BOE Public Session 8 21 2019

001um should we um foreign thank you all right ladies and gentlemen we uh i get the mic thank you um ladies and gentlemen we apologize for for the delay in getting started today some unavoidable issues that we have to deal with so at this time the august 21st meeting of the anne arundel county board of education will now come to order please stand for the invocation followed by the pledge 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 one nation under god's individual good morning and 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

002meeting are posted on the sign by the doorway as you enter the room so please make sure you read those if you have not already for item 2.03 we are going to have two different and separate approvals of the minutes because we had a special executive session meeting so for the first motion can we have a motion to approve the minutes from the july 10 2019 board meeting summit motion and a second are are there any edits uh or discussion around those minutes seeing that all in favor say aye goes no the ice have it oh i'm sorry i apologize i just have one and it's not a significant change administratively we agreed that it um for the reception with cac we agreed that it would uh take place no later than november and then

003for the the minutes of the special executive session that occurred on august 5th can we have a motion to approve those minutes please a second discussion on those see none all in favor say aye close no the ice have it thank you very much uh item 2.04 is established agenda order but any member like to propose any changes to today's minutes miss antoine i am making a motion that item number 7.02 move up to become item number 3.02 so that it closely aligns with the presentation today and and so in the order flow i'm requesting that that moves up so second to that moment okay we've got a motion in a second any discussion on that i'm sorry and these lights are dimmer than before so i apologize mrs hunt yes ma'am thank you for

004asking so yes the appropriate staff is in the room um my my concern and they're giving me the nod and thumbs up is that they will already be winded and exhausted from the previous presentation on readiness school because they're part of that as well and so we may have to um give that team a minute or two to catch their breath is that okay with the board because they're part of the previous presentation so i want to make sure that they've got time to catch their breath to go into the next one i i certainly am sensitive to that fact and willing to do that maybe we can put the photo off right there or something to allow them that break but i would prefer that it not be at the bottom um of the

005agenda miss sancho and if if i may and if the board would would certainly support um how about we do this special presentation in 3.01 we moved to public comment um which will then give them a break and then perhaps right after public comment i agree okay and so do we are we doing a consensus on the movement or do we vote on it how does that go yeah okay i i think we'll make that as um 5.00 then yes that's okay so i'm making a motion that we please make item number 7.02 um item number 5.00 discussion further discussion on that seeing none all in favor say aye post no the ice have it thank you very much uh would any member like to make any further changes to to the agenda sing and

006then the agenda will stand as revised thank you item 2.05 is special recognitions and today we're very honored um because of the work of this board and of the school system to have a presentation of an award that this board and school system earned and it's my honor at this time to recognize one of anne arundel county's own jackie wiseman representing the maryland association of boards of education welcome good morning as you know i'm jackie wiseman the director of communications and marketing for the maryland association of boards of education however this morning i'm here on behalf of the national school board association to present the anne arundel county public school system with the 2019 magno award the magna award honors schools across the country for programs that break down barriers for underserved students a panel

007of school board members administrators and other educators selected the winners from over 200 submissions it is important to note that in the past 10 years anne arundel county is the only maryland school system to receive the magna and the only system in the country to win two years in a row anne arundel was recognized for their work in addressing equity by creating the office of equity and accelerated student achievement since the office of equity only has four staff members developing the equity lead program was essential in more effectively and efficiently executing the office's mission to serve and support students schools and families by promoting high levels of student achievement the national award committee believes that the results of this program are worthy of the prestigious award and may could not agree more so on behalf

008of may congratulations to the anne arundel county public schools on receiving the national school board association magna ward [Applause] now ask the board to come around for the photo opportunity oh i like it thank you okay thank you [Applause] thank you and before we move on i'm always excited to see some of our former school board members but in particular uh our most recent student board member and vice president josie arrey is in the audience she is off to university of maryland college park tomorrow so best wishes to you thank you for being here [Applause] i um uh foreign thank you mrs humber item 2.06 is school and community highlights mrs crocodile thank you um so very very busy summer um i wanted to do a first a very quick shout out and congratulations to

009several agencies that school teams with and that is anne arundel county department of recreation and parks as well as anne arundel county economic development corporation through the efforts of working with our ffa students our four agers in the program in the county and the friends of rockhold creek they restored the historic rock hold creek barn in west river and had its official ribbon cutting and so our students are going to have a chance a place to keep their livestock because their livestock when they go to market at the fair is how they earn their their money for their programmatics is one one way for the 4-h and most of our ffa uh students are outgrowths of our 4-h program and so it's a great um celebration and a special call out for miss elite miss

010lisa barge who handles the agriculture program and works so closely and um with awesome enthusiasm for our ffa students down in which is our future farmers of america um for southern high school um i want to thank uh macaw learning center for inviting the board to uh to participate in the idi otta and um i had the fortune of being there celebrating with them and we always appreciate their gracious hospitality um and then lastly uh i attended i don't have my mic but i attended the the new teachers orientation i went all three mornings to the auditorium and i just want to say um a special shout out to um andrea mookie who is the manager of new teacher support she is such a rock star and she's this bubbling bouncing uh of joy each

011and every single year that she does this and it gets better and better of course helen madioski did an outstanding job rallying the folks i understand there was a i saw a guitar in her hand at one point demonstrating the rock stars but most importantly were we able to get the no okay but most importantly on day three um in the morning i want to recognize one of our students so this student took their summer to practice with the dance teacher just for our new teachers and that that student was kamari curtis she did this outstanding interpretive dance so they did a section for the teachers i'll just say really brief to demonstrate the types of emotions that they would be going through in their first year and it was an interpretive dance with music

012and art going on totally awesome and she did solo the interpretive dance so she's a rising meat high school student coming from macarthur middle school this year and she got up there and so owned that stage and rocked it for the teachers so um congratulations to all of our new teachers i could not imagine so much energy in a room 670 new teachers that we had there each one of them enthusiastic some with experience some this is going to be their first assignment and i just got so excited about our school year and i hope everyone else is too because we've got a we had a room full of rock stars new and old um so congratulations on a very successful new teacher orientation folks um and lastly i just want to do a shout

013out to jody uh reese uh one more time for summer meals hero award i had the pleasure of joining them up at the brooklyn park middle farmer's market and a true testament to healthy student healthy lifestyles and making sure our families are well served she just takes it by the reins each and every single time and i can't wait to see what she's going to build upon next next year thank you so very much thank you mrs croquedale mrs shawn yes a busy oh maybe it is on i'll just project um yeah a busy summer indeed i since our july meeting i just went to um a few different but all very incredible events the the fort meade summer of cyber at fort meade high school was amazing learning about the the partnership between the

014military and the school and the program and just what a fabulous and amazing opportunity for our students and something that did not exist and at least my part of los angeles county growing up so um i just i loved learning about it it was a pleasure to be there i was there with um with melissa and candace and i'm sure they'll talk more about that as well i attended the our minds matter festival so our minds matter is a group of i think it's all severna park high school students and their focus is obviously on mental health an incredible articulate fabulous group of of individuals and i appreciate their their work and their advocacy and they put on a whole festival focusing on the mental health needs of students and it was amazing so um

015super props to them and then i went to the drum corps event at navy stadium a bunch of us were there actually and i just never seen anything like it it was like a cross between marching band and flags and cheer and it was it was not something unlike anything i've ever seen before and i just thought it was really fabulous so it was wanted to share that with you all thank you so much thank you mr shah mrs ellis thank you uh yes the cyber summer event at fort meade was it was remarkable to attend and see the opportunities that our students have and the partnerships that our schools are able to create to provide these opportunities for our students is remarkable um i i just want to give a special shout out to

016our teachers and staff and welcome them back for the new school year i'm very excited to be starting the new school year and i want to give a very special warm welcome to our new teachers i did attend the kickoff for the teacher new teacher orientation and it was remarkable to see how many new teachers we've already hired i know we're still working on that um so it's it's it's just very exciting for me to be starting a new school year with um with this board so welcome back everyone thank you mrs ellis sanchoine so everything they did i did too so i i won't go into repeating it but i do want to um share with um with jody mr miss jody uh you are sincerely a hero and well deserving of the award

017that you got so many of us not just our students but people overall are benefiting from your hard work and i'm the only thing i request is that you keep the board informed on your needs so that you can continue to do great things um i attended uh something that was not mentioned was the drama and bugle uh core show i didn't hear you so okay i lost my hearing um but but it was that was an outstanding show and and well worth us going out there it introduced so it introduced so much significant uh opportunity for our students that i would encourage attend if they can um but the arts in itself the display of that show the the the entertainment value in it it was it was definitely worth the attendance um the

018cyber security session that we attended at fort meade i had my lapel this morning and i think it popped off but i am so excited about the collaborations and the partnerships there at meade high school i would request that students interested sign up for that signature program at meade and the i think is expanded to other students that may be interested it is a an opportunity where we are leading effective change in anne arundel county cyber security is certainly something that we will directly be impacted by and it's a necessary program and to know that we are affecting change with our future and helping them to understand the pros and cons of cyber security is is a blessing so i'm glad that's in place and i'm looking forward to working with those students and the

019entire signature program to to help it to become what it should be thank you so i just had to take a breath i'm sorry and then um we had the summer commencement that was absolutely wonderful i cried at every commencement but i behooved at the summer commencement it was incredibly moving i commend those students who had the boldness to just keep going and cross the finish line congratulations and then finally i told you guys i would do a special report but my procrastination caught up with me concerning my school visits i will admit to that but i have photos and i wanted to be able to share those this morning especially because we had so many reassignments with the principals i wanted them to get their kudos before the new new season so diane if

020you could pull those pictures up please so um i i want to be able to say to our entire community our students need and deserve the best and those schools visits revealed those things it also revealed how significant the operations of our schools are not only directly affecting the success of our students but it it directly affects our our success as a community as a county and as a state so when i am a photos you'll see what they're doing and you'll be able to appreciate what's going on just as much as i have thank you and now perry i am done i'm just checking okay thank you android mrs humber i'm using mr lodge mike can you all hear that so um i went to the cyber security um event at meade high school

021and i just have to pass on some high praise that we received from the community there about one of our staff members i was talking to our major liaison with the military community and talked about how much we appreciated the work with the fort on our cyber patriots and the great partnership that we had with them on everything and she said anne arundel county is by far our easiest and most extensive partnership around the surrounding counties and she said and you know it's all because of dr maureen mcmahon and she said she is amazing and she has such vision and when we come with any ideas for things to do to offer in the schools or partnerships she jumps right on it and she finds a way to make it work she said we go

022to other counties and present things and they turn us down because they say oh that's too hard logistically or we can't do it anne arundel always jumps in because of dr mor dr mcmahon's leadership and then a year or so later the other counties come back to us and say how can we do this now so i just wanted to shout out that that was an unsolicited just feedback that we got right away that to say that what a powerful advocate we have for our students in our community that is seen and appreciated throughout the community so thank you dr mcmahon thank you mrs hummer and and thank you to dr mcmahon and your entire team for for all that you do uh dr arlato yes thanks so much uh just really briefly i wanted

023i received a wonderful letter uh that i wanted to share with the board and the public once again the national procurement institute um is awarding their 2019 achievement of excellence and procurement award to our procurement office and so it is not the first time it is a number of years that they have won this award um and i just received that information so congratulations to mary jo childs and her entire team and procurement officers do a fabulous job congratulations uh on that i i want to say eight but i'm waiting on a response so i think it's i think it's eight um but once again um they just do incredible work and so we're lucky to have them as part of the team and i also just wanted to mention um for those of you

024that haven't noticed the new and improved boardroom we have a new fresh coat of paint you have new flooring you have new seats to sit in and the wiring has all been upgraded you'll notice that we're not using the screen anymore it's a special paint on the back wall so we can expand the picture so you can see it better from the back of the room um and much of this our own facilities team um did a fabulous work but in in particular chris cole who spent countless hours particularly um on fridays when we were closed in here in the ceilings getting the wiring done um in fact i believe we're wired now for hd when we go to hd so that's kind of exciting so welcome to the new board thank you thank you

025dr elato for for mentioning that and thank you to the entire team item 2.07 is the policy committee update and we'll turn to mrs brief update thank you president gilliland so um the policy committee as um as was announced in june does not meet in july and august however the executive team of the policy committee did meet earlier this month to lay out a final draft of their schedule and that is going to be sent to the policy committee members i want to do a um welcome aboard to our newest board member who will be joining us welcome aboard um and thank you for uh being willing to uh join ms shalheim and miss hammer and i on the policy committee and so uh what we will be convening again in september and uh at

026that time we will have the final approval one of the things that we did decide to do to make the policy committee more accessible to the public as well as other board members is the meeting time will now be occurring on the third wednesday of the month at 4 pm prior to our board meetings here in the board room and so any time the public would like to engage the agenda just as a general reminder is up on the policy committee tab on the website and if you have any questions you can always contact our executive assistant at the board office ms howells and she miss house and she can instruct you appropriately we welcome the public to attend uh however this is a business meeting and participation uh public participation is not typically on

027the agenda um so we're looking to forward to a very good uh year and for those who are on the policy committee you can be looking for emails in the next couple weeks in preparation and in september we will have a good comprehensive uh update as to the final setting of what policies that we are aspiring to review this year as well as some other announcements thank you very much sir thank you very much mrs corcodale item 2.08 is the budget committee update and we'll turn to mrs ellis thank you so this is our first uh budget committee update and uh what i want to do today is just sort of give an overview of the activities of the budget committee moving forward we kind of have a new process we're going to become a

028bit more active through the budget process to we'll be meeting more frequently depending on where we are in the budget cycle and the purpose is to basically consolidate the information get in front of the big issues and be able to sort of guide the process throughout the budget cycle many people remember our last budget meeting where we had 81 amendments i think it was made for a very long evening so we're trying to get in front of all of that and come together on budget issues so that we can have a more seamless process and make it a little easier for everyone so we will be meeting again more regularly starting in september so those meeting times and locations will be posted and um thanks for the time thank you mrs ellis and certainly thank

029you for your work on the budget committee and raising awareness of all of the delegate intricacies involved in that committee item 2.09 is the pta report no report today your mike's louder than mine item two 2.10 is the cac report sorry good morning president john and board members we look forward to a new 2019-2020 year my name is tanisha howard and i serve on the cac as the northeast cluster elementary representative this past year i was the vice chair and honored to be elected as chair for this upcoming year as my third year amy ziegler who is entering her second year will begin as secretary with the vacancy in the vice chair position due to her resignation over the summer the cac will hold election for this position at our september 9th meeting the cac

030will continue to meet on the second monday of each month to be held at a new time 6 30 to 8 30. we have a minimum of eight meetings that cac members will have this year and we have also designated alternate dates for the winter months which last year decimated several of our meeting dates to ensure that the committee work progresses timely for board priorities the cac membership consists of 16 returning members with 12 new members elected this past july we welcome our new staff liaison and kayak representative jen lombardi as teresa tudor retired the cac leadership team consisting of myself amy and our staff please on jennifer and assisted by shelly davenport with the office of school and family partnerships who i cannot thank enough for stepping in to attend the meeting that we

031had for our new members um as jen was on vacation we met on tuesday july 13th to greet and provide orientation to our new members to the committee orientation is an opportunity to train and develop a foundation for while in the past this typically occurred an hour before our first session uh convened i thought it would be more appropriate to have the orientation in august to provide our meet our new members with a longer opportunity to onboard an ample time to adjust and acclimate before the official meeting in september gets underway and at which time they can fully participate we want to thank president gilliland for attending this orientation session to properly welcome our new members and starting the new year with with them in a collaborative spirit with that in mind we look forward

032to the new year having more interaction with the board um having their presence at our meeting and starting in september we actually already have on on our schedule to have vice president policy chair michelle corcodal scheduled for our september 9th meeting we have planned several speakers with robert moser as our first to launch the school year and we continue to seek staff participation to support the committee work designated as priorities by the board in that of our community as you are aware the cac submitted reports in june from our four subcommittees the communications equity college and career readiness and social emotional learning at the september 2018 meeting recess was a topic worth brought forth and was elevated to a mention to the board that same month our equity subcommittee took up that issue of recess

033as the months progressed last year we are pleased to work with the board in planning to support continuing actions on the issue of recess this coming year in a more comprehensive manner thank you for your support of the cac and look forward to building and strengthening the cac board relationship to further achieve a rewarding educational experience for everyone within our system and i think miss howard we should be thanking you and appreciate all that that you have already done and and we certainly look forward to to our continued collaboration this year got one question uh comment from miss angeline just wanted to say congratulations please stand by for the reception that we're working to schedule to so that we all can meet you all in one happy place that we voted on last year my

034question though for you because it sounds like you're doing a lot over a summer do you have personal goals that you would like to achieve as a new chief so as i over the past two years when i first came in it was more of a transparency and really more of how can we be more effective and really wanting to establish where the members and the enthusiasm that we are receiving every year i want to channel it i want to make sure that it's used and i want to make sure that they understand that we are heard and we want to make sure that we elevate the cac to what the board envisioned it to be and to really set that foundation for the future so that's really what i want to do is make

035sure that i put a solid foundation together and also create that transparency in that pathway that we can really channel our efforts wonderful thank you very much thank you good morning president gilland vice president corcodell members of the board and dr arlato my name is parity cherry and i am the crafts and secretary of education kraska has taken part in many school system regional and statewide events since our last report on june 21st four student leaders had the amazing opportunity to be ambassadors at the student services mini conference not only did we get to meet the student services team but we were invited to attend sessions about supporting the lgbtq community perils of social media and dangers of vaping the end of june concluded with the stellar unlocking our potential conference at northeast high school

036student leaders hosted the vision board tables and were able to interact with aacps leaders and even see some of our former teachers this summer krask opened up the application period for appointed staff and received interest from schools all over the county our president vice president and advisor met to review the large number of applications we now have a fully staffed 22 student executive team for the 2019-2020 school year the maryland association of student councils advance was held at lathrop e smith environmental education center in rockville on august 8. during the masque advance student member on the board rita alvey cross vice president princess merritt and middle school coordinator brenton mead took part in renewing mass bylaws presenting a regional report meeting the new mask officers and appointed staff along with a powerful presentation from strong

037schools maryland it was a great time and we look forward to working with mask much more this year krask is continuing to build our relationship with the chesapeake bay foundation on august 10th we had a fantastic time on the leadership cruise we were able to learn about the bay's biodiversity discover how we can be a bay ambassador and even caught blue crabs next week the craft executive team will complete the initiative and confidence course at arlington echo we are looking forward to team building with our newly appointed staff in addition we are hosting our first meeting on august 28th at 6 30 pm a few initiatives we want to tackle this year include advocating for mental health awareness embracing diversity and empowering students to advocate not only in their schools but in annapolis as well

038i appreciate the time to give you an update about what's happening in cross thank you and let's have a successful school readiness year opening of schools report uh just by way of background as has been the case in previous years members of the executive team will provide an oral presentation to the board as to the readiness of the school system for the opening of the 2019-2020 school year presentation will include information from the offices of school performance curriculum and instruction equity and accelerated student achievement advancement studies and programs student support services and human resources as well as the chief operating officer this presentation will include information that's normally covered in the four departmental reports presented monthly to the board so welcome to all of you good morning president gillian vice president crocodile members of the

039board and dr alato for the record my name is dawn lucarelli associate superintendent for school performance before i begin our presentation on the readiness for the opening of schools for the 2019-2020 school year i'd like to ask my colleagues to introduce themselves and their respective offices good morning michelle batten assistant superintendent curriculum and instruction good morning assistant superintendent and studies and programs mary talar good morning myesha gillens executive director of equity and accelerated student achievement good morning sally eagan assistant superintendent for student support services good morning jessica executive director of human resources our readiness report begins with the office of school performance first our schools between transfers and promotions 17 schools will have new principals 11 schools will open with first-year principals and six will open with principals new to the building 40 schools have

040had changes in assistant principals 23 were promoted 16 were transferred and one was hired from outside anne arundel county public schools second are students we're projected to enroll more than 84 students a record this year and our staffs are ready to greet them at the door at the secondary part yes 84 000 yes not 84. 84 000 couple zeros off there at the secondary level our office of school performance team worked with our office of student data and our student services division to ensure all students will have a complete schedule the first day of school as we speak our schedulers and our counselors are working diligently to resolve any last last-minute scheduling conflicts at the elementary level our youngest learners will be ready to go on day one the safety and security of our students

041and staff is always forefront of our thoughts and we continue to work hard over the summer in that area our office of school security for example has been involved in providing safety training throughout our school system including secretaries and custodial staff in addition safety vestibules or double entryways as they're more commonly called have been added and are being added to many schools as we speak that will continue well past the start of the school year third our school buildings are busy as well six of our schools are starting their schedules one day late to accommodate final preparations due to construction projects arnold elementary edgewater elementary george cromwell elementary high point elementary jessup elementary and chesapeake bay middle fourth athletics continues to be awesome as well last year we had 11 267 student athletes 1066 additional

042students in unified athletic programs such as tennis bowling and bocce our 1018 coaches are certified in care and prevention cpr concussion trait training and heat exclamation training in addition to better serve our 64 percent of coaches who are not traditional classroom teachers our athletic department has trained coaches for critical moments in sport prioritizing student athlete mental and physical safety teaching life lessons through sport and integrating student athlete voice at all levels of programming all this hard work pays off last year anne arundel county public schools brought home 11 state championships this puts our new county-wide total at 403 since our first state championship in finally the people in the office of school performance our team has worked with all school-based leaders to ensure successful opening for the of the school year specifically on monday we

043hosted an our opening session with all principals with a focus on our three driving values from our strategic plan all means all ready set launch and sound stewardship we provided a professional development session entitled increasing cultural intelligence and leadership and in collaboration with the office of equity once again we shared energizing and engaging ways to forge critical relationships with students staff and the community during the first week and beyond in summary our 123 principals and their school teams are ready and excited to welcome our students for the 2019 2020 school year thanks to the collaboration of many offices good morning i'm excited to share curriculum and instructions preparations for the start of the school year during the july assessment writing and curriculum innovation academy elementary and secondary teachers work with content coordinators and resource teachers

044to create more than 70 new curriculum documents the academy included almost 300 writers and partners from montgomery carroll frederick prince george and queen anne's counties who all joined in the experience this year equity leads joined writing teams to help ensure materials of instruction and strategies offer opportunities and access regardless of regardless of a student's native language learning level or physical social and emotional ability curricula updates include universal design for learning artful thinking strategies avid strategies project-based modules and technology supported activities learning tasks and assessments have been developed in all disciplines to build students reading and writing skills to connect essential skills and concepts across all grade levels we are working on developing our students writing skills with a renewed focus on writing conventions throughout the summer staff from the offices of curriculum and instruction advanced

045studies and programs and professional growth and development collaborated to plan and deliver professional learning opportunities for multiple audiences we increased our interactions with administrators and classroom teachers to focus on learning strategies to engage students in critical thinking problem solving communication and creativity our sessions also covered various topics including multi-tiered systems of support instructional technology proactive behavior management and a literacy academy for special education and general education teachers also teachers new to special education participated in a series of seminars with staff from the department of special education to prepare them for the effective delivery of specially designed instruction in addition we work with school teams to get them ready to prepare for our students to become literate independent caring and contributing adults who are able to successfully navigate and possibly impact the 21st century global society

046we are thrilled to continue our student-centered curriculum for elementary learners students investigate new ways to engage learn and achieve through the themes of communication critical thinking collaboration and creativity students will have opportunities for inquiry and discovery through exploration questions and concept connections within each discipline we continue our commitment to movement play and discourse to support teachers with implementation of our elementary curricula this year early childhood teachers will receive multiple resources to facilitate instruction as well as job embedded support from specialists in the division of academics we are also excited to continue our focus with middle school experience to meet the demands of the maryland college and career ready standards curriculum documents include globalization and cross-curricular themes that align with the 21st century competencies our instructional approach is centered on developing students conceptual understanding and systems

047thinking to allow for connections across content and prompt problem-solving opportunities students will use utilize manipulative conduct investigations solve problems and participate in discussions that focus on the strength of the evidence used to generate claims to support learning students will participate in blended instruction that provides focus coherence and rigor of the standards so that learning is engaging relevant and fun for all learners we evaluate it and the board approved 17 new secondary courses over the past 12 months in preparation for the opening of this school year these new courses support the values of the strategic plan to offer students important and relevant content tools skills and experiences so that every student is able to confidently build and cross their own unique bridge from school to community engagement workforce participation and college enrollment again good morning the

048division of advanced studies and programs continues to be dedicated to preparing our students to communicate precisely work cooperatively think creatively and initiate action as they prepare to participate and excel the global society at this time nearly 400 students have accepted seats within our programs or choice magnets for this upcoming fall we currently have waiting lists for middle school and high school stem middle school pva and high school ib but they are being assessed daily to prepare for the upcoming school year approximately 3 000 magnet program students engaged in activities camps and our bridge programs over the summer months specifically in stem middle school students focused on team building community and stewardship sixth graders engaged in a relationship building immersion at the maryland science center where seventh graders actively participated in day-long experiences and eighth graders

049prepare for the changemaker project through involvement in a changemaker academy activities for stem and vima high school students consisted of two-week immersion experiences for ninth grade ranging from the physics of music to summer sailing to board game design and production a stem design thinking summit for 10th graders where students actually designed a better a better library a better fitness center a better grocery store as an example the summer service for 11th graders were over 7 000 hours of stem service in the community occurred and stem summer internships for 12th graders with a 100 internship placement rate in pva students focused on arts engagement or experience middle school students participated in exploratory activities but also working in various art forms building new techniques in and out of their prime track ninth graders in pva engaged in

050three-day immersive arts workshops in and outside of their prime content area whereas 10th graders focused on project groups that examined for example media storytelling band design and marketing and musical theater additionally several of our pba juniors supported the summer bridge as arts ambassadors and ib this summer enabled transitioning middle school students incoming sixth graders to engage in globe in a global explorer and or innovation academy high school students on the other hand will offer extended essay workshops and or college essay and interview seminars we are also prepared and we are thrilled to implement the triple e initiative in 12 elementary schools including marley glenn and the broadneck and glen burning clusters with the inclusion of these clusters eight of the twelve clusters now offer this exciting program triple e teaches students to approach problems with

051an open mind it also offers students an area of study with project-based lessons designed to spark creativity the program also provides our elementary teachers with precious and much-needed additional planning time advanced studies and programs staff also actively participated in the curriculum academy with their cni colleagues this includes focused program program writing for example in avid ib design and dp math and the proactive planning for the needs of all students including accelerated learners by enhancing the integration of learning strategies additionally this summer we partnered with the division of student services in the creation of common kits for our kindergarten students recognizing the role of social emotional learning with self-regulation and engagement furthermore knowing the impact on education when educators knowledge and passion are ignited asp office leaders provided under supported engaging professional development for our systems

052adult learners this included avid summer institute and path training where 127 educators from 29 schools attended training or school-wide focus focus sessions to help with their school's college and career readiness mission designing 21st century classrooms mindful meditation and trauma-informed practices the power of protocols and technology and the teaching and learning process college awards enhancements to advanced placement which included operational changes and student educator resources and the provision of teacher externship externships with the organizations such as interior county public works chesapeake's art center and jug bay wetland sanctuary to ensure our 67 global community citizenship educators and leaders are prepared as they create a movement of inclusivity acceptance empathy and community for our high school students we have concluded a six day onboarding series created a resource repository and have had rich conversations with each and

053every high school principal to set the stage of support for the upcoming school year finally in our quest to create amazing learning for our students and teachers we have planned for authentic learning and application with a robust series of field trips guest speakers community partnerships and contracts and extended day and weekend student learning opportunities for the 2019-2007 the office of equity and accelerated student achievement continues to be intentional in our efforts in assisting schools in eliminating the achievement gap over the summer we conducted professional development sessions and partnered with curriculum and instruction and student services to continue the conversation around equity and inclusion title 1 sponsored a one-week camp at arlington echo where students were engaged in authentic hands-on outdoor experiences title 1 also offered summer school programs at seven different schools across the county

054children were engaged in learning over the summer helping to prevent the summer slide over the summer the title one office was also preparing for professional development for staff that focuses on mindful strategies to incorporate on a daily basis i will be providing you with a summary of the three different summer professional development opportunities session one focused on the use of protocols to explore the impact of microaggressions on educational equity session two focused on how culturally responsive teaching in daily lessons and activities can meet the needs of students session three was a book study on the new york times bestseller white fragility written by dr robin deangelo the outcome of the two-day book study was to recognize how the system of racism shapes our lives how we uphold that system and how to interrupt it the

055office of equity and accelerated student achievement partnered with curriculum and instruction this summer to present valuable strategies and perspectives to curriculum writers on how to approach curriculum writing through the lens of equity to help ensure students are able to connect with the content they also focus on strategies to mitigate implicit bias while writing curriculum we also work with the elementary reading office to take a closer look at assisting teachers with interactive read-alouds that have sensitive topics such as illness race poverty family structure etc and how to deliver those lessons with keeping in mind the diverse perspectives and experiences that may impact students understanding of and reaction to the text and to consider the current social and political climate i am also proud of our office efforts over the summer to work with human resources and

056student services to create a safe schools course for supporting transgender students finally the office of equity and accelerated student achievement continues to support dr alado's goal of being intentional in fostering positive student-teacher relationships by adding resources to the teaching and learning practices guide that focuses on creating a quality learning environment for all students a year ago we were thrilled to help sponsor unity day an event that encouraged the wearing of orange and focused the attention of students staff and the community on kindness acceptance and inclusion i am excited to announce to you today that we are expanding unity day for 2019 and turning it into project unity we will start with unity day on october 23rd so get your orange ready we will be intentionally incorporating unity day on each of the three subsequent early

057dismissal days to focus on building capacity of teachers and staff in creating environments of kindness acceptance and inclusion thank you the division of student support services has hired some terrific new staff as a result of additional staffing enhancements and the filling of vacancies and we are excited for students to return a total of 39 new school counselors have been hired three new pupil personnel workers eight new psychologists six new social workers and six new 504 resource facilitators assigned to two clusters each student services will continue its partnership with the anne arundel county and annapolis city police departments to provide the handle with care programs we seek to who as we seek to support students impacted by trauma our partnership with the mentor foundation will continue to support students with substance abuse prevention through the living

058the example peer-to-peer mentoring groups michelle gay of safe and sound schools who spoke at an event we sponsored last spring will return this fall to speak with principals and student services staff the office of pupil personnel has added a new committee to increase community engagement so be on the lookout for some additional ppw sponsored community events this year in addition many ppws have elected to become notaries in order to help assist families with enrollment requirements to further reduce barriers to education this summer the office of psychological services partnered with the maryland center for school safety to provide statewide training of sros specifically on the threat assessments in schools this spring the office will be partnering with the office of special education to train and improve our assessment process for reading disabilities and dyslexia school counselors

059will focus on the following themes this year ethical and equitable standards how do we ensure that we are meeting the needs of all students in alignment with state and national guidelines inclusion and intervention how do we help students families access supports and resources to ensure that we are removing barriers to learning for all students relationships and culture how do we create support and maintain positive and safe learning environments for all students the office of safe and orderly schools has updated the student code of conduct lessons bias reporting forms and the student discipline referral and checklist the bullying intimidation and harassment forms for reporting and investigating cases remain unchanged the office will continue to offer professional development training for assistant principals the entire safe and early schools team obtained recertification and hearing officer license renewal from

060the national association of hearing officers as well the section 504 office has been onboarding its six new resource facilitators to address section 504 needs in our schools the office is providing tienet and 504 training for all system principals and facilitators we have also worked to clarify discipline manifestation requirements for special education and safe and early school staff for certain drug and or alcohol violations of state testing accommodations from parcc to mcat the office of alternative education will enter at the 1920 school year with a new director new senior manager a new coordinator of behavioral supports and interventions under a multi-tiered systems support framework the office of alternative education will consult train and coordinate with schools to support the implementation of positive behavior interventions and supports restorative practices and collaborative decision making otherwise known as cdm

061the school nurses are back at work as of august 19th and have started putting student emergency medical plans in place and are reviewing immunization records for compliance a team mental health advisory composed of high school representatives from each high school will meet quarterly this coming year press students have greatly increased their participation with mask the state organization this year the office of student involvement is also facilitating the maryland general assembly page program for anne arundel county this fall future events also will include team building in arlington echo and involvement in many other leadership activities good morning while summer is usually a very busy time for the division of human resources this year proved to be our most challenging yet as we managed a new labor-intensive background requirement and we combat the national teacher shortage despite

062these challenges the division of human resources staff rose to the occasion to provide our schools with high quality educators for the upcoming school year our human races resources staff are dedicated talented and relentless in their efforts to find and hire quality candidates for our students and our schools to give you an idea of what our hiring season looked like this summer let me share some numbers with you we have hired 776 new anne arundel county public teachers so far the school year or so far this summer as a point of reference last year on the same date we hired 596 new aacps teachers our new teachers came from a variety of places some are recent college graduates while others came from other maryland districts we have career changers we have people from in-state we have

063people from out-of-state and we have people even from puerto rico currently 169 of our new hires are diverse and we continue to explore ways to recruit diverse candidates to our school system so our staff will reflect the students that we serve a little closer to home 170 of our hires are graduates of anne arundel county public schools and 65 were interns with us before we hired them this year we are proud that they have chosen to come home to aacps and we look forward to supporting them as educators our substitute office has been working hard over the summer to ensure quality substitute teachers are available to hire into any remaining positions until they can be filled permanently we currently have 1480 active substitute teachers for this purpose the number of our nationally board certified teachers

064continues to increase we currently have 380 active nationally board certified teachers and 108 of our schools have one or more nationally board certified teachers our staff is working extremely hard to continue to fill vacancies as we speak so we look forward to being as close to fully staffed as possible when our students arrive on the first day we are excited about our new hires their energy their ideas and their potential to impact our students in a positive way thank you all right facilities division manages over 13.5 million square foot of real estate in approximately 3 200 acres of grounds facilities undertook notable construction and systemic maintenance activities at 64 of our 125 active school buildings the projects included things like building conditions building renovations major component replacements and comprehensive repainting activities most of these projects

065are now coming to a close and all school buildings are being cleaned restocked and made ready for the opening school transportation is ready to begin transporting our approximately 63 000 bus eligible students all buses have completed their mba inspections and all drivers and aides have completed their msde required in services school bus routes are available online and dry runs will be taking place on the 28th of august food nutrition services has completed all of their food service area inspections and employees are receiving their requisite trainings goods and wares are scheduled for deliveries including the newly introduced organic based meal food trays thankfully there is no increase in student meal or milk prices for the sixth consecutive year parents and guardians are encouraged to complete the 2019-2020 meal benefit applications which are currently available online finally

066both technology and instructional data have collaborated over the summer to ensure that all of our critical systems and programs are functioning in advance of school opening the 7200 computer refresh project is winding down and we've added approximately 5 000 new technology devices to our portfolio as evident from the past couple minutes we've been uh busy and undertook in undertaking a lot of work over the course of the summer our job is not yet done we all intend to be committed to finishing strong between now and the third of september when our youngsters arrive with that we're pleased to turn it back over to mr president and your colleagues thank you uh mr chef novich and everyone we've got a couple of likes we'll take some some board questions and comments and then we'll move to

067public comment and then any summary comments every face that i see sitting before us i have seen on multiple occasions in different capacities all over the county all over the state and in some cases outside of the state you guys work very hard now i want to encourage you to keep it going work with us to help you all to be as successful as you are i thank you for on behalf of the board um for always doing what needs to be done despite your own sacrifice your own families and otherwise it's very important i am very surprised that you guys were able to give us such a high level of your successes over the past year and in your future intent in such a short time because we all understand what that means what

068it's going to take and you all are doing a fabulous job because it's high level i have high level questions um i want to understand in terms of our strategic plan how the community can interact in in helping us to achieve that as well a lot of what is trying to be achieved in our goals for all means all sound stewardship and ready set launch has dependencies and that includes dependencies on the community the parents the businesses and otherwise so are are we focusing or are we providing schools to allow that kind of input yes is the short answer let me give you a little bit more detail so currently you can go on the anne arundel county website to the strategic plan webpage and find each school's story in the story it has both

069quantitative and qualitative data that you can currently get on the website soon probably the end of september early october schools are currently finishing up their each school improvement plans that interact with our strategic plan where parents can see exactly what schools are working on in schools you will see what student groups particularly in order to elevate students eliminate gaps will be addressed in those plans at each school did i answer your question wonderful i most certainly certainly did i understood too that there was a tool on our website that i believe so yes it is and the data where the public can click on metrics the data is um [Music] uh what's the word i'm looking for it's interactive thank you yes it's interactive so you can go to a particular school and look at

070the data um and you can um you can manipulate the data as you see fit regarding your school or your cluster so it is interactive it's not just stagnant data um so my second question would be about the water testing i i understand that you know there's a lot going on in terms of the results and we've approved a lot of support to that i i have not seen anything concerning the water testing results since march uh is that to me that those the tests are done and we have met the requirements for what does that mean please well i'll take that one the same one so the statutorily the test will never be done so the mandate was for us to test uh all of the school pictures by date certain and we we

071beat that date by well over actually a year and a half so that was phase one phase two now is the pictures that uh were that the results were above limits those fixtures were in the process of replacing having those fixtures retested once the test passed the fixtures can be reactivated uh those fixtures that are not intended uh as uh potable water sources uh have had signage put on them indicating that they're that it's not their intended purpose etc but i guess what i was referring to is the final phase so the state law contemplated that that the entire geography be tested the first year and then after that first initial foray then one third of the school district is to be tested each and every year going on in perpetuity so we've established that

072schedule that testing schedule is available online and we're working with our uh laboratories the as you may recall those fixtures cannot be tested in the summertime they can't be tested when the pictures are not actively in use then and we don't have the student body and the faculty so we have the plan we know which third of the county is going to be tested like i said that is available and we're simply waiting for schools to reopen and to get back up to the functional condition that's required for the testing laboratory to begin uh testing the one third one third one third wonderful thank you um i wanted to also talk about internships at a high level there are programs of course that gives our students opportunities for those internships but many of our students

073aren't part of those programs so is there a path for students uh going into this year where they can be aware of internship opportunities beyond the programs that already offer them so we i'll um let our experts respond but um at a high level at a 30 000 foot level our goal is that every senior graduate from anne arundel county with an intern with having served an internship in some way shape or form we've got about 40 of our seniors up to this point have earned that um we're not where we want to be to help support that which i think is your question there is a website dedicated to internships so our students and families can log in create a login and go in and see what internships are available that we have already

074processed um likewise partnerships can enter in and say that they want to be a partner and through the website we basically can it's a little more complicated but we can join the two together so we're trying to promote that within schools we've got internship coordinators high school that work with students that want to earn internships find out what their passions are and then they go out and if we don't have one already set up they go out in the community and work with those business partners to establish that internship can i get that right yes thank you dr and we have a designated person tammy diedrich manager of our internships who works with our internship coordinators at the high school so she's coordinating with our high school students and the staff there as well as

075our partners in the community to establish the internship portal for everyone to be able to access wonderful i have two more questions please and thank you guys for that um those answers that was helpful um we are now in in the environment of touch screeners right they um especially concerning our testing i have a theory that a lot of our testing is based on the tools available for the students to test on i i think their success depends on that i wanted to understand how we are transitioning our tools that we provide during testing especially the state uh state tests and those requirements are we are we moving forward in that that transition from the standards laptops and that don't have touch screens two touch screens also i would like to understand how we're doing

076our virtual learning alternatives especially for us our seniors and our high schools overall who may be choosing to take those alternatives rather than the traditional um physical attendance history so i'm going to address the first part of your question regarding opportunities for students to enter interact with our devices particularly this touch screen and so that they have ample opportunities throughout the school day in different content areas to to manipulate those devices in order for them to be prepared for the testing session so that is happening on a daily basis and through our daily instruction so to explain let me jump to explain that our chromebooks that the students use on a day-to-day basis in the classroom for instruction as well as they're used for assessments are touch screens we added 5 000 chromebooks this summer

077and had a refresh of about 7 500 but our chromebooks originally several years when we started this process we're not touch screen they are now on touchscreen a wonderful i i guess as my question is stemming from the fact that we have a limited amount of home books despite our efforts to get more and more and more and more and so this some of the students are still testing on on screens that are may not be touched especially our younger ones who are have entered into the world touching the screen and so they wouldn't be familiar with other devices but it's good to know and understand now that we we are acknowledging the transition and we're working hard on it so thank you when did you want me to touch on the maryland virtual learning

078opportunities i i would please but i have one more question about about the testing we recently got um our park results and because we are sharing highlights i won't mention how i felt about those results here but i i would like to better understand um how those results are are influencing how we're moving forward overall and whether or not we'll be as the board getting a a um getting an update about those results and the plans for that place um so miss antoine that the the park results have not yet officially been released they will be released next tuesday to the state board of education okay so i want uh i'll i'll take that question back off the table and that's good and so once it's released to the state we is it standard that

079the board gives a presentation we are absolutely glad to talk about our assessment results thank you and then so the virtual learning uh the flexibility is my concern with with that is there the students are recognizing alternatives for themselves and and a lot of times we need to be in sync with their their choices because they have a lot of say in their education and so i wanted to better understand how we are integrating those virtual learning alternatives maryland virtual learning opportunities approved courses by msd are available at each of our high schools for courses where a child schedule may not accommodate a passion or an interest that they're pursuing and or an advanced placement course that they want to continue to engage and to enhance their rigor their possibility for earning college credit prior

080to the exit of the comprehensive high school it is also important to note we are now entering into our sixth digital learning classroom that has the opportunity for children 16 years or older to engage in recovery opportunities of course as they may not have been successful in earlier in their high school career as well as the maryland virtual learning opportunities uh the exciting exciting part is we also have inorder community college dual online credit courses also available for these students so they can start actually earning college credit before they even leave their high school experience thank you miss antoine miss alvey i had a question for hr um you mentioned a lot of new hires i was just wondering if how our turnover rate has changed from last year to this year has it increased

081or decreased so i don't have a good feel for that at this point because we're in such a flocks but i'm happy to follow up with you on that i wanted to get a number for that today and i was not comfortable with it based on where we are so as you saw maybe when you're walking in today we are processing teachers as we speak and so i don't think would be accurate to provide something but i can tell you that nothing is out of the ordinary it's not um we are not seeing more teachers leaving anne arundel county public schools um while the numbers were higher for our amount of hires this year it's not as a result of turnover okay thank you mrs um yes and i did see the chiller actively processing

082as they come through how many openings do we still have sure so direct classroom vacancies we have 96 we have 35 candidates that are chosen for those positions but they're not yet hired so i don't include them in our actually hired positions um and then please understand um for those of you new to this process sometimes principals do choose to leave a position vacant for a period of time if they already have a long-term sub or a plan within the school that is more advisable than the candidates that they have to choose from and they may be waiting for a mid-year higher so some of those are deliberate and we don't ever intend that it would be we've never seen that where it's 100 so um we're pretty comfortable with where we are right now

083and as if it's there's 96 and then we do have 35 people chosen but they're somewhere in the pipeline and have not officially been hired yes we would rather we don't want to take somebody just to fill a spot if we have a trusted long-term sub who can fill a position until the right person comes along all for that um and i just wanted to add um miss anton twine had brought up about the strategic plan link just for those watching from home if you're interested in doing that it is on the website aacps.org backslash strategic plan and you can go right on there and see the latest date on there um thank you all i know that this has been a i know whenever i drove by school or came in here there was

084lots going on all the time so i know y'all have not really slacked off for the summer at all and everything is going full steam so um thank you mr thank you first of all what really struck me was the overlap between what a lot of you were saying and i and i really liked the way we were working together as a school system to you know i'm all about a whole child approach to education so um i i liked the overlap and some of the common themes i heard in each of your reports um okay a few questions uh since the park tests came up i i have the question about um there is was last year was the last year for park do you have can you talk to um what's replacing that

085and how that's going to impact instruction this year moving forward so park will be replaced with mcap and that will be administered this spring to our students um again in english language arts and mathematics including social studies and science as well we will have a new social studies 8th grade test this year that will begin and then we will um continue to we still have our same maryland college and career ready standard so the standards have not changed it really is reducing the amount of questions so the testing sessions are are less than what they have been and the number of sessions our students will be participating in has also changed are you all able to get any kind of a preview on what that test that's a great question yes we've had many team

086members working with the state board of education to actually be some be part of the test writers and the field testing experience so our our content teams are directly involved with the work that the state is doing so we're able to see that firsthand thank you um back to the water testing questions so uh in this final phase now every three years um will that uh those results will continue to be reported publicly just making sure that and um the title one summer camps um can you talk about um the participation was was there any kind of waiting list or were we able to meet the demands um throughout this i'm not quite sure of the answer as far as the a wait list but i can certainly provide that to you later today except

087that's wonderful i'd just like to know if we're able to meet the whole demand capacity i don't know about the waiting list okay i don't know about that okay okay thank you and uh as far as buses uh the schedule was just posted yesterday so you might not have this information but do you know in the last 24 hours if the call volume is similar to previous years since that has been posted so yes i mean each and every year there's a spike in call volume because before it's posted um the community doesn't have very much to react to so transportation is taking calls i can't i can't categorize whether it's more or so um can you talk to how the schedule was created this year as compared to last year so last year we

088were looking at integrating the software you were kind of running concurrently i believe how how was the scheduling done this year so i guess it's important to i guess as a background sort of comprehensive numbers right so we've got almost 700 schools those schools are served by about 200 routes and over 15 000 stops so the as i've uh in the interview i had with uh reporters uh we've been gradually sort of shifting our weight from the one foot that was entirely hand-based that's sort of days of old and transitioning over to where the computer is increasingly the software is increasingly taking on more of the work so the schedules that were are out there that are prepared uh this year uh were largely led by the software the software produced a lot of the

089outcomes of course you know the software again uh needs sort of manual intervention to make sure that they're appropriately placed that it's in a safe location that it's not giving you errant results so with 15 000 plus stops that combing through those is continuing to occur and that has to occur at the manual level okay so um i i guess my next question is uh you say dry runs on august 28th will you collect data on bus arrival times um yeah we always take feedback so we take feedback from the drivers from the contractors we have our own personnel out in the field observing observing those dry runs it's a very busy day for that but one of the purposes is obviously to get feedback so a very simple very simple thing is you know

090the software the bus may be routing uh a bus up third street but the feedback we get is that you know there's some kind of an obstruction there's a boat parked on third street and the bus can't make it up there and then we either have to see if we can work with the resident to get the vote moved on a permanent basis or we may have to reroute uh that bus to maybe turn on fourth street instead of third street so there is a lot of uh interactivity and again that dry run is is really that is one of the many feedback instruments that we rely on and uh these bus schedule that went out you so you're saying that was created basically by the software we're letting the software sort of take ever

091more increasingly we're letting the software sort of come into lead and we're doing less manual scheduling okay um i'm aware this impacts my family but i know of other buses as well at the high school level we have some students being picked up an hour earlier than last year a whole hour earlier and i had a parent who um who's student my students are in a magnet program but i have a parent that i spoke to yesterday whose student that is their home school so they go to the same school and in both of our cases our buses um us knowing the routes our those buses are going to arrive 40 minutes before the bell the morning bell um yeah we're i mean we're looking at the outliers because uh you know the computer is

092spitting out results right and we're taking a look at those results and then that's where sort of that human interaction has to go into you know does that result make sense doesn't need to be adjusted in some manner so um information for parents then from what i'm hearing is you uh a schedule was posted yesterday there's going to be a a dry run on august 28th and we could see changes to the schedule at that point oh absolutely um the schedules are up and they're live so as changes are being made they're continuously being updated that that was even you know true essentially in days of old when we were doing uh things manually um if anything i'd say that the more automated process probably makes that updating a little bit more sort of efficient

093possibly so okay so yeah there will be changes that will continue to be made as we analyze that as we receive feedback from uh from the communities we receive feedback from our drivers from our contractors uh from the police department public works department etc so um just to speak uh as a board member on behalf of our students um there's mountains of research on the importance of healthy hours and currently we have high school students that have to wake up in the four o'clock hour to get on the bus um we we need to make we need to adjust the priority has to be our students so we we do have to figure this out and work this out but um i i do hope we're gonna tighten those times as much as humanly possible

094thank you first i want to say thank you for all your hard work um i love your presentation i love your enthusiasm i look forward to a wonderful year and uh and it was just wonderful to hear about all the um the wonderful things coming up this year so thank you um of course i would be remiss if i didn't touch on on one area that i think still needs our urgent attention and that is school start times since the fall of 2016 when we had that vote on the 13 15 minutes live the board has been concerned with late starting elementary schools and in fact previous members members of previous versions of this board asked for a report to be delivered to the board march of 2017 detailing how to resolve the issue of

095elementary schools extremely late um dismissal times before or later and was this report ever provided to the board and you know i'm asked for it but i i haven't yet received it um this board also over the last eight months has expressed on numerous occasions concerns about start times including late starting and ending elementary schools back in march when we voted to develop the rfp for the transportation consultant who has now been hired and is working right now we established those goals under the overarching goal that we don't want our children to walk to or from the bus in the dark so now this board has hired that transportation consultant who is currently in the midst of her work right now to evaluate the entire operations of the transportation department and provide alternate golf the

096consensus of this award has been over the last eight months i feel that no child should be walking to or from school or bus stop in the dark so imagine my surprise despite these multiple conversations on the subject on the subject and by this and previous iterations of the board not only has no progress been made to resolving the late starting elementary schools but that several more were pursed even later this year for 2019-2012 and so for full transparency to the public because my phone's been ringing off the hook since since this has happened both the phone and on social media and to dispel any myths for the public this board was not given any previous notification about school hours we learned right along with the public when our children will be starting school last

097thursday sending school hours is absolutely under the purview of the superintendent and just to dispel this last minute the board was not consulted regarding this year's school hours so the full list of elementary schools that now dismiss between 355 and 410 include the following vodka at 4 davidsonville at 355 ferndell early elementary center at 355. folger mckenzie 405 hebron harmon 410 mead heights 405 odenton 4 o'clock overlook 4 o'clock pasadena 4 o'clock rolling knolls 355 and sally at four that's 11 schools that start between 9 35 and 9 45 in the morning and dismiss between 3 55 and 4 10 in the afternoon and the rest start between 8 10 and 9 30. the rationale that this board has received so far for the three schools folger mckenzie nantucket and pasadena whose times were pushed

098even later included resolving a few late chronically bus schedules bus cleanly like buses and the better coordination of crossing guards these three schools along with the other eight i listed will likely have children all walking home or from a bus stop in the dark in the winter but walking in the dark which is a very very serious safety concern is only part of this issue this extremely late these extremely late start times also put an enormous burden on working parents even those that work from home some of our kids i noticed don't put their kids on a bus till 9 30. some parents are likely not to get to work until 10. i just don't know how this works um some of the schools i listed are title 1 schools i can't imagine the added

099financial pressure of a late starting elementary school on these families who are paying hundreds of either paying hundreds of dollars per month for before care or aren't showing up to work until mid-morning there's also a fact that the that the starting the starting elementary school so late is age inappropriate young children don't often sleep in as much as we might want them to sometimes and are likely to be up well advanced if they're extremely late starting elementary schools with these starting times we are squandering up to an hour and 45 minutes per day 180 days a year for students at these 11 schools and even more when you consider the schools that start right before them at 9 30 9 25 et cetera we're in the business of educating children so i cannot overlook and

100over stress that enough for everyone listening we are squandering prime learning time up to 1 hour and 45 minutes per day for the 180 day school year and it's extraordinarily disappointing that depending on where your school is what school your children attend determines if it starts in the age appropriate hour or not lastly but hardly at least there's the out there's the issue of lost play extracurricular and family time you can't play in the dark what about extracurricular activities how does that work when children don't get off the bus until 4 30 or 5 and forget about family time once these children get off the bus at 4 30 or 5 scramble do an extracurricular activity do homework eat dinner and then it's bedtime so since thursday like i mentioned my phone has been blowing

101up not a single person i've talked to is okay with making these already late starting elementary schools even later and i just know we can do better i mean i hear these wonderful reports of these fabulous wonderful things we're all doing and i know that our transportation staff are dedicated and i've seen i've witnessed this firsthand as a parent but the this and previous versions of the board have been vocal on this issue for years and we need a resolution now i'm extremely disappointed that our children and their families at these 11 schools have to cope for yet another year of extremely late starting start times and ending and dismissal times and that should be rectified i realize that bus schedules play a huge part of our belt schedules but that doesn't mean we ignore

102the problems it causes so i therefore implore dr alato and the transportation team to begin looking at solutions now and i therefore want a full report of of these solutions of how we resolve these 11 extremely late starting elementary schools including a full safety assessment of the late starting elementary schools to be on the agenda for the november 6th board meeting [Applause] mr graham um i believe everybody on the board shares the concern with about our late starting elementary schools that's fun been an ongoing concern for the board and the school system that's come about um i fully support us looking into ways and trying to find a reasonable plan that will do that but we have hired a transportation consultant who is actively working right now and he's going to be presenting an extensive

103report on all aspects of transportation to us by january and so i would personally prefer that we wait and get the comprehensive report before we ask for a report before then let's get the recommendations from the experts that we've hired to bring in and then let the school system use those and working together come up with the best options based on their recommendations for what we have out there i miss hammer i i do agree that we should wait on the results however we understood that nothing would change before we got those results and so that that is what's prompting we we have some sincere questions about what happened and why did it change we went in with some known concerns and it it appears that those concerns were not were not considered when they

104made these schools start even later a lot of the requests from from the board and from the public and otherwise included considerations for the students getting on and off the bus in the dark i specifically have requested that we consider the development that's going on in many of many of the areas in district 1 it makes it very unsafe for those students so now i'm getting emotional but now we we have a safety concern not just a transportation concern i um this year we lost a student because of those safety concerns so i i really want us to focus on that we want to understand as a team this system we work together as a team to understand what's going on and to implement those solutions in this case some things just did not happen

105and and we just want to understand why so that we can move forward as a team for viable solutions so miss antoine i'm not um you have to help me understand um what you mean by things didn't happen and you don't understand what didn't happen what i can explain to you is the transportation division knows well that we don't want to move schools back when we can we want to move them forward so it is a last resort that a folger mckenzie is added five minutes we've got several buses that are running late every day and have been for a year and a half so this would this would be the third school year unchanged in which several buses were arriving late in the afternoon and so the transportation division worked with the schools that

106were the prior runs to folger mckenzie just using that as an example to change to look at their dismissal watch how the students dismiss and can we dismiss from severna park elementary or jones elementary in a different way to get the students on the bus so their runs can they can be dropped off in their neighborhoods and then those buses in the tiered system then go to folger they moved those buses the folger buses to the front of the line at jones and um several park elementary as an example to get the students on the buses and get them out and into traffic and get their drops in the neighborhood so they could get to folger on time so for a year and a half the division been working with those two schools along with

107folger and principal folger and staff to alleviate this problem these buses are running late and the buses are running late because of traffic it's difficult for them to get out of jones and in the traffic it's difficult for them to get out of annapolis excuse me out of savannah park elementary and into traffic into their runs so we know why that five minutes was added in the case of some of the other schools as uh mr scholheim sheridan shared her remarks the request was made to change some start times move forward or back based on the request of the police department because the police department oversees the crossing guards and like our tier like our buses that are tiered one bus makes multiple runs as you know our the crossing guards are also tiered there

108are not enough crossing guards to have on all the corners if all the schools dismissed at one time so they asked us in certain instances in certain neighborhoods could you change five or ten minutes here or there so that would give our crossing guards time to get from one neighborhood to another neighborhood so that those students could be crossed their corners safely so those are some examples we know why those times were changed those are using some of the examples and i i appreciate that dr lotto what i'm i'm sharing is we have requested certain information be brought back to us as a consultant so that we can address those together um before making changes and now now that those changes have been made and based on what i'm i'm hearing they weren't changes that

109could couldn't necessarily wait until we got our results back and so now we're dealing with additional concerns and i just believe this moving forward i mean we've done it already the change has been made we will work with that but we do need those results before we make continued changes we also need to consider and i've heard it across the board but when you consider this these students safety i know logistically problems occur but i think those problems will continue also let's put a lot of onus back on the people we're hiring to get those students there on time it is their responsibility to get it there get the students there on time and and safely i don't think it should come back to us to make changes that we don't have enough information to

110make those kind of decisions before we get viable information again i will stand on you guys work extremely hard i don't take that for granted but it's hard to talk to parents when they're scared to death about the safety of their student it's hard to talk to talk to parents who work all the time or cannot work because of child care or because of whatever these variables are it becomes tough as the board member so i can imagine living the circumstance so my request would be is that we work together before we make these changes so that we can present especially the public forum one voice in those changes if if i could add to the comment or for the board and the public um we we tweak bus schedules all the time and throughout

111the year it happens all the time five minutes here ten minutes there traffic patterns change construction on whatever it might be so um i don't know that we can wait i would beg to differ that we couldn't wait we've had we've attempted to change again using folger as an example we've attempted to change to get those buses and everything within our power to get them there on time without changing and altering the schedules and we weren't able to do that and so we're going to give them five extra minutes to try and get that done um i beg to differ that that that changes aren't needed at uh um at another school where the crossing guards can't get there on time um we needed to make the change so the crossing guards could be there

112to safely cross the students at the corners um i agree with you um and mrs hummer in terms of and her comment that that the large the broad changes should wait until we get through the consult let the consultant do their work and bring their work back to this board for consideration and collaborative work but there are times throughout the year that as things come up and bus drivers tell us about construction in a neighborhood or construction on the road or the traffic has just increased a significant amount they come back and report to us that they can't get their own time or of course the principal tells that buses are not getting to their students on time and so those changes you have to allow us to make throughout the year i i'm all

113with that dr i will stand on though we we need to put safety first and just i it's hard it's hard for me to fathom that those things can't wait when the bigger variable here is the safety of the students i i believe the consultant would have brought us back some additional solutions that the contractors could then utilize to implement changes as needed as you pointed out but i again um now that i know more i can i can better support um i can better support the board my decision making for that but it's it's still a difficult situation because lives are extinct mr sean i stand by my words and i want that report that report was initially requested by i believe it was my colleague back in september of 2016 for a march

1142017 um presentation i don't believe that that's happened i don't believe that we've done everything we can that's why we hired a transportation consultant we haven't the transportation team did not assess whether or not the model that broadneck uses where the middle schools are later in the elementary schools run in the eight o'clock hour that wasn't uh assessed or thought of and this is the 2019 seventh year running that um at least one of the elementary schools in question has had repeatedly been moved later and later and later and you know we have 11. um i see this as a safety issue of our students um and uh and again we're in the business of educating and i just i hate seeing the buses drive us so much so um i asked for that report

115for the november agenda i don't believe we need to vote on that i think that issue's closed and i'll look forward to hearing from you on november 6 about that thank you timely fashion and doctor lawler to uh further a conversation it's my understanding that we did bring that information back as well and an amendment was adopted by the board three years ago to ask a fiscal note came with that study and an amendment was passed to add a request to the board's budget in that fiscal year that was transmitted to the county it was not it was not funded that item was not funded and therefore we didn't have the resources to go forward with that but again we can go back as you suggested and recover that information this is and then mr

116granny um i just uh since we are on the topic of of it i just wanted maybe for the benefit of members so i had the bene i worked with um the cca the crofton community association and the local crofton police about 18 months ago or so we were working with our the county's traffic engineering and so a couple changes had happened to crofton elementary the one thing still remains so we now have a four-way stop sign at the parkway to increase the safety but one of the recommendations that logistically could not be corrected at that time due to budget with the county police was we had a crossing guard that we had to share between woods and crofton elementary and so there was either 15 to 20 minutes where it was free-form chaos going

117on at either one site or the other because of staffing of of the police and so that was one of the solutions that they did was the stop sign and i think the other one was that the community was pretty much an agreement because i know i attended at least three community meetings of their president where they were asking for some relief they would rather have two safe schools than a school starting five minutes early so i just wanted to share the history i know on the crossing guards and i gotta say um just to bring back a positive note here that i was driving down maya road and i saw some of our crossing guards doing simulations during rush hour when i was driving here um we had i believe a blind gentleman with

118the king simulated um in front of me i was about two cars back and so that's something newer that i'm seeing so it sounds like our team efforts working with the county are are producing very good results um we do we do share our uh the start and dismissal times of schools they're shared with the county's traffic engineering bureau they're shared with all the public law enforcement uh entities and are shared with our uh principles and we ask for feedback from those main agents in terms of you know what works what adjustments need to be made etc separate and apart from what our transportation officials so we rely on feedback from the county from the police department from uh from the city transportation bureau and the schools themselves and i believe nantucket is similar the

119request was a similar collaboration and they did work with the school community with it so from my perspective of my areas i have a good understanding of what was going on so i do appreciate that that's all i wanted so i understand the urgency of this issue very much as a student commuting from crofton to annapolis every day i know that sometimes my bus will get there 20 minutes early and then other times we'll be sitting in traffic and we'll be late to school so i understand the logistics behind this that being said i think it has a lot to do with our budget and if this is a priority for the rest of the board of education for which it sounds like it is rather than trying to make these quick decisions and obviously

120i definitely trust our school system to make the right decisions with school start times and all of that that we wait for the transportation consultant to come back with their report but also during budget season put an emphasis in investing more in our transportation um to help resolve this issue thank you mr brannon actually uh this thank you mr president i could not agree more with what you said mr grant and that was very well said i would like to correct some misperceptions that may be out there as a result of some comments we heard today number one to create a notion or plant a seed or whatever you want to say that this school system this board of education and the transportation division does not have the safety of our students as their number

121one most paramount issue is doing a great disservice to our employees and to ourselves that is always in the forefront of what they do from 25 years ago when the department of transportation worked for me to now when it works for alex that's the number one thing they worry about and so i would like to dispel that notion if anyone is trying to walk away from that that is the school systems and our people's number one interest in everything and everything they do uh again i wholeheartedly support your comments mr grantham and uh i congratulate you know not congratulate but i understand all the different restraints that transportation works under and how we have to put this complicated piece together and as mr grandinson as we move forward it's our decision how we arrange our

122resources on whether we're going to support what we need to support in order to correct the situation in the future thank you thank you mr live mrs ellis i i too want to uh share that i completely concur with mr grannon it it is my hope that this board agrees that the whole reason we hired this transportation consultant was to dig through all these issues but the budget is the responsibility this school's budget is the responsibility of this board and it's the board's responsibility to put the health and welfare of our students first and so when we create that budget healthy hours for all students safety for all students has to be a priority so thank you for your comments thank you miss antoine i just personally don't remember insinuating that you all have not

123considered the student's safety i indicated that safety is the bigger variable here and i'll stand on that that despite all of our considerations and how we apply it we have some detriment in our system and we hired people or a person in this case to do the heavy lifting to tell us how to do that better i did not understand that the police themselves requested that some change immediately happen and i certainly as a board member did not get that information before this meeting today those things make a difference in our decision making keeping us informed but most importantly we are making efforts here that we need to be as a team working together to ensure those things get done for the best interest of our entire system and especially our students and these parents

124are not happy they are upset and i have witnessed children walking in the dark i can tell you as i get older it's harder and harder for me to see so i can i can imagine others with with night vision or whatever the case we have a lot of development going on in our county that in itself is a problem i am never going to sit here and say that you all have not considered the best interest for our students especially safety i will say though we have got to work as a team to make those changes and that is the disconnect here today thank you and i i think we've had a good uh discussion i'd like to ask that we um if it's okay with everyone here move to um public comment at

125this point we've got a lot of public comment today um on this topic as well as our general public comment i just want to announce and be transparent uh i was jumping up and doing some coordination with with some key staff as well as dr arlatto um just looking at the clock we're at almost 12 20 now um i think we'll get through public comment um and and then with the change to the agenda item we've got the financial literacy in anne arundel county public schools moved up before our consent items um i'd like the board to break at about one o'clock or thereabout um because i know uh we'll we'll have uh some appeals during uh during a quick lunch if we break for about 30 minutes and it gives staff a chance and

126others have been waiting a chance to grab a quick bite to eat and then we'll resume so we'll keep an eye on the clock and somewhere around one uh we'll pause for about a half hour so at this point we'll move to public comment on this agenda item and we've got a couple of people who've signed up uh for this and first lisa van buskirk and vicky calhoun um we've got um four other seats if there's anyone who wants to uh testify on the school readiness topic please you're more than welcome to to join at this time as well you good afternoon board lisa van buskirk we'll start school later um thank you very much board members for your discussion regarding school hours and transportation so i don't really almost have nothing to say here

127because you guys have covered it other than i would like to bring up that i did print out all of the high school uh bus schedules yesterday and then i compared them to those that were published as of october 2018 which was the last time that they were published before they were taken down last school year and so then i compared the first pickups because i could not compare the arrival times since those were not posted and i got them last year from a pia request so uh maybe i'll have to do that again this year anyway so then i started comparing uh pickup times first pickup times for all the bus routes from this year and last year and i started with southern because i wanted to go in reverse order and um my

128blood pressure started to skyrocket because as you can see from my sheet every single time is red because every single time is earlier by about 10 minutes so i took a deep breath and then i went to south river where my blood pressure again skyrocketed and i started thinking to myself whiskey tango foxtrot and mr lab can translate that if you need it um so um so then i then i just left my room and had i had a meeting whatever and then i came back um and i looked at severna park and savannah park's more white and white being no time difference at all so i was like okay so maybe we'll get better and um we got a little bit better old mill had some red north county was doing pretty good mostly

129white northeast had some greens which means that they were later so i liked that um and then let me get to my tabs because then i had some a couple things but there was one um air where it took 22 minutes to go 0.1 miles for a north county bus number 245 so hopefully that will be resolved because i don't think it takes quite that long um and then i got to glen burnie and a particular attention i like to pay atten the a bus route i like to pay attention to is one that goes from southern middle to glen burnie for the bmah program i the first when i first started as this job i had to get there at 5 15 in the morning to catch a picture of the bus then with

130the 13 minute delay the st pickup time moved to 5 40 and last year i was incredibly pleased because it moved to 603 this year it's moved back to 540. so i don't know why it now takes 20 minutes longer than last year because they actually had the afternoon schedule published for that one and it took about 80 minutes to get home so i don't know why it takes 30 minutes longer to get there and so that's a bit of a mismatch um and then so times went okay and then i got to annapolis which was again almost all red um and we'll take magnets separately because there's a bit of a mess with that one but um some of them are 30 minutes earlier and it's hard to understand why but i did have

131like armando was okay and broadneck was pretty good because those were mostly later but um hopefully the transportation consultant will be comparing that because i think it's something that the staff should have been working on alongside it thank you hi i'm i'm vicki calhoun i just want to say i'm very disappointed in this presentation i was looking yesterday on the website there was nothing it talks about monthly reports those aren't on the website either and i just think you all have been nickel and dimed i think mr granny brought it up i i think that this tiered system which has been established that you all were kind of talking around is what's driving this you paid for software that's separate from this contract and and what's happening is you guys are getting shotgunned by little

132issues because the strategic plan is terrible in your strategic plan is transportation even mentioned i was going to go look on the website because i don't think it is your problem is that the support systems that are there to support you are dysfunctional if you want to fix this problem that you're talking about right now as this lady had this beautiful analysis i said get with the transportation people but but this this tiered system is what's doing it and like mr grant just mentioned you haven't paid for enough guards and you haven't paid for enough buses the solutions are in there but you shouldn't be looking for them there's people here that need help and they're the ones that need to look for it to support you i'm disappointed in the support for you not

133the people not the people that were sitting here so don't let anybody walk away misled i think we as a community have failed you and this community has not supported the people that are in these roles we paid for software that software needs to work 20 minutes or 40 minute early arrival for a bus at a school is unacceptable so i don't know what's going on in the transportation department i don't think it's personnel issues but something needs to happen in there to help them do this job and enable you to do a better job because i'm disappointed in what's going on for this board but i am encouraged by the questions that have been asked and the energy by some of the members to try and get after in in what seems to be

134a somewhat frustrating manner these issues so i'm just want to tell you that i'm here to support you and i i want you to continue to ask your questions because the the parents are grateful to try and get in on these issues that seem to be beyond your control thank you good afternoon dr alado and fellow board members my name is odessa ellis and i'm here once again hoping what i have to say to you again will be considered as a solution to a very serious problem in anne arundel county schools and especially in the annapolis area the miseducation of the african-american males this summer has been an unhappy daily period in the annapolis area we lost three special african-american males two under the age of 21 and one well-known popular artist artist and role

135model montre say i think he came out of school with my son so he's probably around 32 he was a 32 or 33 years old montre had just recently spoken to our youth at annapolis high school giving them inspiration and hope because he was one who made it and he was trying to help others to survive i went to school with montre's mother and father and in a sad way i'm glad that they both did not live long enough to see montre's untimely death their son's untimely death as i have said and asked many times here in front of you what are we going to do with our african-american males they are dying in great numbers and no one seems to care they are dying a slow death on the street corners wasting their lives

136because they lack skills motivation and direction if one of our goals is to strengthen families then it is prudent to graduate our young men with life skills more for more vocational skills training and more opportunities to become strong healthy and wise individuals individuals so that they can take care of themselves better and so that so that they too can have stronger families we must do a better job at educating them and not just graduating them we must get rid of this generational poverty again i implore you to look into this matter by studying other programs alternatives such as maybe an elementary charter school for minority males and to increase vocational training as the saying goes a mind is a terrible thing to waste also a life is a terrible thing to waste please bring some

137attention or focus on this subgroup at the earliest intervention at the earliest age intervention not when you're in high school thank you for your time and hopefully interest thank you and we've got a couple minutes one quick second um so as a student at annapolis high school i see these issues every day and i want to assure you that i've spent the summer educating myself on what these issues consist of and working with the superintendent on how we can help the african-american males in our school system because just minorities in general we know are given less access to opportunity because of systematic issues so i just wanted to reassure you that that is something that i'm working on behind the scenes and and hopefully we'll be seeing some changes with that um with in the

138upcoming year working alongside the board thank you thank you miss ellis thank you for bringing this publicly it is certainly an issue is i have a personal interest in the success of african-american males as i have a son and i think it's heartwrenching some of the stories i've read even most recently in our county in our area to have a child call out to their mom mom i'm i'm hit and a mother not knowing what to do about that you just watch her child die slowly that is incredibly concerning our education system has to work in such a way that our students choose other means they choose more positive alternatives i think the presentation today and i hope that what they presented to you today help uh you and the rest of the public to

139understand we are on it we do not take that for granted it is certainly a concern um dr gillian's i give her major kudos because she goes into the trenches along with other partners in the community to help combat so much that's happening we may not be able to prevent all of it but it does not keep us from being active and concerned citizens like you bringing it publicly and to the world's attention is exactly part of that solution may god bless you for that thank you thank you first of all i want to thank you for your testimony um this is an issue that is very important to this board and there are efforts being made um i hope to be able to provide some updates very soon on that so thank you for

140your testimony going back to the um the healthy hours issue as as i'm listening as we've all had this discussion and we've now heard some testimony it occurred to me yes we have a transportation consultant working right now we're not waiting to find out if we can fix this we have to fix this so i would like to ask that our policy committee as soon as possible start working on parameters setting parameters for school hours and then it will be up the results of this transportation consulting should not be if but how not if but when so um i i do think this board can can go ahead and start creating a policy um to address this issue because it's it's extremely important so i would like that to please be on the policy committee

141[Applause] hi i'm not sure if you can hear me really well okay my name is uh molina melendez and i'm i'm a parent who um just recently moved from well not recently but i've only been here in maryland about maybe two years in florida so i came from hillsborough county florida recently in florida they have a system there where they changed all the school starting times all the elementary schools start at 7 40 and end at 1 55 with a few exceptions obviously charter and magnet scores when parents sign up for those programs they kind of notice that the times on the ground varying for high schools and middle schools i want to say the start times are between either 8 30 or 8 40 for the middle school and high schools and then they

142all get out around 3 30 and that's for all the schools pretty much all the schools should be dismissed they're home unless there's some type of event by 3 30 way before four o'clock i think one of the big uh problems with the school start time is probably the daylight savings because we have to keep adjusting that i mean we can't adjust to school start time every time there's either spring forward or fall back so i mean so i think that's one of the issues that affects like the students getting out of um getting dismissed at a proper time so they could get home and without walking in the dark and things like things like that so i feel like when it comes to the busing and transportation i don't really think it's necessarily their

143fault per se it's just that if we had a a uniform start time for all the schools because what i noticed was that in certain areas you know certain schools i felt like you're starting later because um they're in a nicer area you know i feel like the schools were the title ones for example like uh van buckland a lot of parents have to walk their kids to school you know and that affects them too because they have to give away five six three six o'clock in the morning they're walking in the snow and everything and uh unless you're living a mile away from the school you still have to you know walk to school and i feel like a lot of parents were getting there trying to get their parents i mean their kids

144to school on time but they couldn't get them on time because they have to be there by eight o'clock in the morning so while some have a mention to start pushing to school with back is bad i actually prefer it be pushed back a little bit because that's not being considered to people that don't have a car like myself i mean i can drive and i can adjust with the times pretty uh easily that's not fair to other parents you do have to walk a good mile back and forth to taking their kids to school and we also don't have the proper amount of housing going because i feel like there's some schools there like certain areas that have more cross guards than in other poorer areas have less cross guards like if i go

145to savannah park there's a cross guard on every single corner whereas in another area it's not the same so i feel like adjusting the school times where it's fair for all the schools like i said i mentioned in philadelphia county we started 740 for elementary i think that's something universal like that for all the schools i think all the bus drivers could meet that time and it'd be fair for all the parents and all the students that attend those schools thank you thank you very much um mr graham county so the population is about 1.4 million people and they're all able to get the bus uh they're all able to get bus drivers to all the schools at the um at their proper time they also have police officers at all the schools especially in

146high traffic areas um readily available for all those schools like the middle schools like there's a place to help del maybe it's a very large um road like annapolis or something like that it's very a lot of high traffic there's still police officers there to help guide the students across the street and even for cars as well they allow parents to get into the school out of the school which i found out up here that it's completely different where i talked to the police department they said that they don't have enough officers to be at the schools at every time which i was kind of surprised about since our population here is about eight hundred thousand less than that of hillsborough county yet those in hillsborough county are able to get all their kids home

147to and from school safely and also there to get police officers there as a new fee yes [Laughter] i just want to thank you both for your for your testimony and for the great information and and yes um i hear you and it concerns me too and i i also want to point out that i'm not trying to be misunderstood here with my testimony or with my request this is a safety issue and i stand by every word i said and i'm surprised on the pushback because all i want once again is information we can all do with a little bit more information and a little bit more understanding of uh of the challenges and that is that is what i want and um you um we'll now move to to general public comment we've

148got uh quite a bit today so i'll just read the first statement 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 allowed at three minutes each and may not allocate their time to others a tone will sound when time has expired the board asks that comments remain civil and appropriate for the various audiences that may be watching reviewing this meeting student specific and personal 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 handout should be given to the board assistant uh and again i apologize if i mispronounce any names uh sydney showing uh kufner george

149smith shirley little andrew kelly foley kate um lily ellis okay that's me okay thank you um tina larson and uh melinda you're on there again okay so we'll take the first six as seats are available and then we'll just keep moving okay any order all right good morning good afternoon wherever we are at this point my name for the record is andrew schaffel i am a folger parent and i'm glad to hear my issue being discussed and represented by my board member uh michelle i'm i greatly appreciate that um i'm sad that dr orlando is not here unfortunately i believe this may speak to the priority of the issue when we know that that is what we are here to talk about i fully agree with mr granin and i work in government i'm an

150executive in government a budget displays a body's priorities period everything else is just talk i look greatly forward to seeing the the priority of school start times reflected in the budget i understand their constraints there are always constraints all i hear is no i work in government i hear no constantly okay i'm an executive in a thousand person agency everything is always no whenever we want to change something nothing can ever be done until executives get involved and prioritize it and push it then magically things happen the bus system is a contract i believe is that accurate right we outsource that sure so the fact that we can't tell the bus system what to do tells me that either the contract is you know there's there's something wrong with how the deliverables or the constraints

151are presented within that contract you know if we have two buses that are chronically late common sense says that they need to start their bus routes earlier right so someone is either not asking them to do that or there's a constraint that we can't require them to do that which would tell me that there's probably a contract modification that would need to occur to make that possible again i just don't really believe the answer is no to this i believe that if we push it and prioritize it and force them on an issue they'll do it they're we are their customer in what world should they not be fitting our expectations i realize this is a comment section but i wonder if members of the board would raise their hand if they believe that starting

152school or or let me rephrase that um so my child will likely get home around 4 30 in the afternoon drop off from the box would be my expectation who believes that in elementary school trial getting home at 4 30 is acceptable nobody up there does and i'm going to say that i could even i could even i could even you know couch that around let's pretend that there are no constraints right not one of you would raise your hand and say that that's okay so we know we have a problem now we just need to see an execution of the will to solve the problem and i hope that it doesn't take until next year i believe you'll prioritize this i can see among the board members i know that dr alata does not

153find this this proper i'm sure that this will find its way to solution i don't want to see it wait until next year for solutions i firmly believe that we could make a shift mid-year again if we're able to get the right folks engaged and the right level of priority i would expect that the gentleman running transportation could lean on the contractor to make this happen and we'll be watching closely to see how this goes thank you i appreciate your time hi i'm tina larson and i'm a i'm a former public school educator i'm a health care provider now and an elementary school here at holden mckinnon mckinsey elementary school star and i'm going to read this because it makes me very emotional um and i thank you all for bringing it up you keep

154talking about physical safety what about mental safety and the well-being of our children i have a child who takes medication for to alter her ability to stay on track and to stay where she needs to be have we thought about those children i don't think so having those children get to school later and home later her medication um i should be reading i should just i'm talking from the heart here it suppresses her appetite so she typically doesn't eat lunch so when she gets off the bus at four o'clock she's hungry she eats that entire lunch scarfs down snacks and we run off to extracurricular activities and then we get home we eat dinner we try to get homework done and then get to bed these medications also are big sleeping difficult so the longer

155now we're putting them on the bus later those medications have to be given later so now we're jumping off the bus at i'm waiting at the bus stop but this happened last year the buses were getting back at 4 20 4 30 and i have three kids that i have to accommodate different sporting events after school activities play rehearsals what not so we're getting i would wait in my car they would jump in the car i eat in the car and then get to the next activity that's not okay now that we're even making it five minutes later if it's five minutes later every single year my child who has a difficult time getting sleep at night now it's going to be 10 o'clock when she's going to bed because we have homework so can

156we opt out of homework then you know i want them my children to be around well-rounded people and without being able to do extracurricular activities being home with their family with their sisters going to play rehearsals piano lacrosse whatever it is and then still be able to maintain her healthy well-being mentally socially physically i understand the safety and you're talking about crossing guards and things like that i get that 100 but think about the other children who that's not necessarily affecting them but these other things are there are so many kids in the schools it's not spoken about no one talks about the medicated kids but it's huge and i did call the bus uh system or transportation system yesterday and got passed around i had to hang up and call back because i got

157sent to a voicemail of the person i wasn't supposed to speak to i was beyond happy to say the least um and when i finally spoke to someone they kept saying well what's your address what's your address i'm like it's not about my addresses i couldn't find my bus stop on the list anymore and what happened and i apologize if i'm talking too long they took the bus that used to be one bus which actually was three bus routes last year they were sitting kids three to a seat with backpacks on their laps or in the aisle safety issue you know that light bulb's going off um but now it's two separate buses in my one neighborhood which makes no sense to me at all so i'd like to see the report i'd like to

158see the numbers of why my daughter daughters are on a bus with four bus stops and then there's another bus that goes to the neighborhood with five bus stops yet there was another bus that was included with them all last year how they all fit three buses and they had two bus drivers one in the morning one in the afternoon and we were told it was a substitute all year so how we're getting extra buses when we couldn't even have the bus drivers to take the buses we had last year i don't understand so i do look forward to seeing information on this thank you ms ellis hi just real quick i'm sorry miss i didn't get your name tina larson larson um i i just want to speak to you personally and i i

159really appreciate all parents coming and speaking up about the issues that are important to them um i had such a flashback when you started talking because the first time i walked in this room was as apparent to testify about this issue and i was very emotional so i i i sympathize i know how you feel um but yeah i applaud you and i thank you all for coming and speaking up thank you um okay i'll keep this really short because i think almost every like everything we said we could talk about this for hours and believe me we have uh my name is katie left if you're campus i'm also a folder parent um and we um just the three of us are here from folger but believe me there are um dozens and dozens

160and dozens of us that feel the same and we have heard every reason in the book and i have yet to come across one person who is even neutral on this uh start time and i i this has been an eye-opening experience being here um at this meeting um i was a little frustrated to hear almost that um when you guys were talking about it like believe me safety is our main concern and and i do believe that but it is frustrating to hear it in words and not see it in action year over year over year i have made this phone call and i have sent this email every year since my daughter who is in fifth grade has been at soldier and i get passed around and i get excuses and i get

161nothing and in fact the history has then been in the wrong direction and so this is why i'm kind of at my breaking point we have friends who have moved who has gone to private schools i personally one of the reasons i read shirt as my kindergartner was because he did not possess the ability to control himself at 3 30 ish in the afternoon to still function in a learning environment this is not an ideal time for him i have people who are red shirting i mean tons of people who have read shirt of their kindergarten this is a huge issue for so many of us in so many different ways and common sense i think dictates i mean any amount of reasons you guys give me i'm kind of tired of hearing and hearing

162them because historically if there's been no action yes there's always money there is always routing software but we are tired of hearing it and people are making big changes and we are losing faith so again i think everything has been said but i just wanted to weigh in real quick thank you [Applause] is this mike working for good yes good afternoon board members and public audience thank you for taking this time for public input on bullying in our schools one of the things that could be done to assist the board's efforts to decrease bullying in the schools would be to place into global citizenship curriculum and any other citizen-related curricula that is offered to both ninth graders as well as other children's students additional information that most students would be able to comprehend that additional

163information to the global citizenship curriculum and other citizen curricula would be an open acknowledgement that the behavior of bullying is against the principle of tort law theory which is the glue that holds constitutional laws and the common laws together as part of this action by the public school system's goal of increasing civilized behavior in our schools and thereby in our society at large the basic tenet of tort law theory expresses the requirement or obligation that each citizen owes a duty of care toward every other citizen this is an obligation that indicates that each citizen shall conduct herself himself in such a manner that each person within the jurisdiction of our nation is safe from harm i invite the board to consult with a lawyer or lawyers who have won the background knowledge of tor law

164theory and two this is very important the dispositions to uphold considerations of tolerance and forbearance as part of their professional makeup so that with their legal guidance the implement implementation of tort law theory can be included in the global citizenship curriculum and other citizen-related curricula if the board places upon the official curricula documents its authorization of approval and support of tort law theory which includes the absence of bullying i believe this will make a positive difference in the culture of the entire school system students need to know that it is unlawful according to the basic principle of tort law theory to commit acts which will put a fellow assistant safety in jeopardy citizens safety includes not only physical safety but psychological emotional safety as well bullying is emotional violence which is a prelude to physical

165violence the prevention of which goes to the heart of our present american cultural condition that calls out for healing the public schools of anne arundel county can play a significant role in the beginning of the healing of the nation by starting that healing right here in our county schools thank you for listening my name is dr george r schmidt author of the behavioral paradigm in one school system which happens to be the anne arundel county public school system and i i invite you to invite me to sit with you in executive session and tell you about the things i learned about what was going on in the school system before you came here thank you dr schmidt um [Applause] um firstly and i i think i know the answer to this but just for the

166benefit of the public within the global citizenship course curriculum do we talk about i know we talk about um kindness and um and there's there's various other uh forms where bullying is talked about um or anti-bullying is talked about i assume that the global citizenship course is one of those yeah great great just for the benefit of the public listening and the follow-up to his wonderful testimony and um and then i wanted to say um that i hear you um i'm with you on on this um i think you know that already but there's repeating um and when when the school's starting time gets later and later and later and later over years i think the last seven years it's moved a few times um how can this be the last resort so we're at

167a last resort every couple years that we can't find another solution and we move it again and we move it again and we move it again so i'm saying this is enough is enough and it needs to be corrected immediately thank you very much i i also want to thank you all for your testimony when you start time the emotion i'm all jiggly up here too but but it takes that i think sometimes just send home the message that needs to be sent so don't get weary and doing the good that you're doing please um concerning the bullying thank you i appreciated that you sent in your testimony early because we have a policy coming up that we'll be deciding on today directly concerning those things and i i utilized that information that you sent

168yesterday or earlier in the week and it helped me with the insight that that was utilized for that so thank you please continue to send these recommendations encourage all of us to work together to make this difference so thank you hello um my name is shirley little i need your advice and this might be an easy issue to solve um i'm a 70 year old anne arundel county resident who exercises at the county pool near annapolis high school i often can't find parking place at the pool lot and i just go back home along with many other people especially of my age high school students student visitors other random drivers people going to events at the school they park at the pool line and there there is no supervision that i can that i can

169find uh for for the parking people park at the pool lot even though the rules are posted that say that there should be no people parking there who are not full participants the area behind the pool has parking but there are many security issues behind the building there many county organizations are involved in these parking policies at the pool recreation parks board of education annapolis high school the police the pool management the county employees i knew them all because i've tried to help find an answer nobody i've contacted even my councilman uh councilwoman excuse me gives me any information they don't have any idea they don't know what to do i often feel my concerns are just seeing this old lady complaining but there are many old ladies over at that pool and a lot

170of old gentlemen too and many handicapped people that this this affects i want to know please uh who should i contact board of education owns the pool parking lot and they lease it at least that's what i understand they lease it to the department of recreation and parks and that right away complicates matters uh i'm i found this information out from a person i believe his name was greg at the board of education uh who's in charge do you feel any responsibility about this problem there are the high school events are often scheduled and they're the supervision of the parking if it does occur like during large lacrosse events they don't know what they're doing it and i need help so i can pursue this and i thought i would bring this up thank you

171so much foreign [Applause] firstly i agree with you mr again 100 secondly i didn't catch the name of the pool man it has a long name but it's if you google it it's the river road pool which is owned by the county there are two pools one is here in annapolis and the other is uh towards glen burnie and that's another part of the problem in that there's very little choice as to where to go to a pool if your doctor tells you to okay okay it's the one in front of the high school yes ma'am dr arlatto specific to your question dr arlotta was going to offer hey thank you so thank you we're going to continue to work on this issue we we know folks are parking in that um our parking lot

172yes it is a school board lot um but it's that section a lot should be used for the pool um been in touch with mr julianis the principal at the high school so he's going to continue he's working with his sros i'm looking at my in email that he sent me about some of the things that he's done connected messages to the to the families of all the students that have parking permits we also know that we've got some students that are driving to school and parking in that pool lot that don't have a permit and that's the reason they're parking there so he's been in touch he has two sros the sros are going to be going through a lot yet again he's met with the manager at the pool on a number of

173occasions um my i also understand that the manager of the pool has gotten some spaces um behind the swim center in the heritage lot now that doesn't work the security issues are extreme yes ma'am i'm just trying to share with you what you shared with me i don't know if it works for you or not i'm just trying to share the information so we know that it's an issue we want to try and help resolve it for you so you've got a place to park so you could swim okay and i have i have a list of my suggestions may i pass it out now or how should i do this could you give it to the board assistants and they'll make sure they get it to me and the members of the board okay

174and so you have no one person i should contact that you think i haven't yet no because we don't have anybody that oversees that parking lot per se right i don't have anybody that i can assign that you can just check people and check people out in all honesty so we're going to have to try and work through this um one it's uh we have to start with the students at the school that could be taking up spaces i taught at annapolis high for like 18 years i love annapolis high but i don't like their parking yes okay all right thank you very much thank you and i appreciate your time there is one um minor sort of complication and dr arlatto as part of the um following up on on the parking situation my

175understanding is the parking permits will will not actually be um given uh for a couple of weeks so i as a parent of an annapolis high student i was told that basically parking is first come first served for the first couple weeks until they get that ironed out so for a period of time we may have more students driving than we have spaces but that's the first couple in other words the it might be chaotic the first couple of weeks of school but then they will be ironing that out it's my understanding i'm glad to hear something is being looked at it's the problem i they're people with one leg one arm handicapped in wheelchairs i'm not there quite yet but i can't walk a quarter of a mile to get there okay thank you

176i actually had a question about i understood you to say that we are leasing the lot from what i understand and i spoke to a board of education employee the board of education owns the land and the board of education leases obviously a legal type of lease uh the the the pool area and the parking area to the department of recreation parks and because of that it sort of mucks the water about who's in charge although i knew the board of education is not because it has the lease but then again you know who else is looking and and because of the high school involvement it is sort of your problem understood and thank you for that the reason i was asking um dr alato i was wondering the people that you shared had you

177had already been in contact with are they part of parks and rec or is this internal to us contact with the regional assistant superintendent and the assistant principal but certainly we have a we've got an incredible partnership with the recreation park so they'll certainly work with us this is not a new issue this didn't just happen yesterday okay this has been going on for years uh people parking lot there's a as this little said there's a big lacrosse game or a football game people are coming early and they're going to park the closest parking spot they can find and the lot gets filled up quickly and sometimes they park in the park it's there are no signs that say pool parking only there is one sign one large sign but it's sort of sort of

178so no one can see it yes ma'am so we're going to continue to work on the issue okay thank you so much yes ma'am thank you thank you i'm india oaks i i saw your name was on the other page i apologize for missing you earlier good afternoon india oaks hillsmeer elementary school i wanted to highlight some of the items included in the written document i just submitted about the new public comment procedures we all appreciate that additional methods were added as options to sign up to speak at these meetings yet the word in that last sentence is added as options right now the language on the website and press releases about public testimony is misleading there is no mention anywhere that the public still has the right to sign up in person immediately before

179a meeting the omission of this statement can be misleading to the reader who will think they can only sign up online or by phone and it is not just speculation when i say such a mission can be misleading since the new procedures were announced in june i have seen multiple emails sent out to different education groups telling people signing up online or calling in are now the only way to sign up to speak you as a school system have a responsibility to be fully transparent about how the public can participate and that is not happening right now additionally i am asking for consistency in the wording posted online the main board page says people can sign up after the agenda is made public while language on the public testimony page states people can sign up

180after the agenda is posted on that specific page given the agenda is made public in areas such as on board docs such wording needs to be consistent across all communication finally there are two other issues i wanted to quickly highlight language needs to be added explaining when the public can call in to sign up to speak the phone number is the direct line to the board assistant and thus will only be answered when the central office is open which limits people from direct contact after hours on the weekend or if the central office is closed language should either state the exact times the public can call the number or if the public has the option of leaving a message language should be added letting the public know they are allowed to leave a message and

181what information they need to include in that message and my final item i urge you to post all of the public testimony rules and etiquette on the public testimony page including the three-minute time limit again for full transparency thank you see mrs um and forgive me if if you already did this do we have your testimony that you just gave us in writing okay great thank you thank you so much okay sorry about that we'll break now um and then uh reconvene uh at approximately 145 and the first item on the agenda then will be the the financial literacy uh presentation uh so can we have a motion to close mr president i move that the board go into closed session to consult with council to obtain legal advice on a legal matter second grade

182all in favor say aye opposed no we stand in recess thank you board will now come back to order and uh we will reconvene we the board will now come back to order will now reconvene with item 5.00 which is the financial literacy in anne arundel county public schools thank you good afternoon president gilliland vice president corcodell dr alato and members of the board i am michelle ben assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and joining me today is skip lee director of curriculum and mary talar assistant superintendent for advanced studies and programs we are honored to have the opportunity to share with you the current state of financial literacy in anne arundel county public schools as a point of context we believe it is important to note that in 2011 msde began requiring all school

183systems to offer what they refer to as a program of study in financial literacy for students in third grade through 12th grade that address the six financial literacy standards make informed financially responsible decisions relate careers education and income plan and manage money manage cred credit and debt create and build wealth manage risks and preserve wealth to reach these goals aacps offers courses in financial literacy as well as integrates the financial literacy standards into current courses and offers co-curricular and extracurricular opportunities to enhance the learning process for example many of our elementary students travel to biztown in owings mills to participate in junior achievements miniature city our middle school students learn the importance of maintaining a family budget in family and consumer sciences and in high school not only are the essentials of saving credit and

184investment taught in the context of algebra 1 u.s government and ap economics but students can experience them in a very real world way if they choose to compete in the stock market game moreover students engaged in magnet or signature programs and our high schools may be steeped in meeting many financial competencies as they work alongside or learn from the business professionals our community business partners we have a variety of instructional opportunities for our students in our school system beginning as early as second grade students are introduced to and learn about money we begin with the value of money and what money can buy in early lessons we study how current comers affected the founding of our state and young america in the intermediate grades of elementary school students reinforce fiscal understanding with the decimal placement

185in math and taxation in social studies the financial literacy standards shared with you earlier are more directly addressed as students enter middle school our family and consumer sciences social studies and health education courses integrate the financial literacy standards directly into the curriculum and the eighth grade mathematics parallels the financial literacy standards standard with mathematical standards related to taxes and students in middle school stem or ib programs encounter financial literacy in action in their change making and myp design courses respectfully as previously shared algebra 1 and us government along with ap micro and macroeconomics are the core vehicles through which financial literacy standards are delivered each having a significant section of their curriculum dedicated to this understanding additionally our program of study affords all of our students the opportunity to elect courses excuse me that directly

186or indirectly address the important standards shared earlier your finances is a nine-week course founded on the six financial literacy standards business and personal finance is another of those offerings that provide a strong understanding of money management and future planning for young people our career and research and development course brings all the components of financial literacy together to position students well as they enter the queer world finally signature students will explore financial elements through business proposal development or project management while magnet capstone students will experience similar financial rigor if they are engaged in a project where a detailed budget is required beyond the walls of our classrooms and depending on their interests students are afforded the opportunity to engage in co-curricular and extracurricular activities steeped in financial literacy the maryland council on economic education sponsors an

187annual personal finance challenge bowl and i kind of liken it to x academic where in each school where each school where in each school students are encouraged to train for and compete for regional and national awards our vibrant future business leaders of america clubs participate in local regional and national competitions and do quite well the university of delaware's diamond challenge is an outstanding competition requiring our students to identify or excuse me identify identify a problem and develop a business model requiring a keen understanding of sound fiscal practices to be successful and the stock market game as a live well in here at anne arundel county just as a side note when my son devin was in school he outperformed all three of her indexes and i asked him if he was interested in investing some

188of his his own money and he said no but he'd be happy to invest yours dad many of our co-curricular offerings as well as our strong high school internship program offer all of our students numerous opportunities to learn about the planning for expenditure and saving of and investing of money money they have active access to now or wealth they will accumulate in the future it's important to note that we aren't just making this stuff up at the heart of the work are incredible relationships we have with many business and non-profit agencies who bring the learning opportunities to life in real and meaningful ways for instance dominic powell from the educational systems federal credit union joins us this summer at the curriculum writing academy to share resources with our teachers to utilize right there on the

189pages of our curriculum guides dr alan cox from the maryland council of economic education and towson university sat side by side with our family and consumer sciences teach writers and our social studies writers to ensure the appropriate alignment of standards to learning experiences and our friends at everfee and junior achievement continue to be excellent source of resources and materials to utilize in our classrooms and our new relationship with the recently founded anne arundel annapolis financial education coalition provides a locally minded civic organization whose purpose it is to promote financial understanding and responsibility both in schools and in the community and let's not forget our signature magnet business and community partners who lead our integrated community stakeholder teams and advisory boards collaboratively they teach us or help support our project-based learning modules that are real world

190in origin they also support us support us with job shadowing and field experiences offer us mentorship and open their doors to hundreds of students to serve as interns each and every year our community partners bring relevance real world financial problem solving thinking and challenges into the lives of our students now to present some of the initiatives we have for the future michelle thank you as you've heard there is certainly a lot taking place in the classrooms and schools across our system we continue to explore opportunities to prepare our students for college and career and understand the importance that physical responsibility plays in these matters i want to share some of the additional opportunities we are either currently working on or are considering for the future this certainly isn't an all-inclusive list but it does frame

191the conversation about what is possible for our students and staff as shared earlier we are continually looking for opportunities to integrate the financial literacy standards into courses that already exist in our program of study for instance mrs shelley harford has begun work to include the financial literacy standards in her esau 3 and 4 courses to provide our english language learners with this valuable information we are working with our human resource benefits office to offer courses to our employees we understand that financial literacy isn't just something for students but also for our staff we have incredible relationships with our business partners we want to expand those relationships and include more specifically in this arena to be better able to serve and support our students we continue to promote club and extracurricular experiences and support financial literacy

192related initiatives and as we continue to grow the internship opportunities we afford our students here in aacps we will direct efforts to the business and financial companies in our area of influence to afford students more opportunities to experience these sorts of jobs before leaving our schools these are indeed exciting times and we are honored to share with you the instructional opportunities and experiences our students enjoy we are pleased to answer any questions you may have thank you very much for such a thorough presentation i appreciate you putting it together and sharing it um and and also just before we calling before calling on the sanchoine just to say thank you miss antoine for uh for raising this to our attention and having this request so with that miss antoine so when i requested this a

193couple of months ago i was unaware of the status quo myself within our system and so i sincerely appreciate this presentation i also appreciate the prior board though i understood in my own research after this that you all were making the same source of strides i understand even you terry introduce courses that would help um that that the board approved and added to helping i am still though hearing from parents that their child is not receiving such enrichment so i guess there is perhaps a disconnect between the offerings and the receipt the person on the receiving receiving end so i believe based on what we have we have now a baseline right so i believe the next step would be how is it being utilized and and and not so much the effectiveness but our

194partnerships i know personally that there are partners that sign up and we never see them again and and we don't have the capacity resources to necessarily monitor the partners activities but we can monitor the students if the parents are saying there is an absence and my child is not getting this how do we ensure the parent knows these opportunities are there so i believe that would be the next step in in doing this is just to analyze the utilization of all these fantastic opportunities thank you miss antoine this is thank you and um this is a presentation that i feel we very much needed the public very much needed um if you can help me since we went you know so quickly went through all the many things that are being done um i jotted

195down um a couple of i believe these are courses uh your finance business and personal finance can you tell me when and where these courses are offered certainly i'll i'll start off and then pass it on over to mr lee so in our program of study that mr lee will talk a little bit more about is where they're where parents can see what's being offered in our high school level that particular course so any high school level can choose these courses any any high school student can choose these courses correct okay so i am hearing i mean a disconnect that's what it is because i too am hearing from parents a lot and whenever we try to focus on some issues uh for example when we brought when we started um discussing the global citizenship

196course many people cried out well what about finance so it sounds like we're offering that but the parents the students aren't making those choices for their schedules and so that's something that parents need to work with their kids on if they're finding that i mean i'll be honest as a parent i i never thought to look for or encourage my kids to take one of these courses but i wish they did because that kind of is missing and a lot of young people are going out in the world without having a good understanding on personal finance and it's extremely important so i am pleased to hear that we are actually offering these courses and so i think we need some education and some marketing to our families for them to understand that we are offering

197this it's here and please take advantage of it thank you mrs uh mr sean first thank you um i think that this is incredibly important crucial in fact and i didn't know about all the things we currently do so this is very very informative to me of course i just have a rising third grader so we're not quite to like balancing checkbooks and worrying about you know avoiding credit cards at college but um it's great to know that this is here my one question is in reading the yellow piece of paper that accompanies um that's in our board packet it says that it's oh yes required to offer programs in financial literacy and i understand that that you don't want to just have a financial literacy course that's that's mandated for everyone but instead the

198required components are in all these other bits and pieces but are some of those bits and pieces required courses because if i'm hearing right and i've had a headache always so forgive me but did ms ellis's children not get that course because none of the courses that were listed are required even though the financial literacy piece is required i guess so that's a really good question in algebra one in our u.s government those are required courses and then of course ap economic students could macro micro can elect to take those courses and then the other ones we mentioned are also electives electives okay so they they got bits and bobs it sounds like now the bits would you have to take multiple of those courses to get the full picture the financial literacy requirements from

199the state or so it's when the state mandates that we deliver the standards there's no bits and bobs it is everybody has to get it so we have to put it in we have to build it into classes either you have two ways of doing that either have a separate course that you require everybody to take at some level biology english 10 or finance literacy or you build it into courses that are required that every student must get through it and that's so that's what we do that's what many of the school districts do and then we go above and beyond by adding separate courses if a student has a real interest that parents have real interest then they can take that as a separate class in their class schedule during high school but everybody

200gets the standards beginning in second grade and through into fantastic okay yeah that was my question again third grade totally different from high school um i love it i think it's very valuable um i agree marketing promotion of these things you know encouraging communication with parents i mean every everyone falls through the pitfalls of like how do i how do i live as an adult when i get into the adult world especially in college and you're being bombarded with credit card offers and you don't really know how to balance a checkpoint you don't really know what you're doing anyway so like i i i think some engagement with parents you know to say these things are being offered and and you know we're doing it and here's the full list of courses and if your

201kid has an interest well then by golly they can take massive electives on it and i just think it's um i just think it's really really important i'm really very happy that you all did this presentation thank you so much thank you mrs antoine listen twice i had a request is it possible to get this sent to us for presentation please yes sure absolutely thank you and uh again my thanks um i i think mrs ellis said it best with regard to the fact that we offer some solid stuff uh but it's just not known um perhaps for people that could benefit from it the most it's a passion area for me it was my first teaching area personal finance before i went into teaching econ and then up until about two years ago i

202was on the leadership council for junior achievement in central maryland and i had to give something up and that was it but so i did that for about six years and during that time i know j.a biztown's participating schools in anne arundel county had grown and don't necessarily need it today but just sort of like that yes no is is that still expanding or are we stagnant remaining flat um or or is it decreasing and and i i just mentioned that again because the value of j a biztown for elementary school students is just amazing we can confirm those numbers okay great thank you and i know that comes at a cost too and there's some non-profit funding and support and if some of our partners are willing to kick in additional money for the

203buses to get students to this town i think that that can go a long way especially for the schools that benefit most uh miss aldi um so i noticed that you all mentioned fbla so i participate at that at my high school i was wondering if you had control in expanding fbla chapters across the different high schools or programs similar to that um or making sure that they keep running because i've heard for a lot of schools some of them have stopped running or they don't have leadership to keep them going so do you have any control over that or could you make sure that that stuff is happening so each school is afforded a number of contracts through which they can determine how they're going to support their after-school activities that is a school

204a location decision but i agree with you that it's a valuable opportunity for kids to learn real world application of what they're learning in the classroom i don't know that the three of us really have a lot of control over that but i think it goes back to the marketing piece your your school is is a vibrant great community those opportunities are afforded and we need to be able to share those across all to all the high schools you have an incredible leader that's very passionate about fdla and we continue to try to support her as well in terms of the operation and i i would just say at the void at the risk of avoiding a personal conflict here i sit on the state board for the fbla foundation and not on the formal

205board i'm on the foundation board so i just do the fundraising but i volunteer with them and i've seen statewide where the success rates are high it's when you've got a solid advisor at the school level because that person and then students the upperclassmen and the excitement of the upperclassmen then draws in the underclassmen and then you know it's like football or or anything it just keeps it vibrant and and moving um i i would really like to see a an expansion of fdla because we've got a lot of money now that we actually will pay for students to go wherever to to the national conferences and they don't have to to pay a dime now um we're hoping to get that way with the state conference especially now because we're moving it from timonium

206uh to to the inner harbor next year uh in march or beginning of april i don't know when exactly it's scheduled but um we're hoping by moving it to a more central location i know inner harbor versus timonium is not the end of the world but but we do hope it brings a bigger draw so again side note don't let any personal conflict there i i got no financial interest in it but it's just an important program for me uh personally and i i hope to see it expanded any further questions or comments on this item any public comment seeing none on both fronts thank you so much for this presentation and again this antoine thank you for raising it for we'll now move uh back up near the top um with our consent calendar

207we have um eight items uh 5.01 to 5.08 is there a motion to bundle these items thank you we now have a consent action item dr alato can we have your recommendation please yes sir i recommend board approval of the contracts as listed on today's agenda 5.01 through 5.08 it's a motion [Music] motion and a second grade board discussion at this point mrs shahan hi all right i have a couple of questions some of which oh yes all right so item 5.03 i just had a question about procurement related to this so i had a wonderful conversation very recently with dr mcmahon about our awesome new k-32 not really new because phonics has been around a long time but back to us curriculum and she was explaining the procurement process for that and then i

208was reading this and it didn't look at least not readily to me that there was a formal bid process with this so kind of a lack of competition i just wanted to ask about about that um why was this exempt when for other bits of the k through two curriculum they you know they had a lot of they did an rfp and it came back and they had lots of different options like why is this one different sure um for the record al czech chief operating officer i guess to begin with at a high level under the uh state education article textbooks curricula items and mli non-commodity-based moi activities do not have to be publicly bid and advertised they can be through a negotiated agreement your policy and regulation comports with that too so the

209state essentially recognizes that unlike uh unlike a pencil for example that's a very commoditized item textbooks curriculum things like that that are that are developed and supposed to be in alignment with the 24 jurisdictions are not very easily biddeable not really a word but across the jurisdiction so the stake gives every jurisdiction the latitude to develop to develop their own curriculum their own pacing guides do their own material selections and then that can be procured on a negotiated basis it does not have to be an open rfp and again they recognize that for example the way algebra 1 is taught here in anne arundel county may be different than howard and certainly maybe different than in texas or wyoming so to say we're going to get a algebra 1 textbook that is standardized that doesn't

210possibly align with the state of maryland requirements it does possibly doesn't align with anne arundel county requirements etc sort of doesn't work so and that's very different so if we're looking for a different approaches to k we certainly can do that we can buy proprietary products and say okay so if there's multiple vendors that create proprietary products in terms of textbooks we do evaluate more than one manufacturer's book we use we have a standardized review and evaluation committee that meets routinely vets and decides which curriculum item in this case a textbook best aligns with the state standards and local standards that recommendation then is forwarded to the purchasing department purchasing department then negotiates a contract with the vendor based on price discount quantity discounts they whether they include training or set an additional cost etc

211so it is a best value negotiated agreement that's permissible under as i said both state law and your policy in regs fantastic and so just so i'm understanding correctly we had latitude with this one with the other piece i know the other piece isn't on this agenda but just for just to compare the other the the k through two items we didn't have latitude on or we opted no we did so again it's very specific we did have latitude with that as well but we opted so it's essentially what's the best fit so every procurement you know everything from literally from pre-k up to 12 a lot of homework goes into it it's coordination between our curriculum and instruction department purchasing finance single textbook adoption program it's what is the best strategy it's going to

212bring the best alignment for the best price wonderful that's very helpful um and i just learned a lot there um thank you for that i have a couple other questions um 504 5.04 um i had a question for my constituent wanted to know if this particular contract is just for in-school opportunities or is there a home is there a homework component to this one i thought i read just in the media but maybe i'm confusing this with another one but i guess the the reaction now behind the question was that this particular constituent hadn't seen evidence of this come home and so i just wanted to know if it was so it's both these resources are typically available both uh during the academic day at home and then to the extent that they're required uh

213the students were given a log on a password at the beginning of the course at the beginning of the fall and so assignments so a access can be gained uh off-site and it's up to the individual instructor to align the questions is this like the kids a through z is that like the same is that is that one of them that is that is one of them and so some of these databases are those that are accessed from the students in school and at home and then some of these databases are specific for teachers for instructional purposes perfect okay that's what i thought i just wanted to double check and then materials for instruction gosh let me see i don't know which one is this yeah language arts books oh three sorry all right thanks

214um um again a constituent wrote me asked um asked about this and the cost of it and said that the very nice book with a cd came home at the end of the year that didn't look like it had been utilized so i'm just wondering um these this three million dollar contract i i imagine um that if something came home at the end of the year was it a previous version of i don't i don't know what but are we fully utilizing this both in the school and at home yes absolutely absolutely with not without knowing specific details what i believe is being referenced as a consumable and certainly teachers have an option of how they would like to use that consumer within their structure there this was under a 10-year contract so that may

215have been a consumable that was from a previous edition that the teacher happened to have left over and was sending home for for the summer um so that's a strong possibility the other issue is you well know and if you go visit best buy or almost any place nowadays you're hard pressed to find a computer that has an actual platter to put in a dvd or a cd or whatever yeah we don't have one at my house yeah so increasingly increasingly the market is moving towards online but again some of the companies knowing that there's we're still that bridging phase or producing a cd that they have sort of shrink wrapped sort of in the inside jacket but there is an online compliment too so a youngster can either we or a youngster can can

216have access to both clearly cds that's that's gone there's almost hardly any machines that you can newly acquire but there's a lot of legacy machines out there so i think over time you're just we're just completely not going to see that technology out there so as far as you're aware things are being utilized that that book with the cd might also have an online version that was utilized all year potentially correct okay got it all right thank you so much sorry guys i always have a lot of questions um when if i can piggyback on uh questions mr shah i'm asked um cds aside but um cd roms or dvd roms whatever when we have access codes you know for instance think of pearson and the the labs my econ lab my accounting lab whatever

217um usually that's a single use so when you know you you rip open that packet there's a 16 digit alpha numeric code that's entered in that gets you access to the my lab pearson product um does the school system have an arrangement where those codes can be used until uh so that it's not just one student and then it's used that it's more of a blanket consumable so that we're not paying the per use fee so the answer to that is yes in general it really depends on the structure of the contract but those codes do typically expire at the end of an academic year and a new new series of codes because they don't want a youngster to continue to maybe go off to college and keep using that that product so so we've

218got different kind of arrangements but typically where you have a user key to unlock it that does expire and a new key is issued to the next ninth grade class or called straight line okay and i just ask because in in the higher ed world certainly that that stays with that student and it for that particular semester or or if it's a macro economics class and then a micro economics class they can use it for both but then it ends uh on a hard stop date and i didn't know because of the volume uh if k through 12 school systems had a little bit of a different dispensation if you will uh to extend that yeah i think the market mr gillan as i said i mean the the market in instructional technology and instructional

219content is evolving and you know you're alluding to you know you don't go to the bookstore and buy textbooks and my daughters are renting a textbook but they're only renting it for four and a half months and at the fifth month it turns off and they can't find that textbook again so that that is a new another trend but that's not really a trend in the k-12 arena although higher ed is moving that direction in the k-12 arena we're not we're not there and we don't really see that that's a good fit for us at least in the near term who knows where we're gonna be five or ten years and and behind the scenes through our technology office in our curriculum office we have the single sign-on for our students so once we have

220those access codes then students are able to log log in at any time during that year that we have that license i see no other board questions or comments at this point and we'll turn to public comment we have one card for 5.03 and 5.04 victoria hello again i'm i'm vicki calhoun what i would like to tell you is we are talking about policy ih and policy i h-r-a of which is not being complied with that document was revised in 2017 and not to say it leaks like a sieve would be an understatement here's the book right here the spine was not broken not one thing is written in it here's the dvd i do have dvd players i can't afford to swap my computer out every year the other thing i'll show you is

221this macbook oh wait a second this is on the list for the single the program that was established that wasn't blessed by this board is called the single textbook adoption program there's no details on the website about it but basically what it is is a bidding process so you guys can wait in on that this book is listed on that list a lot of the books are purchased four or five years after they were released so you're buying old stuff um whatever he was talking about the contracting process this book is on there it is an expendable item because the student is supposed to write in it my student never wrote it but that's not the only one here's the math book it's on there never written then photocopies came home on a regular basis

222not of this book but it's some other book that the teacher decided to use so there's more of your cost in photocopy these two books are not on your list these are the social studies books not this one this is the social studies book that my sister or my daughter was getting carbon copies or xerox copies off of that were brought home for social studies this is not on your list so the teacher was clearly picking materials out of this book and sending them home but i will tell you my special education daughter on amazon they had this book which these two books are supposed to go together this is for differentiated instruction which should have been from my daughter so i was stuck last year trying to call through this thing and get material

223from my own daughter for her to understand the homework not do it understand it actually learn the material it's horrible what is going on in the the classrooms today the teachers are not using the material i recommend that you disapprove this contract oh by the way this contract is probably for the books for this year so you've probably already been shafted because if you disapprove the contract the students probably won't have any any stuff the only other thing i wanted to mention is that there is a review process for the books that has not been approved by the board it is edu report edu reports which there is research showing that that organization is biased and that is producing um correct books approving books that are not really the best of the best that there's

224bias especially in the math curriculum not biased um not meeting the standards so i would suggest to you that you need to look at your policy it's terrible and they're not using the books so don't buy them okay um any further public comment on any of the consent items and further comments from the board seeing none this is now a vote on items 5.01 through 5.08 this is how would you please call the roll miss ellis hi miss antwine aye mr lyde miss hummer hi miss alvey hi miss corcodell mr grannon all right miss shawheim and mr gilliland motion passes 9-0 thank you we'll now move to our action items uh beginning with 6.01 administrative personnel appointments this is an action item dr alato can we have your recommendation please yes sir i recommend board

225approval of the personnel listed on the attach sheet be promoted and or appointed there's a motion and a second any discussion see none this is an action item this is how would you please call the roll miss ellis aye ms antoine aye mr lyde miss hummer uh miss alvey aye ms corcodell aye mr granin all right miss shawhan aye mr gilliland aye motion passes 9-0 thank you we'll now move to item 6.02 which is personnel this is an action item dr elato can we have your recommendation please yes sir i recommend that the board approve the actions as stipulated on the attached sheets second some motion and a second any discussion personnel seeing none this is how would you please call it all miss ellis aye ms antwine aye mr lein aye ms hummer aye

226ms alvey aye ms corcodell aye mr granin all right miss schallheim right mr gilliland motion passes 9-0 thank you now move to our third reading policy revision calendar item 6.03 confidential communication reporting of at-risk student behaviors policy code gad this is on third reading for final approval dr elato can we have your recommendation please yes sorry i recommend approval policy g a d subject to final correction for style and format it's our motion got a motion and a second any board questions or comments at this point seeing none any public comment seeing none item 6.03 policy code gad is on third reading for final approval mrs howell would you please call the world miss ellis aye ms antoine aye mr lein miss hummer aye ms alvey aye ms corcodell aye mr granon all right miss

227schallheim aye mr gilliland aye motion passes 9-0 thank you item 6.04 student behavior threat assessment policy code jn this is on third reading for final approval dr alato can we have your recommendation please yes sir i recommend that the board approve policy j n subject to final correction for style and so emotion some motion and second any board comments or discussion or questions or comments seen on any public comment seeing none item 6.04 policy code jn is on third waiting for final approval mrs how would you please call the world miss ellis aye ms antoine aye mr leib aye ms hummer aye thank you we'll now move to our second reading calendar 6.05 bullying cyber bullying harassment and intimidation hazing and bias behavior policy code jcca miss ortiz all right good afternoon for the record

228jeanette ortiz legislative and policy council i will also ask my colleagues to introduce themselves everyone sister alice with director safe military schools today asha smith senior manager eeo compliance brian vogel and director of student services miesha gillan's executive director for equity and accelerated student achievement all right so we have house c j c c a bullying cyber bullying harassment intimidation hazing and biased behavior and second reading we did not receive public comments during the public comment period i do have some follow-up based on questions or suggestions from board members from the first reading so there was a question i believe from miss antwine on the regulation on page one in the definitions for bullying cyber bullying harassment intimidation about having the pattern of behavior language in there and so in going back and looking at

229the law because that definition is from the law that was a great catch it belongs under the bullying but not in that broader definition so we removed the pattern of behavior language there but it is on the second page with just the bullying so sometimes we miss those things um and then on page seven um miss ellis asked us to look at language um regarding how principals are communicating with parents uh regarding potential consequences for bullying behavior and so in speaking with my colleagues and also with dr lucarelli and office of school performance we agreed to go ahead and add some additional language that is already being communicated to principals so we thought that was a great idea to go ahead and just put that in there in the regulation so that it's clear um

230and the concern was that principals would tell the parents of a victim that you know they can't discuss anything because of confidentiality concerns and i think we all know there are federal laws and regulations on student privacy state laws and regulations um however a principal can communicate to the parents that you know we are proceeding in accordance with the um student handbook code of conduct and that these are the potential consequences that someone could face without getting into details right because we cannot discuss any disciplinary actions that may or may not occur and so we did add language there on page seven uh d and it says while the principal or the principal's designee is limited in sharing other student information with the parents guardians of the alleged victim the principal or the principal's designee

231shall inform the parents guardians of the alleged victim of the potential consequences as well as the potential interventions and supports available in accordance with this regulation and the aacps student handbook so hopefully that addresses that concern okay great thank you uh miss ortiz and to the entire team we've we've got a couple of board questions uh miss antoine so first of all thank you for doing the research and updating that um my question was how does the the modern problem of bullying based on citizenship come into play into this policy can you elaborate a little bit more on your question so there are concerns of intimidation based on legal status for example and the is coming to me there are problems for some of the students to include the fact that their parents don't necessarily

232advocate for them when when these kinds of things are happening to them in terms of being intimidated because of their legal status so i wanted to understand how a student who may not have the the the i would say traditional resources how does this policy can we update this policy to verbatim say that this bullying will include bullying intimidation or otherwise of those based on legal status so the bullying policy and regulation apply to all of our students um regardless of legal status nationality etc i mean we can go to anybody everybody in our schools right nobody um should be bullied everybody has the right to be protected from bullying cyber bullying harassment intimidation and so it applies to everyone and so you know completely understanding you might have parents that may not be here

233um may not be documented or you may have bilingual parents or students in other situations where their parents may not be able or do not feel comfortable advocating for them but this applies to everyone the schools inform parents and students and it's in the regulation at least a couple of times a year the counselors the guidance counselors is discussed the information is shared with you know with students several times a year and also with teachers as well to keep an eye out and you'll see in the regulation the student can also can fill out a bullying form it could be a student a parent a close relative in accordance with the law or a school staff and also i forgot to mention i did include language based on a question that i received on page

234four of the regulation that made it crystal clear that school staff shall report incidents of bullying um i thought we could make that clearer so school staff also would be is required to do i mean they are required but i just wanted that to be clear so those are the various resources that whether it's students that you know have parents with um documentation concerns or other students you know they they all have the same available resources so all of that to say is you know i guess i would be concerned in just pointing out students regardless of their legal status because it applies to all of our students and then of course our bias when we get to the bias policy and regulation we're talking about protected classes so national origin and ethnicity is in

235there um so i don't think that we have to spell out any class of student because it applies to all of us i i i agree with you based on your explanation that is in is in there and then you when you went a step further and emphasized the internal system's responsibility for women as well so that that's excellent thank you thank you thank you miss antoine this is shawn thank you again and um yes i know i you didn't mention some of my suggestions because i know that i sent those to you at the literal 11th hour um but uh but and you're you're gonna it's possible to look into those for the third yes so yes i did receive some suggested revisions and questions that you had regarding primarily the regulation um and

236so i haven't had a chance to discuss with my colleagues and with dr olado but certainly before the next meeting um i will have follow-up all right perfect thank you so much yeah you're welcome thank you um so i know i sent you some questions regarding this but the language for um the principles designee which you read out can we have some sort of language regarding if a student is to report um something happening to another student can we say something that whoever that they they go to the counselor or the principal must state to that student that certain procedures or regulations are being followed so that reporting student is not stressed or concerned with the results of the situation because they don't know due to confidentiality reasons yep so i did receive your questions

237again i haven't had a chance to chat with my colleagues and dr lago but definitely that's on my list to discuss and we'll get back to you before the next meeting okay but thank you thank you looks like we do not have any more board questions or comments at this point um we'll turn to public comment and i know there was one card from uh jacques dornell jones but i know he has left already um is there any further public comment that's dr danone if you like oh there's no mike um um dr mary to donate thank you members of the board dr arlato thank you members of the administration um for these and i'm going to attempt to speak to both but i'm going to run out of time i'll be back to talk

238to the next one um i see here a tremendous amount of effort inside professionalism awareness of the breadth of the problem the depth of the problem a professional rigor that brings me to tears genuinely i want to particularly call out the effort that has been put into the analysis of prevention and intervention and supports with respect to the purpose statements i acknowledge that our first reading what's most obvious is that these are addressed to student to student bullying if i look into the investigations in both bills and in this one particularly in clause 2b there is wording that addresses employees and students but it does not address contractors or volunteers we have evidence very public evidence of bullying from contractors racial bias that i believe it would do the board well to consider adding i

239do know the public would be looking for a mechanism there under definitions uh my narrow reading i want to call out two things first i understand the insignificance of intention versus impact i sat through both of the circuit court trials for the young men who hung a noose at crofton middle school i was a court appointed supervisor for one of those two young men i have deep sensitivity for the distinction between intention and impact both legally speaking but also in terms to what happens to the community you are i believe correctly and focused on intention that leaves the school system having to deal with public impact i know there are programs to do that i've spoken to you before in support of the global community citizenship course it's a mechanism i request that you consider

240carefully how you deal with the impact side of it regardless of the intentions and that it's done in a compassionate manner which is going to lead me down to jump ahead to the interventions and supports i certainly appreciate all of those that were listed they were remarkable i would ask yet you consider adding restorative justice as a separate item from conflict resolution the distinction being that restorative justice focuses on harm and healing and i know there are restorative justice practices in the school system the public scuttlebutt is that its enforcement is at the discretion of principles and not all principles are equally on board with it and i'll look forward to saying more when we come to the next bill the next policy before you leave i'm sorry just between flipping pages your first comment

241about third parties contractors where were you referencing that a school bus contractor presumably owner who um referred to a young child uh using the n-word i didn't mean that i meant in here you were referencing it oh um yes uh in the bullying cyber bullying etc policy um clause to be under investigations adds um interactions between employees and students and i believe those would go both ways but it does not address contractors or volunteers so if i can address that if you turn to page 8 f we added language that says complaints alleging bullying cyber bullying harassment or intimidation by an aacps employee volunteer or third party shall be reported to the office of investigations for appropriate action we also have a separate personnel policies and regulations that specifically address discrimination harassment and all of

242that that apply to our employees volunteers third parties so i i think we're covered all right i just want to make sure we've got a couple of likes um this is sean i'd like your idea think first thank you for your testimony i like your idea about adding restorative justice and can you add that to my list of suggestions to chat i wrote it down thank you so much that's it thank you i had i had a question about um the restorative justice versus conflict resolution uh dr dadona your recommendation is that we identify both of them in here and not one as the umbrella feature of the other that is correct and then i had a question um in terms of our contracts in terms of our contracts do we have clauses in there

243when um incidents like these occur those that because the contractor is of course obligated only to the contract um do we have clauses in there to reinforce what our policies are chief operating officer we we do uh general language it talks about compliance with the you know with applicable uh state laws local laws things like that now whether it gets down to that degree of granularity i'd have to go and check specifically oh no worries i just wanted to make sure that even though we do it in the policy the obligation for the contractor is back to the conference i understand so if um if we can get an answer on that that will be you know of course whenever you can sure and then the other thing i will say though in our contracts

244is we do have a lot of control in there so when an allegation is levied for example a student against the driver we can investigate that we can have that driver removed bar them from being utilized as a driver for an anne arundel county public school route etc so we do have a lot of contractual administrative strengths that we have in our portfolio when we encounter such an issue similarly anybody that works on any of our school grounds for example has to you know pass the correct background checks and all that clearly anybody that can't just bar they're not allowed either on a bus or on a score on a roof or anywhere like that so you know there are a lot of those elements already built into it but again i'll have to go

245back and specifically check the language to see how all-encompassing it is thank you okay thank you any further public comment any further board comment so this will be back on third reading on during our next meeting excellent thank you so much i will now move to item 6.06 bias behavior and language policy code j.o again on second reading so i have some follow-up for policy j.o bias behavior and language based on some requests and suggestions from the board at the last meeting first on page two it was requested by ms schoenheim to add ethnicity to national origin i'm sorry page two of the regulation um and so and just looking back you know we thought that would be appropriate even though ethnicity is included in the definition of national origin that we understand that a

246lot of folks are maybe used to that word as opposed to national origin so we went ahead and added that to the definitions i know there have been lots of questions about expanding the groups of people that are covered and so um conversing with colleagues and uh my eeo expert here um so the we all agree that we do not feel comfortable um nor that we have the ability or authority frankly under the law to expand upon protected classes um that's a legal term of art and so the law clearly defines protected classes and so those are the groups that we added to the policy and regulation and so just legally we don't have the ability authority to do that um and also we understand the concern um i think there's a concern that nothing

247you know will happen there will be no consequences but i think that's where bullying cyber bullying harassment and intimidation policy and regulation come in because you'll know that is a little broader right it talks about other groups of people that are not protected classes in accordance with state law or federal law and so they're covered and we have a student code of conduct if the student is misbehaving you know there will be consequences there's an expectation of behavior and conduct by our students and quite frankly are employees volunteers in third parties and so even though it may not be covered under the bias policy um and regulation it is covered under you know this the bullying and just the general student conduct policy and regulation so we feel that we're very covered um and then

248there were some questions about the definition of disability in adding emotional i think it was emotional and social well-being so again here the law is very clear in defining disability as mental as in statute mental or physical however in the bullying uh cyberbullying harassment and intimidation regulation it's broader right it talks about disability or ability you know and so that's a little bit broader um but again we just would not feel comfortable changing our definition just you know in accordance with um with how the law defines maryland law defines disability and so here again i know miss shawheim and um miss alvey had some other questions and those are all on my to-do list to get back to you before the next meeting i was able to answer some of your questions but not all

249of them thank you miss ortiz uh we've got a few board questions and comments ms alvey um so i had a question about um reporting so it states on page three under reporting section b that a student may complete and submit a bullying harassment or intimidation reporting form in accordance with the policy although this is the bias behavior and language policy so just to address in the eyes of the students that we treat bias behavior and language differently than other forms of bullying or harassment although i understand the reporting form will look the same most likely or in this case it is the same is there a way to have two separate um forms that have the same format so let's say like we'll have a bias behavior in language reporting form that looks exactly

250like the bullying harassment or intimidation reporting form and it just clarifies to the students that they're being treated differently in my opinion like is there a way to do that so maybe we just need to re-write the language or the order of this so we we have a bias form that employs staff are to fill out it's a little bit different in that the bias formed the students would fill that out and so we know there are instances in which bias behavior and language can also be bullying and vice versa and so but that's not always the case and so we just wanted to add language in this regulation noting that it may be biased and it may also be bullying and then we are required to report that to the state of maryland um

251and so so we do have two different forms it's just the bias form and it is um it's a little bit different um it's asking for different information but that's done by the staff and so we'll look at maybe reordering you know b and c and then also just maybe providing more clarifying language acknowledging that there may be instances and i thought i put something in there but we can look at that okay and the only reason being that um if i am to go to my counselor or principal and i want to report something that is related to bias behavior i'm going to approach it much much differently than bullying on any other basis and that's why obviously looking at it from a very like classroom perspective and at the school level um it's

252kind of like what form are you handed when you walk into your counselor or principal's office so that was just my concern regarding that good observation thank you thank you mr shawhain again thank you for your work on this thank you for taking my um additional uh suggestions just piggybacking on what salvi was just stating is there can they be the exact same form but with a different with a different title so no because the state requires different information so our bias form is from the state of maryland and that's what we're required okay got it sorry if i missed that point i also i i do have a really tiny change on the policy side i think that's something maybe we can address via a motion so if we look on page one of

253one of the policy position c position number four it currently raises a violation of this policy for an aacps student to engage in bias behavior or language on aacps property on a school bus or at school-based activities i think that this stuff also goes on online i think we've had proof of that with some incidents last school year and so i wondered if it would be possible to add in that list of items or on on on social media you know we had pictures of unsavory things last year come across i don't remember what school it was next i'm not entirely sure and you know people people can say buy things towards another student online i don't want i just don't want them to slip through the cracks where we would where we would otherwise

254say oh no you don't you're like oh gosh it's not in the policy because it's not explicitly written so i do want to add what would you what would you write that would it just say or online or or via electronics if i mean what what is the standard so if you are agreeable to let me go back and look at language i don't disagree that online however the caveat is that school systems don't have you know blanket jurisdiction on students online behavior there has to be a nexus to the school in the school system and cause of disruption and so my concern is the online is kind of broad so if you would allow me to go back and just find some language because we do have the social media policy and regulations for

255students and for staff and we have electronic use use of electronics also policy and regulation so i just want to be able to go back and look at those to see like how we word it for a consistency and for accuracy but i don't i mean the intention is right the online uh behavior even with the bullying is covered it's just wording it that would be that would be great um and i appreciate that i don't want to i don't want to miss this word it move and then go through all that if it's not um it doesn't encompass what it should so and it might just be i'm sorry so the bullying regulation has also referenced electronic communication so we might just pull in that language because that was added in state law a

256couple of years ago which is one of the things that we added into our regulation so we might be able to pull language from there that's wonderful because i definitely would argue that when these things occur online it makes a huge educational impact of the school like it it blew up like a bond with that one thing last year i'm sure there were others and so yeah i just want to make sure we're covered and thank you so much and then the rest of it will just i'll just hang out and thank you again for your work thank you uh so much um miss antoine thank you on uh page five of seven under section four under the consequences the first offense is the the student takes the course with his or her parents does

257is that um does suspension come along with that necessarily or does it just mean you take the course so um not necessarily right there are case-by-case situations each incident would be to have different degrees and so that's why md we do say that their subject um maybe i should say shall also be subject um to the appropriate disciplinary actions in the aacps code of student conduct so they're both being looked at so perhaps just adding also right because um i made the poor assumption at first that okay the student has been suspended and this is something as a as part of the consequence the resolution was the class so um that was that was good the other part of that is the uh the pain the feedback i got was that the parents didn't want

258to go um and i i can tell you there were some times that mr antoine ran his mouth and not like this thank the lord but he got in trouble right i would not want to have had to take off a work or whatever the case may be to attend that class on his first offense because he does need the correction but i don't necessarily feel like i would have needed to be there so could we hear it or something as a solution what is the purpose of having the parents there as well well our parents uh and guardians are our first teachers and so the goal in having them there is the direct impact of how their child needs to begin to develop and change their behavior we walk them through the series of

259classes because we do monday wednesday tuesday thursday at marley or phoenix so that there's full transparency about the curriculum and what is taught and of course they share their stories and then they learn from that and grow from it but the parent should be there in supervision so it doesn't happen again they don't have to come to all of them but we want to walk them through what the expectations are for the student as they move through the other six additional classes so the say the first class is an introductory kind of situation where the parents understand this is this is this is what will be happening so in the case of the parent not showing up there are cases where parents can't show up because other siblings and jobs impact so what i try

260to do to mitigate that is to see if there's outside therapy counseling mentorship clergy member or anyone to offset some of that conversation so that their student will still be accommodated yes but it's a case-by-case basis very rarely does it happen and parents do attend and and would would be able to update the regulations that kind of indicate that how would that work if i could interject that if you do that that might be the outfit a lot of people take and i don't want to do we deal with those families on case-by-case basis yes ma'am understood in that case how however it their appearance it just cannot be therefore maybe and we will accommodate we do one-on-ones for our younger youth in the elementary schools we go to the schools and work with them

261before school uh ends for the day so could we as you just share with me and introduce languages says we we can modify this consequence on the case-by-case basis or something to that to excellent no i would i i don't want to do that okay i want to i want this to um be impactful and i want the parents to be involved and and as i said we will um we've had parents that have refused in the past or could not and we work it out i trust that uh ms swift will work it out on a case-by-case basis but i do not want to write in language that we are going to negotiate these consequences not necessarily negotiate but if i'm the student my parent cannot be there did i not meet i didn't

262meet the consequence what what what goes on there there are circumstances way beyond apparently not the difference in a circumstance than a refusal so with the refer to the refusal will work out um but if it's something else then we do the accommodation okay okay if of that just just for clarification if a parent cannot be there does the child fail to meet the requirement of the consequence no they don't and but if they can't be there we will work out maybe another date and time another location can we come to the school what's the impasse and if there's something else there can offer for us to offset their role but the goal is as dr alato stated is the impact there's a difference between refusing an accommodation because of other children in a job

263or something else that may you know prevent them from coming but there's some folks that believe that they uh weren't biased for the act yeah and that's a little different yeah i just had a question um when michelle hammond brought up about the online i kind of i was wondering when since we're in rome on that if i i remember i recall a couple cases where i sort of liaisoned from the county side over with the schools and in a couple of the cases as it dealt with online because sometimes they don't contact the school at first they look at it as a social media issue not a school issue even though it is we worked very closely with the state's attorney's office i i would like to see maybe some feedback from them before

264we finalize if we're dealing with online because aren't they that first person who's going to do the criminal charge if it's involving it because of online or is that do we collaborate could is there a collaborative effort i i just would hate to write a policy and were inadvertently strapping our people who would be that next level that's happening in addition to the school or is there no concern of that so it depends not all bias behavior rises to level of criminal activity or a hate crime and so in those instances we would be the ones contacted by the state's attorneys let me rephrase it i would just i just want to make sure our language doesn't get in their way sometimes oh no yeah definitely i think we're doing that because they they're pretty

265heavily involved in that so yeah we wouldn't do anything to interfere but oh no i know that i just because you're kind of wondering since it was we're in second reading and it just sort of came up it just occurred to me that that would be valuable and absolutely with it to make sure we're right in sync with our fellow teammates absolutely thank you thank you mr um so not to steal possibly dr dedonis thunder but on page six under interventions and supports can we add restorative justice i apologize thank you okay i've got no further questions or comments at this time we'll move to public comment dr dadoni thank you again dr alato members of the board and everyone in aacps has given your heart and your professionalism to this i can't thank you

266enough extend the comments from my previous time at the podium to this and i would like to call out a couple of things i didn't reach before i'm going to assume that in addition to the notation in um under investigations 2g there is additional language that will extend to contractors under element 2 h and i believe this is under investigations i having sat through both of the circuit court trials around whether or not hate crime charge could be brought around the hanging of the news at crofton i experienced a disagreement among professionals including a former and now current state's attorney over interpretation of what constitutes a hate crime therefore it strikes me as something that cannot be taken as a solid definition especially if we're having a requirement to report to enforcement authorities hate crimes

267would it be appropriate to consider language language such as acts that may meet the criteria of hate crime or are suspected to meet the criteria of a hate crime under uh definition something i didn't mention before that which applies to both of um the proposed uh regulations there is um reference to definitions that apply to students and there is an implication that it may apply to persons including their parents so i have a very specific example that is made public through work done um in the severna park area and this is a case of a child of two lesbian mothers being ridiculed because of her parents marital status so if it's possible to extend the definitions or appropriate to extend the definitions especially as we don't expect too many of our children to be married

268finally again with respect to both of the regulations were as far as i could tell on my reading silent on appeal or escalation processes and i would expect these would be exercised on both sides students and parents who felt that their complaints were not adequately addressed and aacps personnel who felt that there they were treated inappropriately in the case so i would ask for consideration of appeal and escalation processes and i apologize if i missed it thank you thank you thank you is there any further public comment i've seen none um a couple more board questions and comments just a shot i'm sure you wrote notes um ortiz but just in case are you capturing all of what she just all of the lovely suggestions and i always go back and look at the video

269too awesome all right cool i just wanted to make sure the eyes are started thank you i just have one thing looking right at the end on page seven of seven number seven um it says there are instances where biased behavior and language constitute bullying cyber bullying harassment or entertain intimidation such incidents shall be addressed in accordance um could we add in such incidents shall also be addressed just to make sure that both in those cases both policies yeah and we'll look at the language that i think i have fairly very similar language in the um bullying policy in regulation too okay thank you okay uh that looks like uh it for the second reading on this item so we'll be back with third reading on this again uh in september as as we would

270with 0.05 september 11. and i will follow up with the board before the meeting so that you have answers and think about that thank you so much for that again thank you everyone for for being here today we'll now move to the other action items item 6.07 sunset elementary school kindergarten edition schematic design this is an action item dr arlatta can we have your recommendation yes sir recommend board approval of the sunset elementary school kindergarten edition schematic design so motion slow move got a motion and a second and um there's no formal presentation on this but certainly um questions any board questions or comments any public comment seeing none uh this is an action oh i'm sorry miss alvid all right it's comparing this elementary school addition to the other one that was presented um

271i noticed that there were individual i take that back i figured it out okay um seeing no further board questions comments saying no public comment we'll now take the vote this is how would you please call the role in item 6.07 miss ellis hi miss antoine aye mr leib aye ms hummer aye ms alvey aye ms corcodell aye mr granden all right miss schallheim aye mr gillen aye motion passes 9-0 thank you we are moved to item 6.08 van bachmann elementary school kindergarten edition schematic design this is an action item dr erlatto can we have your recommendation please my apologies um i recommend board approval of the van bakken elementary school kindergarten edition schematic design again no formal presentation but we'll move to board questions and comments miss antoine thank you president um i wanted

272to understand on the on section on the first page it shared the state uh capacity number as as well as another number uh in terms of for the proposed edition but what is the current actual number of stu kindergarten students projected for this edition are you asking what the current state capacity is yes the the enrollment basically the full-time enrollment for ftes is 4.94 and that was calculated of september okay and then if we look at um this would be the well all of its section four but under if if we turn about to the middle of the page what talks about the existing site plan in the proposed site plan i noticed that there were it didn't indicate that there were exits on the back of the school it so is the design is

273the intention of design not to have any exit outside of that one at the bus loop if for safety reasons out of that corridor that we will be adding in okay um i guess what i'm getting at if you if if we can go back to sunset just a second on the it looks like on the back of that particular one there is a means for exit if if i'm into under the site plan on page five it looks like that's a sidewalk or something where the there will be a means of egress in that case but on this one it looks like they would have to go in if something you know worst case they needed to egress they would have to go back within the school and then come back out there it

274doesn't look like there's anything on the addition in terms of egress they would in both instances so the new building the new four classroom addition is attached to the current building and there is a new hallway that will separate the two okay the students would walk out of uh and could turn right or left and they will be exited either end of that new hallway does that make sense yeah so this is always between the new and the old thank you mr sean hi i just have one question on page six where there's the little dotted line and it says potential future classroom edition i'm i'm kind of of the mind do it once do it right under what set of circumstances would that propose future classroom edition become an actual schematic design in front

275of us or be put in that pipeline to become that and if that's nearer on the horizon is there economies of scale of just doing it all now so we would only add that if there was a need for it right now we always look at future expansion at all of our schools whether it be where the corridors are placed and you don't project a need in the in on the horizon as as of yet because the reason why i ask is i just i didn't see the same sort of dotted line on the other and so it all depends on site how how the site lays out where they could actually put that we specifically asked this this architect to look at that for future use with the current injections we don't show up

276and the current projections go out a decade ish yeah okay all right great thank you okay i see no further board questions or comments is there any public comment see none this is an action item and vote on item 6.08 this is how would you please call the roll mrs ellis aye mrs antoine aye mr lyde aye ms hummer aye ms alvey aye ms corcodale aye aye mr granin aye ms shawheim aye mr gillin aye motion passes 9-0 thank you we'll now move to item 6.09 fort smallwood elementary school data public utility easement this is an action item dr arlatto can we have your recommendation sir i recommend board approval of the fort smallwood elementary school deed of public utility easement motion get a motion and a second thank you um there is no formal

277presentation are there any board questions or comments any public comment okay this is a vote on item 6.09 this is how would you please call miss ellis aye ms antoine aye mr lyde aye ms hummer aye ms alvey hi miss corcodell mr granin miss scholheim mr gilland motion passes 9-0 thank you um next we'll move to our review items uh item 7.01 is a word of contracts um no formal presentation but are there any board questions mrs xiaohang thank you i i asked this question previous to the meeting but just for the purposes of um in case anyone else and the public reads this like we do for item award number it's really award number um oh yes 12. modification installation and reconstruction signals and lighting when i when i read this i was like

278oh that's that's interesting why is that under why isn't that county and so um if dr lotto wouldn't mind giving just anyone who would um happen to be watching this the the very very brief um uh reasoning why that is under our purview not the county i would be grateful yes so i sat down with mr scheck now which after you and i talked so that i could make sure that i clearly understood you are right typically signals will come under the state highway or local um jurisdiction unless we are unless based on construction say for example we need an intersection move so if we built a building and the entrance was in one place and now the entrance is in another place and we need that signal move to meet the need of that

279new entrance of that new school or reconstruction certainly the county's not going to take on that because it was ours we would have to take that on is that right yes so if it's i think we're going through that now at jessup elementary school is an example where the entrance to the school is changing and so we are now going to sort of be responsible for i guess is the best way to put it moving the signal perfect now in terms of lighting can i not specific to this well i guess it would fall under this say say we we desperately need a bus stop to stay where it is for a variety of reasons um but a lighting lighting could could improve that making it more safe there isn't another option or whatever is

280it is that something that we would put in to um to make a bus safe a bus stop safer because the county oh do we ask the county hey you know we have this bus stop can you put in a light do we does that ever happen and would that fall under something that we would show up money for i've not experienced that in three decades um i got one for you we do uh but i mean we do routinely and communicate with the county pretty collaboratively so if it's a state road or a county road we can certainly make a request of them just like we do for traffic engineering studies traffic calming studies etc so if there's a unique circumstance we would uh put that request into to either the state or the

281county and ask their indulgence do they do they often comply with those requests or again i've never asked for one in three decades to put a traffic put a street light in this specific spot that's well removed from one of my schools um i'm not so i don't know what the answer is i'll email you um thank you for that explanation do you have any page 31 has to do with um playground outdoor fitness equipment site accessories etc resurfacing do we have any specific schools in mind or is this one of those contracts where we we we want to keep a reserve an event that we needed or is this to fulfill some specific school projects that we're doing at the moment so there's two different avenues for where this typically would be access one

282would be in terms of the the reconstruction replacement of a school so jessup arnold manor view high point new schools could do playground equipment that would come off this contract we also ask for a line item funding in our capital budget specific to the replacement of pre-existing playgrounds should that be funded then this contract would be a vehicle in which those newly appropriated county cip dollars could be dispensed wonderful and last question sorry guys you know i always have a lot has to do with the usda processing commodities um i cringe only because i'm a recovering vegetarian but um the it my reading of this is that there's a there's a list of approved and we've selected a couple from that list only farms and tyson foods did we select is it a menu do

283we select those two because we happen to like them or was there another rationale and is there a longer list of just those two there is a longer list we are adding these two so the the federal government approves the vendors they go through an evaluation process they approve the commodity processors and as they post a new list we synchronize our list with theirs so we're adding this the purpose of this is adding these two additional commodity processors to the list that we can procure from because they've been added to the usda list and do we have preference of of who we ultimately choose in the end i know we we add we're adding them to a list of options but do we have do we prefer one over another and do we take into

284account any sort of farming sustainability or lack of hormones and raising of animals or any of those sorts of issues price goal price price so the federal government runs this entire operation our choice is we either participate or we forego the federal funding so the usda supports farmers through a price stabilization mechanism where they go out and buy commodities from farmers they then send the commodity to a usda approved processor and then we have the option of either receiving the products from them or we can turn them down and either not use cheese at all or have to go and pay for cheese on the open market instead of getting it from the federal government greatly reduced rate does does the federal government put any guidance since it is used for schools do they have

285any guidelines about use of hormones or conventional versus sustainable which is organic of any sort or is it straight conventional the whole way through i just want to know if there's specific rules that they have to follow with regards sure there's absolutely there's federal nutritional and food safety rules that they have to follow specific to what hormone is on an approved list and what is not that's a long it's almost like a medicine shopping list it's a long list so the the products have to comply with federal government requirements on both the production side and the nutritional value side okay thank you i really appreciate your time okay i see no further board questions or comments uh on um contract items any public comment seeing none that concludes today's official business uh the next general

286board meeting will be on wednesday september 11th at 10 a.m there will be a board workshop on the superintendent's proposed capital investment program on thursday september 12th 2019 at 6 p.m in this room um and then again that's the fy21 cip and capital budget and then the next budget committee meeting actually that's on the agenda for today has been cancelled at this time we'll have a motion to close for a close session uh mrs quirkedale mr president i move that the board go into closed session to consult with council to obtain legal advice on a legal matter motion second on thursday i post no we stand to journey thank you so oh labor day weekend oh