or you know the local arts community that you belong to and really spending time listening to one another and negotiating who i am and listening for who each of the other people in this room are now the key is that the teachers have to learn how to foster that environment but we know how to help teachers do that we do and and actually mr lara and she won't tell you but i will tell you she knows how to do that and we can look at our triple e teachers and they are doing it right now with very young children all across the district where
241tripoli exists and so we know how to do it but we're going to have to be very intentional about doing it well and she started that process already that is exactly what i wanted to point out as well the students that are benefiting from it say next year that would be ninth grade next year will more than likely have been introduced to a lot of this through our new tripoli curriculum in the first place i'm learning that through my school visits yes um so so that they are they will then be well versed into the requirement this is just a reinforcement so that when they are looked at uh in a competitive a very competitive global uh spectrum when it comes to their choice as an adult they'll be better prepared and that's why i
242strongly support this this requirement miss ellis thank you a question the students who currently take this course at it's at one school right now they they have opted into that course correct there's not a requirement at arundel or am i at the board level at this level there's not a requirement but the principal of that school has requested that all of those ninth graders take because because she believes so strongly in that being an on-boarding activity to really bring civility and the notion of civil discourse into our building and help those students get along and understand what it means to build community and their signature at arundel is community citizenship global community development and community citizenship and so it even fits that very very tightly so she has requested that so all of her ninth
243graders do take that as an entry to arundel high she requested that of all the ninth graders and puts that as part of the expectation but was it wasn't an option for those ninth graders did they have to i'm trying to understand right how so she has she has expected it and set it as an expectation at arundel high right and so all of the ninth graders have taken it so all right now but one over four semesters okay that's the fourth one coming up the fourth semester coming up now okay um and i i want to concur um certainly when we were presented with this um there's a lot of exciting things about this course um but there have been some really legitimate concerns that do need to be taken a look at i
244you know there's a reason that we have the public comment period in addition um i've received emails so i we do need to take a serious look at those concerns and we do value the public comment and looking at each question individually and compiling an answer for them for frequently asked questions list pardon which will be posted oh for the community thank you mr raya just to answer the question about the teachers i'm pretty sure michelle him you brought that up the cheater selection um so when i went and i visited the class at arundel like the third time i think um there were actually some staff from the board that came with us um i think from curriculum correct me if i'm wrong but they specifically like interviewed students asked um an engaging conversation
245on what are the key components of the teachers that you like that teach it what do you want the teacher to have how do they build a relationship to try to get those key components and try to spread that word to principles when they select the specific signature teachers that teach this course or other teachers as well and and also one one common email um i've been getting dr alato is about the magnet students so just because i know the answer but just i know some people don't could you clarify or how it's going to be implemented with the magnet program students absolutely so for the magnet programs we recognize the contextualization is going to happen with the magnet themes um specifically within the stem and bima classes we have mandatory 9th grade courses so
246we are redesigning those to be the gcc class through the lens of project-based learning or through the lens of medical rounds as an example in pva we have a mandatory pva foundations of art so that's going to be the new gcc contextualized with foundations of arts and arts application for the ib world high schools we are contextualizing the course obviously with the ib instructional cultural framework through the unit planner really setting the stage for personal projects in 10th grade which is a whole school endeavor and at the same time partnering with the signature programs for the contextualization of those themes recently we also worked with our social studies department in the spirit of academics and we're redesigning the historical inquiry class to be offered for the ib mypdp students as well it will remain as
247a 0.5 historical inquiry course and then be also the 0.5 gcc course so we are looking at all options for inclusivity as well as recognizing the uniqueness to the programs to which our children are participating in so it won't add to the coursework it will be incorporated in instructions wonderful correct okay yes okay thank you mr gilliland thank you madam president and and thank you everyone for this i know the hours late so i'll just be very brief uh i wasn't going to say uh anything until miss antoine said something that i really want to underscore and that was the transition from spirit to application i think as profound as that was this hits home for me in in a couple of ways and it's anecdotal but um you know a year after starting at
248lariat education next thing you know i'm thrown into the international at that time what was called our international division and then i'm leading teams in europe and central and south america and then visiting countries and that i had never been to and being thrown into environments that i never had the exposure to as an aacps alum and i think the world is changing so much and i now have the the privilege of of going unfortunately just domestically but throughout the country to talk about workforce development and trends that we're seeing and this really hits home to what's coming i mentioned laureate and what we used to call our international division because that went away a couple of years later because we started to realize we are one as thomas friedman said i don't hold me
249to this 95 96 i don't have my slides with me but the world is flat and then of course you know his book in 2000 uh the world is flat so we you know they versus us it's now we and and i think what i would just add if if i could as as sort of a recommendation as as this is tweaked along the way i certainly agree with my colleagues who talked about the implementation but um really just talking about the real world applicability for business um and what we used to refer to as international businesses no more either right you know because the world is flat and and globalism is here we're all connected whether it's because we're online or or or what what you may have but i i just think that
250the the real world applicability to business is going to be key and certainly helpful to students whatever path they may choose to go next and there's a key piece here that ms talar has made sure that is in and that is the community members community stakeholders many of whom are in business will be part of this course they're already part of the design but they'll be part coming into the class and being present with the students and that's going to make a difference michelle um so the concerns that were brought to me i assume are also brought to the school so how were they how were they handled because again even in your description you mentioned church i don't go to a church i go to a synagogue so i just wonder if we're truly
251being cognizant of our diverse community and how those how those concerns were handled and if they were addressed at all um because again i i worry about the execution so at least one to two of the concerns that came to you and came through dr alato came to us we followed up with them the principal then followed up with the teachers involved what ms talara is doing with the build-out is forming an iterative process to continually do the formative assessments not just with children but the young people but with the adults so that we continuously have improvement in the understanding of how to teach this class the sensitivity and the facilitation and that's being woven into the infrastructure of the course and that's that's going to make a big difference that's not that's not a
252small undertaking and we're talking about that not only with the people building the course and with the teachers through professional development but with the principles because ultimately it's the principal who leads the school right and we'll excuse me will we will we the will we be making the curriculum available to the public because that is another issue that has come up over and over and over again no transparency to taxpayers and parents you know will i get to see what we're teaching our kids yada yada so i mean i will this be posted somewhere um if so where will be handed to us how will it be distributed to the the the community because for some this has been um not properly introduced to them at least from the emails that i've received and i
253have here so i just want to address those can you just um answer this hi good evening michelle batten assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction yes there's a variety of ways that we can share that information um with our citizens and parents in particular um through a scope and sequence which will outline the goals and objectives and then also the instructional strategies and i think one of the critical components of this course is the protocols that are developed so they're very specific in structure and how they lead students through the discussion uh so that every voice is heard and it's done in a very diplomatic manner as well and then ms ben will you um share with the board the process we go through with all of our curriculum from the point of deciding to move
254forward to the writing to the sharing with the public so we um well one first we start with bringing the course proposal to you for approval and then we do solicit various writers and that will be our school-based teachers that are involved in that process we work closely with our teachers association to have their voice represented on those committees as well and then our citizens and that may have come through our business advisory boards or our integrated schools support teams so um they we also reach out to specific experts in the field um so that we have those content um folks that are that is their uh trade that we want at present at the table writing with us as well thank you i just want to echo what i've said before i'm excited about
255this class i i shared some remarks at the martin luther king junior breakfast on monday and i'll say them again i was taught that in polite conversation we don't talk about politics or religion and i believe that's done a disservice to our country that many of us were raised that way that we aren't able to discuss things civilly and listen for understanding in all areas not just politics and religion and with the current thing on there i think this is a very bold step that we are taking it will not be easy there's going to be these are hard topics these are hard things we're talking about whether we're talking about income race religion anything that the diversity that comes and so teachers will make mistakes and students will make mistakes and we i i'm
256confident from how you're talking about this that we will learn from those and we will move forward and that if we all stay the course with this and are committed to this that this will be very valuable for our people all of our students so i appreciate everything you had you've you've done on this so far and now we do have some public comment samaya mordecai i'm i'm going to say it wrong i apologize shiv shafek mordecai donna corey andrea chamberlain aaron snell i believe miss nell has left okay and then that's the first batch miss mordecai i'm donna oh you're done i'm out okay some some people at this hour may have left so i'll go just make sure and say your name so i know which one i'm addressing i'm andrea chamberlain we
257were gonna tag team we we thought about this together okay um and we know we only have three minutes together so that'll save everybody three minutes okay so we're here tonight um [Music] first of all again this is donna quarry and i'm andrea chamberlain we're from crofton our children are in the south river feeder system um and thank you for giving us uh your ear tonight to hear our concerns we're here to ask that you let me get clarification here i heard one of you say this class would be a requirement and i heard one of you say it was not so it is proposed in the in the in the regulation um it's cur to be a graduation requirement offered to all and it would be for all ninth grade students okay that that's
258what we're concerned about um we're here to ask that you not make it a global make the global community citizenship class a required class for graduation and our reasons for this are really very simple you heard a lot of people say how we needed money for many other things tonight and we believe that with limited school funds and those many other funding needs that we always have how we're requiring this course over those other things really add to the educational needs of our children the core educational needs which i consider to be reading writing math sciences for instance would it be better to provide a course in financial literacy and make that a requirement don't we all hear on the news every day about how your average american hasn't saved enough for retirement they're in
259major debt that to me is a more serious problem in our country not not just in our county and i would say i share some of your concerns that you've heard too um so why not use those funds for something like that that's something that i think every child would benefit from and don is going to say a few more points yeah i only have um a couple of things i came across this in an email a few days ago and the subject header was actually um the redistricting and we get so many of those sometimes i open them sometimes i don't this time i happened to open it i read the whole thing and at the bottom was when it talked about the new high school requirements and i didn't know that if you
260don't mind like a few more minutes um i didn't know that there were um being there was things being added to the new high school requirements and it's that global community citizens i believe it's a valuable class um i do not believe that it needs to be a requirement um i think it can be an option for student i would like the children to be able to take that class if it interests them if it interests them in something in the future but i feel that if you have to have a requirement could it not be a financial literacy class there is i think all students could gain from something like that [Music] and i did speak with somebody who was a parent of an arundel student and her daughter dropped a math class because
261she wanted to take this class because it was an easy grade so i don't know if we are really doing a service to our students thank you very much for your time and i hope you reconsider what you're trying to advocate because my youngest child will be affected by it and i don't think it'll make him a very productive citizen thank you mary dedone connor prout romy pittman and jacqueline also good evening by about 55 minutes um i have a question of process first of all obviously we've lost people um i would be glad to forego my testimony which i regard as the weakest of the several testimonies we bought we we brought with us is it possible for us to share the testimonies of other people who are not here who've sent their testimonies
262with us i have two to share miss alsup has her own and one other to share we do not normally do that but if you have it written and you can give it to us and we'll make sure everyone gets copies of it and this this will also be coming up again at the next meeting if people can come then be happy we will continue to organize for that and um i will get a cleaner copy of one of the two testimonies i'm going to read and you can give the hard copies them or you can email them and miss connolly will make sure that everyone on the board receives them great as i leave i'll hand you the one i have a good copy first of all i want to speak for mr thornell
263jones mr thornell jones is an 80 plus year old man of color extremely well educated physicist and you may know him from the work he's done in the community he has taught many people through book studies primarily based on recognizing white bias and white blindness i hereby read his testimony to the board of education i would like to share with you that i had the pleasure of visiting arundel high school and talking with principal davenport and two of the three teachers who put together the curriculum for the global community citizenship course after visiting the classroom and observing the student's internet interaction with one another and the instructor that day my evaluations was that the course i observed was valuable students were clearly learning to respect one another i thought at that time that the course
264would be beneficial for all students in the county i thought it would raise the respect students have for each other regardless of their background i want to further say that the principal and teachers involved were serious about their aim and were well prepared to present the material to help students benefit from it in that regard introducing this curriculum in other schools will require teacher training both for dealing with the material especially the forgotten history involved but also for understanding their own unconscious bias which can hinder the learning that is necessary i applaud the superintendent for putting forth the expansion of the course to all freshman students in the district and urged the board of education to ex to approve this expansion and um i just realized that i read the easiest one to read so
265i actually have two others to share with you but i'm going to ask ms allsup to speak next if that's okay good evening president hummer dr alato and board members i'm jacqueline boone also and serving as president of the anne arundel county naacp for many years the anne arundel county branch of the naacp has engaged with the superintendent and with the board of education to address racism and racial incidents in the school system as we all know these incidents have become more overt and more frequent over the past two years together we have sought ways to reduce racism through all means known the naacp and the caucus of african-american leaders have especially requested training for faculty staff and students we appreciate the efforts that have been made and that are being made tonight on behalf
266of the anne arundel county branch of the naacp i want to publicly support the implementation of the global community citizenship course across all 12 anne arundel county public high schools with this course the anne arundel county public schools has gained traction on what seems to be an intractable problem this is exactly the type of program that the naacp has been requesting the successful implementation of this program at arundel high school has testified to by the participating students at the december 5th meeting of the board has demonstrated the potential effectiveness of the program we of the anne arundel county branch of the naacp also acknowledge that there may be pushback and challenges in the implementation of this program across the school system we recognize that arundel high school although challenging in some ways was an ideal
267incubator in other ways the commitment of president david of principal davenport and the teachers was evident when they spoke at the december 5th meeting of this board we pray that their knowledge sensitivity commitment and success can be replicated at other high schools in the county the anne arundel county branch of the naacp shares with you the goal of increasing understanding and reducing both overt racism and implicit bias the anne arundel county branch of the naacp stands with you in support of this program furthermore the anne arundel county branch of the naacp offers our support not only in this public statement but also as resource to be called on as you implement the program and conduct the courses thank you for your consideration thank you miss also can we appreciate the offer of help with us
268because this is going to be need to be all the community and everyone involved as we move forward so we appreciate the support all right i don't i believe our others are not there so that i have oh i have two more to go and i'll be as quick as i can i am now speaking for miss romy pittman who was with us earlier and had to leave um the question always comes up about her last name yes she is our county executive's sister speaking for miss pittman i have two daughters who graduated from south river high school and one who is currently in 10th grade i also happen to be the sister of the new county executive i've been a teacher and administrator for 30 years and currently work at a charter school in
269baltimore city her background is in education i am also active in groups that foster civil discourse in our communities including coming to the table and better angels she wishes to speak in favor of the global community citizenship course requirement as you are all aware we are living in a time of deep division frightening sometimes violent intolerance in the world in the country and in our county schools if there is any fundamental mission of the united states public schools it is to create citizens of a healthy democracy people who know how to express their beliefs civilly and how to listen to the perspectives of others and find common ground we know from both academic research and from looking at recent history that the curriculum all students are exposed to in school makes a tremendous difference in
270their understanding and acceptance of others different from themselves education week recently conducted a comprehensive look at just this question consulting experts visiting classrooms and conducting surveys they found that because we have taught such different narratives of our history and civic values in different states and school districts citizens grow up seeing the world and the united states very differently we tend to look for facts to line up with the worldview we are taught and we grow further and further apart the global community citizenship class teaches students to recognize their own assumptions and viewpoints as important but it's different from facts it encourages dialogue respect and perspective taking and it reinforces a narrative of who we are that strengthens our connections across lines of difference instead of shutting each other out these skills and mindsets are at
271the very foundation of our diverse democracy if as a society we do not teach them well we will threaten the very core of our american democracy as we know it global community citizenship is no less than a course on how to manifest our better selves individually as a country as a world community thank you and finally hopefully representation of fully respecting those whose opinions may on small points or large points be different from ours i wish to read the testimony sent forward by pastor jay offer as i believe most of you are aware pastor offer is a i hope i get this right a community ambassador at chesapeake high school and placed there because of the challenges at chesapeake high school he writes today as a pastor i'm the pastor of harvest crusade ministries in
272glen burnie maryland we serve a diverse community with a community-centered mission to reflect christ as we build productive and sustainable relationships with all aspects of the community we've been in existence as a church ministry since november 2011. prior to that date we were a street ministry which began in april 2009 this year marks ten years of ministry in anne arundel county our efforts have helped us to become intimately aware of the school system personally i've involved in been involved with the supporting school system as a parent for 25 years through the school pta organizations community advisory council and is a member of the anne arundel county council of ptas currently i also serve as a communi community ambassador at chesapeake high school i'm very proud of my efforts to help not only my own children
273to flourish in anne arundel county schools but for many years i've worked on behalf of all students in one way or another i wish to go on record as supporting the community development and global citizenship and initiative to include this course in county-wide instruction i understand the curriculum focus is to create leaders and participants in our vibrant communities all of harvest's work in the community has been with the hope of doing exactly the same thing foremost we're excited about the prospect of teaching children how to work and live in a community where perspectives differ as we know through life sometimes those differences can be great yet we must still persist and work together to make anne arundel county maryland and ultimately the united states a good place to live often we receive feedback from the
274community in our membership that the current curriculum does not prepare students for real life the tone of that feedback is great disappointment with a desire that this would change your consideration of this measure gives hope that we will get on track in this area the value that we place on this type of instruction cannot be overstated as a member of the faith community and being respectful that there are many traditions of faith we have one reservation we hold fast to the definitions of living in accordance with god's will as described in the holy bible as we understand it however it is important that as we discuss matters of human sexuality and religious constructs they were mindful that parents have the ultimate authority in shaping the views and moral boundaries of their own homes we believe
275that parents may also choose spiritual guide of their choice to teach their children in such matters the school should not ever place itself in conflict with a home in these matters i thank this distinguished panel of administrators for their time in considering this testimony thank you thank you very much is it doctor to donate am i calling yes it is okay but you know like it's only a phd don't get sick in front of me thank you [Laughter] all right item 5.04 is also a second reading gang and gang-like activities uh policy jccb and we do have some did we receive any public comment at the last meeting the board voted to put this policy forward for an additional two weeks of public comment and we did receive um a public comment because it was
276up through yesterday um through the end of the day yesterday public comment um on the regulation it was more um stylistic questions about the usage of why we're using and in some instances and or um in other instances and so i did respond to the person i explained why you know there are certain instances where and is appropriate and or is appropriate um there was a question as to um what appears to be duplicative language with school security coordinators on elementary schools versus secondary schools and there is a slight difference in the language whereas in elementary school there shall be one and secondary schools there shall be at least one so that's a little bit different there was just a question about the reporting requirements to parents and whether that should be done in 24
277hours and just to remind you this policy and regulation were established in accordance with state law in the state model policy and so that language in particular came from the state model policy and the reporting to parents and then there was other just recommendations about term usage using violators and alleged and we just don't use those terms in the way we draft policy and regulation so that was all in the regulation that was the only public comment we received michelle hi there i i did get a couple different emails um with a lot of concerns um so bear with me here um i want to make sure that we're not being biased on policy section c items one well one two and then all the subsequent letters underneath and that we're also including symbols intended
278to harass and that have recurred continuously in our schools like swastikas nooses the white power hand sign pretend kkk hoods etc will also be included um when we talk about symbols of symbols you know that a group of people might use or a gang might use because if we if we're not including those things then we might be um placing some some bias with what we may or may not historically view again to be so i wanted to address that first yeah and i can address that so again this is written per state law and state state policy model policy um so these are things that are required by state law so the definitions for example those are criminal law article of the maryland annotated code and so we cannot redefine those things references you
279know to symbols and things of that nature that's not defined in here and again it's in accordance with the state policy and obviously there are all kinds of different gangs um you know whether it's in our county our state around the country so you know the folks whether it's the sros or the teachers and their training are trained to you know certain things to keep an eye out for um with regards to gang and gang like activity so there are certain things because this is state law requirement we don't have the flexibility to redefine do we everything under section c of police of the policy under position is that all mandated by what the state told us to write all of it that's through items a through j and the whole thing the whole shebang
280right so the language came from this msde goddessy on gang and king like got it i have a couple more things to talk about so some people wrote me that are in law enforcement and we're really concerned about the the term gang-like so again we can't we can't adjust that that's immovable because of what we were told to do by the state exactly and so this is one of those instances where you know i'm in the middle of legislative session started two weeks ago and there are bills that are introduced that in theory we may like the concept or things that we may be doing here in our school system but we may not we may oppose because they are dictating very prescriptive requirements as to how we should do things this is one of
281those instances when that law passed gang and game like activity are defined um in the criminal law article and in the in the statute dealing with this issue so we cannot change it so even if you know we might want a different definition we can't do it right now in the regulation um under procedures under reporting the the paragraph a um someone wrote in and was concerned about the first sentence and wanted to change the word from shao to may are we allowed to propose bob's like that so shall is the requirement and may is discretionary so we are required to report you're required to report so shell is stated again thank you for bearing with me on this i have a couple more um okay got it and let's see here and they're under
282professional development what is the source of the training will it be a credible source for example the police department's gang unit as the training body for the record dole batten supervisor school security that is one component safe schools online program is available to all anne arundel county public schools employees that is one online mechanism the school resource officers themselves are another resource that is used for specific programming as well as the homeland security gang investigators that are also closely affiliated not only with sros they're also anne arundel county police officers and they are tied in with our state and national partners so we have a very robust level of expertise available to us but i want when it comes to this topic what we're talking about is criminal behavior done by two or more people
283in the furtherance of a criminal enterprise this is not about labeling specific things that we just don't care for as something nefarious and then moving against individuals in a just in a completely arbitrary manner as an actual practice this policy is seldom in effect because we emphasize our actions on the criminal actions that the individuals are doing that are incorporated within this policy this policy involves criminal activities you have to do more than one of the prescribed underlying criminal activities gang prosecutions in this county and in this state are rare because of the extremely high burden to tie those criminal acts to a specific organized entity yet the criminal acts themselves are actionable and a much easier way to not only for prosecution but as a lower standard of more a preponderance of evidence so
284for that standpoint these are the type of training aspects not only in the application but when you ask what are we looking for it changes it adapts and it shifts constantly that is the nature of it so there is no way in one previous question talking about colors or symbols or items these things are they morph and they adapt and they take they more or less repurpose normal things to utilize to identify people to each other and to use to intimidate other people who they let know what these are but it's nefarious it's underground and it's done in furtherance of criminal activities of violence and of intimidation and so that but as an actual affect using this policy itself is extraordinarily rare it is the actual criminal offenses that come into play that are dealt
285with from the disciplinary and from the prosecutorial avenue i appreciate all of that thank you i i just think that the the people who wrote me were afraid of biased to creep in to then um and then yeah they were just afraid of bias creeping in yeah so that that thank you for the language in this policy closely mirrors the state's policy for and their their use of one term is destructive and illegal group behavior as opposed to gang-like activity in msde 2011 guidelines to schools so whether we call it gang like and and whether it's a local group of individuals who are identifying themselves in a manner similar that if they were a legitimate enterprise like a football or basketball team with uniforms and things that we accept as a legitimate legitimate source where
286this all addresses individuals as they pop up who operate in a group to further their criminal activities regardless of whether it's state national or locally sanctioned authorized by any other outside entity organized in any way and this directly resulted from the homicide of a student in crofton back in a time when i testified before the legislature in support of additional information sharing by law enforcement and schools to reduce the element of gang and gang-like activity not being able to be discussed when it is a relevant component but not the overarching issue so again we we have been at the forefront of this issue for a number of years and from a element of bias it would be difficult to refute or affirm that because this regulation of policy really comes into play when we deal
287with the underlying events that precipitated the action thank you so much really appreciate it thank you mr antoine thank you for that um i do appreciate that this was uh the board allowed this to go out for another two weeks because this is great info also i think the training that i the training question i received was more related to the policy in getting the policy out to to the staff so that they can understand what our new policy is our new regulation uh will eventually be and otherwise so that they are are aware of some of the things you just shared as well yeah and to that um i create somewhat quarterly really like three times a year uh with the beginning of the school year um a policy revisions memo also that goes
288to the schools um that highlights you know all of the changes that the board whether it's policy changes to policy or regulation i identify that i provide a description of all of the relevant changes and i've also worked with other staff to ensure that a big topic such as this is communicated to the principals vice principals and teachers when we make changes so yes we certainly work to ensure that there's communication at the school level at our level of awareness i can tell you that we are comfortable that schools are aware and they are reporting as required things that not only we get information from the police department but the schools have the same information and they're doing the internal reporting mechanisms that are required here and they're matching so i'm very comfortable in saying
289that our schools are are very well aware of what is required and what needs to be done and if information arises and they have not done it there is the mechanism through my office that we can follow up with them to check and see what the status is and what is as anything else developed that we are not aware of to remind them these are the steps that are to be done suspected is the key word it does not have to be confirmed the investigation is a separate element of this and it may be a completely innocent or otherwise explainable activity marking gesture anything that might be out there so you know our reporting has been on par with previous years and it's actually been a little bit up but many times that is a
290willingness to report and an awareness that it is required to report so it's not necessarily indicative of additional activity it's just a better adherence to policy and a better communication sure and so that of course that never mr bad never question your your procedure or otherwise in fact i've gone to appreciate how you've implemented it in such a strong educational system the question though is for those teachers administrators and and otherwise within the system this policy is about to change and so if some things are going to be introduced to them differently i'm thinking the parents or whomever is making public comment would like to know how they're being how they are are being trained or aware and you share that with with us i also like that you're saying hey and once this is
291out there we're also going to reinforce that through through the uh procedures and protocol that we have in place so thank you for that are there any other board questions or comments is there any public comment thank you mr batten thank you so on the previous policy on the graduation requirements i've neglected to ask if there's any other public comment at the end and there is some someone who wanted to speak so i'm just going to backtrack a little bit and miss oaks has a comment to make on the graduation requirements i apologize for that mistakes it's late i just slipped up there thank you india oaks from hillsmeer i wanted to just quickly give my support for the global community citizenship course as long as it is properly implemented with all demographics in mind
292some may think kids are not exposed to these experiences until later in life but that not true when i taught a law class at a rural high school in upstate new york which at an all white class i asked them to write letters to the editor about a time they were discriminated against and then we sat in a circle to talk about those letters each of those white seventeen-year-olds olds had an experience to share and they did not all have the support to deal with it regardless of the community or demographics we see we must share these lessons with our kids and human rights values as early as possible because we all go through situations and meet people that may be new or different and the more understanding we have of how to interact and
293how to react the more we learn so yes keep the course as a requirement as long as it's all encompassing in its implementation thank you all right miss ortiz item um so for the last one on the gang and gang like activities that will come before us for third reading at the next meeting correct correct okay item 5.05 student suspension and expulsion policy jd this was also a second reading and did we receive any public comment so we did not receive a public comment and just as a reminder this policy what and regulation were updated as a result of new state law requirements as it relates to the suspension of pre-k through second grade students and then we just needed to clean up some things to align with state law and also with komar regulatory
294requirements okay are there any board questions or comments is there any public comment all right thank you very much all right item 5.06 is an action item board organizational meeting and board officers code bcc or policy bcc the board voted in december to move this one forward to after the 30-day comment period were there any public comment on this policy no i did not receive any kind of comments is there are there any board questions or comments on this policy mr grant my understanding is that this having gone the 30-day period we're now going to actually vote on the on the officers we will now vote on the policy and then um and then the discussion of that so but first we asked if there was any board question or comment if there's any public
295comment and if there's none then we can move forward on the vote yeah so what you did is you consolidated we typically have three readings on policy so the intention of the board was to have the 30 day and consolidate it at this meeting and so you still have to consolidate it too from a second to a third reading to vote well it's actually i believe we already did that at the december meeting that we consolidated the second third reading sent to one so now it can move on to is action and if there's no public comment we can vote ms connolly call the roll please need a pen sorry all right mr gilliam aye ms antoine aye shaw hi hi mr live hi liseles hi mr granny aye ms crocodile hi mr raya aye
296and miss hummer aye all right that's nine zero motion passes all right thank you miss connell mr granny uh pursuant to this policy uh i nominate terry gilliland to serve as president of the board second um just as a clarification according to this policy it the policy says that the first regular meeting after the adoption of this policy the board shall elect a president and vice president from among its members by an individually recorded vote so the policy that we just passed states that the election of new officers will occur at the next regular scheduled meeting that's not what it says that is exactly what it says in the first line under issue that's not what it says and my motion has been seconded okay that would you can we can discuss the the motion
297if it's been seconded but i was saying that it would be a violation of the policy that this board just passed in order to do that miss antoine so with the with the next meeting that's the february that's the first meeting in february okay so that wouldn't be aligned with our budget meeting that's the last meeting right correct okay okay thank you it's kind of as i said that it would be a violation of policy to to um to take in it to try to hold an election at this time mr gilliam thank you madam president um i know there's a motion on the floor but just in the spirit of not violating policy if mr grant would be open to making this an agenda item prior to us breaking for photos at the next
298board meeting that would be and and why i suggest that if if if i may if there is to be a change um you know we we normally recess for about 10 minutes um and that's typically something that we've done for for the july for the july meeting when we've um elected officers in the past um at that point in time um our name plates are exchanged and and all of that so if we were to do that at the next meeting i would just suggest that we do it before the break if if you would be open to that miss schallheim can we get mr burns interpretation of the policy i do i want to share too that this went through policy committee that included miss corcodel mr and myself and ms scholheim all
299of this language is vetted it's the first line in there it's in bright red and it was put out for public comment president humber members of the board dr arlatta uh darren burns board counsel uh and to add what ms hummer said i do remember in that committee meeting because i was there there was that detailed discussion as ms ortiz will remember about making sure that the part in b1 sort of a one-timer recognizing your unique circumstances and that after that that sun sets and you and you switch to the process that set forth in two which is immediately after the election so i think that was something that's worth pointing out there there is that recognition here that this is a somewhat unique situation in terms of what the language says it's pretty straightforward
300so say at the first regular meeting after adoption of this policy the board shall elect the president and vice president from among its members by an individually recorded vote i don't know any way to interpret that other than your next regular business meeting is february 6th that's what it says well that's your opinion right that's my opinion a literal interpretation is at the first regular meeting after the adoption of this policy the board shall that this is a meeting after the adoption of the policy that is another interpretation of a literal interpretation i'm not a place to argue that i'm just telling you that's what i think this means is antoine so i i actually took it like this would be the first regular meeting i didn't take it as the next meeting i wasn't
301i wasn't in on those discussions though so that's why we're deferring to you for a legal uh legal interpretation but of course i'll support either way the plane the plain language again what the committee might say i leave it to miss ortiz and the board members who were present for that what they all thought was going on in that committee meeting i'm simply saying when i see the word after i believe that's a temporal reference i believe that's a reference for when the meeting occurs not after as in five minutes later i think that's a reasonable interpretation that's what you asked me to that's what you right but what it says is not that after it's adopted at the meeting you'll do this it says at the first regular meeting after adoption so if if
302if five members of the board believe the proper construction that is in the immediate aftermath of adopting it because you're at a meeting you move forward your vote so be it but you've asked you've asked my opinion that's that's what i'm getting i appreciate it thanks miss ellis i'm uh i'm sorry i still asking questions i guess my question is if the wording was the first regular meeting after the meeting in which the policy was adopted that would clearly be spelled out based on your interest that would even further strengthen that interpretation right so i'm saying this is not as strong as that so all i can this is what the committee the wording is a little this is what the committee moved forward by agreement to the board this is what you have in
303front of you and that's what the board just adopted and i just want to repeat again that we have four board members who served on the committee there was great discussion about this it was put out for public comment it was amended by board members at the last meeting so there was opportunity if this was unclear that it could have been amended at that time and there's nothing so i just want to say again i'm going to stand by that we should we just voted on this policy and that that i've the interpretation and as mr gilliland said the elections can be scheduled for first thing at the next meeting but to in order to abide by policy i think we need to stand by this that was put out by the committee but before
304everyone has been properly vetted by this committee and passed as stands is there any other board questions or comments so we have a motion on the floor that we can that i'll make one further comment when we were coming up with the agenda for this meeting uh did i not expressly circulate as an agenda item election of board officers to all the members of this board and uh and you received a reply that stated that this policy was going to be on the agenda even if this policy had if if the interpretation that you're putting forth of this policy had been on there we still would not have listed election of officers on the agenda because that would have presupposed that a policy was going to pass before it was discussed so that would there
305would need to be an agenda item to add election officers after this policy was passed right i think my understanding is once two board members support an agenda item it becomes an agenda item if you have a disagreement about that you can speak to it once it's an agenda item well you didn't make an agenda item you asked and that and the reply was given and there was no response back about that that item so that's incorrect i expressly stated election of board officers as an agenda item and then any event my motion's been seconded mitch schulhan that was my interpretation as well that this was in fact an agenda item for tonight's meeting i'm not sure how you could say it was an agenda item because it's very clearly not on the agenda the
306agenda was put out to everyone last week ahead of time and the reply that went to every board member in reply to mr grandma's question was is was the election of board officers on the agenda and the reply back was the this policy for the organization of members was on the agenda there were no further questions asked after that time nothing was hidden here this is not this has all been very above board it's very in red and white i'm not going to say black and white mr lod uh thank you madam chairman yeah i just think it sends a very very wrong signal to our public that we adopt a policy and the first thing we do is try and read between the lines around the lines over the lines and we violate that
307policy we respect our citizens the people do business with this county the people who rely on us that we don't do business a certain way and this was something that was done above board and as we just get ourselves wrapped around the axle and it's just regrettable miss antwine so again me not being part of that policy discussion and me reading this sentence i took it as this being the first regular meeting it's not trying to work a situation it's an interpretation as a board member therefore i was not confused and then when other things came that you all know came between all of us that reaffirmed my interpretation but tonight something else was brought up and as i shared if the board decides that i want us not to keep putting out there that
308we're somehow violating policy when things are are plain and clear because that also sends the wrong message what we're all we're saying here is some of us on the board understood that we will be voting tonight and and and we also study this policy so therefore we were prepared to move forward tonight with that if the rest if it's a point of contention the main purpose is to vote for the board so i as as one of the board members will be willing to wait until next time but i i would request that you all not put it out there so we're trying to twist words or violate policy well i want to point out too that the policy also states prior to the vote the board shall determine the method by which the vote
309for officers should be conducted so that would need to take place as well before any nominations would come up and that we had actually talked before could take place in closed session because that would be an administrative thing to do rather than debate out here i'm not i'm i'm sorry it's late if i come across this that but i don't like the insinuation that i and perhaps as i said it's like being sensitive that this was somehow um not above board um so and i so i apologize if anybody's offended by that but it's my my interpretation people can have different interpretations but i agree with mr live that you know there's there's nothing rather than to have a gray area and try to twist it what does it hurt to to wait until the
310next meeting and have the elections and then that way it's clear so any confusion on this is taken care of miss ellis so assuming we waited until the next meeting i want to be very clear so we're not ambiguous in any way we're we will determine in closed session how we will do the vote but we will be voting early in the meeting the next meeting first meeting in february for board officers correct correct that is what it would certainly be on the gen and mr villain just proposed that it be put right at the very beginning right bef you said right before we break for pictures and then when we come back any new officers then the shifting of seats could take place and that could all happen right then and so yes it
311can be it would be placed on right then it's miss ellis it's mandatory actually assuming for a second that you don't vote today because you go with the other interpretation it's mandatory to be the next right so then the other part of the policy was pointed out about determining how we vote i just wanted to make sure that we weren't going to say we were determining that next meeting and then the following me okay so it's mr burns am i correct that determining the way to vote because that's an administrative yeah can that be discussed in your method determine discussion of of the process by which you determine your method whether it's a roll call voice vote however you all want to do it you can discuss that as administrative function you have to conduct
312that vote out here though right okay thank you michelle i just want to make sure that you understand that i'm not trying to circumvent policy either that was also my interpretation and any insinuation that i was not going to be following policy is offensive so it was my interpretation again that we were voting on this tonight and that we were then subsequently going to vote on um on officers etc um i i think that it's although we can do it in closed session like i raise that too do we want to i want to be transparent like let's have the discussion out and proud about how we're going to take that vote um and not hide because that's been a constant complaint from the public about transparency but to be clear i'm not trying to
313break policy that was my interpretation any insinuation that i was trying to break policy again is incorrect mr granny yeah i guess i just wanted to respond it's only you know only one board member has suggested anything about going into closed session for determining how that vote is taken and i think ms ellis basically reiterated that she wasn't necessarily adopting that i don't have that view and to me if a motion is made and board members uh a majority of the board vote for it that that has executed the the election so this idea that we have to somehow go back in behind closed doors to talk about the method for voting the method for voting is a majority of the board is going to choose the officers of the board and so i for
314one do not support this idea of going into closed session mr graham just so we're clear that's not what i'm talking about with the method in robert's rules there's at least two different processes by which you record your votes you have your seek you have your uh secret value you have your voice validating the process by which you decide to come out here and to conduct your vote is an administrative function that you can discuss so that when you come out here you're not talking you're not talking about who you're voting for but when you come out here you're organized and can present your vote pursuant to what you've agreed is the process right i'm not saying it can't be done right but because it can be done does it mean it shouldn't that we
315have to do it that way or that should be done i concur right correct it doesn't have to be done in closed session it can be debated it can be discussed out here it would probably be quicker in a meeting if it was if we had decided beforehand before we came out to the meeting rather than have the discussion well the reason that didn't happen is because clearly based on the comments right now a majority of the board had the understanding that the election of officers is going to take place and that's still possible my motion is still pending it's so possible and has been seconded miss ellis um so correct mr grannon my question was about the timing of everything i was not suggesting that we should be determining the method of the vote
316in closed session i fully support being open about that process and just for clarification [Music] for the public miss scholheim you um thought we would be voting tonight and you were on that policy committee correct yes correct so either i and if i missed the word after like that was not what i was assuming was gonna anyway yeah i think it was the meeting is what you missed or what what kind of throws off the interpretation because after it was it's taking place after we changed up this was after and if you missed it so did six of your other colleagues because i know at least seven board members were under the distinct impression that the election was going to take place and that still is possible so um mr burns yes um oh just
317a minute mr gillard thank you again i i just in in the interest of time because it's 11 55 and we still have to talk about legislation um with the pending bills before the general assembly i i just want to um and and forgive me and i'm asking the boards patience with this just because it's it's my name floating right now i i i want to be respectful uh to process and i want to be respectful to any ambiguity or confusion that may have existed here and again that's why i'm just suggesting um that we do it first thing february 6th um you know we take the you know we we do an educator of the month employee of the month volunteer of the month we have that natural recess let's just do it right
318before that recess i i'm hopeful if if the board would be um in deference to the time the hour tonight um that's just a natural break time we can change the placards and you know again depending on what what happens i'm i'm hopeful that that's a quick discussion it's a yes and no uh next meeting and then and then we can be done with it and change if need be since i've since i made the motion i'm willing to withdraw my motion uh contingent on the board agreeing that there's not going to be anything done in closed session and that the very first thing we're going to do in our next public meeting is go directly to the election of the officers i second that but when are we going to decide on how we
319do this because there's no there's no there's no there's voting there's no there's voting five people say who the new officers are and that's the decision on how the voting is going to take place there's not going to be any backroom discussions that is the only basis on which i'm willing to withdraw my motion mr grant all due respect that's that is not the proper problem you have to fix the method of voting prior to voting you must do that you have to fix the method that is that is can we fix the method now can we do that right now so that is off the docket and we come in on the ninth and i mean on the whatever the six and we'd get this done we couldn't do that you could according to
320let's do that according according to robert's rules there's two options for that one would be a vote voice vote and one could be as mr um burns had described just before a ballot vote so the nominations were made put on the ballot and then there would be the ballot so it's up to that the board can vote to determine which one before we could entertain mr mr [Music] burns am i correct in this before we could entertain mr grannon's motion according to this we need to fix the method anyway is that it says prior to the vote we have to decide yeah you have to fix your method first okay and one of the processes that boards use across maryland is you you you come up with your method it allows your clerks to assistance
321to come up with let's just say you're going to go with paper ballots they're all prepared the process is in place and then you conduct your your nominations either ahead of time or as part of the voice vote and you go from there i move that we roll call this thing and it's out in the public transparent that's what i've been for well well what thing i would i'm sorry you didn't call it okay wait there's still order okay yes i'm sorry i know i'm sorry it's it's late so we have a motion on the floor so the motion could be withdrawn so we can set the method or miss shawn you could ask if the motion could be amended to to set the method first it's but it we have to we have to
322address the motion that's pending on the floor before we do anything else it was my motion it was my motion i will withdraw it i now offer a new motion and the motion is that at the next meeting the very first agenda item that this board will take up is to elect its officers in an open roll call vote sec miss ellis yes that would be that yes i well it's been a second we have to miss shawn i want to get some clarity from mr granny on what you mean by first thing mr gillian said after item i guess it would be 2-1 whatever before public comment but you're saying first thing like after the pledge or after what like what are you suggesting thing i think mr gilliland had said immediately after we
323recognize employee of the month volunteer but i don't know that that's right that's what i'm asking so that's yeah miss gildan said i'm not sure if that's what mr granted means by his motion is immediately after those or before those then i'll clarify to make it the last action in uh in section two second the last action in section two before public comment okay all right so that is the motion that's the motion that is before us is that the elections will be held by open open roll call vote voice vote voice vote immediately before public comment on february what date is the next meeting february 6th is that correct okay all right is there any other board comment is there any public comment miss connolly would you call the role yeah aye mr lott
324salas hi mr granny all right poor cadella hi giraffe he's hummer aye nine zero motion passes all right okay item 5.07 is items of legislation miss ortiz all right so as i mentioned earlier the legislative session uh got underway two weeks ago it's 90 days of organized chaos here in annapolis at the general assembly and so you should have received a legislative exhibit and i mentioned this before but i'll mention it again section one are bills that require board vote section two are just fyi bills no positions section three bills fall under our legislative program which we've already taken extensive positions and so do not require a board vote but i still provide information and an explanation for our position so the bill before you is hb4 crimes hate crimes use of a noose or
325swastika to threaten or intimidate this is being introduced by our own very own delegate chang typically we do not take positions on criminal law uh bills you know things related to crime however given the things that we've experienced in our school system and in the county we thought that it would be important for the board to support this legislation which essentially is trying to strengthen our current hate crimes law we had a situation actually at one of our schools in which there was a news affix to the school building that technically did not fall under the current hate crime statute because that dealt with more acts towards individuals and not a fixing of things such as nooses or swastikas and so this legislation looks to kind of clean up or close that loophole and so
326you know we're recommending that the board support um this legislation as it's in line with the things the efforts that we're taking here um in the annual in anne arundel county public schools to address these sorts of behaviors michelle hunt i'm delighted to support this this is long overdue and i commend delegate chang's efforts to acknowledge the use of symbols like the noose and the swastika as an intimidation factor in our schools and needs to be recognized as the hate crime that it is and i hope that we all vote to support this are there any other board first do i have a motion to support this bill i move that we support this bill okay are there any other board questions or comments is there any public comment all right miss connelly if you
327would call the role hi miss antoine aye ms shaw hi aye mr live aye ms ellis aye mr gronin aye ms corcodell aye msurayah aye ms hummer aye nine zero motion passes okay all right are there any questions on any other items of legislation that are presented today miss shalhon i noticed that house senate bill 128 and 131 were missing from this so they're not missing it's just i have to get information to you by a certain time and we've actually pushed the items of legislation even later than when you typically get your packet and so what michelle heim is referencing are two other there's a cross file to the calendar bill that's referenced in section 53 hb 53 so senate bill 131 is the senate cross file and there's another calendar bill senate bill
328128 but by the time the text was available on senate bill 128 i had we had already provided you the information so i try to get in as much as i can and that's why it's important for us to have a legislative program which allows us to you know weigh in and take positions because things move very quickly we only meet twice a month and so i got in as much as i could before the um but it will be in your next packet but those bills also address calendar issues and those items will also be listed as items we support because it's part of our program so it's yes it's part of the legislative program so i'd also like to mention that if anyone's wants to testify in support of senate bill 128 or
329the hearing is on the 30th at 2 pm and this is again part of the legislative packet and you've heard me talk to them blue in the face about how the calendar must change mr grandman i move that item 6.01 through 6.03 we move to the next regularly scheduled meeting of the board second um these are all three items that are very short and quick and um and i think we can get them done in about three minutes if we because none of them are votes they're all just review items so i would say that let's just get them done and have them finished so but are there any other board questions or comments any public comment so we will the motion on the floor is to move these to the next meeting ms connolly
330call the roll mr gilliland is that no no ms antoine hey no i guess i'll vote against my emotion then let's do it nay nay mr granted actually i have a point of information if these are review items and we're not voting on them and the idea is the public is supposed to be informed by the review items we're now going to put these on at midnight on the fiction that the public is somehow going to be informed by a review of these items that we're not voting on you know what i'm going to vote for my original motion to move these to the next meeting because this is disserving the public mr grant is a yes yeah i'm finishing my i'm finishing my vote miss connolly this is a disservice to the public to
331push this through in some narrow-minded version of following policy the public is not being informed at all by doing this at midnight can i change my vote no it's already gone what that's not going to change i want to change my vote to i thank you change your vote go ahead miss corcodell i'm gonna actually say yeah i'm gonna say yes is that an eye yes that is an idea yes sharaya nay so we will continue and i want to say that our last meeting went until one in the morning we still settled them it's it's public out there that for the public to comment on and so if we want to make that more transparent for the public to be able to speak where meetings should be more it should be more succinct to
332have them on there so um item 6.01 is a review item monthly financial status report in fy29 2019 revenue and expenditure projections are there any board questions or comments on this item okay all right item 6.02 is the construction status report um and i do have one question on this one um mr shaknovich this is a review item it's a it's a quickie but so um mr shaknovich in here i saw that on the the the update on george cromwell it said that the roofer defaulted is that going to impact the finish date of that project for the record alex check now the chief operating officer uh no so under under a default condition we've got the ability uh working through the bonding agent to bring on a new roofer as well as a temporary
333roofer to keep the work uh on track so we have a mechanism both short term and long term through the uh bonding and surety functions that are required of all prime contractors on any of our major construction projects thank you mr antoine so and that helps explain some things that i saw with first of all cromwell is incredible and i would encourage anyone to go and visit the new cromwell uh renovations it's beautiful um but i did see some roofing issues and i was after looking at this i didn't quite understand what the defaulting is so we're literally the roofer didn't default on on doing the work the roofer no longer exists and we're waiting on a new roofer is that what's going on correct so all of the there are a number of mechanisms
334of default right um but to guard us and the public against a contractor falling into into legal default for a variety of reasons as prescribed we require a bonding insurance you know material performance payment bond right you know other guarantees that come into play they that swoop in should a contractor default and again that is a funding mechanism to both uh acquire and procure short-term measures which means the security area make it rain tight to you know address any safety issues to keep immediate immediate other collateral work required to continue progressing progressing until another essentially permanent new roofer can come in and that permanent new roofer will then complete the balance of the project okay thank you mr shaknovich item 6.03 is also review item some contracts are there any board questions or comments on
335these items is there any public comment all right then the january 23rd meeting of the board of education is now come to an end the next general board meeting will be wednesday february 6 at 10 a.m the next policy committee is wednesday february 13th at 1 pm in conference room 2b the next budget committee meeting is wednesday february 6 one hour after the board meeting ends in in here mr gillin i move the board adjourn do i have a second second all in favor aye meeting is adjourned [Music] why can't i as if their bravery was not enough the heroes left indelible marks on county students i thought it was really nice and moving because he made a lot of very good points about many things and he helped a lot of people when they
336mentioned their problems he seemed to be very nice about answering their problems i'm also going to become a better citizen i'm going to help people