001[Music] do [Music] good evening and welcome to the december 19th meeting of the anne arundel county board of education please rise for the invocation oh god we pray to administer that which is just in all educational policies being ever mindful of your guidance stir us to action with love wisdom and understanding the pledges [Applause] welcome to this meeting of the board of education this meeting is being televised live on aacps tv and live streamed on the internet general information and protocols for the meeting are posted on the sign by the doorway as you enter the room so please make sure you read those if you have not already item 2.03 is approval of the minutes and if there's no corrections we will have those stand as written item 2.04 is established agenda order and item
002the agenda stands as written item 2.05 is recognitions and we have no board recognitions tonight item 2.06 is school and community highlights michelle um well as always i've been volunteering a lot and my daughter's school and i accompanied the second grade class of folger mckenzie to the national aquarium which was lovely um i love that place and the kids had a wonderful time and i attended the inaugural um concert of the asa i don't want to get it wrong but it's a it's a youth symphony that has been started um the the concert was beautiful it was at temple best shalom where they incidentally also used as a practice space and some very very talented young musicians out there it was incredible miss antoine good evening i would like to have my very first highlight
003go of course to meade high school last week and the following weeks there have been winter concerts across the county but this one was totally moving the the dance company of mead high they did an incredible job a lot of colors and array and in the the techniques that were utilized a person with no experience in the arts like me enjoyed it thoroughly so i thank you guys for that i want to give a highlight to chesapeake science point as well check them out they are setting the bar and the gauntlet is thrown for academic achievement so there you go chesapeake science point finally safety and security is is our number one issue and without it we don't learn effectively just jessup elementary i think last week or so experienced a total lockdown at their
004school and i would like to commend miss anita dempsey and the entire jessup elementary on how they handled their lockdown great job that's it for me thank you thank you miss antoine miss urea so last friday i actually had my first student member for the board advisory council um so i talked to students from across the county representatives about how to continue building positive community relationships and it was amazing the ideas that they bounced across just seeing the brilliance in students across the county was amazing honestly and then as crash representatives will talk about tonight we had our first mental health assembly and it was different from our usual ones but attending it was amazing and then it was at ronald high school so i also got to see the community citizenship class again with
005ms davenport and become an honorary um rental student so it was pretty great yeah thank you ms corkadel so last thursday i had an opportunity to visit south river high school and attend their winter concert and i just want to give a nice shout out to um their music teacher mr jerry cavanaugh for a spectacular evening and i've had the pleasure of hearing a couple of winter concerts as well i went to monarch global's band and um concert last week and then yesterday here at the board i happened to look out and catch the linthicum chorus as they performed their winter things in the cafeteria for all the staff so that was great to see and last week as well i attended the special education citizens advisory group it's always great to hear from our
006our advocates and hear about the issues that are that are facing the school system and our parents when it comes to special education so i enjoyed being a part of that as well and next week with superintendents update dr arlatta i'm going to save my minutes for uh i'm going to give a little presentation a couple of minutes so i'm going to save my time thank you thank you all right item 2.08 is the crasque report good evening president hummer members of the board and dr erlatto my name is savannah quick i attend northeast high school and i'm secretary of education for craft on december 12th cross hosted a wellness and school safety summit at arundel high school the event was offered to high school students and featured a number of events such as yoga
007and self-affirmations self-care mindfulness positive psychology and stop the bleed training students were able to select sessions based on their interests we would like to thank maureen roy regina mourinho and stephanie hackley from the anne arundel county department of health kristin bowser jennifer sweeney mary kay connerton ryan voglin sherry billheimer susan stawas and our student leaders for their passion for student wellness and school safety they were instrumental in helping this event be successful we would also like to thank sherry and larry lykin for sharing their story and helping spread awareness of mental health issues another highlight of the day was a panel discussion about school safety crass would like to thank doyle batten supervisor of school security for anne arundel county public schools bob mosher chief communications officer for anne arundel county public schools senator edward
008riley from maryland district 33 and tim wengert school resource officer at arundel high school for their participation in the discussion attendees developed questions for the panel and the feedback we have received was that it was very informative we are currently preparing for our next ga which will be the next segment of our middle school leadership series it will be held at brooklyn park middle school on january 10th our goal is to develop leadership capacity of our middle school students by working on communication skills conflict resolution organization and much more in addition the revisions to our constitution are almost complete finally we would like to welcome all of the new board members and thank you for representing the 83 608 of us please remember that your choices impact the entire county and not simply one district
009of our county as you make decisions for anne arundel county public schools i hope you keep the interest of all of us in mind thank you thank you so um before we move on to dr arlatto's presentation of the 2020 operating recommended 2020 operating capital budgets i do want to recognize some special guests that we have here tonight to hear his presentation county executive stuart pittman county county council chairman andrew kruski council vice chairman allison pickard councilman nathan volkey councilman amanda fiedler [Applause] councilman lisa rodvian matthew pipkin the legislative aide to councilwoman jessica hare and delegate mike rogers and now dr lotto all right good evening president hummer vice president gilland members of the board county executive pittman members of the county council members of our delegation and residents of anne arundel county thank you
010once again for the opportunity to stand before you and present both the state of our school system and the path that i believe is best for us to follow in the coming year in order to enhance the educational experiences for our eighty three thousand students that we serve in the fifteen thousand permanent part-time and temporary employees that make up our anne arundel county public schools family when i stood before you four years ago and delivered my first budget address as superintendent i spoke of our need to forge pathways of access equity and excellence for all of our students i spoke about the ways in which our students were engaged and challenged and the inquisitiveness we seek to instill in them each day i also spoke about the backbone of that work the incredible people that
011i am privileged to work with and work alongside in our school system as i've said many times before they are truly the heroes of our singular mission to elevate all students and eliminate all gaps they are the heart and soul behind the three simple words that guide our efforts all means all and i continue to be inspired by them every day i stand here tonight extremely proud of the work we've done together we have indeed continued to forge those new pathways of access and equity for all students the enhancing elementary excellence or triple e program we launched in 2014 allows students to explore areas like stem in society arts and humanities global studies and world cultures and language in ways that are designed to spark creativity and excitement triple e is presently in place in
012six of our twelve clusters providing more than 18 000 students in 43 schools with access to these experiences as part of their instructional program in added and often overlooked benefit of this program is that its scheduling continues to afford elementary school teachers with precious additional collaborative planning time that further advances their instructional capabilities we also continue to enhance and implement our new elementary curriculum to infuse more project and problem-based learning and active engagement into instruction the goal is for our students to spend less time in so-called sit and get instruction and more time in hands-on exploration of subject matter the new curriculum has been implemented in pre-kindergarten through fifth grades and we are now augmenting the fourth and fifth grade curriculum to provide even more critical reasoning opportunities student-centered learning choices movement and real-world experiences
013our work together over the last four years has also allowed us to expand the number of elementary schools offering the international baccalaureate primary years program to 13. this program lays the foundation for students who may wish to continue with the ib program in middle and high school even if students do not pursue that path their exposure to the global oriented mindset of ib helps them become more well-rounded and civic-minded citizens we also have completed the rollout of our middle school stem magnet programs now in place at central and lindell middle schools as well as old mill middle school south at the high school level we have fully implemented our performing and visual arts program in annapolis and broadneck high schools in the biomedical and allied health program at glen burnie high school including our two
014highly acclaimed centers of applied technology our school system now has eight differentiated magnet programs in place at 18 schools our avenues of school choice for students and their families are not limited to those however they also now include four charter and contract schools monarch academy campuses in annapolis glen burnie and laurel as well as chesapeake science point in hanover through these avenues and others we have created more opportunities and experiences for students than ever before proof of this can be seen in the first ever student-run business undertaken by our school system the cafe at maryland hall of for the creative arts using a formerly vacant space in the building adjacent to bates middle school students at the center of applied technology south are responsible under the careful supervision of chef pam klink and others for
015everything from food preparation to the business side of the operation the cafe which also features an art gallery performance venue not only provides students with incomparable hands-on experience in all aspects of a commercial operation but it gives maryland hall patrons a place to relax before after or in between classes or performances this is a true community partnership that benefits our school system our students and maryland hall we're incredibly fortunate that our partnerships extend to many businesses and agencies throughout our county who offer internships to our students in the last school year thousands of our high school students were involved in internships that provided invaluable experiences and in many cases have helped launch careers at johns hopkins healthcare for example aacps student interns in everything from community relations and customer service to information systems property management
016program development and finance at the smithsonian environmental research center last year two students worked closely with pepper a social robot the students enhanced their computer programming skills by expanding pepper's motor functions speech recognition and even table functionality to make the robot more interactive and valuable to those who interact with it these internships and hundreds of others like them allow our students to gain experience they may otherwise never get and provide organizations and companies with a chance to shape and mold future employees our partnerships also extend to those who spend time mentoring our students whether one-on-one or in groups take for example dr murray corman a physics professor at the united states naval academy who has designed a one-year mentorship program for high school juniors that provides them with a wide array of experiences from research
017and data collection to graphic design and service learning or take those who are involved in the senior senior corps we established several years ago seizing on the opportunities offered by intergenerational learning this initiative allows senior citizens and high school seniors to mentor elementary school students within the school setting mentors help students in areas such as guided literacy structured play and social navigation as a part of a partnership that helps create a multi-generational community in which everyone benefits those are just two examples of the more than 17 000 volunteers who generously donated more than 450 000 hours to our schools last year that time helps us establish and build upon relationships the cornerstone of our strategic plan approved by the board last february if we are to successfully implement the rigor and achieve the readiness we
018all strive for we must do it first by building relationships the cumulative effect of our curricular work the impact of our incredible employees and the investment in partnerships from local businesses government agencies and community organizations have paid incredible dividends they can be seen in the tangible examples both large and small and in the many laudable projects undertaken because these valuable partnerships have opened doors for our students to make a difference at southern high school members of the football team recently helped in a cleanup project at nearby union united methodist church as pastor randy truesdale told the capital the church was definitely in need of a facelift southern players responded the morning after game in fact asked about the effort one player put it this way we felt more like a team this was more than
019just football this impacted the community miles away at chesapeake high school members of the school's regional championship football team had a chance to directly thank those who impacted them prior to the regional final each player selected an adult in the school building who has had a positive impact on them the day before the big game those adults donned their players jersey and display of pride and partnership at the phoenix academy in annapolis the cause is more personal stirred to action by the shooting death of a classmate the students have formed hood to good a movement designed to give children a more powerful voice proactively engender more adult support and reach out to help build bridges the dividends of our investments can also be seen in the achievements of our students members of the class of
0202018 earned a record 200.7 million dollars in scholarship offers in increase of more than 44 million dollars from the year before 10 high schools top the 10 million dollar mark among them need high school which saw its offers triple from the previous year since 2014 the amount of scholarship offers earned by graduating seniors in our county has risen by 47 percent last year at our centers of applied technology 841 students earned industry certifications everything from certified nursing assistant to cisco certified networking associate those certifications are launching pads to a success to successful careers and give our students a significant leg up when competing with those from other jurisdictions for jobs the payoff of our investments can also be seen in our graduation rate 10 of our high schools have rates above 90 percent for the
021class of 2017 according to latest data released by the state as importantly since 2011 the graduation rate for african-american students has grown by almost 10 percentage points and the gap between african-american students and white students has shrunk from 8.3 percentage points to 3.3 percentage points we continue to address achievement gap challenges every day with the ultimate goal of propelling all of our students to the graduation stage ready to excel in a career college or the armed services our graduation rate data is proof that we are making a significant difference ladies and gentlemen the cultivation of a well-rounded successful students who take pride in their communities and give back as much as they get is something that can't always be measured by a test score and it certainly doesn't happen in a vacuum we need every
022member of our community to play a role especially when it comes to personal interactions that's why our intentional focus at the outset of this school year was to deliberately and purposefully devote time to building relationships between and among students and staff that's why we have intentionally dedicated significant professional development time at schools and offices to implicit bias training that's also why our county-wide participation in the national bullying prevention center's unity day 2018 an initiative in which students and staff for orange to show commitments to fostering acceptance and inclusion and eliminating bullying and hate was critical i am proud that we were joined in that effort by local businesses and governmental agencies and that's why as we announced two weeks ago we are making the global community citizenship course a graduation requirement for high school students
023beginning with next year's freshman class the course developed by arundel high school two years ago requires students to identify and discuss topics events and issues relevant to their local communities and explore the meaning of cultural historical and religious customs and traditions with the goal of fostering values of empathy acceptance and inclusion for all people it is no secret however that our communities including our schools have been the sites of far too many incidents of intolerable hatred and bigotry let me be clear this is not behavior that should or will be accepted in any school any business any agency anywhere period our schools absolutely have a role to play in eradicating hate and bigotry because it preys on our children and precludes them from achieving the potential they all have but let me also be clear
024the duty to eradicate this scourge is not one solely laid at the feet of any single institution including ours we all have roles to play and just as is the case when it comes to the education of our children in this effort all must mean all we will continue to do everything we can as a school system to prevent and address these incidents on our campuses that will include ongoing conversations with county government as well as the many organizations who have made it part of their mission to stop out this blight to every resident of this county however i say these four simple words we need your help when i stood here four years ago i also spoke of another relationship one in which was fractured and in desperate need of repair i urge that
025when it came to our work with the county government we needed to replace discord with dialogue in order to move our school system forward the board and i have worked hard really hard to accomplish that and we are in a far better place today than we were four years ago we've not always agreed on issues or approaches but we have built solid bridges that have allowed us to talk and work reasonably and rationally to advance our cause that can be seen not just in budget numbers but an increased staffing of school resource officers and mobile crisis resources critical security upgrades and advanced land acquisitions to address the need for future school sites our students and our school system are better for those collective and cooperative efforts while we've not been able to do everything we
026have wanted we have been able to provide compensation increases to employees in each of the last four years and we have fixed a potentially disastrous shortfall in our health care fund as i said earlier we've also been able to implement and expand programs that are key to advancing our students and we must not also not overlook the work we've been able to do on the capital side where we have launched 12 school renovation projects begun construction of the new crofton area high school and upgraded facilities across our county to help create better learning environments for our students last month's elections brought new faces and perspectives to the county executive's office the county council our county's delegation to the maryland general assembly and to this board to every single office holder i say this i welcome
027your ideas and i welcome the chance to partner with you in another four years my hope is that it can be said of us that we are champions of collaboration in the best interests of children to be sure we have significant challenges both inside the classroom and outside of it as oprah winfrey once said however challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity don't fight them just find a new way to stand so i ask everyone tonight to stand with us and continue to invest in the future continue to invest in our children the rewards for that investment reach all of us no matter our age race ethnicity occupation or socioeconomic status the 1.26 billion dollar operating budget recommendation for fiscal year twenty twenty that i present to you
028tonight provides sufficient funding for multiple compensation increases for employees additional teachers to address enrollment increase and help incrementally reduce class size and positions to continue to help address the social and emotional needs of our students my recommendation allocates 7.5 million dollars to fund the second half of the mid-year compensation increase provided in the current year it also includes 14 million dollars to fund a step increase for all eligible employees in all bargaining units and an equivalent increase for non-represented employees i've included another 13.6 million dollars as a compensation placeholder for additional increases for employees subject to negotiations with our bargaining units this funding is sufficient to provide an additional step for eligible employees cost of living increases for all employees or some other distribution including back steps that a bargaining unit may desire to negotiate
029i want to be very clear however and correct some of the rhetoric that's been tossed about the board has asked for enough funding for at least one step increase for all eligible employees in every budget request made to the county since fiscal year 2012. compensation funding as this board has discussed many times comes to us from the county in a pot of money the decision about whether to convert funding for a step to some other form of distribution to cover more or fewer employees is one for a bargaining units to make and negotiate i would urge represented employees to make their priorities known directly to their bargaining unit representatives on this issue so that their voices can be heard at the bargaining table this budget recommendation also includes funding for 295.6 positions 92 percent of
030which are allocated to people who have daily interactions with children including this recommendation is 15.3 million dollars for 201 classroom teaching positions 44.5 of which will address enrollment increases and another 116 of which will help further reduce existing class sizes we've been unable to secure full funding for these positions in our last several budgets and fixing this issue will take a multi-year plan but if we are serious about creating smaller environments in which children can learn we must do it by adding teachers we've talked for several years about the growing social and emotional needs of our students and the fact that we are seeing more extreme behavioral issues and at younger ages than ever before across our system there are twice as many incidents of students making statements that implied a threat of self-harm in
031the last school year as there were five years ago i am asking for 1.4 million dollars for 13 positions seven school counselors three school psychologists and three social workers to help with these issues three of those counselors would be deployed to elementary schools and two each would go to the middle and high school levels this budget recommendation also contains 3.1 million dollars for 47.3 positions to address enrollment increases and enhanced student needs in special education we are serving a more diverse student population than ever before and we simply require this additional staffing to meet legally mandated services for our students with special needs thirty percent of the funding i'm requesting this area will go to teachers teaching assistants and a crisis interventionist specialist at specialty sites which we hope will help better address the needs
032of an increased number of students and allow us to continue to educate them in our county instead of funding non-public placements we also must continue to add positions to assist students who do not speak english as their first language a population that has almost tripled over the last 10 years to nearly 6 000 students this budget includes 2.4 million dollars for 25 english language acquisition teachers 10 bilingual teaching assistants 2 bilingual facilitators and a technician to assist these students and their families as we work to close gaps and catch up we cannot ignore the need to push forward that is why i believe it is critical that we continue to expand the triple e program i spoke of earlier there is seven seven hundred and forty two thousand eight hundred dollars in this budget recommendation
033to do just that for the five elementary schools in the broadneck cluster making it the seventh cluster in our county with the triple e curriculum we are as you're aware preparing to expand the high school landscape for the first time since 1983 with the opening of the new crofton area high school in september 2020. this budget recommendation contains the first 8.5 position requests for the school including the principal the final round of construction funding 24.4 million dollars for crofton area high school is contained in the one 172 million dollar capital budget request i also bring to you this evening it is absolutely critical that we continue to upgrade and update our facilities in order to provide the best possible learning environments for our students the capital budget also includes 64.3 million dollars for ongoing construction
034projects at george cromwell edgewater tyler heights and richard henry lee elementary schools three million dollars for feasibility studies at quarterfield hillsmeer and rippling woods elementary schools and 10 million dollars for the design of the new old mill west high school additionally my capital recommendation contains 11 million dollars for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten additions at millersville and lithicum elementary schools and six million dollars to construct a classroom addition at crofton woods elementary school and complete one at sally elementary school as we continue to attempt to erase the 2.1 billion dollar infrastructure backlog we must maintain the momentum we have built over the last several years just as is the case with roads and other county facilities the predicament that we find ourselves in is the result of decisions made years and decades ago we have started to
035reverse that trend and we cannot stray from that course ladies and gentlemen we continue to have a lot of work to do i stand here tonight committed to do everything i can to accomplish that work and firmly believing that the right ingredients exist to bring about the results that we all want when former president george h.w bush departed the white house in 1993 he penned a note that he left in the oval office for his successor bill clinton the letter offered encouragement and support and contained seven words that are certainly applicable to our work today he wrote your success your success now is our country's success indeed what we do now all of us through this budget and every other endeavor will help determine the future of our county our state and our nation to
036every resident of this county i say clearly that this is not just my work this is not just your work this is our work these are our children all of them and all must mean all thank you [Applause] we are going to take a short five minute break and then we will come back [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] um [Music] all right we are now going to move on to public comment i have grouped our public comment things by topic and we're going to begin with the comments about the budget helen wilkerson robin schmidt russell leone kate miller mike where's bicky dennis sullivan and katrina griffin miss wilkerson you're looking very festive tonight i was trying to do that
037to get everybody smiling today we need some smiles on our faces in this world good evening president hummer dr lotto returning members and new board members we are very pleased to welcome you to an illustrious anne arundel county public school school community i am helen wilkerson president of secretary's assistance association of anne arundel county the technology support technician of anne arundel county and merlin state education board of directors the saya community as i refer to is the arteries of anne arundel county public school i described us this way because we are the secretaries for principals who keep their calendars letters and many important documents ready and available to keep the school running and the first line of defense the teacher assistants who are there there when the teachers miscount papers or need to be in
038an iep meeting or work with the little pre-cares on learning health care brushing their teeth and working with one-on-one with struggling students the behavioral assistants who implement strategies on how to behave in classes or being kind to others financial secretaries keeping the books and students money technology support keeping all technology up to date technicians av other technicians av media services piano tuners with a few other titles i have not mentioned i just thought i would share a little scenario about our jobs and our of in the community of antamonda county public school the association for the first time along with the support of dr lotto recognized and nominated our first county educator support professional esp of the year award during the week of the national education association which also recognizes teachers and esps this recognition
039not only recognized an outstanding peer we also adopted the school community presenting families of needed health need of need doing the holiday basket and gifting and creating partnership with the school parents and community what an excitement and community con connection we have created and we are excited we know that the task ahead will not be easy for all of you as society change the social the education needs and jobs the board of saiyak and members would like to invite and elect newcomers and other members of the board to sit in whole conversations about our jobs and responsibilities to the school in the community we hold monthly meetings every third tuesday of the month and we welcome your presence we invite you to visit our schools and to speak to our members to hold conversations and
040hear ideas and strategies and making aacps beyond the best and i just want to say one quick thing the budget is a good starting point but there are some areas we like to change thank you very much for listening we'll be seeing you again thank you miss wilkerson whoever's you can go ahead all right i'll go next all right good evening my name is russell leone president of attack tonight i'm speaking to further highlight the impact of the last 10 years that has had on many of our teachers you'll be considering a budget and budgets are about numbers but please remember that these decisions affect people our teachers who are working every day for the future of our county their stories are so deeply personal that many of those affect it will never share them
041here in this public forum we talk about all means all in this county and teachers dedicate themselves to ensure that is true in their classrooms but what about the children of our teachers are they not part of the all as teachers are falling farther behind how are we supporting their children children deserve to have time to develop and strengthen relationships with their parents but in our county teachers must sometimes work two and three jobs to make ends meet this is from one teacher she says to make up for the loss of my promised salary my husband has to work at least one part-time job at all times my husband has missed countless games soccer concerts and bedtime stories because of the additional jobs so there goes their time with their children it even affects the
042rest of our children and our students as one teacher writes when we ask when students ask me to attend an after school event instead of supporting them i now tell them i can't it breaks my heart to hurt their feelings when i have to decline this breaks down relationships i have with my students families and young couples delay starting or expanding their families simply because they can't afford daycare or a home suitable enough for a larger family from another teacher my wife and i had to make a family decision to wait five years between children because we cannot afford to pay for two children in daycare we should be trying for our second but can't this means why we will have to wait until my wife is of an age that puts her at an
043age of pregnancy teachers with advanced degrees must rely on their ever-growing credit cards in order to feed their families teachers are leaving the county so they can afford reasonable housing i wonder how long it will take before these county out of county residents decide to teach closer to home you will not hear teachers come before you and share these humbling decisions that they've had to make the reality of asking friends to put them on their phone plan or of being 40-something and taking in roommates just to cover your mortgage of losing your home of taking money out of your children's college fund to pay your bills another teacher writes my daughter had to come home from school and take all her classes online because even with several small scholarships i couldn't give her the money
044for her school of choice our youngest stun has already decided he will not even apply to a four-year college because of the financial burden so how is that helping their children to become college ready when being not being able to afford it is the reality so even within two two teacher families inequity is present one teacher shared we both started teaching at the same time in anne arundel county my wife left for three years for calvert county and then returned she's two steps ahead of me we have teachers in our county who face these realities as an educator i'm assigning you some required reading before you make your final decisions these are their stories so i present to you a collection of their testimony from our teachers in their own words thank you thank you
045mr leon [Applause] go right ahead good evening dr alato president hummer and members of the board of education my name is kate miller and i'm on the attack board of directors and a third grade teacher in the mead feeder at maryland city i come here tonight like many teachers in the county because i'm concerned with the salary steps that are greatly different than my years of experience listed however my salary is not the most important thing my greatest concern is of course our students as a teacher in my 11th year of teaching i see many of my experienced colleagues leave the county for other neighboring counties these are teachers the county has paid for hours of professional development graduate school program cohorts and health benefits many of my colleagues with several years of experience are
046leaving aacps to go to other places where the salaries allow them to work one job which permits them to focus on students and instruction and their own families it is important that our students get the best teachers so they can have the best educational experience please support sufficient funds to close salary gap so we can retain our investment in our teachers and for our students we have an excellent opportunity with a new county council and county executive to receive more funds for salaries which will help us retain the best teachers for our students thank you for your time and consideration thank you miss miller [Applause] good evening ladies and gentlemen on the board my name is mike weirs vicki and i'm here again to speak with you about the highly inequitable hiring and compensation practices
047here at anne arundel county public schools i'm in my 16th year of service here and all of that has been completed in one school that's north county high school i'm currently on step eight and would ident be identified in blue on this graphic on the far left next to my blue you will find a new out of county hire in red that was brought in with 15 years of credit experience and placed on step 15. this out of county new hire is now making 9486 dollars more than this loyal aacps teacher in salary each year over the next 15 years that cumulative salary discrepancy will approach 150 000 i hesitate to think about what any portion of that discrepancy would look like in a 403 b in 10 years the same out of county higher
048will be maxing out on step 25 while in 15 years i will only be on step and that means that retirement age this new hire in red will be poised to accumulate over three thousand dollars more than this loyal aacps teacher in pension for the rest of their life because of this highly inequitable compensation structure we currently have teachers with 15 years of experience in one school earning less than teachers just hired with around half of their experience i am here to ask for sincere advocacy on behalf of your loyal teachers in correcting this highly inequitable compensation structure because this is an easy and inexp inexpensive fix i love my school i love our school system i love our students and i thank you for your time thank you mr weirs [Applause] my name is
049dennis sullivan i'm from north county high school also and i'm also speaking about the pay and equity and hiring practices of anne arundel county there was a nagging issue that kept a rising my mind as uh these last two months have been going on and it was really the fact that we don't have any true advocacy by any parties right now uh the people who are part of this group this minority have no one that is sticking up for them the last time i was here miss hummer you suggested that mike where's bicky and i go over to our union and start talking to them we did i think they have the i think they have the message uh we've talked to everybody we've talked to the press we've talked to anyone that would listen
050about this uh and we have exhausted every person and i'm throwing myself in front of this board and our superintendent to ask you plead with you make this a priority champion your heroes pay your teachers equitably and why do we need a champion it's very simple i have an inexpensive fix that i would like all you guys to see after i leave i we we are seven steps behind but to get every everyone 2925 teachers to within two steps of equity we estimate it would cost as little as 11 million dollars or less than one percent of the entire 1.2 billion dollar budget if you don't want to go that far for everyone to get three steps behind the cost is seven point one million or just point six percent of your budget so you
051have four steps you find is po that's 3.9 million and that's less than three percent of your budget i printed this chart to show you guys how inexpensive it is inexpensive this equity fix is i'm not trying to negotiate with you i am a parent i am a teacher and i want everyone to just understand this issue so with being so close to christmas i guess i'll assume the role of jacob marley we you will hear as we go along about the past the president of the future effects of this inequitable policy and it may go on deaf ears but miss hummer as you said in the last two graduations at north county high school do your own laundry that resonated with me it means taking responsibility for your actions 2 925 teachers all are
052counting on the members of this board to do the right thing make equity the number one issue do the dirty laundry i want you to remember that you have the power to make this happen and all means all thank you mr seller i'm glad that my speech is memorable it affected me it really did miss griffin good evening i'm katrina griffin german teacher and department chair of world and classical languages at north county high school a school that has the only nationally recognized center of german excellence in the state our department is comprised of teachers who have earned numerous distinctions among them embassy teaching awards unsung hero awards awards for leadership and of note three of us are fulbright scholars you may remember that in 2016 i was your anne arundel county teacher of the
053year and in 2017 i won a national award for innovation in teaching k-12 foreign language and was named the 2017 national foreign language teacher of the year i was most recently voted on to the board of the american council on the teaching of foreign languages you would be hard-pressed to find a more accomplished and effective department in the county or probably in the state i've been working at north county for 17 years 12 of which i have been the department chairperson and i am on step 12. some of my colleagues as you as you have heard have it worse this is appalling how is it possible that the backbone of our workforce at anne arundel county the mid-career employees the award winners the county teachers of the year are affected by such inequality and inequity
054in the pay scale we are the teachers who have honed our craft due to our many hours spent in the classroom and the variety of professional development experiences and leadership trainings provided to us here in anne arundel county we come to school with the passion and skills necessary to effectively teach students every time i or my colleagues present at a conference publish an article give a speech or speak with a member of our national government the name anne arundel county schools is attached to our names not only do my colleagues and i make the county look good with our accomplishments and work across the country we have a huge positive impact on the lives and educations of the students we teach and the teachers with whom we work it is a slap in the face
055every time someone with my experience level is hired and paid more than me and i am tired of finger-pointing is attack the board the county executive it's kind of shameful and definitely ineffective the lack of action on this issue shows us that we are not value teachers in this organization it is in everyone's best interest to advocate for teachers to remain in the classroom here in this county and not to look for opportunities elsewhere or outside the classroom mr gilliland you went to north county and frequently walk the halls don't you want to have the best teachers at a school that your children will likely attend i must also recognize that some of you have been supportive to me on a personal level miss hummer you sent me a handwritten note for every award i
056ever won no one else did that and dr arlata you attended many events with me even walking me down the aisle but now i must ask that you support me and my colleagues in a very public way i implore you to advocate for us and place us back on the steps we deserve and earned you may find teachers to replace us but will they be of our caliber and expertise thank you miss griffin [Applause] is robin schmidt here okay all right thank you if you have any handouts of you can give them down here to the board assistant and we will all receive them thank you all right our next group is elizabeth ruddy carolyn fumey allison lestowski nicole clements aaron chadwick this is going to be more than the seats there but it's uh
057they're all on the same topic john scofield habib benjamin and robert cube and whoever wants to start go right ahead well i'll start because i think i should have been with the last group oh sorry i'm sorry no wonder no no worries um good evening dr arlato and members of the board my name is elizabeth ruddy and i'm a fifth grade teacher at crofton meadows um decisions our lives are full of them each one having its own impact on our life story i decided to join aacps in the summer of 2007. i was 28 and married with hopes of starting a family soon a year later we were expecting our first child we were thrilled and had ensured that we were ready emotionally and financially when i returned to school after my child was born
058i was more than willing to continue working a job that i loved in a school system that treated me with respect had excellent professional development and wonderful resources little did i know i was experiencing a honeymoon phase with aacps that the school system that would train me to become a highly effective teacher would one day treat me with disrespect and disregard the honeymoon ended slowly over the next couple of years as seemingly logical decisions were made by the school system to ensure that my colleagues and i would keep our jobs i appreciated this and felt that they were made in the best interest of me as a teacher aacps and its employees little did i know that in 2018 i would be sitting at step 10 with over 15 years of experience why would i
059think that aacps would ever do this they respected me didn't they my years of loyalty would be appreciated wouldn't it when people said we're never going to see those steps again i didn't believe them and i reassured them that aacps was on our side after my second child was born i again decided to return to the classroom i loved being a teacher and common core was rolling out and i wanted to stay relevant and effective little did i know how poorly i was going to be treated by aacps when i made this decision going from one child to uh in daycare to two is an enormous financial leap it basically equaled one of my paychecks as the paychecks started to not increase as predicted by our salary scale child care and the cost of living
060continued to increase when our children were little i felt like i was struggling not to drown in the everyday routine of life when my youngest was around three i surfaced took a breath looked around i began to realize that there were those around me with less experience than me that were at a higher step than i was and that teachers in other counties had been respected and treated with regards and retreated with regard their school systems caught them up on their steps or at least put them on their way as you prepare to make decisions in the future regarding the budget i ask you to please consider my story and the story of my fellow educators we want to feel valued and respected please start taking the necessary steps to remedy this inequity in our
061school system thank you for your time and consideration thank you miss ready [Applause] no problem i'm used to that um good evening my name is carolyn fumey i was a member of the crofton high school redistricting committee i came before you a couple weeks ago asking you to send option 4j to um for lj to public hearing i'm here with stephanie mulcher she is the president of both the pining orchard pta and the arundel middle pta and has five children so she's busy mr boniface offered to walk miss corcodell through the numbers of the superintendent's plan i make the same offer to all of you for our plan a few points came up after my testimony last time from the school system so i just wanted to address those quickly with you tonight the first
062was the contiguous boundaries issue um option 4j maintains contiguous boundaries for all the neighborhoods except for one 1038 c the board should be aware that it is not invalid for a redistricting proposal to have non-contiguous boundaries you already have at least eight aacps attendance areas that have non-contiguous boundaries i give you a list of them in our proposal so this wouldn't be the only attendance area second 1038c under the superintendent's plan only has a contiguous boundary to piney because we're taking 1038b which is next door the two rivers area there is no naturally contiguous boundary to piney orchard in 1038c the only school that has that to 1038c is four seasons elementary and they were not part of the redistricting or represented at the table a comment was made at the last meeting about would
063we drive through nantucket to get the 38 sears to crofton meadows under our proposal we would go by nantucket but if you send them to piney we go by four seasons and watch apple as well the big issue is that piney is 1038c is closer to crofton meadows than it is to piney crofton meadows is 2.2 miles piney is five in fact piney is the furthest arundel feeder elementary school to 1038c arundel middle was not on dr arletto's feasibility study tonight for 2020. the earliest around the middle we'll get a feasibility to study will hopefully be 2021. we're going to be talking to you about that arundel middle will not get a addition or renovation to that we ask you to take option 4 lj to public hearing next month when you vote thanks for
064your time mom would you like to go next [Laughter] we all get it at least he's cute good evening my name is erin chadwick my husband will and i live on evergreen road in the evergreen woods section of crofton which is behind wegmans okay school zone 1038c our daughter abigail currently attends crofton elementary i'm here to speak to you today about the current redistricting plans um and why we disagree with the plan to send 1038c to piney orchard elementary school if the board allows i put together a packet that i'll hand out that you can review at your leisure but i wanted to point out some information 1038c has likely been underrepresented at the district meetings because 1038c does not have a large population and we were just recently made aware of the changes that
065have been happening in the folder that i have put together you'll find a letter that i sent to dr arlata and miss hummer um i'm not certain if our concerns were presented previously but i just wanted to address some information my husband put together a powerpoint slide that's in this folder piney orchard it discusses is the farthest elementary school there are no direct routes and you must go around north and south route 3 to get to piney orchard which would equate to a long bus trip for our daughter and it's not in the student's best interest to get up extra early or arrive home late impacting homework study time and school activities in the folder as well is a letter from our daycare most daycares in the crofton do not service the odenton area mainly
066due to distance and also because the conflicting schedules between the odenton and the crofton schools my husband works in dc and i work in baltimore so staying in crofton where we live with our daycare is in the best interest we understand the schools are overpopulated but the board's desire to redistribute distribute the students to penny orchards is not the best option we know that 1038c will no longer be attending crofton elementary it's not even in any of the plans but the next best option is crofton woods due to distance from where 1038c is located to the school itself we understand the desire not to have students cross route 3 but it is not possible for 10 i don't hear him okay okay sorry um we also understand the desire not to have students cross route
0673 but it is not possible for 1038c not to utilize route 3. we enter and exit route 3 to get to our homes route 3 has been part of our lives for a long time there's no infrastructure infrastructure changes underway to alleviate these concerns either all we're asking in this folder is that you consider looking at 1038c from a instead of a bird's eye view of a map the actual cost perspective that it would take to take 1038c from crafton elementary all the way down to pioneer turd thank you thank you [Applause] good evening my name is alison lestowski and i come to you tonight as a concerned parent of a second grader at crofton meadows elementary school and a sixth grader at crofton middle school i had the privilege of serving on the crofton
068high school redistricting committee this past fall due to my participation on that committee i was happy to see that superintendent arlato's recommendation to your board closely mirrored the recommendation that the committee put forth it was an incredibly time consuming process and one which we did not take lightly it's an exciting time to live in the crofton community and we want to assure that whatever plan is finalized works the best for all our community and all the students involved in our public schools unfortunately it's been brought to my attention that the alternative plan that was brought to the board at the last meeting called option lj after careful consideration i've come out to speak against option lj as i feel it would be detrimental to the crofton community and the students that would be affected by
069it i know many other parents who would have liked the opportunity to express their concerns with this option but crofton meadows unfortunately is holding a holiday choir concert tonight and crofton middle school is holding an orchestra concert therefore i speak on their behalf as well crofton meadows is currently the smallest elementary school in crofton due to current insulated development we'll be getting new students from two developments in the coming year or two that said if the students in neighborhood 1038c were were redistricted as proposed in option lj cmes's enrollment is projected to balloon to 118 by 2022 and 123 by 2027. these numbers are incredibly concerning to me as a parent and not only affect cmes but continue throughout the entirety of the crofton feeder system further overcrowding crofton middle school and eventually crofton high
070school another concern i have is that throughout our meetings aacps representatives expressed the need to keep orders of any proposed plans contiguous if students from 1038c were bused across route 3 which is a dangerous and unnecessary risk they would pass through two other elementary schools borders before reaching their school this provides an illogical and random drawing of school boundaries finally throughout our meetings we were also informed of the county's plans to build west county elementary school if students from 1038c were sent across route 3 to cmes they would have to be considered for redistricting again to west county when the school was eventually built changing the feeder system once again and having a detrimental impact on those students affected when determining which plan to put to public hearing next month i hope you'll take all
071of these considerations into account and i strongly urge you to adopt superintendent arlato's plan thank you for your time and consideration this evening thank you miss lestowski [Applause] who's next go ahead there we go good evening dr arlato president hummer and board members i'm nicole clements and i'm a crofton meadows elementary school parent i would like to thank you for the chance to speak on the crofton high school redistricting plans that were put forward for consideration i attended most of the redistricting committee meetings held in october at arundel high school and was able to watch the process as the committee wrestled with the question of what the boundaries should be for each school affected by the opening of crofton high school there were passionate discussions on what was the best option for the various schools
072and the children who attend those schools they considered safety classroom size capacity among other things in watching the committee work i feel they made the best recommendation when i saw that there was a second recommendation put forward called the option for lj i was concerned especially since the committee spent significant time discussing this recommendation and decided not to move forward with recommending it to the superintendent the main difference with this option is that the neighborhood 1038c is redistricted to crofton meadows elementary school versus piney orchard as a crofton meadows elementary parent i'm specifically concerned that the recommendation option for lj strongly impacts the student of croxton meadows in this recommendation is op is adopted estimates show that the crofton meadows elementary school capacity will be at 118 in 2022 and as high as 123 by
0732027. in addition to this the option also increases the overcrowding at crofton middle and crofton high for example currently crofton middle is at 100 capacity in 2022 would be projected to be at 103 but under the option lj it would be around 111 capacity one thing i learned by attending the redistricting committee meetings is that anne arundel county likes to keep the school boundaries contiguous adopting this plan means that crofton meadows boundaries would not be contiguous there are several elementary schools within the area that would have the contiguous boundaries with the neighborhood 1038c i thank you for your time for considering listening to me and i hope you consider moving forward only the recommendation but made by the superintendent for public hearing thank you thank you miss clements uh good evening board members i am
074habib benjamin and i wanted to voice my opposition to option lj because how it would overcrowd crofton meadows elementary and crofton middle school i currently have a daughter in first grade at crofton meadows and another daughter entering kindergarten next year so the overcrowding is of great concern to me option lj doesn't seem to be a good option in regards to the size and capacity of cropped and menace and crop the middle as you heard before furthermore there may be safety and transportation issues for the neighborhoods being transported across the congested route 3 corridor this is why i respectfully ask to continue with the um the proposal that dr arlatto has come forward with thank you and happy holidays thank you mr benjamin good evening my name is john schofield i'd like to represent facts to
075the board about plan four that i think in some ways speak for themselves this plan was based on the following articulated important values keeping communities together utilizing walking distances reducing distances of students bust and making use of natural boundaries bussing students from watchup while 1038c goes against all the above it would bust children through a road that floods with almost every rain patuxet road a flooded road is clearly a natural boundary the alternative route travels on heavily traffic route 3 and watch apple taking students away from the three crafting schools they're close to all the way to piney orchard bussing plans only on sweet basin plans only on snapshot numbers from today not taking into account 1500 new housing units coming online zoned for piney orchard and the hundreds of units being built zoned for
076anne arundel middle is not responsible plan 4 calls for overcrowding it posed gradual and temporary it's not gradual it would it would be immediate upon planned for taking effect and for our children who are in piney orchard now including kindergarteners starting next year is their entire elementary school career not at all temporary overcrowding has a demonstrably deleterious impact on school children or at least that's what educators tell me the two rivers elementary school is supposed to be ready in 2027 alleviating the so-called temporary overcrowding i'd be interested in hearing about building projects that were completed on time nothing has even been started yet and yet people are saying construction and opening can be expedited that is not going to happen this is not theoretical these realities will unfairly tarnish pose children potentially for their entire
077academic careers meaning their entire lives another value was minimizing the number of times a student was reassigned however recommendation 6 to go along with plan 4 is aacps should redistrict arundel feeder system elementary schools upon piney orchard reaching 110 capacity as of 2018 plan 4 puts piney orchard already at 104 percent with all additional with all additional housing we will soon surpass 110 a second redistricting would be coming and then a third when the west county elementary school opens is the opposite of minimizing redistricting finally allowing a committee with a large majority of crosston crofton theater schools to create a plan that alleviates their overcrowding by busting students away from their schools and all the way to pioneer orchard and calling for arundel elementary schools to be redistricted to deal with it when most of
078these schools had no voice or vote is simply orwellian we're asking for the burden of overcrowding to be shared not just dumped on arundel middle and piney orchard please bring forward plan for lj or other options to give all students equal value as you said sir let's elevate them all without subverting some thank you mr scofield ms scholheim so i have a question excuse me about the redistricting process and the various plans the option four and four lj are we as a board able to choose an another path if we if we so desire yes so in january the plans will come before the board and to make a decision of which plans to take to public hearing and at that time we can choose to add any additional plans to the one that was
079put forth by the committee and dr our lottos we can add any others or we can create our own so we'll have that option in january too that's when we will decide which ones will go to public hearing right and i was looking at them and you know i am curious about the the 4lj plan um the the children would be bussed to crofton meadows but there's a there's a closer elementary school and i just wondered if that was discussed was that discussed elementary schools but both of those have higher capacity currently which was the reasoning got it all right thank you all right thank you all very much it's robert cube here okay then we'll wait for that agenda item thank you all right our next group before we begin the next group i
080just want to make a couple of comments we appear as board we are public servants who are here and as part of public servants we are held accountable by the public um and sometimes that is difficult to hear and sometimes we may agree with the criticism and sometimes we may not we also sometimes disagree up here as a board i've served on this board for three and a half years now with 15 different board members some of them with wildly divergent personal views than i have but what i've always seen is that board members are making the best decisions they can make at the time given the information they have so when we come out hold us accountable and challenge us but also realize that we are that everyone up here is um working to
081serve children keep reminding us of that that it should always be students first and if something occurs and you feel that our priorities are not in line let us know and so we will we listen to you and we hear what you're saying and we want your feedback and we expect you to hold us accountable to doing what's best for our students so our next group is connor curran jack alexander and kathy flaherty can i start all right good evening president hummer members of the board and dr alato my name is connor curran and i'm here as a concerned 10th grade student as our board is going through a change i've noticed some differences and i'd like to address them to the newly elected members you may have been elected to represent one district but
082you serve all eighty three thousand students of antero county public schools regardless of what district they may live in when you're on a diet to decide what policies our schools follow you decide the fate of how our schools are funded you decide how we run as a school system as a whole that's why it's vital for you as a board to be inclusive of all respect others views and remember it's not every board member versus each other but the board as a whole versus the problem at hand when a decision to have this board become fully elected it was supposed to be a nonpartisan act i can personally see partisan allies forming we see far too much this political nonsense on both capitol hill and state circle i hate to see the same thing happen
083here on river road our education is far too important to be poised by partisan politics that's why we need to look at each other and see what each member stands for not how they voted last november because at the end of the day that's what matters the most our values and morals while i still have a little bit of time with you guys i would remind you to please fully fund dr lyle's recommendations for next year's budget to increase staffing for school psychologists and counselors i look forward to working with the sport as it's going through its transition from appointed to elected i thank you for your time thank you khan miss dolphin thank you i wanted to um sir hi hi um thank you for your statement um i agree and just to dispel
084some some myths um there are people up here who have wildly different political views than myself i ran as a nonpartisan candidate i remain nonpartisan and i'm actually pretty friendly with my opponent and and i cherish that so just to dispel some myths i hope that that is helpful i really appreciate you doing that as a board member and i hope um that you guys as a board can all follow that same model and as through as we go through um our board becoming fully elected i hope that we can all follow that model that's kind of thank you thanks connor mr alexander [Applause] good evening thank you board members my name is jack alexander i'm a former teacher from california north carolina and maryland especially this county as well as a disabled veteran i
085know what it means to serve students in country after witnessing the december 5th board meeting i don't believe some of you know what it means to serve the community it is unlawful for anybody to violate policy no matter how many times you profess it's the will of the people you cannot and should not violate policy or laws mr ghen's actions during the meeting were not only embarrassing but showed nothing more than a power grab for his personal vendetta it had nothing to do with the betterment of the schools for our students his behavior along with several members who concurred did not only insult the very people that voted for the new members but also greatly disrespected the institution and it's missing it was very apparent that mr gannon branson said excuse me was bullying the
086other members of the board which is highly unprofessional to those of you who who seconded mr granger's motion and voted i you should be ashamed of yourselves as you demonstrated your lack of knowledge of board policy and voting procedures board of education council and board members council along with dr alato made to had to repeatedly advise the members on a proper procedure so that they would not be in violation of board policy and yet those same individuals still voted i mr gannon went on to show his lack of professionalism by leaving the meeting after not getting the vote he wanted he therefore disrespected his constituencies he who he's supposed to represent and others the crofton high school parents who all had been waiting for hours to speak regarding the district went unheard because of the
087abrupt departure for anyone should be removed from the board it should be mr granston agrandon excuse me your sir you sir are a case in point as to why the board needs to be elected representation mr hummer needs to be miss hummer excuse me needs to be recommended for her professionalism in dealing with the deplorable episode which to me appeared to be nothing more than a personal attack thank you for your time miss flaherty [Applause] ms hummer and dr rolotto and members of the board thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is kathy flaherty and i have two children currently in high school in anne arundel county public schools i've been an active participant in the special education citizens advisory committee the seacac for the past six to seven years i've served
088on that board for four years i was part of a group that appealed to the maryland general assembly to add the voice for special education to the school board appointment committee i was the seacac rep to the citizens advisory committee the cac for a total of four years i currently am a part-time employee with partners for success an initiative for the department of special ed i'm speaking today as a parent and community member i wanted to share i was disappointed and disheartened as i watched the new board member meeting of december 5th 2018. i believe this were to be an organization that says policy and procedure for our school system these policies also affect all where all means all community members who vocal or not involved or not aware or not all have a vested
089interest in the operation and policies of this board over the past seven years i have had to learn and abide by the policies and procedures of anne arundel county public schools for both personal and more global reasons therefore i greatly appreciate the voices who spoke up to preserve the upholding of existing policy in these board proceedings thank you it does matter i ask you to continue to honor the existing policies procedures and intent of such as you find your way on this new board if a policy is no longer appropriate there's a procedure to to change it you can certainly follow it and i ask you to heed the advice of the people you employ with our tax money to advise you of such in addition it's stunning to me that in the discussion about
090what the previous board may have or may have not have done for new members in mind there's really no regard that that's all hindsight is 20 20 vision and the fact with the community in mind is that there could if elections had gone differently there could have been two vacant spots on this board into december and further i congratulate the newly elected members on your accomplishment in participating in this groundbreaking new system i also would ask that you consider the native american philosophy of seven generations this phrase has been made popular by the natural cleaning product line but i learned of the concept in my work with an environmental organization that lobbied the united states congress many people attribute this to the iroquois law that states your actions affect senator seven generations hence but i
091learned of a different ideology one that says you are where you are today with gratitude to the three generations that came before you and your actions affect the three after whether you agree with them or not like them or not want to change everything they did or not those prior generations have made contributions to the board on which you now sit please honor and respect that it's not always easy but it's necessary for the health and well-being of our community thank you thank you miss flair [Applause] next dr mary dudone sarah davis reverend kathleen rowlands carmen skarlukka and reverend diana carroll good evening members of the board good evening to those i know are listening and watching on video and who will be watching and listening on video miss skarloopka is not able to be
092with us this evening i am dr mary dejoni i'm standing before you as a resident of anne arundel county i know that my name and face and voice may be familiar to you from other times i've testified before this board so i want to be clear that tonight i'm standing here as an individual resident of this county there are others who will be speaking following me who will be representing specific groups i want to speak to you about the role of the citizen the role of the board the breadth of the identity of our community the need to respect that breadth and to extend an offer to work together it was early in my work as an advocate a learner i began to appreciate that the role of citizen is much more demanding than i
093had ever before appreciated understand the role and the burden you carry it was easy to neglect the role and the burden that i carry i as a citizen have a responsibility not only to vote to be an informed voter to speak to you before you to advise you to let you know what my issues are and all of us are here to do that tonight you as member of the boards come in with your best intentions and best knowledge but you do not know the lived experience of people not like yourselves and sometimes that's a problem mr lieb you have been called out because your facebook posts were public there are others of us of you perhaps who've had equally i will use the word offensive facebook posts that haven't been found out or perhaps
094you didn't post on facebook but every one of us carries biases based in our own ignorance i do not wish to speak solely to mr lieb's post they are an example of a problem for several of us as we walked in this evening we were greeted by a light sign on the side of the building right out there that said we are all in this together and that's true we're all in this together the kids who hang nooses and the children who are traumatized by seeing nurses the children who are suffering from or gifted with different perceptions and abilities and the teachers who are frustrated by them we are all in this together those who are distinctly gendered in traditional ways and those who are not i want to offer the idea that there are
095really no others we are all in this together none of us have a chance of understanding those that we might think of as other unless we hear the stories i'm here we are here to help bring the stories that's our job your job is to hear and understand the art of the stories we are here to offer our expertise call on us any of us you know how to reach us our names and numbers are on the sign up cards but you know us we have a lot to teach you please take advantage of it thank you dr daniel good evening members of the board my name is sarah davis i am the parent of five children with disabilities attending anne arundel county public schools we are also a military family and i am a
096person with a disability as a family who experiences disability we are discriminated against on a daily basis in both small and large ways yesterday after she misunderstood her teacher's instructions my daughter was chastised in front of her peers and her teacher asked her to write a letter thanking the teacher for not giving her a zero on an assignment i've just passed to you that letter for your review this is not a teacher who had any ill will towards my child these teachers are doing their very best work with large class sizes this is simply a matter of not understanding the needs of someone who learns differently lilly's takeaway from these ongoing experiences is that she is different that she is less than and that she is not normal i've also passed for you to you
097a graphic that my daughter wrote reflecting that view billy navigates a world that is not always welcome welcoming to people who do not neatly fall into gender norms and we need funding and training and support for our schools to include all of our children effectively we need to make sure that we are supporting our teachers i spend countless hours volunteering at my children's schools to make sure that the teachers that they work with have extra time with their children because we are not properly supporting our teachers and we need changes in public policy for example we do not need restraint of a child to ever show up on a behavior intervention plan that is not a behavior intervention restraint is an indication that the behavior intervention plan has failed i noticed during the presentation we
098did not have a slide on the gap for children with disabilities it is reprehensible it is 20 percentage points below our other children where is that slide why aren't we watching the track and tracking the reduction in that gap i urge all board of ed members to make sure that they are receiving the proper sensitivity training the property proper disability awareness the property proper awareness of the various subgroups within our community to ensure that all viewpoints are represented by the people that we have making the decisions for our children and that we are celebrating diversity in all of its forms this is critical to making decisions for all of our children thank you for your time thank you ms davis good evening my name is reverend kathleen rolens and i serve as the interim senior
099minister at the unitarian universalist church in annapolis along with reverend john crestwell we pastor a congregation about 400 adults 160 children and youth and young adults some of whom currently attend or will attend the anne arundel county schools under your watch so i am here to speak about the comments of one member in particular mr robert lee but i also address my remarks to the entire school board i am here because i want to talk to you about trust as public persons as public officials who oversee an institution as significant as our public schools you are certainly going to be the subject of much scrutiny as well you should those of us in the public are held to high standards because we know our office holds incredible power and as you well know this body
100has the power to shape the direction focus and funding of schools for years to the co years to come you have the power to set a course in motion that will affect the lives of thousands of children and their families i also believe the work of the school board is holy work because your decision shapes the values of a community and those values are manifested through the principles teachers students everyone affected by the decisions you make as a body so i want to talk about the comments in the posts which you um mr lieb have made prior to this appointment because it reveals a troubling pattern of disregard for the very real people whom you've been called to serve when you repost an article that calls the black lives matter movement trash you are essentially
101saying that black lives do not matter and by referencing the post by referencing that post it dismisses the very real pain experienced by black members of this and so many other communities when you read a post about teaching children about transgender issues as a form of psychological abuse you create more suffering for those transgender children and their families who are struggling to be seen and heard as whole human beings when you repost a condemnation of same-sex marriage you are essentially saying that the lives of those men and women some of whom will have children in the very school system you have pledged to serve do not deserve your respect and attention and when you serve up posts that criticize the hispanic community you cause irreparable harm to people who live and work here who have
102their children attend our schools and our churches and whose taxes support this community so i believe that everyone on this board has agreed to serve because in your heart you want to build the common good you want your leadership to matter and make a difference you believe in public service and i honor you for that but in order to effectively serve and faithfully serve you must build the public trust and mr leave your comments cannot be unseen or unheard but they can be addressed by apology and by engaging with the very communities that you disrespected in your post thank you so much for your time thank you [Applause] good evening president hummer dr arlatto members of the board of education my name is pastor dianna carroll and i'm the rector of st luke's episcopal church
103in eastport here in annapolis and my wife sarah and i have lived in annapolis for the past seven years i serve on the board of annapolis pride an organization which was formed this year with a mission of celebrating the lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer community and engaging local residents businesses and groups to unite in welcoming and embracing diversity along with many others in our community as the board of annapolis pride we are deeply concerned about the disrespectful statements that mr robert lieb chose to share on facebook regarding several groups of people including people who are lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer many of us on the board faced harassment and discrimination when we were in school including public schools in this county because of our sexuality or our gender identity or both so we
104know personally the damage that such hurtful statements can cause especially when made by public figures in positions of trust we also know that lgbtq plus children in our school system have been physically threatened outed without their consent and made to feel unsafe and unsupported pflag of annapolis in anne arundel county has provided supportive services to over 30 of these students and their families on an ongoing basis mr lieb i don't know you and i would like to be able to give you the benefit of the doubt i would like to believe that you were not fully aware of the impact that the messages you shared would have so on behalf of annapolis pride i am here tonight to ask you to meet with us to have conversation with us we want to work with you
105we want to work with all of you the whole board of education to make our schools safer for every one of our children mr lee will you agree to meet with us thank you we look forward to being in touch thank you reverend carol all right all right next group is cj mooshaw dr ellie gomez jacqueline alsup and carl snowden okay good evening i really appreciate being here in front of the public and on the video and also in front of our public servants here thank you for serving i understand that change feels unfair for those for whom the way things have worked out pretty well in the past but i also want to be crystal clear that i'm not here to address the hurt feelings of advantage folks making decisions on behalf of the
106public we witnessed a beautiful presentation from the county or excuse me co-sponsored by the county and also by a women's giving circle at the maryland hall for the creative arts most recently and they did an outstanding job of bringing home the point that this isn't about good or bad people as we were all reminded as we walked into the doors here tonight we're all in here together we're all in this together this is about how structural bigotry structural racism comes to be none of us are here because we want to hurt someone else we're all here because we want to do something good for the people around us for our children for our families for our neighbors you don't become a racist or a bigot overnight or because you choose to be half the time
107it's implicit we don't realize it we have the best of intentions and when you're in a position of power to make policy decisions those end up becoming institutionalized systems institutionalize implicit bias institutionalize bigotry institutionalize racism and when something is institutionalized it becomes systemic every day we're asking our staff members and our students to go to an anne arundel county public school system that suffers from structural and institutionalized bias and bigotry we have the data that's clear we need to disaggregate the data on discipline suspensions discipline referrals and dangerous referrals we need to differentiate which of these are mandatory versus which are discretionary we need to own the fact that the majority of calls to child's protective services for african-american students happen from our teachers they're not doing that on purpose we need to make mandatory
108implicit bias training for our teachers and staff we need to make equity goals that cross all departments and not just couched in a single office and we need to also introduce at a minimum a resolution against bigoted and biased speech for folks on the board for folks on the committees that choose the members for the board and if anyone would like to talk more about this you can reach out to some of us at surge annapolis at gmail.com or to me personally on facebook at cjmusha thank you for your time thank you miss moosha michelle um dr alato do do we currently um collect data on all those things that she mentions yes ma'am and it's disaggregated yes ma'am wonderful um would i would love to see that if you can email that to us
109i would love that thank you absolutely and as we are with the development of our new strategic plan is something we talked about earlier today as did miss ellis and i that with the development new strategic plan we're trying to develop a new data site that's very interactive for the public and that was something that we talked about the board last year as we developed a new strategic plan and put into action so that our data can be out there for people to um to manipulate as they want to take a look at it by school by student group and so we are starting we've just launched and posted some of that data today and we're building that site over time but some of that data went live today wonderful and then anything that um
110ms cj said that that doesn't fall under that um i i don't know does it did it cover everything that she currently what's out there on the data no but we collect all of that data so i have data sets that i'm glad to share with you wonderful thank you so much good evening uh my name is ellie gomez i'm an assistant professor at howard university college of medicine but i'm not here as a physician tonight i'm here as a parent my son ayden attends serena park high school um we moved here when he was about to start middle school and uh you know i being scientific guy i looked at the demographics i thought wow this is great a lot of mixture a lot of different cultures and people this will be ideal we
111had no idea the challenges that this community uh had faced um and is still facing um when we moved here with regard to race intolerance he uh you know experienced it when he was on the baseball fields um with uh racial slurs being hurled during championship games he experienced it when he uh noticed there was a confederate flag on a public practice field growing up in new york city i never expected my son to be facing the same things that i did when i was growing up in the early 70s i figured that was going to be left in the past we'd be educated we heard it so many times that it would change um i didn't need a degree from cornell to educate me to the fact that race is a social construct that's
112entirely artificial with no scientific basis made to advantage one group of humans over another i didn't need anatomy class to teach me that every human being is exactly the same before the below the level of skin so my question to you is about the concern that was expressed um so eloquently in the budget uh with regard to the emotional wellness of young people under duress i'm usually a fairly resourceful communicator this this topic makes me angry and uh it makes it difficult when it's as personal as my child i've i've addressed the problems that my uh boy is dealing with as a 15 year old sophomore at the school unfortunately as i've done it um a lot of times what i've gotten from the administrative body is that this is just childish pranks by a
113few bad actors that they don't seem to recognize the implicit bias in their own assessment of the degree of the problem that my son is facing so um you know young teenagers shouldn't be walking around with their heads down to avoid confrontation to avoid a slur being hurled out their way he shouldn't be spending so much time trying to figure out how to get transferred to broad neck where he feels he's created a network of safety with friends from his church he shouldn't have to be concerned that his friends on the football team may hear a racial slur and uh respond inappropriately so what i'm imploring you to do is to understand that personal biases inform the way you vote on issues and to understand that the choice even of members to join your board
114are in fact reflections of that bias thank you thank you dr gomez [Applause] good evening dr alato miss hummer and board members i am jacqueline also first vice president for the anne arundel county branch of the naacp and i am currently president-elect for the anne arundel county branch of the naacp i'm speaking tonight both on behalf of the anne arundel county branch of the naacp and as an naacp representative on the anne arundel county school board appointment commission the school board appointment commission reviewed applications from and interviewed nine applicants for the position during the evaluation process we each brought our own perspectives and best judgment we relied on the background information on each candidate that was submitted to us subsequently to the final vote of the commission we became aware of a number of public
115facebook posts by mr leaves that were not aware of before our voting it is a matter of public record that it took five rounds of voting before mr lee received the votes needed for his appointment it is also a matter of public record that i and three other members of the 12-member board voted for the other candidate in the final round of voting in which mr lee received the eight affirmative votes necessary for the commission to recommend him for appointment i chose not to vote for mr lee appointment to the board of education because neither his resume nor his interview responses convinced me that he would represent the interests of those whom the naacp seeks to protect that is all americans i want to repeat that all americans the mission of the naacp is and
116i hear quote to ensure the political educational social and economical equity of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial bias discrimination i could not conclude with sufficient confidence that mr lee was sufficiently aware of the equity and civil rights issues and or significantly committed to them to work consistently and effectively toward a goal of equity inclusion uh justice and protection of civil rights for all of our children parents staff administrators and teachers since that time i have become aware of mr leaves public facebook posts which is in my assessment reflect both ignorance and of hostility towards several groups of people becoming aware of this i joined several other persons including elected legislators and publicly writing a letter asking mr lee not to accept the position to the board of education mr lee clearly has
117enough faith and confidence in himself to go ahead and accept the position i and others do not share that faith and confidence at this time mr lee steps into the position of district 30 to represent on the anne arundel county board of education without the full confidence of the protesters of several constituent groups as evidenced by those who spoke here tonight in conclusion mr lee continues to believe he can support those goals or if he determines that it doesn't matter whether he does or does not support these goals and if we determine he is failing at supporting them then we will continue to bring this attention of the anne arundel county public schools and the board as appropriate and we will continue to seek legal redress if necessary at the same time we offer not
118only to mr lee but to the entire board to the entire anne arundel county public schools our hand in identifying and resolving problems to ensure that together we do accomplish the shared goals of protecting the civil rights of all students and stakeholders at anne arundel county public schools elevating all students and eliminating all gaps thank you for your time thank you ms allsup mr antoine [Applause] this also if i want to first congratulate you on your new position very well earned and deserved i also wanted to request if the naacp is not a part of our equity committee ran led by dr gillian's if we can invite them to those meetings i think would be helpful based on the offer she just made we would um it's also up and i have frequent conversations i'm
119looking forward to us getting back together regularly as you take your new office as president again um so again congratulations and so we'll continue to talk um she knows well that they are invited each and every month and so we're delighted to have her or representative join our committee our equity advisory each and every month and we've been doing that since 2005 that equity advisory's been meeting and so we'll look forward to i look forward to starting our meetings again thank you and just just to add to that uh a board member currently as far as i know does not regularly attend that because we don't have a board position for that at this time but i am volunteering something i said i would never do again to be part of that so we definitely
120want to work together to to manage that so thank you very much thank you mr snowden thank you um i'm here representing the caucus of african-american leaders and i want to ask the board [Music] to become more assertive in your leadership today we heard read and seen another incident a chesapeake bay middle school a noose too many incidents tonight people came to ask for an apology an apology is important in annapolis the city council went on record apologizing for an incident that took place involving a noose in 2000 uh this past monday the county council went on record apologizing for lynching that occurred in annapolis and in anne arundel county where's apology from the board of education what's the apology from a system when children have been traumatized time and time again i want to
121read something that was distributed again from the school system comes from the principle and i'm sure it's done with all the sincerity that she could muster but i'll ask you to listen to these words carefully she says as i've asked before i underscore before please speak to your child in a manner you deem more appropriate about hate bigotry and intolerance have no place in our school community nation or world if you are unsure what to do contact what to do or say please contact our school about resources so parent comes today and they ask the board of education what should we do incident after incident occurred a letter goes home from the parent from the school generally from the principal deploying the act asking people to talk to their kids and this continues to happen
122consistently clearly something's wrong and it seems to me the board needs to take a more aggressive view of what the board can do i know that this controversy in terms of appointment of the newest board member and i would i'm glad to hear that you have agreed to meet with members of the gay and tres gay and lisbon community we extend an invitation to you to come to a caucus meeting to get to meet people directly to hear some of the views but i would ask you also as the one of the new board members to extend an apology you've heard a lot of people whether you did an intention or not really doesn't matter a number of people spoken out it takes a lot to be able to say i'm sorry but it's the
123beginning of the healing process and i would appeal to you too and ask you directly are you willing to make an apology to those who were offended by your remarks of course thank you sir thank you mr snowden and then we have two more comments chad jones and dave hogan uh good evening my name is dave hogan it seems chad didn't make it tonight although we spoke briefly today and so i have his comments i'm in the minority here this evening apparently i want to kind of mitigate what's been said about bob because i've known him for 50 years and i've been a county resident since 84 and i have three very successful students that went through the system here and went on to have very successful lives my wife and i hold the system
124in high regard we worked with it when we were had our kids in schools and we care about the future of the school system as citizens and it certainly affects everything from property values to how your kids behave with your neighbors kids or your grandkids in our case so i just want to jump back a bit and say that having known bob for 50 years i wanted to say a few positive words about bob given the recent social media and journalistic coverage which i actually found sadly misleading in some cases i would only address one point which was on the racial issue and uh the person bob quoted was actually a black man who wrote in the baltimore paper uh who had some very interesting viewpoints uh that a lot of other black people that
125i've spoken to share now uh i will say that during our childhood years and again our military service years bob and i were certainly inculcated with the belief to respect our fellow men and women irrespective of their faith or race and to advance that belief as a moral ethical responsibility to those around us and to those whom worked for us and whom we reported to and i can report that for the past three years bob capably did that and he capably served with me on the county veterans affairs commission which i still chair and he demonstrated that belief repeatedly i know he only stepped down from the veterans of affairs commission in order to dedicate his time to the school board which is very close to his heart having served a business role on it
126several years ago and is in my view very knowledgeable in the school board processes and the school systems and knows where the issues are and and how to address them you know i i think those are important factors in his selection and the board did and whoever the selection committee was did select him uh i'm sorry the other candidate didn't get selected there's a lot of people that supported them so i just bring that up and i would also just point on a personal note my children along with nieces and nephews who live in the area call him uncle bob and of note some of them are black some of them are mixed race uh we also have very close members and extended family uh that are the lbg gt community i can't even say
127that right so we bob is aware of these things and he's uh so i'm here i guess in the minority in the minority uh position here but i wanted to bring that up if i may now speak for chad jones uh who asked me to speak for him because he couldn't quite make it chad had the following to say he said as a muslim man in anne arundel county with three muslim children in anne arundel county schools let me say that there are few if any better servant leaders than bob leib i am proud he will be on our school board trying to paint an american hero like bob as anything other than that is disturbing and he went on to say in an email to me later today chad is the secretary of the
128anne arundel county muslim council which is charged with representing the county's islamic community by bringing them together with the county's civic leadership as a father of three anne arundel county students and glen burnie secondary school representative on the board's citizen advisory board his primary issue is understanding political differences and the fact that the school board has become a political organization but his main point is disagreeing with someone politically is not an excuse to label someone as a racist or bigot and purposefully he went on to say purposefully lying about a person's character is against everything taught in islam individuals painting a man who has served his country and his county for the better part of 40 years in so many capacities and suddenly being labeled as a racist or bigoted is clearly wrong and which
129is why he was compelled to speak up i'm done thank you thank you thank you mr hogan we will now move on to um consent items award of contracts do i have a motion to bundle items five point zero one through five point one got a zero second miss howell would you call the roll miss corcodell aye mr raya aye mr gilliland miss antwine aye miss scholheim aye mr leib aye ms ellis hi mr granite miss hummer hi all right um do i have any board comments or questions on these items my recommendation oh i'm sorry dr your recommendation yes ma'am with that i recommend the board approve contracts as listed on today's agenda as 5.01 through 5.10 okay no no yeah you don't have to move that oh sorry yeah i'm sorry she was
130in the wrong step we'll get her just after this item miss frank i'm sorry you got to put in the wrong stack no no no i put it it got it got done after we finished this item um so um i have a question on item um 5.03 so the total dollar amount for this contract is 3 944 000 but on the bid page it says the base the the am i reading that right it's kind of wait i'm looking at the wrong one hold on i got myself mixed up you you confused me mr gillwin um where is it well maybe i don't have a question maybe i've mixed that up okay that was it i'm sorry item 5.01 the total contract amount is 35 million 400 000 but on the um the bid
131page the sample project amount says only 869 000. what's the the difference on that so how many when we say this is a bid price for a sample project how many projects are we looking at here that they're bidding on so ala check chief operating officer so essentially the way that this bid is constructed and this is typical through the industry is we have many capital projects coming down to pike they can be new school construction renovations they can be systemic component replacements they can be routine repair maintenance or they can be emergency nature the way this bid is constructed is we created a prototypical project and we had all the vendors bid this prototype project and say what would be the price to do this project you know inclusive of labor materials everything and
132then it was awarded to the firm that provided the lowest price for that prototypical project what we then did was we took a look at our capital improvement program that extends throughout the duration of this period and beyond and said if all of that capital improvement work was fully funded and if it was funded at the rate at which we are asking so it's fully funded fully funded at the rate we're asking and fully executed at the pace that we've contemplated should all of that transpire and i'm sure hoping i get to see that once before i retire this could potentially be the maximum value of the work again you saw when the superintendent's addressed that we're have a 2.1 billion dollar infrastructure backlog here in this county we're aggressively trying to eradicate that and
133being able to have a proficient contractor that can install these emergency temperature control systems within these projects is critical to that discharge thank you very much for that explanation are there any other board questions or comments on any of these items okay i do have um some a public comment jeffrey forman thank you thank you ma'am um i am here as you may or may not know i'm here on item 5.03 the electrical contract at edgewater elementary school the agenda item is to undo the award of that contract to key systems and award it to ct electric as you know that is in appeal it's it's in the courts so i'm not here to talk about that what i am here to talk about is this um i want to give you i have two
134handouts to give i have ten of them to give to each of you so that you understand that the contract to key has been signed and we had a court hearing where i asked mary jo childs if it had been signed i was told no that was october 31st but i have a string of emails dated october 3rd that verifies that the contract with key was already signed so the only reason i'm here miss hummer and board members is to say we've brought action and i'm not here to deal with the merits of the action but i am saying is if i am correct that we have a contract and it's breached then i just don't want to make sure nobody on this board can say if the court decides that there's a real problem
135here nobody's going to be able to say we didn't know i'd like to hand you all there is testimony that miss childs on direct question when i asked has the contract been signed i was told no but there's emails that say i'll just read this one from christopher schwartz back to miss charles just so you know the signed contract was emailed to me by purchasing on monday and i sent it to the cm which is construction manager who may have already shared it with key so i just want you all to have this so that you know that if you vote to give the contract to ct and the court says wait a minute i'm just suggesting tonight might not be the time to vote on 5.03 i know you just voted to do it
136as a bundle i don't know if you want to vote to undo the bundle and take that one out maybe you do maybe you don't i just want to make sure nobody says we didn't know to whom can i give these thank you as this is a matter that's under pending litigation um we will not be commenting on that this evening thank you very much for hearing me thank you all right is there any other public comment all right miss connolly would you call the role is not here miss uraya aye mr gilliland aye ms antoine aye ms shawheim aye mr leib aye ms ellis aye mr granite said oh i'm sorry ms hummer i thank you eight zero one absent so motion passes um i'm going to we had one other piece of public
137comment that accidentally got filed with a agenda item for comment so i apologize miss frank you you were just put in in the wrong stack up here um so miss frank i've been told i'm a troublemaker um so i did actually want to talk about the cell tower briefly but i'm i believe that i'm supposed to do that at the end that's why okay um that would be on that agenda item yes okay so then i will just limit my comments right now um to the later school start times that we have in our county um that started before my son came to school and the cost for that was 680 18 000 per year it breaks down to 47 538 per every minute that those teenage students were supposed to be able to sleep
138this is about the starting salary of a new teacher and we could have funded 13 teachers or counselors for about the same cost i think that's relevant at budget time a lot of the studies that i've read always cite one hour of sleep to be able to have an appreciable impact and we have only increased those start times by 13 minutes at the october meeting ms ellis you mentioned that your children's bus arrived 10 minutes early and then the students sat in the parking lot for about 10 minutes um and miss nelly said well you know that's because of traffic and if they leave too late then they'll be 20 minutes late um so many of the high school children are not even getting the benefit of that 13 minutes because of the traffic situation
139our kids down in bodkin as they're coming home are now firmly into rush hour traffic so our children get home way later than that 15 minutes and there are a lot of studies that will link play with better outcomes and better student outcomes at the younger age there are definitely benefits when children get more sleep but our students aren't really getting those benefits and our vulnerable children could still get benefits of exercise if you reverse those start times our high school students do have the option to go to bed earlier but elementary school students cannot extend those daylight hours one thing that i would also like to mention there are no sidewalks anywhere in my neighborhood or in most of the neighborhoods in pasadena especially the bodkin school district so those late night walks home
140or those you know getting getting colin off the bus in the dark is is difficult especially if it's raining it is really dark we have prioritized our high school students at the expense of our elementary school students my son gets home at 4 30. this means that i cannot make it to a 5 p.m soccer practice many families are not able to participate in extracurricular activities and it's because of this late start time and dismissal cullen is no longer in soccer he has adhd so that makes it hard for him we have sacrificed crucial play time for many young children and i understand the reasons behind trying to make this change but i ask you to reevaluate this decision with new eyes and to look and to see if we have actually benefited um i
141ask you to give our young children back their daylight playtime please thank you thank you miss frank miss schallheim [Applause] it's no secret that i ran on one of the platforms i ran on was start school later but that is for div for high school predominantly my daughter's school also starts very late gets off very late so i hear you um and i am listening and um it is a priority in my mind and thank you for speaking tonight thank you all right item 6.01 is made administrative personnel appointments dr alato your recommendation yes ma'am i recommend board approval the personnel listed on the attach sheet be promoted and or appointed do i have a second second okay are there any board questions or comments miss miss connolly call the role please ms corcodell aye
142ms uraya aye mr gilliland miss antoine aye ms shawhan aye mr live aye ms ellis aye mr granin ms hummer aye zero motion passes okay thank you item 6.02 is the shadyside elementary school telecommunication transmission facility and we do have a board a staff presentation so for the record i'm alex shaknovich chief operating officer at the board meeting of 5 december 2018 the board members posed a number of questions that evening we took copious notes and have essentially created a question and answer type presentation so we're taking your discrete questions and we're applying in a discrete fashion i will say that uh this will take some time i will i would prefer with your indulgence to be allowed to go through the q a and i'm simply asking that because there's a probability that if
143a question jumps in your mind as i'm discussing item number three that very well may be answered by the time we get to number seven in a more thorough fashion so we've sort of tried to also lay this out in in a logical progression to the best of our ability as well so let me begin so the question was posed believed by miss antwine should a project be reassessed in light of technical maturity within the industry or in general our response is as follows with the continued proliferation of mobile devices any increased reliance on mobile communications the need for a robust and sound telecommunications capacity infrastructure is greater today than ever the ongoing move from 4g to 5g technology as well as the build out of the next gen 911 system being driven by the
144fcc's 911 improvement act 911 improvement act of 2008 will only increase not decrease the need to construct additional towers or supplemental antennas since the telecommunications grid will require more dense and robust nodes to support the 5g and next-gen 911 platforms along with the numerous other ever increasing throughput demands it isn't also important to note that the national emergency number association has recently estimated that approximately 80 percent of the 240 million 911 calls made annually in the u.s are from wireless devices and why not part of my script let me just explain next-gen uh briefly so the capacity current is to move to a 9-1-1 system the 9-1-1 calls cannot only be accepted through landline but when they come in through cellular devices the systems will be able to triangulate your location and send emergency response
145vehicles the 911 centers in addition to receiving phone calls from mobile devices will also be able to receive text messages photographs and videos straight into the 911 systems that they find will be a benefit to assess a situation and discern better what emergency forces may or may not be appropriate to be dispatched but i digress second question just a minute mister shag mr granted second question was can we have milestone and others make a presentation before the board regarding telecommunication facilities and the telecommunications industry in general as well as their work with aacps and other public sector entities the response is as follows yes certainly we can arrange for such a presentation with representatives of milestone and the industry at a future board of education meeting third provide an update in terms of permits and
146other regulatory approvals a grading permit was submitted to anne arundel county on february 9 2018 and is awaiting final review and approvals pending release of the approved final site development plan by planning and zoning a building permit was submitted to anne arundel county on february 16 2018 and is pending awaiting final review and approvals pending the release of the approved final site development plan by planning and zoning preliminary site development plan was submitted to anne arundel county on may 24 2018 and it was approved on october 10 of 2018. the final site development plan was submitted to the county on november 7 and is awaiting final review and approvals by the planning and zoning office of note the project has also been approved and reviewed and approved without comment or objection on november 14 by
147the maryland department of the environment on january 10 2018 by the us department of the army corps of engineers and on january 11 2018 by the maryland department of natural resources question next is there a need to reassess the 2500 foot commercially zoned proximate site search requirements of anne arundel county code section 18-11-117 sub4 answer as in all regulatory matters the authority having jurisdiction interprets applies and enforces all requisite requirements for regulatory and permit approvals any such requirement if any for reassessment would be imposed by the county department planning zoning not aacps that said a reassessment would likely not be required since the initial 2500 foot radius study was done from the extreme outer edges of the entire elementary school property not from the location of the proposed tower site or the land immediately surrounding
148it question are there any technical adjustments needed to the wetland delineations answer we are not aware of any necessary adjustments needed to the wetland delineations naturally as in all regulatory matters the authority having jurisdictions interpret apply and enforce all requisite requirements for regulatory and permanent approvals if any adjustments were or are to be required it will be at the request of those regulatory bodies question provide more info on the wetland maps and environmental assessment study a code compliance study dated october 23 2017 was developed and produced by wetland studies and solutions inc the maryland department of the environment reviewed said report conducted a site visit on november 3rd and concluded in a november 1417 letter that the department maryland department of the environment issued indicating that it has verified and concurred with the wetland report
149dated october 23 2017 and the wetland delineation depicted therein so there are no dnr regulated wetlands on the proposed cell tower site the us department army corps of engineers reviewed said report conducted a site visit on december 28 and concluded in a letter dated january 10 2018 that the corps verified and concurred with the wetland report dated october 23rd 2017 and the wetland delineations depicted therein the corps further went on to state that in its field inspection its field inspection indicated that the delineation of national waters of and national waters and wetlands of the united states including jurisdictional wetlands depicted in the october 23 2017 report are accurate and that there are no waters of the united states including national or local jurisdictional wetlands present on the site that are regulated by the u.s river
150and harbor act or the u.s clean water act on january 11 2018 the maryland department of natural resources wrote that a wildlife that the wildlife and heritage service division has determined that there are no official state or federal records for listed plants or animal species within delineated area and as a result they have no specific concerns regarding potential impacts or recommendations or protection measures question will reforestation be required on site what will be the impact on playground equipment playfields or field days as you can see on the exhibits before you based upon the extent of the existed forested area to be retained and what we are aware of there is no requirement for reforestation according to the permit documents since only 0.15 acres of forest is being cleared well below the 2.71 acres of clearing
151permitted by the county without a forestation requirements being imposed there will be a 15-foot landscape buffer immediately surrounding the entire length of the access drive from ottawa road an equipment compound which is already further completely surrounded by the existing woodland areas the county's code requires that only 24 shrubs and trees be installed along that landscape buffer again within the existing woods milestones landscaping plan depicts 128 new shrubs and trees newly installed within that heavily wooded area as such since all construction and landscaping activities are contemplated to be confined within that already wooded area there will be no impact upon playground equipment playfields or field days question are there any modifications presently pending or that have been granted by the county relating to the project at shadyside elementary school answer to best of knowledge there are
152no modifications personally pending or that have been granted by the county as it relates to the project at shadyside elementary school question could the county executive approach milestone with other land options answer based upon our contract with milestone there is nothing that we are aware of that would preclude the county executive from approaching milestone with other land options question could new county lands such as turtle run or franklin park work based upon a preliminary assessment both sites would be too far south to eliminate the gap in service that the cell service providers are seeking to remedy naturally the final determination of such would be between milestone verizon the fcc the county's administration and the planning and zoning department it is important to note to the extent that the parks were purchased by the state's program
153open space or pos program funding the pos covenants would likely preclude non-recreational related activities on the land in question question can we explore a land swap with the recreation with recreational parks at the shadyside park ball fields answer as previously stated there is nothing that we are aware of that would preclude the county from approaching milestone with other land options including on recreation and park sites however i would add that anne arundel county public schools would not likely be interested in a landslop land swap at the county's ballpark site since we would have no valid use or reason to own a small piece of land remote from the site that we occupy and that is not continuous to any other anne arundel county public schools land as a side note the shady site shadyside park
154site does appear to be entirely within the chesapeake bay critical area line and is deemed as a resource conservation area by maryland's department of natural resources question does the county's administration have an interest to host a tower or do a land swap with arnold county public schools have they reached out to us our answer is as follows we cannot speak for the administration regarding either their intent or their interest levels again that would be entirely between the county and milestone i did however reach out to the director of recreation and parks who indicated then he and his staff know nothing about this are not initiating anything in disregard and have no blanket contracts in place with any tower providers we were however informed uh informally contacted by the county's office of technology on behalf of
155the emergency operations office police and fire some time ago regarding their desire to potentially construct a high frequency public safety bend radio communication tower mass on the shadyside elementary school site there would be over three times the proposed height of the cell tower monopole being proposed by milestone and require multiple guy wires to support and stabilize thing question was an up or down vote taken by the board with respect to the project answer no regulation fbra does not call for an up or down vote it states that absent action by the board to preclude a project from proceeding the vendors shall prepare the construction documents and requisite applications the board of education reviewed the proposed projects at both its june 21 2017 meeting and again at its september 6 2017 meeting at which time no
156action was taken to preclude a project from proceeding and thus the requisite permit applications were filed question did anne arundel county public schools follow the applicable policy regulations including timeliness and notification answer yes to the best of our knowledge all timelines under direct purview of aacps word here too on april 6 2017 there was an aacps requisite meeting at shadyside elementary school with anne arundel county public school staff and principal on may 23rd 2017 there was the aacps requisite meeting at shadyside elementary school with aacps staff the principal the pta member and a school board member the board of education reviewed a proposed project at its publicly advertised and televised june 21 2017 meeting the aacps required community outreach meeting was held on august 9 2017 with notifications being issued on july 18 2017 august
1571 2017 and august 7 2017. the board of education reviewed a proposed project again at its publicly advertised and televised september 6th meeting following to above milestone commence would make an application to various regulatory authorities and any notifications documents and meeting requirements required by said regular regulators are under the purview of the individual jurisdiction not that of aacps and again as in all regulatory matters since the individual governmental authority having jurisdiction interpret apply and enforce their requirements for regulatory and permit approvals question if a forest conservation agreement is required by the state or county will it impact upon our future ability to build upon or develop our property answer no even if a forest conservation agreement is required by the state or county it will not impact upon our future ability to build upon or
158develop the property almost the entire acre area contemplated as a potential forest conservation area if required is already designated as either wetlands proper or is or in the designated 25 25-foot buffer zone again depicted on the post poster boards in front of you does the obligation to review a school site as a potential location for telecommunication tower stem from the 2006 u.s federal telecommunications act or from our master agreement answer essentially both towers are constructed for obvious reasons to limit or eliminate gaps in wireless coverage the federal telecommunications act of 1996 tca encourages the use of public land to resolve a matter of national concern which is a robust communication system for emergency communications routine communications and the orderly conduct of trade and commerce furthermore the federal tca aims to reduce governmental obstacles to the
159installation of cell phone towers the federal communication commission advises that section 704 requires the federal government to help licensees and spectrum-based services such as cellular get direct access to preferred sites for their facilities federal agencies must make federal property available for its purpose and the fcc is directed to work with states to find ways for states to accommodate licensees who wish to erect towers on state property or use state easements or right-of-ways maryland school systems as creations and creatures of the state fall within the scope of this language 47 usc section 332 c7 provides in bi2 that the regulation of the placement construction and modification of personal wireless service facilities by any state or government or instrumentality thereof shall not prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting the provision of wireless services since revolve resolving
160a significant gap in coverage is generally the basis for the installation of a tower in the first place any such legislation or act would likely violate said provisions in the eyes of the courts and not pass the federal preemption or field preemption review standards board policy fb which governs telecommunication transmission facilities simply states that aacps will comply with all applicable federal state and local laws and regulations as to relate to telecommunication transmission facilities inclusive of the federal tca act and fcc regulations question can the board consider health effects even if the county cannot answer likely not under the federal preemption and field prevention preemption review criteria the federal tca places certain limits on the ability of state or local governments or their equivalents to regulate wireless communication towers 47 usc section 311 c7 provides in
161b i for that no state or local governments or instrumentality thereof may regulate the placement construction and modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis of environmental read health effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the commissions read fcc's regulatory uh regulations concerning such admission emissions once again it is likely that any legislation or act by a state or local governmental body or instrumentality would likely violate said provisions in the eyes of the courts and may and not pass the federal preemption or field preemption review standards on september 2013 in a september 2013 ruling by judge garvis for the u.s district court for the district of maryland espoused upon matters of federal preemption and struck down similarly prohibitive actions as unconstitutional under the supremacy clause by virtue of
162field preemption specifically judge garvis wrote and i quote where a state action falls within a field congress intended the federal government alone to occupy the good intentions and importance of the state's objectives are immaterial to the field preemption analysis field preemption requires that the state to yield to the force of federal law notwithstanding that the state's action is constructed upon values familiar to many and cherished by most question would cell tower projects have been rejected within anne arundel county public schools answer cell tower projects tentatively proposed for belle grove hillsmeer piney orchard elementary school severna park high school and the millersville student support services building in millersville were previously rejected by anne arundel county public school staff question what is the total revenue to date received via the milestone contract answer 805 dollars question what
163is the pro pro rata revenue distribution splits and what have said revenue been spent upon answer for regulation fbra governing telecommunication transmission facilities the school where the telecommunication transmission facilities located shall receive twenty five percent of the revenues from the twenty five thousand dollar one-time site fee to be managed by that school's building principal the school cluster that encompasses the school where the telecommunication transmission facilities located she'll receive 25 percent of the revenues from 25 000 one-time site fee to be managed and apportioned within that cluster by the regional assistant superintendent for that cluster all other revenues from the telecommunication transmission facilities should go to the board of education's general fund as an unrestricted operating budget revenue source to support the district's overall budgetary requirements in its totality question how much time have anne arundel
164county public schools employees spent over the years to develop review and coordinate milestone projects and what percentage of that time has been reimbursed directly via milestone payments to anne arundel county public schools answer salaried anne arundel county public school employees do not tractor time in a detailed in detail via a billable hours type of methodology and given the daily myriad of multitasking activities projects initiatives etc that each works on there's simply no way to quantify this answer the existing contract with milestone does not however contain a provision within it then milestone directly reimburses anne arundel county public schools for each hour spent by aacps staff question qualified clarify the timelines and impact of the lot consolidation and what was the lot consolidation roll call vote answer it was discovered early during the design review process
165by the county that the overall existing shadyside elementary school site was comprised of multiple legacy parcels and carried multiple legacy tax identification numbers as a result these legacy dash line lots should have been vanquished and the lots consolidated when a school was originally constructed in 1971 the county indicated that it would benefit them the state and everyone involved not just here but at any other properties that aacps controls if the legacy lots were consolidated into one unified parcel and the entire site carried only one tax identification number mauson offered to prepare the necessary deeds and plats at no cost to the public since no public land was being conveyed accessed acquired or otherwise encumbered via this ministerial act under the advice of board's legal counsel your council no vote of the board as a whole
166was required aacps is committed to the county it will continue to pursue lack consolidations in the future to the extent that we have construction projects on school sites that contain similarly situated legacy parcels dash lot lines and multiple tax id numbers finally can the board of education corporately or individually be liable for health liabilities or health liabilities in the future answer the old adage that you can be sued by anyone anytime for anything essentially always holds true as to the merits of any such suit or the perspective outcome of same i defer to the advice of your legal counsel that is the conclusion of the q a portion of this presentation i just want to say alex thank you that's i know it was a tremendous amount of work uh you and your team over
167the last two weeks uh to put all of those facts together when it was presented in a very um um uh uneventful and factual manner and i want to let you know that i appreciate it it was a tremendous amount of work for you and your team so thank you mr granin i agree mr shakanovic thank you for the comprehensiveness of your presentation i move that the superintendent take all actions necessary to pause the placement of a cell tower at shadyside elementary until further direction from the board otherwise given the late given the late hour and remaining agenda items assuming that my motion is seconded i call for a vote of the motion second second um miss antoine so if you'll appease me i'd like to i have three specific questions that kind of all
168align i agree with uh dr lotto and mr granny tremendous outstanding job thank you for that especially for the statutory references that you took time to find and and the opinions as well my question is i there was concerns about the other locate possible locations and the response was that those locations were too far south so um not to have you and your team go and research even more but how how far is too far south please and then um the revenue to date i wanted to better understand um is that to say that having milestones cell tower there allows the uh the our schools money and if so it is that part of the capital side or the operational side sure let me address your questions in turn so the the questions are posed
169at the 5 december meeting reference three particular elements of county property two of those elements are appear to be too far south to resolve the coverage gap issues that exist there are coverage gap there are coverage area maps that exist the third and remaining site which was at the shady side ballpark was not however included in that the shady side ballpark does appear to be close enough to the coverage gap area that it would aid it in resolving that to the extent that it would be uh to able to resolve it fully that would be subject to that full analysis with respect to your second question the monies so again the monies are unrestricted operating budget they are not capital at all in nature their general revenue to the board of education classified as unrestricted
170miscellaneous income and they can support any and all expenditure that the board of education does on the operating side of the budget given that we continue to maintain alignment with the appropriation authorities that we've been granted so with that said that here comes the third with the revenue being on the operational side i'm for clarification to date since since we've been engaged with them about 500 500k has been uh utilized for operation support for the schools yes ma'am okay thank you schollheim over what stretch of time because that equates to point zero four percent of one year's budget so i just want to be clear like if that's over four years five years so that the direct question that was asked was revenue to date we have been in a contractual engagement uh with the
171firm since uh mid 2011. got it so that's revenue aggregated two dates since the inception of the contract in 2010 so just for the audience out there to understand that's 0.04 percent of one year's operating budget i wanted to address some items i went down to planning and zoning and looked at the full package today i ran into mr stewart in the elevator um so he can confirm that i was in fact there looking at it and i asked planning and zoning point blank will this require a forest conservation part of the the the hashed part of the the map and she said yes and so i said so this thing can't go through without that and she said yes so it will be required to make that part of forest conservation land just so
172we're all clear and the ball field hopefully the measurement was done from the center point of the consolidated land and this outer circle is that area the ball fields up here and that is fair game and i was not suggesting that anne arundel county public schools purchased that land i was suggesting again it's a suggestion and nothing more that that we make this entire parcel perhaps with the board's approval a forest conservation site the tower is erected perhaps again um you know pending conversations with the county on that site and um and we accomplish uh you know his commitment to zero uh four station loss we get the cell tower which everyone needs and we all agree as needed and um you know figure out the money part and that as well so i just
173want to be clear on that part i have a point of order my motion was seconded and i've called the question um there there were still people who had um who would put push their buttons to ask questions beforehand and we also have public comment that will that will be taken before we have evoked so mr raya there's no such rule that says that miss you're mr raya let's go i just want to okay go ahead i just want to say thank you as well uh mr chiknovich um so i have a couple questions mine is just an inquiry as to why the other projects were rejected do you by any chance no i don't know if you mentioned i don't think you did but the projects at lex river park and other schools why
174were they rejected you know sure i can go through them in a little bit of detail for you so um for a variety of reasons so uh belgrove elementary school is a very very small site it's just north of two acres so in order to comply with the various requirements there's setback requirements uh that are that are required so there's a number of regulatory provisions that are sort of geometry and distance based so bell grove wouldn't meet those those distance and geometrical considerations hillsmeer elementary school is currently in your cip it's one of the schools that dr lotto referenced just several hours ago and he gave his budget address given that we don't know what the ultimate design or outcome or placement of of that school would be in the future it would be unwise
175to put a cell phone tower there that could potentially impede with a future construction piney project elementary school was again a issue of distance and geometry the that site although it does look large half of that property is owned by recreation parks it's not owned by us so the the lot lines that may appear to someone externally are not true by representation when you take a look at the land records for pony orchard elementary school savorna park high school again that has to do with uh timing with construction we approached while you know the school was going through it it's now completed but at that time it was still actively under construction and we didn't want anything to interfere you know and have two contractors on the site and it would just get too messy
176and finally the millersville student support uh services building on uh on 175 right there 301 in millersville is again simply uh too small and the parcel is so small that there's no way that the tower could be cited and comply with the regulatory uh requirements okay um and my other question is could you explain more of what you meant by like the shoreline crisis by that one site you said that the shoreline the critical area yes sure so uh i mean we've talked about um natural conservation areas we talk about wetlands etc so there is there is a provision that um that we're trying to protect obey so what we're trying to do is uh to re restrict to the greatest extent practicable construction within about a thousand foot buffer so creating uh impervious area
177that would create potential for runoffs etc to maybe harm the bay et cetera is something that the regulatory regulators are trying to do the shady side park site that's been referenced through board member questions as a locate as an alternative location that park site is fully within that chesapeake bay critical area zone and it's also been uh deemed by the maryland department of natural resources uh as an environmental protection area essentially under their auspices so is that the part that other board members have also referenced in the swap of land is that the one or is that different they're one in the same okay thank you miss corcoda thank you um for your presentation i appreciate it a lot of those questions were mine um i've been following this issue um in other capacities for
178quite some time and um what remained to me of interest to want to have this conversation and to make sure everyone was included and to extend it to tonight and we did hear from folks from all perspectives and stakeholders although not all were able to attend tonight was a concern over wetlands i personally visited the site prior to taking office with several folks and had encouraged them at the time to check in with mde army corps and dnr and similar with questions of concern of map since that time it appears that it has met all the regulatory standards at the federal which is army corps and two state agencies and one of which included a site visit which i thank you for sharing that information um so i'm just reviewing a little bit of what
179you said three so uh us army corps and uh state uh dnr both did site visits in addition to so dnr did as well so it's two of the three agencies uh one agency did not conduct a site visit and that was the one that was uh looking for protected species or plants so correct that that's part of that habitat protection act um and it was verified sir correct that no species extraneous species were found correct correct or protected okay the other uh question i had posed as part of my decision involved whether or not the school was a green school or in the process of becoming a green school as an optic of education for the res for the students contingent of course on the environmental features and it appears that although that i
180would i would hypothesize to say i think every piece of property on on shadyside peninsula and its neighbors are a vital core part of our environment um it did not appear that we do we is this a green school i'm not i've never been clear on this i've gotten answers that contradict one another i believe it is okay um i don't know one way or the other we certainly can find out okay we can we can check our list of green schools and i don't know i i'll just say because that that really is i think that's part of part yeah that i'm still hearing two different answers because to me that that does make a difference we've listened we have a listing online of all the schools okay if maybe we could have someone
181look that up for a second that has a computer while we're i have a couple more questions for you sir so one of the other issues that was brought to my attention had to do with the lot lines and whether or not those adjustments would make other parcels perhaps within the range of acceptable and i think that it sounds to me based on your testimony tonight that there are two aspects of that number one is what the need of the cell coverage is and what is the standard for the county those are two separate um entities it appears to me based on the testimony i've not seen to the contrary i am going to table my i would wanted to table my decision until i hear public testimony on this but is there anything that
182is missing in there that would benefit a decision in in that that you've not already presented no i believe that the board's questions or opposed were uh were thorough yeah and we did our best ability to uh answer them in kind so i don't have anything else to offer this time um as it relates to public notification i was not clear i'm i'm i'm very comfortable with the county regulations as it relates to a requirement by an applicant my understanding is that milestone is the applicant having rights have haven't been granted authority by acps as the owners to do so and therefore it would be their responsibility to manage and work with the county to ensure all the public notification regulations were met is that accurate or does that need edited no so there are
183essentially two different public notification elements there is an initial so leading up to the board having no objection to the project that he outset there are notification requirements that are embedded within this board of education's regulations once we get past that point then and the applications are made to the various regulatory bodies those notification requirements are completely driven by the requirements of that agency be it county agency federal government agency etc so our the board's notification requirements essentially cease and that responsibility responsibility still remains with the applicant but now they're governed by that federal agency that state agency that local county government agency okay and have to fully comply with whatever those requirements are oh thank you i just got clarification shadyside is not a green school at this time thank you thank you ma'am
184yeah mr ellis okay wait i was not finished by apologies um so one of the other considerations that i did have had to do with notification and apple notification i i know a public record with the county and its application and file being available of what happened on the county requirements to notification md's requirements notification when applications been filed in the similar associated agencies um i'd are you able to testify to us that the notifications prior to the initiation of any applications to federal estate and local officials were met to the best of aacps's ability yes ma'am okay in the are you aware and this may be a question i would prefer legal uh too if you had to defer to um is there a consequence to a uh termination of this project as it
185relates to our contract with milestone and if so what is what is that look like what's the consequence well every contract has um well not every almost all contracts have uh termination provisions embedded within those and then the ability of a contractor to recover damages or profits or whatever is enumerated within that contract so it would at that time essentially become a legal dispute item and the outcome of that would be subject to either negotiations with this board or an action that's taken via an appeal to this board maryland state board of education or the circuit courts for the area and if um if we if permits were in hand but this body chose to enact a motion to pause the actual construction of the project would that be can possibly construed as a contractual
186breach i would be disinclined to answer that question at this point in time and defer to legal counsel because that would become part and parcel to a potential dispute item madam chair given the severity and of the legal nature of the motion um i would request that our legal counsel come and answer that question please at this time mr burns good evening madam president mrs gilland dr alato members of the board for the record i'm darren burns uh general counsel to the board i i did hear the word termination just came up and was discussed although i think that i'm not sure that's what it originally was was my question has to do with the motion withstanding is whether or not that by by very it's very virtue would constitute a breach right and i
187want to clarify i i think the idea of placing a hold or a stop on some action that's involved in a contract is certainly different than terminating a contract and and i think mr zack novice was pointing out that if one party decides to we're gonna call it terminate a contract that does have certain legal consequences that are defined not just by the contract if it's silent it's gonna be con defined by the law what i believe has been put forward tonight represents i think some version of an action by the board to do something under the contract or to do something outside the contract my best advice to you is this i i'm i'm not aware you've received as a board or that dr arlatta has commissioned a formal legal opinion on what your
188rights are or your remedies are under your contract with milestone i'm not aware that you've received any opinion on what milestones rights and remedies are it's a serious topic i would hesitate to to tell you to move too quickly on any action that you're not you have not received guidance on the potential consequences but depending on the motion it may not be something that invokes anything in the contract and so again sitting here today without the contract in front of me with the motion that i heard i can't give you an opinion on whether there are contract ramifications i can tell you you would want a formal opinion if you choose to take action under the contract to do something and so a pause would be a action on imposed on the contract because it
189would not be running its regular course as a project they would have a permit in hand and money invested in that but we would be halting the construction of it you're you're the owner they are the applicant well you're the owner of the property they're an applicant in a proceeding for the county government i'm not aware of any particular rule that allows you to stop the county government process correct but as the owner of a property if you want to exercise a right in regard to your property you would not only have whatever exists under the common law and state law regarding education agencies you would also have what's defined in the contract and again if you're asking me whether tonight you're asking whether or not under your milestone contract you have the right to
190unilaterally as owner tell milestone to stop its activities stop proceeding for the county stop doing whatever it is they're doing i can't answer that question if you're asking whether or not as a board you could engage with milestone about the topic of pausing with whatever the contract says there's nothing to stop you from doing that but i hesitate to give you advice on what the contract tells you absent the ability to look at the contract and assess it under a specific set of circumstances so it sounds like if the motion were modified to pause for enough time to request a a legal brief and dialogue of the contract that would probably be more more legally appropriate so is not and reduce the risk of us engaging in a potential breach or other legal action or
191recourse i will answer that two parts one is i don't want to sound like it's self-serving i'm not suggesting that you would need board counsel at least at the beginning to offer such an opinion dr lotto has legal counsel they engage in contract matters all the time if your motion was to pause long enough to ask the superintendent to obtain advice that would be shared with the board about your contract rights and remedies and milestones rights and remedies that would be an appropriate thing that i could support in terms of advising you it wouldn't have to come from me because it seems like it would serve its purpose of its immediate and allow us to operate healthily within legal our legal obligations which although we have not personally adopted the school board has so um
192i thank you very much for that yeah and i i would add um too that you'll remember that under law dr arlatto is the sort of the written approval authority through himself or his destiny of your contracts without again seeing in front of me and seeing who signed it i can tell you that you didn't enter into a contract with milestone absent his approval i think it's entirely appropriate before you start directing actions under that contract under his authority executive i think he should be comfortable enough to let you know what your rights and remedies are so dr arlatto before i uh table i i resigned my microphone there we've not heard your opinion on this and potential consequences from your optics of what we with this decision or motion would do i echo i
193thank you for the opportunity and i was going to wait to allow you to finish before i press the button i echo and before mr um before your council was brought forward i echo exactly where he is um and his advice in that i think that um the board needs um counsel on exactly what the remedies are um if there is a breach of contract if this and if in the end it it it is determined to be a breach of contract and that analysis of the contract has not yet been done in your opinion is a pause advised to the board as a person who advises us as our employee i think it is in light of the conversation tonight the answer is yes a pause is appropriate if the board is looking for
194counsel on um uh the legal ramifications of a breach of contract yes thank you very much no further questions ma'am and i'm a chair thank you mr burns miss ellis um i'm going to go through real quick um so there's uh it was bro mentioned there's no reason to acquire a ball field in a land swap i i would argue the reason could be to provide cell service to the area including the school without putting a tower on school grounds um i have a couple questions um can you can it be verified that residents were given two weeks notice for um public um what do you call a public hearing um and i asked because several parents and residents from the area indicated to me that they did not get that notification so i i
195i don't i would like to hear that verified how that was notification was given out and as far as the argument that school systems are not um have to put cell phones or cell towers on school grounds if we have no justification not to per federal law we have there are other school systems in maryland who have decided not to do that so um i i just think we have enough reason to learn a little more so i i support hitting the pause button um before we move forward michelle heine i'm i moved to call the question that was previously stated and seconded i i have a question for um this is robert sewell's question for you mr burns so this item i think i may have made a mistake earlier this is an information
196item it was not moved to action so it's it's listed on our cover sheet as an information to action item um and so was it says action it says action on there oh on our agenda and on here it says information that's what i wanted to clarify because it says on here information to action i wanted to make sure for that so um the the question has been called however we have not we have a number of people who want to speak on this before it hands what is the robert's rules on that after after the primary motion uh has been moved and seconded and there's at some point in time during the discussion a member wishes to call the question uh once they're called upon you you've called upon whoever i think it was
197michonne she may move to call the question if it is seconded and then a two-thirds vote of the majority that can call the question that's how it's done would that be a separate separate motion it's the motion that was just made in second and i think michonne made a motion and someone seconded okay i think mr grant in a second all right so now the the there's no further discussion of the primary motion and it's subject to a two-thirds majority to uphold the calling of the question so uphold the calling and then and then you would vote on the question got it okay so we are it is tricky it is it's kind of so so the motion before us is to call the question and vote um right but to in discussion that so
198it's not to vote on the motion it's it's to vote on calling that because that motion has been made to call the question can we now take discussion on that no it's just a vote to call the question as normally occurs okay so we are voting to call the question and vote on the original motion is everybody clear on what we're voting on is everyone clear on what we're voting miss antoine is not so i'm going to explain again we are voting on we're voting on whether we we are ready to vote if we call the question at this point and end discussion on the motion from the public or the board to call the question and go ahead or to continue discussion so this is a the vote to call the question to move
199on to vote for the motion everybody got that now okay miss connolly would you call would you call the roll poor cadell aye mrea aye mr gullin aye miss antwine we're voting to call the question to end there we go okay so and that means no one else gets to speak period send this a name for me please michelle aye mr live nay miss ellis aye ms hummer nay six three motion passes so now we will vote on mr grannon's motion which is would you repeat your motion mr grant yes the motion is uh that the superintendent take all actions necessary to pause the placement of a cell tower at shadyside elementary until further direction from the board otherwise all right roll call miss conley would you call the roll please miss corkado nay it's
200uraya hi mr gilliland i mr granny aye ms hummer nay six three motion passes miss corcodell i just wanted to comment that um my name vote is because of the absolute because of the broadness of it and the fact that we have residents out here that wanted to speak to allow us to independently review all aspects of this project and by placing the motion during the information phase their voices were thwarted i do believe that a pause is necessary but not under the terms and without hearing everyone's voice miss antoine so i thought about that in that few seconds that i got to think about it and the motion i understood to be that the superintendent would do everything necessary to to pause the project basically which i believe includes that public input and during
201well um i'm not sure about that but during that pause we can ask for a full legal opinion as to what the ramifications could be on the contract basis for this i i understand that and and just in response to my fellow members part of this motion included him pausing the entire doing whatever necessary to pause the project as opposed to pausing the project for additional information and additional opportunity for the public that is what i am differentiating it's the back end of the motion because i don't think that our residents that were here to allow us to to really get input um i think would have helped me drive closer to an independent decision on this particular motion miss antoine mine would just be a question if ever if having requesting the superintendent does
202everything necessary does that mean getting input from the public and and what does that mean everything sure understood i just believe just like all means all i believe everything means everything in in the essence of time i won't belabor that but i believe i i'm confident that dr alato will do everything necessary michelle could the public speak now about it or are we moving on to another item mr ellis before we get to public comment i i just want to be clear um i i think the whole reason for the pause button is because there are so many there's still so many outstanding questions on this board that i don't see how we can move forward but i i can only speak for myself in this statement but i think that um probably everyone here
203recognizes that we would we want the cell cell service in the area for the shady side residents and for our school um so we're just trying to find the most safest and most efficient way to accomplish that mr grayman i have a question for board council but my understanding of the way this has worked is each of these agenda items this was an action item it has now been voted on that agenda item is complete discussion is for the purpose of is for the purpose of informing votes on action items that action item is done if two board members want to put this on every single meeting that we have going forward we can do that this item is finished that's my understanding is that correct and i think that's been your practice okay thank
204you very much so we're up to 6.03 so um so and so then is this is that the will of the board of the rest of the members of the board that all the extensive public comment that we had here would these folks would not speak tonight that's what we're saying if we're going to move on to the to the area it's kind of miss urea that's kind of miss uraya did they say we're good we don't want to speak or do us well i mean in my personal opinion if we just halted the project for more opinions to answer more questions than the people want to speak we should speak so can we make a motion then i motion for the people that want to make public comments a public comment on this action
205item i second that okay mr connolly would you call the role plea aye we will now have some public comment for those who still would like to speak robert cube victoria calhoun erica cullenberg jennifer cannon i may not be saying that one right and lisa taylor cerriero that's the first batch if any of those folks would like to come speak go ahead i'm just going to keep my comments quick based on what what you guys did i'm very concerned about these cell towers and that this making this land available is absolutely taking you beyond the scope of what this board is supposed to do the mission of the anne arundel county public schools is to nurture and provide for the education of our students you are now in the cellular communications business and i think
206that that's part of what the problem is here i i've done a little bit of research i i just think you guys are moving beyond that this is a commercial enterprise by virtue of you guys having the land you're making money and it's coming in it's unauditable i just think you guys have been pulled outside this scope and i i would strongly encourage you to look along those lines because i think the fault in all of this is higher than than we're looking thank you thank you miss calhoun someone just go ahead okay um good evening members of the board my name is lisa taylor cerrero from shadyside maryland i've been a teacher for 15 years now and i'm a mother of three i come again tonight to oppose the cell towers on all school
207grounds in particular shadyside elementary i i just wanted to just talk to you guys a little bit about the wetlands learning center al center that i mentioned at the last meeting for the newest members um i wanted to tell you a little more about the proposal that we were told would not be considered until the cell tower issue was settled the shadyside elementary owl center was proposed to create an environmental learning center in our forested wetlands on the school grounds our proposal would accomplish the following create a structured outdoor classroom in nature walk extend the trail system to connect the peninsula provide a stem or steam opportunity based on the natural setting that exists on site and in our community and its heritage is the great swamp um and teach our children about the local
208environment and ecology by providing learning opportunities based upon biology chemistry and environmental studies preserve and enhance the wetlands and the natural ecology present on the site the project would be fully planned and funded constructed through private means and be donated to the school the project would include a natural trail system which is ada compliant an elevated walkway and sensitive environmental areas with integrated teaching and sampling stations a structured outdoor classroom for students digital cameras microscopes insect necks uh collection containers age appropriate monitor monitoring equipment ph strips trash receptacles etc special instruction from outside resources and companies whether public or private entities planning engineering and permitting and it was all to be privately funded with no expense to the school system um so you know instead we might be getting a tower so i was very
209happy to hear that you're pausing it um there are other options uh for the tower and i asked that um that we let school grounds be used for school grounds and for our children and not for things that bring fear to so many parents in our community um and and i appreciate that you guys voted to pause this thank you thank you miss taylor hello um thank you for allowing me an opportunity to speak my name is robert kuby i'm a professional engineer with bachelor's master's degrees environmental engineering encompassing civil and chemical engineering water chemistry environmental science water hydrology meteorological science and nuclear technology my 40-year career in engineering has taken me to multiple locations in north america europe australia pacific rim to consult an industrial pollution hazardous waste and environmental contamination within my career
210i spent two years with the defense thought reduction agency in eight years inside the cia developing technologies to covertly detect and identify chemical and biological agents and nuclear weapon technologies i'm a been a professional engineer in maryland for 35 years and i now consult writing helping large corporations write proposals for federal and state procurements and i currently work interestingly enough for att corporation helping them write proposals for telecommunications for both contracts for federal agencies with that kind of background in mind i'm here to talk about the cell tower and specifically focus specifically on on the wetland study i was asked by i'm a resident of shadyside my wife and i have lived in shadyside for almost 15 years i was asked by the members of the community to review this wetland study which i did
211i prepared a position paper on it which is available if you'd like to see it i met with along with other members with the planning and zoning commission and presented my position paper and i can make that available for your review a wetland study was conducted on behalf of milestone in october of 2017. my review of that study indicated several major deficiencies in analysis and conclusions one at the time of the study a drought caused a deficit of 3.2 inches of rain within the previous month while the wetlands while the wetlands report stated conditions were normal which is incorrect the u.s army corps of engineers recommends wetland studies conducted after the middle of the wet season or after several soaking rains which obviously did not occur here and that's information that the corps of engineers
212and dnr evaluation probably wouldn't even be aware of they they see normal on the checkoff sheet and think everything was normal that was incorrect this property has water on it or around it most of the year and it was usually dry at that time of the year number two after taking just three soil samples they derived a fairly complex wetlands delineation massive should have required multiple samples in a carefully developed grid pattern probably 20 or more in order to develop a delineation map of the complexity they provided i've consulted at complex environmental remediation projects over the years and i can assure you this wetland study does not have the data needed for such a complex delineation map the wetland study divided the site into small irregularly shaped parcels of wetlands and not wetlands interestingly enough
213a corridor of not wetland parcels was reported that matched the requirements of the cell tower company exactly number three they collected three samples two were identified as wetlands and one was identified as not wetlands although it had several wetland uh indicators associated with it with this type of finding when this type of finding is raised professional protocol calls for conservative approach to be reported especially for a subject of this high volatility nature from a regulatory and cultural perspective wetlands are mercuric and the boundaries can be changed over time as weather conditions change this this i can assure you as a professional engineer i would never advise a client to attempt to build anything on this property thank you mr cumin can i i'm sorry can i just take a few more seconds i want to
214make it it's thank you if you have written esma you can share it with our with the onboard assistants and we can share well the comments are provided about the core of engineer and the dnr assessments are wrong they're absolutely unequivocally wrong so i can address that issue i would like to see it if you're willing to read that okay all right i've been here before for several other reasons um i'm so upset over what has happened today your behavior is no role model for any of our children um when mr graham walked over to mike shay and said that he had the vote take the vote i felt like my voice was never going to be heard and i'm going to run out of time because i'm so emotional none of these people have
215kids at my son's school none of them and let me just my name is jennifer cayden i am a resident of shadyside i went to shadyside elementary my dad went to shadyside elementary my son goes to shadyside elementary you guys are talking about cell phones this isn't even about cell phones it's about a monopole antenna it's not a cell tower i worked at verizon wireless for 16 years we had a cell tower in our parking lot we had antennas on the roof i have no cancer this thing is glued to my ear literally they called me the phone girl because i love talking on the phone the landline phones inside of our school do not work when the power goes out we live in a swamp the power goes out all the time my son
216sat on the bus at school for two hours because the power was out and they didn't know if he should go in the school or be driven back home and nobody called me nobody called me because they had to leave the phone open for emergencies there was no heat on his bus there was no heat inside and he sat there for two hours and i didn't even know about it so when i say that the importance of this cell phone is now it is now it is last year we need cellular service people cannot use their phones you have all of these people talking about no cell towers writing their notes in the lobby with the notes on their cell phone shut the cell phones down in this building first for one week that's like
217a really long time one week they don't have service my son is in a school we live in a day and age of mass shootings we can say it's not going to happen to us it happened in annapolis elementary schools are not immune so when it's time for that man to come into our building with a gun are we going to say oh it's jimmy's turn to grab the landline phone he can hide under the desk with the cord of calls to 911 come from these and if you can't use it you're in trouble you guys are talking about all this stuff this is my kid my school my community and they are speaking out and these people here are the same people week after week after weeks and the same things that don't affect
218them thank you miss cayden miss cullenberg my name is erica cullenberg and i'm a resident of shadyside i live just off of idlewild road close to where the cell tower is going i'm also the parent of a child at shadyside elementary and i'm a strong supporter of the shadyside tower i cannot make or receive phone calls from inside my home i must be outside and even then sometimes it's a little spotty i've had an emergency in my front yard and my husband could not get a signal to call 9-1-1 so he had to waste what could have been precious moments running inside to get the phone to call 9-1-1 luckily it wasn't a life-or-death situation but what if it were what if something happens in the school or on the playground that is much more
219serious and a teacher can't just pull out his or her cell phone for to call for emergency services what happens when the power goes out which is not unusual in shadyside when school's in session and none of the landlines work how in this day and age of technology can i not use my cell phone in my own home the opponents here don't represent everyone in the community some of them don't even live in shadyside or anywhere near shadyside this cell tower is in has been in the planning for two years it can be constructed in the next few months the board has already reviewed this project why is it resurfacing now it's the week before christmas southern middle schools concerts tonight the second annual parade of lights is happening in deal there's a shadyside cub
220scout pack meeting those are only the events i'm aware of people want to spend time with their families they couldn't be here tonight but i want to make sure that you know that much of the community is for the cell tower thank you miss killember next randy williams peggy williams claire miller brian dobbs and mike shay with mike leave uh in each time i'll just go i'll just be very brief i've prepared a bunch of remarks but uh to spare some time thank you very much for voting to um put a hold on this uh i am could you give your name i'm sorry yes let me start up my name is brian dobbs i live in edgewater my daughter goes to mayo and uh just i'll just read my first sentence here children depend
221on the parents in their community to keep them out of harm's way this is why i stand in solidarity with these fine people from shadyside who oppose the construction of a cell tower at the elementary school thank you very much good late evening everybody um i'm randy williams and i attended shadyside in 1971 the first year that it was constructed and i live about a half a mile away from the school now um the um i presented to you today some several different pieces of paper i'd like you to take a look at them when you get a chance it doesn't have to be today i'm speaking in opposition to the project and i'm speaking for one particular young lady who couldn't get here today jocelyn valor who has a son named bentley and she
222asked me to speak here because she was not able to come to the meeting you have about 30 plus public comment sheets that i brought from our community from alumni neighbors parents grandparents and others that just weren't able to attend the meeting tonight but wanted to get their voices heard on november 1st of 2017 the board received about a hundred handwritten petitions following the community meeting and i believe that was the second time i turned those in i also presented 300 printed names from a change.org petition it also included about 40 comments as well so to date that change.org petition had 100 up 513 people opposed there was a change.org petition in favor of the site it had 151 signatures the reason i'm standing here today is because i'd like you to stop this project
223but i also would like you to stop projects at all schools in anne arundel county because it's done enough is enough board members in public session told us that a lot of these names are from out of state i did not find a policy that stated that if you sign a petition that you have to live in maryland so that was discounted uh about i know that there are also grandparents relatives maybe on parents who are divorced to live out of state they probably signed the forms it doesn't matter we are all american citizens and it is democracy and we all deserve the voice to be heard two weeks later on november 14th we sent in a four-year request and asked how many positions were there for the tower and how many were against the
224tower the answer that came back to us was that there were 53 in support and 30 against how can this be we've been discounted and discredited since this process started since the beginning since the original community meeting it's about time that the school board take a look at well you guys are new um as a new board please look at the policies and make sure that they are followed because community input was not heard nor was it put towards the decisions up until this point so i really appreciate your time tonight in addition to that you have 250 handwritten signatures that were collected in the last couple of weeks from shadyside residents thank you miss williams thank you so um is claire miller and peggy williams not here okay all right jacqueline cleary linda nguyen
225natalie robert jessica o'kane corrine frank and kenneth michael most of these people i'm here first i'm going to go first good evening i'm sorry it is so late i do appreciate you all listening right now my name is jessica o'kane i'm gonna i am an anne arundel homeowner i'm a parent's two middle age two middle school children i'm an attorney i'm a real estate broker and i'm chair of the anne arundel county commission against cell towers at schools i just would like to um emphasize that as a school board you are sitting here in a proprietary capacity as the landlord on this property not in a regulatory capacity as a government entity as a general practice wireless companies routinely falsely represent that the telecommunications act of 1996 prohibits state agencies and boards from considering the
226adverse health impacts from radiation being emitted from cell towers in deciding whether or not to enter into a least milestone however the board is in the board of education is acting in a proprietary capacity rather than regulatory and as such they can consider the potential adverse health at impacts the cell tower can inflict upon children and i know there was a lot of siding of such 47 usc so i'm going to have my own site sprint spectrum lp verse mills 283 f third 404 second circuit 2002 where the school board entered into a lease to allow sprint to construct a celtar and school property and the school board acted in a proprietary capacity and as such was not constrained by the telecommunications act of 1996. um they were so there's not enough time and it
227is unfortunate that it's late and it's unfortunate that we only get three minutes each when i forgot how to say allen's last name gets to do a whole entire spiel i have so many comments to the things that he has said that were misleading um but i digress i will submit them in writing um in addition there will be an adverse impact on property values for all those near the school and therefore those thinking of moving there it's beyond reasonable argument that the installation of a 10 tower story at the heart of this school in a residential neighborhood and in one such proximity to single-family homes will adversely impact the financial values of those homes across the united states both real estate appraisers and brokers have rendered professional opinions that support what common se sense
228dictates when large cell phone towers are installed unnecessarily close to residential homes such homes suffer material losses and value which typically range anywhere from five to twenty percent in the worst of cases the installation of a cell tower too close to a residential home causes the home to be to be rendered wholly unsalable and i have lots of studies and as a broker i can testify to this and i see what is the and now my time is over i do want to say one thing there were lots of people that spoke tonight that you let go over and so it is kind of rude and i know it's late but you have been cutting people off that are speaking on this issue thank you miss okay please go right ahead my name is natalie
229robert and this is ellie knight robert she'll hopefully be attending shadyside elementary in the fall and um we thank you for your service for being here this evening just a few days before christmas and i come in peace i just would like to say that i believe as a taxpaying citizen of the state of maryland that all of us pay taxes that's the money that should be used to fund schools not businesses that approach the school for cheap real estate to me that just stinks secondly i did some research and there's a lot of science for and against the safety of cell phone towers but my takeaway is it's unknown because this the um radiation is relatively new and we don't know the effects long term so i'd sure hate to be on the wrong
230side of history if we do discover that there that there are some negative health outcomes to young people because i think this is precedent setting if this board votes to put the tower on school property to get extra funds for education and then other school systems follow suit then we wholesale possibly generations of children sorry i'm a little nervous and emotional we expose children over generations to the radiation that comes out of these towers without knowing exactly what we're doing when the funds exist to support a school system they just need to be allocated in that way that's wrong also so thank you thanks for letting us speak thank you ms robert miss frank i'm short so i like to stand up um i absolutely agree that we need cell service in our community and
231in every community i'm not in the shadyside community i'm in the bodkin school district in addition to the health and emergency concerns that were brought up i would also love to point out that in our school we would love to facebook live broadcast or pta meetings but we're unable to do so because of our sales service but i do want to try to find some more palatable um you know maybe options to the community a lot of people are really concerned you know maybe there's some better ideas i know that mr alex s was up here and he was discussing the turtle run property i was unable to follow all of it because i was trying to take notes as i was listening but um i know that when the county started this process we
232didn't own the turtle run property are we still having that conversation is that a done deal i understand that milestone is supposed to initiate all action um but it could could it be possible for the county executive to reach out to milestone with a proposal has anybody asked him maybe that could be possible um and if milestone accepted i would like to ask aacps would you be willing to renegotiate that i'm also going to ask that maybe moving forward could we exempt our green schools from these cell towers maybe that would at least make some people a little more comfortable and i want to thank everybody for being here as well thank you miss frank is kenneth michael or linda nguyen or jacqueline clary here do you want to speak okay all right is there
233any other public comment on this item all right thank you all very much all right mr granny oh oh i'm sorry i'm sorry miss oakes good evening india oaks hillsmair elementary and thank you for taking the letter i submitted yesterday into consideration and again this is just a quick comment since i do plan to send a follow-up letter in response to some of the answers shared tonight but i just wanted to go on verbal record that by narrowing the question of what previous locations were rejected to just cell towers the new board members unfamiliar with past history were given misleading information regarding hillsmear elementary since while it is possible a cell tower was rejected before my son was enrolled there a mini cell was placed on the pool immediately next to one of our parking
234lots last november so i just wanted to clarify that not all telecommunication projects were actually rejected at hillsmere elementary school thank you ms oaks miss nell hi good evening everyone i will be brief as well my name is erin snell i'm also a parent at hillsbeer elementary school and i just wanted to echo what people said about concerns of cell phones broadly speaking i have three children and we have a self tower mini or the little mini at our school at annapolis middle school there's a big tower in annapolis high school there's a big tower and i worry about the health of my kids and all kids as we don't really know the impacts of that so i just wanted to say for any kid out there whether they have a parent group that's organized
235enough to get a green school but i worry about those school systems those schools in our system also who don't have that organization to fight it and i just think we need to do what's best for all of our kids in our county thank you mrs snell mr granite i move that we take agenda item 6.07 out of order next the reason is a personal one i have an eight-year-old and a four-year-old i'm a single parent that i'm going to lose my babysitter i would like to be able to dress and vote on item 6.07 second so the motion is to move item 6.07 out of order on the agenda up to the next item is there any board questions or comments on this on this motion wait so um okay miss connolly would you
236call the role please miss corcodeal hi oh excuse me just a minute mr live yeah on uh the items listed for information correct yes thank you miss corcodell i aye ms uraya aye mr gilliland aye miss antwine aye ms schallheim aye mr lyde aye ms ellis hi mr aye ms palmer aye okay item 6.07 is first reading for policy board organizational meeting board officers policy bbc miss ortiz good evening for the record jeanette ortiz legislative and policy council my apologies for my horse voice i'm coming down with something um so before you we have policy bbc board organizational meeting and board officers it's before you for first reading this policy was last updated on august 18 2010. the policy has been revised to change the date for the election of officers clarify the duties of
237the president provide for a succession plan and specify voting requirements these proposed revisions will be posted on our website for 30 days for a public comment i'm happy to answer any questions mr grant yeah i i move to amend the policy uh before it's placed on the board's website for public comment my amendment is to amend section c 1 d which addresses the president's duties d in particular addresses determining the agenda for board meetings my motion is to add the following seven words at the end of c1d after consultation with all other board members so c1d if my amendment is approved would read that the president determines the agenda for board meetings after consultation with all other board members second are there any board questions or comments on this amendment so all right if there
238are no questions or comments is there any public comment on this amendment okay there's no comment miss connolly could you call the role miss corcodell aye drea hi bill aye aye mr heim aye mr live aye ms ellis hi brannon i'm gonna vote i and i thank my colleagues and my eight-year-old and four-year-old thank you as well ms hummer i find zero motion passes are there any other questions or board questions or comments regarding this policy all right are there any public comments regarding this policy so this policy will be um will be posted for 30 days and returned to us um in january and january all right thank you now what pardon oh i'm sorry mr lib uh mr grant just clarification uh i did vote in favor of this is this let's say
239that miss hummer is the president and she can't get me because i'm unavailable so does that mean the president then can't set the agenda until she gets a check mark from every single one of us i mean i'm looking at the you know practicality of how we interpret that amongst ourselves if you're asking me for a response to that i i i think the language would be reasonably interpreted to mean after certainly reasonable attempts to consult with all board members i also don't think obviously would mean you know waiting until the day before this is an issue that has come up before there has been a past practice and miss hummer has followed the practice that was carried out by prior president so i'm not saying at all or insinuating at all that she's done
240anything out of the board's practice what i'm suggesting is the board's past practice is outdated and needs to be thrown out the window and that the president really is just the first among equals the president is not someone on this board who should be setting the direction of the board or doing really anything other more than any other board member than just chairing the meetings and that we should all do that in a collaborative and consultative way and that the current um system so for example i can say that i know for a fact that some of the new board members that wanted to come on wanted to add agenda items more than one of them wanted to do it and that was not permitted and then they were told after the agenda was submitted
241to the public that it would take five votes to get an agenda item on i think that all that kind of parliamentary and procedural wrangling needs to go out the window if board members want something on the agenda it should be on the agenda it's just as a clarification we do have a policy for the board that stipulates that we follow robert's rules of order and all of those statements uh all of those items about adding um to the agenda that was following robert's rules of order it was some confusion because board members were sworn in so close to the date to have that and i will fully say that i gave the wrong information to board members because i didn't realize the details on that for to have that and i got clarification as
242we got closer to the date but that was an unusual thing under robert's rules and then under further consultation with robert's rules that was cleared up but that would be one you know any time that two board members put at make a request it's added to the agenda but that was an unusual circumstance that we fell in for that mr lott understand miss homer thank you and mr grant i i concur with your uh summation mr ray mr live also just after a long debate at the policy committee um that's specifically why we also added and see number one in accordance with the board handbook specifically to address d so that it would stipulate that not just the president determines specifically that word but like in accordance with the other board members as stipulated in
243the handbook so just for that thank you mr gilliland thank you madam president and i don't i certainly given it's 11 15 i know mr granny needs to go this this is just a clarification question and i don't want to belabor it tonight but maybe when we get to the next reading we can talk a little bit more that will help us moving forward and and that's around number five in accordance with state law affirmative vote of five members and we know that that's in statute now um there are some things that this board does without five votes and i i just want to be sure that we're clear moving forward so for instance we're talking about two board members getting something on the agenda well that's potentially contrary to the law now i know
244the spirit of the law that was not the intention however they were looking at official actions of the board so i want to make sure that we're not boxing ourselves in in in any way that we're jeopardizing five votes versus what a reasonable expectation may be um whether it's one member getting something on the agenda two or do we have to now vote for five every time you know because now it's here and of course it's in the law so again maybe a later discussion given the the hour unless you sure i mean that language is state taken directly from the law i wouldn't think putting something on the agenda would constitute like an official action because you know it seems like that we're but we can you know massage it or okay with some
245more clarifying language so that's absolutely clear that putting something on the agenda would not qualify as the interest why i raise that is then on the off chance we do something that's let's say controversial that night could someone question that it was done sure without the the acceptance of state law or not in accordance with state law so yeah that's my reason for asking not that i'm i'm not a hall monitor by any means so miss corcodell i just in in response to member gillian's comments i think the reason the way i understood it was that if if you're putting something on the agenda after it's gone to the public for notification that the five vote is because you're thwarting the notification to the public not because of any official or unofficial action by virtue
246of the vote so the two is just to make sure it's relevant was my in was the way it was explained to me and the five of its action on the night of is because you are thwarting public opinion every time you add something to an agenda to discourage it to be used except for in emergencies if i may just in response that was just one example and yeah you know it i'm not right enough at this later to think of other examples but but there could be i concur we should look into that just to verify because that was my plain english understanding of it was that that was what was differentiating it and yes that is that would be troublesome if we had to go through that you know that would allow that
247that would narrow the flexibility most certainly would it also um i think the the intent of that as well and again you know going back to when this was done almost two years ago we had prior to the last board being seated i i know maybe dr elato's first year pre-dating mrs hummer there were times when the board did not have a quorum because there were some vacancies from the transition of governor o'malley to governor hogan and i think what they were trying to avoid was three board members you know sitting here making decisions and so i know that's the spirit of this but i just didn't want to be boxed in in any way or this board to be boxed in future boards all right sounds to me item 6.03 is the 2019 legislative
248program dr arlatto your recommendation yes ma'am i recommend board approval of the 2019 legislative program and we do have a staff presentation ms ortiz yes and i'm sorry that you have to listen to this voice but uh before you for consideration is the proposed 2019 legislative program a proposed revisions the program are formatted similar to policy revisions new languages in red font and deleted language has read strikeouts some revisions are substantive for example i have included updated information on the work of the kerwin commission and other revisions are grammatical or stylistic the legislative program provides a comprehensive overview of the board's positions on various education related issues that impact maryland public education and aacps in particular the program serves many purposes throughout the year and during the legislative session it is used by aacps staff
249throughout the year to represent the board's positions on various issues that may arise or are presented by stakeholders the program is also helpful to our delegation and decision makers in annapolis as such it is sent to our elected officials partners and stakeholders to provide them with information about aacps as well as for the board's legislative positions and priorities this information will hopefully help guide our elected officials when considering legislative and budgetary issues that come before them the 2019 legislative session is right around the corner with the maryland general assembly convening on wednesday january 9th the general assembly convenes every year for 90 days from january to april to act on nearly three pieces of legislation as well as the state's annual capital and operating budgets our legislative program is particularly helpful when legislators are drafting
250amending and voting on bills or making budget decisions during the legislative session i use the legislative program to draft testimony and advocate on your behalf when education-related legislation and budgetary matters are introduced and heard before the general assembly the program allows aacps to respond quickly and provide effective advocacy during the hectic pace of the session i am happy to answer any questions you may have regarding the proposed revisions michelle heim i don't have questions well i submitted all my concerns in advance but i i do hope that we have time to go through some of those you can ask whatever you like all right well on page and i'm sorry you don't feel well and i know it's late um the first bullet under aacps opposes in light of the fact that we are still
251going through the letter water situation i don't believe that all unfunded mandates are outside of the scope of what is um generally you know what what we like good main maintenance of our buildings for example and so i would move to add to the end of that sentence beyond the scope of the responsibility school systems have to provide safe safe and healthy places for students to learn i realize that this is a counter to what has been done in the past but what was done in the past led to in writing opposition about the leaded water thing which i don't think was good pr for the school system at all i'm grateful for the law and it's uncovered numerous um you know high uh highlighted uh fixtures and so i just i just want to
252add that so i'm to add that is that something that needs a second sorry um so you're looking to have that okay um i would just say when we get to the unfunded mandates so this when we get to our legislative program these are broad general things that we say in general but any specific bill can be pulled out and voted on separately we have there's been things we might say we oppose all unfunded mandates but there could be specific things we say but we're making an exception with this one so at any time of ms ortiz can bring us one or a board member can ask that a board be pulled out and be considered separately so it wouldn't be a blanket thing so um my concern with this language would be that it's
253pretty broad looking at cell health and safety would cover many things i believe that the language that's there right now that we could say unfunded mandates and we still have the ability to on this issue or you know on health and safety or any issue we have the ability to bring out any bill and we've done that in the past we have we have pulled out bills and said this is an this is an unfunded mandate that we support and so there is the way to do that without adding really specific language this is really helpful thank you um i just want to now that there's you know five new faces on the board i just want to avoid another situation where we're on record as saying we're opposed to something that i personally felt
254should have been part of the school maintenance from the start and then we avoid the pr nightmare that has ensued since well and i would say in that regard any board member at that time could have pulled out that bill and public could have come and made comments on this bill and at that time we didn't there there wasn't any public response nor was there any movement on the board this board can to take any board member on here can take an action they want to on any specific bill that comes out so it's not it's not limited so thank you mr lodd turn this on i'd like to congratulate you on this document mr live i'm going to stop you for just a minute are you going to be commenting on this motion or
255on something else because we have the motion pending unless so you if you if you want to withdrawal okay thank you for clarifying i just didn't want us i don't want to box this into having to say no and put in writing to everything to every bill because there might be something else that comes up down the road that i personally would never vote for ever and i just don't want to box this on certainly no and part of the language in here is we don't want to box ourselves in too much so if you make it very specific for something for safe and healthy you know buildings that boxes us in a little more but it's you will see as we get into legislative session that every meeting you're going to be presented with
256quite an extensive list of bills and things to review and they can anything some of them will be general but some of them we may choose to um to look at individually and i and i appreciate all this clarification that's very helpful thank you yes so mr live as i began to say ms ortiz i'd like to congratulate you on your legislative program it's quite thorough it's it's much improved over how it began uh back in i think 1998 i wrote the first legislative program for anne arundel county public schools uh there's a few dating yourself there's a few words in here that i recognize some key phrases but all in all and i can attest and reinforce what ms hummer said yeah board members have that right we can reach in and pull out
257whichever we want as ms ortiz gets to know us better she will know where our sensitive you know points are and she'll realize when she should ask for things but this really does free her hand to better represent our interests from minute to minute and that's how fast it'll go down there so thank you for a job well done oh you're welcome but i can't take credit for all of it i mean my colleagues back here um have been very instrumental i just i just celebrated just over two years and so a lot of work has been done on this program over the years and i've helped move it along and you know we we kind of revamped it last year and made it a little bit prettier to look at and showcasing pictures and
258a little bit more background about our school system but um this is with the work of you know my work and the work of my colleagues and um everybody you know all of the divisions take a good look at all of the um their sections their respective sections they do a comprehensive and thorough review and provide feedback which is why we always have some additional edits and we stay on top of things that are changing whether it be with legislation or regulation et cetera to make sure that you have the most updated document to represent you during the session sorry can you uh clarify for us um for example when this board did take a position on on the mandate for testing lead in the water that was not something that was voted on by
259the board is that that position correct that position it was it fell under our legislative platform that it was an unfunded mandate and so we don't that's kind of a blanket statement that we will oppose unfunded mandates so it doesn't require a separate vote if we already voted on the legislative platform and that counted as the vote for it but a board member could have asked that that bill could have moved that that bill could be pulled out separately but i'm just making sure i understand right so where we have the power to right we have the power to do anything but as mr live said and ms ortiz said things move very quickly during legislative session and there's often not time to bring us back bills between meetings because they're coming up that so
260by having some the these guidelines she is able to take a position and talk on general things but some big bills we will get we will certainly get heads up on and we can look at them but so something like that i'm trying to go back just so i can understand how if if i had a different opinion i could have stopped that so so it would have been up to me to follow the legislation to have seen that and say hey wait no no no you it will be included in your packet when every week miss ortiz once legislative session starts we'll get a packet with a number of bills in there and you can review them all and you'll see them so it's kind of you will not be able to keep up
261with everything during legislative session i think miss ortiz followed 300 and something bills last time we that's what we have her for and so she'll be bringing this back for that and that will come up yeah and just to clarify it so i provide a document that has three sections one is on bills that aren't covered by our legislative program so would require an affirmative vote from the board we pro i provide a summary i provide a recommended position my colleagues assist with drafting recommended positions obviously the the current uh or the program and your current uh positions there's a second section that's just fyi with bills that are things that are going on education related in other counties so not anything we would weigh in on but just to keep you abreast of what's
262going on around the state and then the third section are the bills that fall under the legislative program that don't require vote because they're under the program however i understand that these sort of issues are of concern to the board so i'll keep that in mind and certainly once you look at the program and you say you know hey house bill 625 i have a concern with i'd like to pull that out separately and vote on it you have the ability to do that mr ray um i don't know if i'm just confusing myself but um could you explain like aacps it's under special education um i don't know who would be able to answer this special education page 24. legislation requiring parent parental consent for changing changes to student placements and special agents oh
263my god i can't speak sorry special education services why would we oppose that so we actually um that's been a long-standing opposition not just of this board but mostly all boards around the state and the maryland association of boards of education because with special education students that have specific needs that we must provide on a daily basis if we're unable to get parental consent on something in an iep for example and we're unable to provide those services in the interim for the student it may be detrimental to student so what we have opposed is to have you know off the bat just the parental consent on you know these changes to students iep without the school system being able to use their expertise to also determine the needs of the child however there was legislation
264that passed um i think it was last session that does require parental consent and changes to an iep under certain circumstances so while that's been a broad opposition that we've had um as a board and and mabe has had um there has been there is new law that does require it uh require the parental consent on certain changes yeah that's why it confused me a little bit um okay thank you so much for clarifying that miss corkadill concerning page six in charter schools i did have one question on the last aacps opposes attempts to permit charter schools to participate in maryland's cip why would we is the reason that we're is it because they would be in competition for our money that we would not want them to have capital dollars if the state delegation
265were inclined is that their the thought has that ever occurred where they have requested money that would be taken from us that we would that would create okay thank you sean um i actually have two more things i want to address in here and move on so the first would be 22 under aacps opposes i'm not comfortable with the language under this third bullet or mandate that a school resource officer be in every school even if it doesn't divert funding from pre-k to 12 education i mean in this day and age if it's already proven unfortunately really terrible things can happen at any school at any time so i would move to um to strike the or mandate a school resource offer officer in every school i'll second for discussion i'm i'm not quite with
266you yet i'm understanding what you're saying and i realized that i might be talking total um rubbish at this hour but i'm just trying yeah i understand the the concern about safety for that but i think part of understanding this is understanding the role of a school resource officer is that um you know our while they are there for security we view school resource officers is more of an added staff and tool at the school rather than security our school resource officers and the middle schools and elementary and high schools really work to build relationships with students and have all that so while they are there for security they play a larger role than that so i don't i don't want it to to be just viewed as that they're only there for for protection
267because we really look at them as much broader than that but what we run into this and the state maeve also opposes this because for to mandate a school resource officer first for us we don't fund school resource officers they're paid for from the county they're employees of the police department so if it's mandated we don't have the authority to do that because it's not out of our our funds to come it would have to come from the county and in other other school districts around the state they do have to come up their funds and they don't have people also in our county we found we don't have enough police officers as it is it would um it right i checked with a friend who's a police officer today there are currently over 150
268vacancies in the schools in the county for police officers to have a to mandate a school resource officer in all of our schools that would be almost um a hundred and something so it's just the the reality of that would be very difficult fiscally but also knowing the relationship and what school resource officers have within our schools i think they are most beneficial in our middle school in high school areas and um so that's just to give a little research a little background and things on the school resource program um thank you for that so by having this in here doesn't preclude our ability or desire down the road with the appropriate funding to put because i don't want to say like there won't be a school resource officer at shadyside or hillsmore or folger
269mckenzie or you know because as i don't i hope that's why i'm asking that so this doesn't limit that if we decide that that's a priority down the road and here's a big thing to go with this too this is our program to the state it does not preclude this board from doing anything on an individual basis this is more of us saying we don't want the state to dictate what we have to do we would rather make those decisions ourselves based on the wants and needs of our counties and the value that we have rather than the states saying you must do this when it may not be something i'm not even talking about this may not be something that our county wants so this legislative program does not preclude us from doing anything
270on our local basis it's more of us saying we don't want to be maintaining our local governance that we make the decisions for our county and that we're not necessarily dictated by the state okay great thank you um so then i withdraw that as well but i have one more okay so mr ray you had your button on and i didn't know i have a question i had something to add but you added it so it was fun yeah i did the same thing okay so the last one i actually um i have two questions about [Music] page 24. um the first was the [Music] legislation requiring parental consent again i think parental consent is necessary for something like this but you're just that wouldn't limit us from changing our policies internally we could i
271could someday move to change our policies internally and it wouldn't affect this right again i hesitate to say that in regards to special education um because because special education falls under so many legal requirements so i would hesitate to say we could just change our policies because i think we're very dictated by state and federal law in regards to that good morning for the record bobby pedric director of special education i'm sorry could someone repeat the question yes okay and again i'm i'm sorry if this um is coming out not as articulate as it would be earlier in the evening on page 24 i personally have a problem with under aacps opposes i personally have problems with the second and the fourth bullet if i'm being real and actually the first as well but mostly
272the second and the fourth bullet um that would be like legislation requiring parental consent for changes to a student placements and special ed services and as you know i was just off the trail so i heard a lot about special ed over the last year and i would be a proponent of requiring parental consent and the other thing is the expansion of the categories under which a student is eligible to receive protections yeah of course i'm i'm a proponent of that too so okay i'm not sure i want that in there either one i'll begin with the simpler response perhaps the fourth bullet we mirror the categories that are mandated by federal law and those are the categories that allow us to receive funding from the federal and state governments and so if we were
273to create another category we would it wouldn't be officially officially accredited by the federal government okay and then so we would not be eligible for federal funds no and it wouldn't be recognized if we were to identify if if we as a state or county came up with new categories and then that child moves to another state or even another county they may not be able to receive services under that category so it's it's practice to be to remain consistent with the federal government and sorry but what if i want the state to expand the categories then i think there'd be some lobbying at the state level well right so then why would i if i'm pers and i'm not speaking on behalf of the body obviously this is just me personally i'm not afraid
274to go on record on any of this stuff but i i if i'm personally a proponent of expanding categories under which our students provide services in support of their education then why would i want that written down and this program that we as a body are supposed to agree to well you can oppose it and you can make a motion to remove it but it would be up to this body to leave that in there and you know there well then in the you know for the sake of time i know it's late um i moved to strike both the second and the fourth ball on those grounds i'm sorry um i'd like to respond to the question about the second bullet um but i also on the fourth on the fourth bullet um there
275are many categories that allow they're all encompa they encompass a lot of different types of disabilities so um i've worked in four large school systems in 30 for 36 years in the field of special education and i'd say i've never experienced us having a hardship identifying a child under one of those categories so for example multiply disabled i mean a lot of things fall under that other health impaired a lot of different types of disabilities fall under that even learning disabilities can encompass a lot of different types of students so um and then the second bullet that is a very um large conversation as you know um basically the um the law that was put into place as of july 1 for um parental consent uh requires that we now as a school system have
276a choice if if the educational experts at an iep meeting recommend a different type of environment or a different type of curriculum for a student then if the parents do not agree with that then we are put in a position where we have two options one is maintain that child in their current environment which clearly they're not being successful in according to the educational experts because that's why they recommended a change or take those parents to due process which puts us in a very challenging position because if the child child's not being successful and meeting making progress on their goals and objectives on the iep in the current setting we have a responsibility to respond to that and so if the response is that we believe that child's needs could be better met in a
277different curriculum or alternate placement and the parents don't agree to that then we have no option our two choices are leave the child in their current setting knowing they're failing knowing they're struggling and quite frankly oftentimes behaviors are escalating because they're frustrated or take them to court i i guess i see this from an opposing view where some where it's a family is in an iep meeting and the school system is considering removing services yeah um my brain is going really slowly right now and and then those because i've heard of several obviously i just came off the trail so i've heard of this over and over and over again over the last year and i'm downright opposed to that without parental consent it's the removal it's not the adding of services i'm worried about
278it's from the from the perspective of removal of services without parental consent so we also have a responsibility to service children in the least restrictive environment and providing specialized instruction to a student who doesn't meet the criteria by federal and state law we're doing a disservice to them by pulling them or by doing specialized instruction with them when they don't warrant that there was a time in my career when parents didn't want their children to be identified as having a special need and that pendulum has swung and we now have a lot of parents who see their children as more disabled than maybe they are or having a disability when they maybe don't have a disability or don't have an academic impact from a disability and so no i follow you and you know i
279know it's late so i'm not gonna like um beat this into the ground but i stand on record as being opposed to the second and the fourth bullet that's my personal opinion i'd stick by it miss antoine it's almost midnight and and i have some things i wanted to add to that as the discussions are going on as an aunt of two special needs um my nephews they some of the things that you brought up are very true and it becomes it it becomes complicated and unfortunately in many cases and all of them the ones taking the brony and are the ones are the ones suffering with the disability and i'm i'm concerned too as dana is that we missed the mark on that if we go in opposing this with this level of restriction
280i would request that it be adjusted to be more flexible in consideration that so many circumstances could result in some differences that hurt rather than help in in the child in either case all right so page 30. yeah i'm sorry may i introduce something else i apologize oh okay i'm sorry if i have a question oh i i i'll definitely digress to let you continue that miss ellis i'm sorry i didn't want to step in i just figured on that topic okay so um i i too am very uncomfortable with bullet two but i want to ask a question about bullet four not creating another category does not prevent us from coming up with some sort of program or educational support if we identify some new type of issue or am i correct we could
281we can handle that without yes we could handle that under the current categories and the current iep process okay i just wanted to get that just to add to that as ms hummer stated earlier this is really looking at it at the state level right this is your local board authority and governance and while we may agree to this and i will say that even when when we oppose testimony i try to do a good job of saying while we like the idea and oftentimes uh here at aacps we're doing these things it's not the state's purview to tell you a board what to do or to make a statewide mandate so that's really the difference there it's kind of usurping on your authority as a board as well so this doesn't limit the board
282it's just telling the state that they can't mandate things upon you as a board and us as a school system and i would add on the parental consent element um that there are definitely and and we all have heard of them there's individual cases where that there's disagreement that come on there but this is the overall thing of doing because this would not if this law is passed it wouldn't be just the individual cases that we really should look at as a individually as a school system are we doing everything possible it would be a blanket for all 9 000 of our special education it would be very broad to have this i'm personally more in favor that and i believe bobby's team is always trying to do this that we make our iep things
283meetings and our work with students more and more collaborative and be looking at those individual cases where things aren't going what can we do as a school system to to breach those if this is put in place it almost automatically creates a um an adversarial role right from the from the bat on both sides it could be people become a defensive whereas we definitely want it to be more of a collaborative experience from the beginning and i would be more on the local level that we'd be looking at the individual cases and and trying to improve those rather having a blanket statement from the state for everyone it may be helpful for the board members to be aware of the fact that the the current parental consent law pertains to about one percent of the
284special education population so it's our most severely disabled children and that i was part of that task force at the state level and it came up because in a few counties in maryland they were um putting children in more restrictive settings without notifying the parents and without it even being a team effort and anne arundel county is the the state mandate is that we service as a state under one percent of our students in that in that category and anne arundel county is the only large school system that still remains under one percent so we're very close we're 0.98 but what that says is we do not have a history in this school system of quote unquote dumping children into a more restrictive setting we work really hard to not do that um so i
285you know i i think philosophically this county is in good position to not abuse that and the other thing that might help is that we've expanded our partners for success program over we started it last year where we now have three teams servicing the county so six adults who are teams made up of a a parent of a student with a special need and a former educator or a you know an educator who's just not working in the field and they're working very closely with parents and that's part of our effort to build those relationships and work collaboratively my feeling when this when i was on this task force is i don't need a law to tell me to do what's right for children and but i do understand i do understand that there are
286families who did need that and i'm proud to say that anne aruma county was not a county that was having people represent that their children were put in placements without parent involvement so is there any more discussion on page all right mr antoine i think you want to go to page 30. yes please i would just request an administrative change where we have the diversion of public education identified that each time we refer to it as public education funds rather than public funds to encourage other resources to support non-public schools so in other words for example where aacps belize the diversion of public funds we would say instead the diversion of public education funds that's i think i understand what you're saying that but um and correct me if mr ortiz find my saying right
287so this currently is we do have a vouchers system called the boost program where dollars go to non-public schools like uh to private schools to have that those aren't necessarily cut that money isn't necessarily coming out of education funds it's coming from the general budget but that is money that could be going to public education and instead is being used for another thing so it's not coming from the education public money it's coming from the general fund but because it's coming from the general fund that is less money that could come to us just like when we said with charter schools with um that they that are one of our positions is that charter schools wouldn't participate in the capital improvement plan for the state because that would be less money available for public schools
288so that's just that was just to clarify a little bit that they're not necessarily funds that are designated just for education so so i understand that i was just trying in in terms of consistency because it could be misinterpreted that we simply each time refer to it as it is in the first paragraph as public education funds michelle um back to page 24 are we so we're not voting on that because i don't have them no motion was made on it we can go back to it but let's finish our talk on here but we can go back to that page but no emotion was made so i thought the discussion was made um so i you're right miss um miss antoine we have it say public education funds in one and just public funds
289in the other and i would say the question is do we want to always say public education funds or do we just want to say public funds to come through because right now the money for the boost program just doesn't come out of the education pot it comes out of public funds altogether so that would be my question for you just as a clarification i think it is better to keep education aligned with education put the term there so that you know the layman won't misinterpret it when we take it to the state level miss corkadel i would oh i was just going to concur with your thought process because the thought occurs to me that public funds also include how include health department related matters that could preclude access of necessary public health issues
290that do transcend in a private school so i i do prefer carrying the consistency down down the park line so mr lot rather than have miss antoine do a motion could we just have a board consensus to add the word education the public education public yeah public education funds and power in the next two paragraphs so it's consistency rather than do a formal vote for one word yes if everybody's okay with that that's all right okay all right we got it that's added in all right so any other it's nice sorry it wasn't called i apologize um yeah i still move that we strike bullet two and four off of page 24. do you want to do those together as one vote or to have two separate votes i'll second the vote but but uh
291just to clarify is that why you want to have two seconds we can take them one by one sure so i moved to strike uh the second bullet the legislation requiring parental consent consent second okay yes yeah thank you miss uraya oh i was just gonna ask that it be too separate but i was about to turn my button off but i guess i was too slow missed antwine so for clarification you want it completely taken out yeah because i i'm opposed to completely taking it out because of all the scenarios that i know will come up i do believe we can readjust the language where it doesn't um the interpretation right now i i'm in agreement that if these scenarios were the case it would be too restrictive if we can uh i'm i'm
292posing i'm guessing amending your emotions yeah sure to say let's let's relook at it in intel and i think we have to vote on this tonight right because it's almost session so i vote i move to amend my previous motion to say legislation requiring parental consent to remove services i don't know i don't okay it's too late to award smith um for changes to student placements and special education services what i want to avoid is the removal of services without parent parental consent that that's a smaller breath than than just striking it i'd be all right with that do we have a second on that on the the change that that michelle i made do we have a second as a i'm sorry just for clarification so as opposed to removing it i don't want
293services to be removed without parental consent because i think that's where we've heard most of the problems at least i have i don't know i don't want to speak for anyone else but on okay i guess i could just have a second so we can discuss it right okay i'll second that i'm just um i'm still really hung up on the i i believe special education should always be a collaboration with the parents i know we're not always going to agree but i i don't know how we can move forward with making a change to a student's placement without parental consent i have an issue with that whether in either do you prefer the first way but you're striking it all together but i'm cool with that too thank you i wanna on this particular
294piece want to caution the board um that as miss patrick stated we have an obligation when the educational experts believe that a student is in need of services and need of accommodations we should recommend those and deliver those likewise if we believe a student is no longer in need of those services we have an obligation morally and ethically and educationally to recommend that those services be removed we the staff the teachers the folks in the school buildings and you the board have those ethical obligations we have a responsibility for the students and so um it's important that you also understand that um you what you are here you are you are really getting into the weeds on something that is at a state level where we're saying in general we oppose if legislation comes down
295and makes us do this as opposed to you having the ability to make changes for yourself right again i want to bring this back up to this level to say this is about when somebody imposes something on you where you can't make the decisions any longer as a school system as a board but we do have the ethical and moral and educational responsibilities that when we believe a student needs services we have to deliver and should deliver those services and likewise if we don't believe that they need those services any longer and we can move them to elite a less restrictive or least restrictive environment we have that obligation also we also have the obligation and we do very well at it and we will continue to work at bringing parents in right there's consent
296versus we you're at the table and you're having those conversations with us and that's not what this is saying at all thank you miss uraya i personally also would caution the removal of bullet number two just personally because as dr alana said i think that it's in the educators best interest of the students whether or not to remove that so that's just my personal opinion and i think that us because as ms hummer said also sorry if i'm not cohesive or coherent or whatever but um we can take specific ones based on what they need out and personally vote as a board whether to add or remove certain things so i think if we blanket this and just take it away i think it would do more harm than good personally miss ellis yeah i
297i think as we're discussing it i could see uh us tackling this at the local level obviously our level of discomfort is because we feel that we have work to do to figurative in this area yes that's where this stems from for me i just i just want to be clear and on the record that um that that i disagree with both bullet points i think i've made that clear and so so yeah i'm tackle it at the local level and i'm okay so i'm gonna find the agenda at some point in time i would love to do that and to get both of them and i would love to review all those policies just fyi okay so just whatever yes i'm going to withdraw it fine but i've said my piece and i do
298expect to see those at some point and get them in the policy committee okay miss uraya just to hopefully shorten this rest debate um we as a board can do essentially what we believe and what we want this is just statements for the state so that they know what we want and do not want just clarifying um so are there any other questions or comments about the legislative platform is there any miss antwine i don't know that we have yet i propose a motion that we adopt the our legislative process second and second and everyone is there any public comment on this i just want to put that out there it's late people still awake out there then we have it all right miss miss connolly call the roll please to adopt our legislative program
299ms corketo aye mr reye aye mr gillian aye ms antwine aye shawnheim zero motion passes one absent all right thank you ladies all right item 6.04 is the second quarter operating budget supplemental and fun transfer [Music] i know good morning i'm alex schachnov chief operating officer matt stansky director of financial operations we're here to present item 6.04 it's an action item regarding the second quarter operating budget supplemental and fund transfer for fiscal year 2019. it does say there's a staff presentation we do intend to have a rather exhaustive and lengthy review of this entire document may take a couple hours to bear with us so we are we essentially operate on an appropriation authority system where we must seek and be granted approval to expend public funds we get that from our appropriation authority entity
300which is the county council which is the final fiscal authority here within anne arundel county that's essentially the structure so we start a year with an adopted budget come july 1 and then time marches on as time marches on we can win additional grants we can be notified by the state federal government private entities etc that hey congratulations you're getting more money or you're getting less money well that's wonderful that we've received this grant which we you know noobly try with great diligence to achieve but just because we won the grant we don't have actually the legal authority to spend the money even though we've won the grant we don't have the money but it's sitting in our bank unspent so annually twice a year once at the midway point and then once again at
301the end of the year we go today we seek your permission to go to the county council to work with the county administration and the county uh council to get the appropriation authority the legal authority to then utilize those dollars that have been apportioned to us so if you go to page one of the exhibit from the federal government from the beginning of the year to where we are today we have amassed a net gain of about 3.97 million dollars in various federal activities none of this is unrestricted funding so this is all on the restricted side essentially and if you want to follow the breadcrumbs there is a page specifically four pages fact it goes through what those various federal grants are so for example in vocational education we received an award of a
302notification of award 139 600 more than we originally contemplated and so on and so on and so on from the state government we are in a position here in mid-year that we are slated to receive 832.4 a hundred thousand more than we originally contemplated when the budget was adopted back in june again that's not in the unrestricted category that's in the restricted category and again four pages back in your exhibit it gives you the line item detail of where that money comes from the next two items local and restricted revenue revenue from other sources all has to do with our health care fund and the receipt of less revenue from our employees from our retirees from the federal government etc towards our insurance health care plan so we have to get those numbers recalibrated fund
303balance surplus and this is an important one four million dollars this board at the superintendent's advice and council took specific action to reserve and set aside four million dollars of our operating budget at the end of the last fiscal year to spend on school security improvements and this is part of the broader plan that we are working in partnerships with the county government the prior county executive et cetera et cetera so we now purposely saved and identified a four million dollars and specifically uh gave no notice on how we're going to use it we now need to complete that final step and go to the county council and have them grant us the authority to do that and then finally on the county side you know we're in partnership with the county to do this
304multi-year underground high speed high security cable cabling system for data transmission and this is money that the county government is looking to give to us that we will immediately give back to them so that they can complete paying the bills on this county-wide process to which we are beneficiaries but again they connected not just our schools but the libraries to college fire stations police stations and the other myriad so all in we are asking your permission upon the advice of the superintendent to approach the county's administration and county council to get the legal authority to spend us approximately 6.2 million dollars in the exact manner that's in compliance with the various restrictions from the funding sources and funding agencies with that we'll see the floor and entertain any questions you may have work it down
305i make a motion to adopt item number 6.04 as presented do i have a second oh no do you have to recommend oh i'm sorry oh i i'm yes ma'am i'm recommending board approval the second quarter operating budget supplemental and fund transfer for fy 2019 to be submitted to the county council now ms corbin i present a motion to adopt item number 6.04 as presented second is there are there any board questions or comments is there any public comment miss connolly call the roll miss corporado aye mr ray aye mr gilblin aye mr santuan michonne aye mr live aye ms ellis aye ms hummer aye eight zero one absent motion passes thank you very much item 6.05 is second reading for policy jk student behavior interventions exclusion seclusion and physical restraint good morning good morning
306oh dear miss ortiz so this uh policy jk was uh is on second reading it was on 30 day public comment period we received three identical one one comment from three different people it was one identical comment and then two up comments from one individual i provided that information in your packet along with my response um and then we received a couple i received a couple comments after the comment 30 day public comment period but i advise those individuals to please contact you the board directly um and so there were just uh some concerns i'm sure you can see um that i provided to you and i just reiterated that this is you know these are the regulation is what was con some of the language in the regulation and just as a reminder um
307this the revisions to the regulation are in accordance with revisions new comar regulations as required by the state of maryland so we're simply aligning our regulation to the new comar requirements so this is these are statewide requirements are there any board questions or comments about this miss shawlhead apologies for not knowing where to insert this but i really don't want a restraint in the behavioral i don't know what the i and the p stand for but i don't want it in that so how do i where help me where do i where would i um strike that out of this that's actually in the regulation which is not so we can't amend that that's superintendent's regulation and as i mentioned so the the language regarding a physical restraint being included in a behavioral intervention plan
308is a new language that's maryland regulations but also remember we must have parental consent to do that so it's not a unilateral decision by the school system and that's also in in the regulation it specifies um if i could find it that we must have uh parental consent um to do that so i think it's on page four four of five under physical restraint item four um so if you see four a little uh three three little eyes obtain written consent from the parent so we must have parental consent for that so it wouldn't be you know the school system deciding to do that without the and those were some of the concerns that the public comments um raised and i answered that question so and by being part of the iep or bip that
309ensures that the parents are part of that conversation and just to make sure i i understand they will always have to provide consent for that to be in there yes ma'am okay yeah because i yep that's a weird one for me thank you it's kind of and and i just want to stress for those because our newborns weren't here for the initial discussion on this when we talked about physical restraint is the last resort it is not there are a myriad of things that it as it says in the regulation that we're going to try all other behavior interventions first but we do have we do have students that self-harm and they do have to be restrained so that they cannot hurt themselves or others i will speak to this from a personal standpoint i
310have a nephew who is severely autistic and has seizures he is now over six feet tall and 200 pounds he's non-verbal and he at times will truly hurt himself hitting his head against the wall or things like that and he is a large young man and there needs to be immediate response to save that and so um to have that and so i actually when i because i was considering this too it should be in there i actually called his mother and said they're in another state and said did you have this in the iep for him is this something you wanted to have physical restraint and she said yes at a certain time said when he was growing a lot his medication that would accommodate things when he had a growth spurt the medication
311would stop working because the dosage was off and there would be times that they would have that so she said during that time we needed to have it so that immediately people could help him but as soon as he stabilized we took it out of the ip but her whole thing was it was done in concert and with um parental consent it was never done without and so i agree with you that's very important that there needs to be parental consent if we're going to have it in iep but she also said she appreciated it being in the iep because that required that it was more documented and discussed and carried through to have so i understand i just i just don't want i don't want any i don't want it ever going from skipping
312a whole bunch of steps for convenience or otherwise to hop to that because that that's that would and and the certification training that we do with staff 95 of it is on behavior positive behavior interventions the restraint component is only the last five percent of the training and and staff are trained the initial training is a full day's training and every year staff have to participate in the um in the half day recertification training and we train almost a thousand staff a year okay and you're monitoring to make sure that when you know i'm sure you have to document when these things happen that they that they did a b c d and f before they got to that okay thank you thank you so much for clarifying miss ellis so just to clarify to
313anyone who might be questioning to make sure and make sure i understand restraint is never never used to punish or induce a behavior it's only to prevent harm it's only to prevent the child from harming themselves or harming others i've been in classrooms where we have five adults and the child is acting out but not harming himself or harming others and we all stand back that's the training teaches us just stand back and let them work through it right and then but if they harm themselves then we need to be able to right try to prove thank you and miss patrick i i think sometimes there's some misperception of what restraint is that we are that it is not sitting on a child or laying there on the ground it is there it's very prescribed
314it can be done it's very structured and we've had parents request us to do prone restraints and we refuse to do that and that's in our regulation so some strategies that families are using at home we will not use if they're not approved by us so are there any other board questions on this is there any public comment ms calhoun good evening vicki calhoun first off i got my comments in at 4 30 in the morning on the 16th and i absolutely object to the fact that the so-called policy which i could not find written anywhere that says 30 days doesn't say 30 working days the 16th at 4 o'clock was a sunday she wasn't coming in until monday morning so i understand the cut off and everything but i'm telling you that's not that
315is not fair it needs to be 30 working days so the public has a chance to actually comment on it it's hard enough to make the time to get the comments and she really didn't get very many i think mine were the most substantive but what i do want to highlight to you all is the serious problem that's in that document the what you do not have is a pbis program that's actually firmly implemented inside of that so the positive behavioral intervention system is not implemented in all the schools according to the website only 78 schools report are reported inside the pbis program if you have a pbis program you get that tiering that you were just talking about if you said do you skip steps i'm going to ask you where is it written
316where they do the steps it's not that dot it would be in your pbis stuff and i will tell you that i found a document online i'm going to give it to bobby it was the 2008-2009 pbis summarative report by virginia dolan those recommendations were never implemented i don't know that lady but she seems to be pretty smart and i think this was when the program was first implemented within the county it says we were doing really well at the time you can tell it's dated 2008 2009. none of the recommendations that she put in there in in the back i say in the back because that's where the summary is were implemented and the most important one was that we need to systemize the pbis program in all of our schools in mid middle
317the rewards for the students to have good behavior are donated items or money that's uh that they're selling stuff and they're getting money for if you need to put your money where your mouth is if this is the program that's going to help us get parental involvement get the right echelon or write interventions at the right place it's not there it is not in this document it's not written anywhere so to the comments that were made that's what i would say this policy is not properly nested with the anne arundel county supposedly pbis program you need that program that program actually nests properly with uh as ms dolan said a bunch of other initiatives charter education attendance initiative dropout program bully prevention program so what i would tell to you tell you is that this
318program needs this this interventions need to be properly nested with the pbis program i think the pre pbis program would be more of what this regulation is about and then the restraints and the stuff that you would be talking about are nested inside the tears of the pbis program and then at each level every time you have an intervention i think the parents would be more and more involved and then the parents would be responding to the behavior and say hey this is what the teachers recommend this is what we're doing and i i think it would just be more comprehensive so i just wanted to highlight that stuff i felt that was a huge problem in the regulation i think it leaks like a sieve steps are skipped and the problem is my daughter
319was dragged down the hallway at jesup elementary school it wasn't reported there's no reporting section in this regulation where does it say reports will be made it doesn't there's no reporting if you pull up the other state of the other states or other counties they have a separate section that calls about reporting so i appreciate your time i think we can do better document on this thank you thank you um i just want to clarify and on the regulation page four of five number four b it says each time physical restraint is used girl personnel must debrief and document the restraint using the aacps approved documentation of student behavior interventions so that must be completed and also pbis is one tool that we use for positive intervention it's part of the the toolkit that's used
320but if you look in the policy under position number one that they advocates the use of positive behavior supports as a proactive approach these reports may include but are not limited to positive behavior interventions teacher initiate interventions etc we don't generally name a specific program in our policy or regulation because those could change we we may find tomorrow that there's a new one so by making this all encompassing that there will be positive behavior interventions different things that that is all inclusive to include pbis at the schools where it takes place as as to others miss antwine i just similar to what you said when i reviewed it i understood certain models to to incentivize and encourage positive behaviors and that was going to be a question tonight i understand that those models can you
321know because they do change right what's what's cool today is not cool tomorrow but so long so the policies though they pull from the tools that we current the models that we currently utilize so what you wrote here was like the systematic and and the processes and things that she she just mentioned which was a good catch how do we make that more specified so as is interpreted with the spirit that we're intending so miss calhoun and i spoke earlier tonight because i did have an opportunity to see her comments and review them thoroughly the the reality is the children the students who are requiring restraint to prevent harm to themselves or others they are children that are in what we call the red zone and that's parallel to the pbis model these children are
322beyond the the pbis strategies they're not they're not able to control their impulses a coupon a winning an ipad you know free extra free time or or something like that is not gonna control the types of behaviors that are used i mean that are being exhibited when we when we are required to use a restraint so while pbis is a fabulous program and it's making a big difference for a lot of children we're talking about the hardest children to redirect so i want to make it clear i i don't want you to reward poor behavior right but whenever you put your hands on that child no matter how well you were trained and how delicate you were it's going to be a problem and i believe if we instituted tonight or this morning as uh
323something that makes it clear that we use other alternatives to incentivize this behavior not help reward it but to let them know because you chose to change here is your your reward based on the the behavioral change not the current adverse behavior and a system like pbis a proven system like pbis can even be referenced not necessarily utilized as the whole but referenced as part of that tool kit um to support that and i and and i i see both sides i sincerely do but i i'm with her as well that it should be a little bit more emphasized it's in there but it's not in there does it make sense it's not as apparent as it could be some of the strategies you're referencing actually are part of the um the positive behavior intervention
324supports that we provide aside from pbis so our teachers that are are working with children with these issues um and and please understand restraints are not i mean they're they're used for a variety of students and they're used very rarely um but they their focus is first and foremost positive behavior interventions in addition to pdis so if i could add to that they are they're proactive strategies that our teachers are using in the classroom to prevent our students from us to escalating into a a place where they would need that type of intervention so really looking at the de-escalation strategies so that we're not having to then put a student into a restraint because they're harming themselves or others and and the behavior intervention plan typically has a whole array of strategies to use to
325try to de-escalate as well miss corcodel i just wanted as a clarification so i we're we're voting on the policy the regulation we're not voting on anything actually where this is second reading this is the second reading right we're not even doing that but when it comes to the to third reading we vote on the policy not the regulation so okay so to that effort i apologize it is a little late um does section c uh c1 that seems to me that that is the guiding it is addressing exactly what is being questioned and is already included in the policy and so its translation to the regulation is where the suggestions are being made is that my understanding because this is is included but not limited to um so with those phrases i'm not understanding
326what would have been omitted because it seems like that's a pretty broad blanket statement and the policy would override any one regulation um although and and the regulation i would point out if on the first page of the regulation for background it says in order to achieve this goal a range of behavior intervention shall be available to staff and such interventions shall be clearly delineated delineated and progressive in nature ranging from positive behavior intentions to more intensive interventions as outlined below for the regulation states that for children with an iep or behavior intervention plan these will be clearly outlined and then for children that don't have an iep if it reaches a point where they're about to harm someone in the physical restraint then they would be referred immediately to be evaluated for the need
327for an iep or behavior intervention plan and then within that plan it would very specific things can be outlined in that plan based on the needs of the child as well more specific interventions and positive proactive steps am i correct in saying that yes it's miss ellis so a child being dragged down the hall and not documented that's not a policy issue because that goes against our policy am i correct that's a management issue that should be addressed right that is true through something yes it's kind of the policy is what we are putting out there as the vision of this is what our expectation is the regulations are how to do it and then if an individual is not following policy or regulation that's a separate issue that needs to be addressed but we
328have this so that it can be addressed so if somebody is dragging a child down the hall we can very clearly say that was incorrect and appropriate action can be taken with that staff member or whatever may have happened so they can't argue back that they were doing the right thing when it's very clearly written out that that is not the right thing to do miss schollheim so what are we allowed to to suggest edits to the regulation or is that outside of our scope okay um so to the lady's point are we are we clearly stating what steps a b c d and e are before we get to the restraint part michelle batton assistant superintendent for prison instruction so when our teachers uh are processed through the certification protocol they receive those steps
329that they are to follow before they even take a student into a restraint is that but those aren't listed in the right regulations so do we get to that level of detail on a regulation generally no no but it does clearly state that it has to be an emergency situation and that there is necessary to protect a student or other person from imminent serious physical harm after other less intrusive non-physical interventions have failed or been determined inappropriate okay i because i was deeply disturbed by what she was saying so i just want to make sure that it's addressed and and we have to remember that every human being is different and every student is different and so we don't want to be too prescriptive in a regulation i understand are there any further questions on
330this policy or regulation okay this will come back to us the next meeting for a third reading and we will vote on it then thank you ladies item 6.06 is first reading graduation requirements iic this is regarding our new class that we heard about last meeting the global community class so before you we have policy iic graduation requirements for first reading this policy was last updated on december 21st 2016 and follow up as ms hummer stated to the presentation to the board at the december 5th meeting the policy has been revised to clarify the board's position on graduation requirements and the regulation has been revised to add a new global community citizenship course as a one-half graduation credit requirement beginning with ninth graders in the 2019 uh 2000 or 2019-2020 school year uh the proposed
331revisions will be posted on our website for 30 days for public comment and i'll let my colleagues introduce themselves i'm going to say good evening but it is good morning good morning mary til our assistant superintendent for advanced studies and programs i'm maureen mcmahon deputy superintendent for academics and strategic initiatives and we're happy to answer any questions you may have miss ellis uh since this is the first reading excuse me and we're now going into a 30-day public comment correct yes so what will happen is it'll be posted right tomorrow and so in the interest of the late hour we won't go um into the various issues but we are already receiving public comments so this is just to be on alert there are some concerns and this is something we're going to have to
332discuss i believe after the 30 days michelle yes i've also received concerns um things that greatly disturbed me and distressed me now i don't think it's because of what the course is trying to do i believe this is an issue with allegedly perhaps the an instructor of said course and so i just want to make sure that if we're trying to create global citizens that we have the right staff hand-picked that don't show bias like what i received in my email and which i sent to y'all um have a curve because i then i can't go there but so it's not the course it's the staff thank you miss antoine so as as we stated at the last meeting the course is outstanding it's necessary and we heard from students who said it made the
333difference for them and they were from some very dynamic backgrounds the concern that has been coming across though is the requirements piece and and we can anticipate that so i would recommend that we kind of think ahead and think about what things what what other the cons we know the pros but and and um prepares something to address those even before they come and we have received some comments asking actually they've been inquiries from uh programmers of choice parents who have been concerned that it might be an additional requirement in an already packed program of study and so one by one we're assuring them and now assistant superintendent talar is going to put this on the website assuring them that we're working hand-in-hand uniquely with the magnet programs especially to build a program of study
334that doesn't add one more thing to their program but in effect brings the global citizenship to the forefront and threads their magnet themes throughout that so it'll it'll be absolutely as dr mcmahon stated it's not more it's instruction done differently using the tenets of the global citizenship course and then contextualizing it with existing magnet tenants i appreciate it thank you absolutely thank you mr ray i also urge board members not to just throw away um i don't know if that's the right word but a class because of a couple of bad things that they've heard about it because per one student that's had a bad experience i've spoken to so many so it's like one to one hundred that i've had a great experience so i really think that moving this class to be graduation
335requirement um really is a great response to things that have been going on in our county recently um to every student i've spoken to probably over 50 students at arundel and actually seen the class going on and been in the classroom participate in those discussions and it's not only a place for the students to learn but the teachers to grow with it and this is the second or third year of the pilot of it being at arundel so with every new curriculum in class there's always going to be learning for the both the teacher and the students and there's going to be things that we have to work out and as we've seen today that it's not only this new class that has problems even our classes like us history have problems so i wouldn't
336throw away this class just for that because there's always growing to be going on thank you miss corcodell i'll just really quickly thank you guys once again although this did not make the newspaper compared to our other addendum items last time i can assure you that all it barring the the couple concerns from our mostly stem kids to be you know that are really in ib kids um they want to get as much out of it as everything else is possible um i i have received quite a few accolades to an encouragement that tells me that i i believe that the other cluster schools will be embracing it at the level that arundel did at least in my area so i want to thank you guys once again thank you miss ellis when we start
337a new course do we do an evaluation by the students and parents of so in other words do we have documentation or data to indicate not just word of mouth so the idea here with arundel actually launching this we looked at teacher selection we looked at the theme of the course how they divided it into sections and we're actually at with with their support and their co-leadership changing some things in it and to meet student needs we looked at student feedback as well as teacher feedback and parental input and then the grades of the course and of course the grades of the course that's good good point miss shelton i just want to make clear that i thought the presentation was fabulous i think that the the course is going to be great i'm just
338talking about a specific thing that i'm sure will be shared with you related to you know and and i just reiterate like given the right staff chosen for this i'm sure it'll be as fabulous as design so i'm not throwing away thing there's nothing that there's nothing to throw away here this it's awesome so i just just to clarify in this late hour all right i'm going to get off mr ray uh miss ellis just to bounce off you um i don't know who was said i forget his name but um i'm pretty sure he was from curriculum and instruction who actually went um one of the times with me and miss pellegrin to talk to students the principal and actually the author of the book that created what the class was based off of
339kind of to actually bounce off of ideas of what the students were actually looking for in their teachers so they can have these collaborations and then bounce that off to other schools and try to give that to principals when they decide the teachers i'm asking not only about face-to-face uh feedback but is there an opportunity for say anonymous feedback i i'm concerned could there have been a student who was uncomfortable and you know i i just want to hear all the feedback that's fair i understand um we do have one card to speak on this and i'm not don't know if they're still here but jennifer denmark thank you for oh bless your heart thank you for hearing my concerns i'm jennifer dinmore i'm a parent in the arundel cluster i'm very concerned to have
340heard this is being mentioned as already a graduation requirement for incoming freshmen next year without intricate introducing it and talking to us parents i've spoken to many parents various clusters none of them have heard about this class or what it entails i believe it's premature to make the global community citizenship class a graduation requirement this is its third semester in use it's been into less than one percent of your population and you want to make it a graduation requirement next year without some more data at this time we have no training program available for teachers what training has been mentioned is being talked about being developed right now to be available come this summer as an option for teachers to do during their summer is that something that's ready to go mainstream seems a little
341bit early this class mentions personality tests self-discovery are we going to be delving into areas that are actually personal psychological issues that are better handled with a guidance counselor or psychologist are you opening the state or our county up to litigation when something gets released somebody finds something out about another person in this class that's really private psychological information this class doesn't make every student feel comfortable it rather makes them feel excluded they're not going to respond on anonymous surveys they're not going to respond in front of their peers this class makes them more concerned that they don't fit in because they don't think the same as the other students their anxiety gets heightened does this lead them to self-harm or harm of others have you thought about that as you all sit here and
342say this is a great class we have to rush to do it now we're not thinking about all the students these issues are sensitive they will delve into topics that are political and religious are the teachers even allowed by their contract to stand in a position of authority over a class discussing religious and political topics are you opening the county up to potential litigation if they offend any of the over 80 000 students religious beliefs in this course it's a free-flowing course you have no totally bent out curriculum how are we going to protect ourselves and our children parents have the right to handle their religious and psychological issues of their children at home these do not belong in your public schools i'm unsure how changing the graduation requirements so quickly that would impact students
343going in the 2023 year can be considered now when this information hasn't really been shared out i heard about it in the capitol newspaper i still read the old-fashioned way how many parents haven't read it haven't seen it and i just heard you all talking like this was a done deal the process to make this class a graduation requirement seems like it's being rushed through without true community involvement why not choose a slightly different path let's go to the state board of ed have them help us develop this class in a way that protects all students and protects the county from litigation if you delve across political psychological or religious activities you grant a religious religious exemption for vaccines but not for mental health thank you mr moore thank you you raised some very thoughtful
344points that we'd have i think someone has a question for you i just because you i'm not sure if you stated where you come where you if you have a student and i'm a parent in the original cluster okay that's the okay so you reported that um you are aware of students who were i'm just trying to understand you personally know students who work i don't have their permission to talk i understand that i'm just trying to clarify for myself thank you i don't believe this is for everyone's best interest thank you thank you miss angel i sincerely want to thank you for your comments the fact that you stayed here with us means that it's something that's that's personal and deep and it should be considered so i do want to reiterate let's get
345in front of some of the cons and and look at mitigations for that because the class overall from the things that we've received has been it's been a big plus and and it has changed changed environments that that and that encourage and not discourage so um with total respect from from what you're going through i sincerely request that we consider those cons miss ellis oh okay all right miss shawlhead and the concerns i received did delve across religious lines so fyi i don't know if we're all playing by the same book but it would not be okay if what i read was true and it's just alleged it does cross into religious um things and sort of pits the minority against the majority mr ray i want to highlight two things that i mean you
346all know i'm a proponent for it um so one student that i spoke to um said that he learned more about religions that he didn't even know about before from this class because they had those open conversations um and i know we all read ms shaw heim the email you were for did and i feel so bad for that student but um i don't know i just feel like from everything i've heard and seen with miss davenport um the ability for students to have this open discord with other students on their personal beliefs their religions and those politics and having it monitored by teachers in the classroom is exactly what i personally think that we want and um the other thing i want to talk about is the way they structure it at arundel includes
347actually special needs if i'm correct and i was actually able to speak with one of the special needs students in that class that took it um and she said that her voice has never been heard the way that it was heard in that classroom and um she doesn't have a lot of special needs but she's she loved the fact that she not only made friends but she didn't speak a lot in the class but she said that just from sitting there and choosing when to speak or choosing not to speak she learned more about herself and other classmates and how to have those conversations that she never did before so yeah i'd like to make two points right now it's an elective you're making it a graduation requirement so no student can choose not to
348participate in the future or they will fail and have a failing grade and not graduate high school additionally this is one class it doesn't follow them onto the bus it doesn't follow them into the neighborhood it's one class one period every other day of the week it might benefit some students not every student gets it and they use it to make people targets thank you mr moore so there's no further questions thank you ladies item 7.01 is a review item the monthly financial status report are there any board questions or comments on this item all right we will move on item 7.02 is also a review item award of contracts are there any board questions or comments on this item okay we will move on item 7.03 is a review item public comment procedures so
349on june 13 2018 policy bcb public participation was an item before the board policy committee it was determined that the name of the policy should be changed to public comment to be consistent with the board agenda and new procedures were discussed the policy then went to first reading on july 11 2018 second reading on august 18 2018 and was adopted on september 12 2018 based on discussion within the policy committee with board members there were it we um did offer changes to the public comment procedures not to policy the procedures for the board meeting it was reviewed we compared our um our procedures to all the other counties in the state to see where we felt within that we found that actually among the large school systems we are the most um generous with our
350public comment my favorite is howard county well no my favorite is baltimore county which literally draws 10 names out of a hat to determine who will speak which i find ridiculous and others have limits on how many speakers they have there are also some boards that had only allowed speakers two minutes we discussed and reviewed all of those it was determined that we did not want to change from the three minutes because that is necessary and that we didn't want to put a limit on speakers however we did determine that the discussion was had that this is primarily a public business meeting of the board and it is to conduct business and so to have um that public comment people for public comment would need to sign up by the time the agenda is set
351and that is just was done in part to make it so that the meetings we can get to the business of the board um the business that is here when this was discussed at that time it was announced it was discussed in you can see in the minutes at the june 20th [Music] meeting of of the board it was also discussed at the july 11th meeting a pub a release a press release was sent out to the community we received two emails that were concerned about the fact that having people sign up by the time the agenda was set would limit people that's the only feedback received the other change we made at that time was another decision that we made to increase transparency for the board was that we would go to roll call
352vote before then it had been a voice vote now we have the roll call vote so that was a step we made for transparency we also did not limit public comment on any agenda items so that anyone can speak on an agenda item that's just to give the history of where we are with procedures at this time miss corcodell thank you um to be as brief as possible to get us moving here i just uh is i don't think it wouldn't be necessary even the procedures to change but it occurs to me that there are instances where uh technology is affords individuals to sometimes register in advance and particularly when we're dealing with you know action items closer to the end of the evening would something like a form to fill out that would be
353completed by maybe even a time prior to seven o'clock if someone knows that they may have a delay issue and would like to participate nonetheless is there anything in this procedure outside of maybe we don't have the technology but i don't know that we wouldn't um it's a standard form script to kind of balance the concerns of those who show up late or think they may be inclined to be late do you mean like a form that someone would fill out ahead of time and submit and saying they wanted to speak so you go online and you complete the form that says i would like to speak to the following if it's in the agenda item since we've already published the agenda item they could put it to that or to the regular comment they
354would know what time if you call their name and they're not here we move on i will say there are some other boards in the state that do have the policy that you have to sign up a week in advance montgomery county has a week in advance that you must call the board office to sign up and they limit it to to how many montgomery county limited to that's the one that's not on my list and i'm not advocating for that i'm just sharing some of the restrictions that boards have it really limited to 15 yeah items and five on anything else i i think that it just more or less of would be by a certain time that we could say you could choose to sign up we could determine that but i don't
355think we would that would even require a change in procedure because it just says you have to sign up by the time the agenda is is confirmed here on the diets and that would meet that need and that seems like that might be a simple solution to test pilot at least not you know maybe we could pick a time that of the year that to test it i'm just throwing out a suggestion because i don't think there's anything afoul there and we need to be respectful of everybody's time and if all of a sudden you know if martha says oh my god there's only two people on in our position in here give me 30 more bodies and they show up at 9 00 p.m um that you know you where's the line drawn i
356am happy to sit here until three o'clock in the morning listening to every single resident but out of respect to the people who did take the time to show up by that and willing to make the weight i think that there's a technology solution to meet the to strike the balance bezel uh i've two comments um so when the agenda is set um i'm sorry i'm reading my scratch um so it was stated that the board did not want to limit comments but when the agenda uh but when someone has to sign up prior to the agenda being set that that did serve to limit comments now what ms corkadel suggested could alleviate that but i have one other issue and i have been present in board meetings when a citizen came into this room
357because there was a topic that was very important to them but for whatever reason they didn't sign up it could be that they they were nervous it could be that they you know felt um did not want to speak publicly but then they were so moved to or they felt the need to clarify on a topic and i i want to hear that i think they take their time to come out here something was obviously important to them and we should hear them michelle despite the fact that we only got two official comments it has been all over facebook for the last year about how at least and the groups that i've involved with on facebook that it was a rollback of it was limiting public comment that the procedure changed and so at a
358minimum i want to revert back to what was but i also want to include technology too to make it easier i mean there are sometimes like the second meeting in november where it's like an hour and a half i mean or more between when the when the agenda is set and when the public comment starts so i'm not trying to say you have to be here and you have to sit through all that if you don't want to sit through all that so at a minimum i want to revert back to what was and then i also want to incorporate a technology component essential so so i'm not sure how it was because of course i got involved after the change more more involved after after the change but i do love the the fact
359that we need to make it more automated and not only for those trying to come in or needing to comment but also for for the staff in terms of administrative burden i think it would take a lot a lot of weight off this other thing i would like to say is if since we are addressing uh the comment procedures i think we should do some some levels of prioritization as well we have students who come and they testify we have elderly people who are passionate about things that they want to share we have different kinds of of uh kids people um you know a lot of us have children but um but i i get i get a dana it's it's it's a midnight talk that i'm doing right now but um the point to
360this is i think if we're going to make adjustments we need to think about all the adjustments because here we are we're a new board um a new team and we're we have things that we definitely need to address need to support and i think a change in our procedures will allow the quality that needs to to be introduced just to a point of clarification we do try when there are students to testify or something like that we do try to move and adjust the agenda to let those ch those students or people with children that these last couple of meetings have lasted exponentially longer than we normally do so it's not usually quite as big of an issue but we try to be sensitive to that that wouldn't necessarily be in our procedures that's
361a kind of on a case by case as we see who has come out at a meeting of what would be miss corcodale oh i'm sorry wait miss uraya yes you're right first um thank you um maybe i'm wrong but i just don't understand um why i lost my train of thought um but if a person comes past so currently we have it where we have to like shut it down at a certain point but if they're so moved in the audience they can always have the option to do written a written form or like email us which personally i think is more strong because i can go back and look at that and review the points which of course we can always rewatch the board meeting but also it puts it in the log
362and everything so i don't underst see the problem with that corkado i'll just um add like for example tonight we had in our agenda shadyside elementary is 6.02 there was some shuffling of the agenda items but all in all if if 40 more people showed up to testify for that ad hoc that would have turned are now turning on one o'clock to possibly 3 a.m respect of mutual respect i i expect respect of our people to respect our time and us just as well as the other way around and maybe in action items where we are getting ready to place a motion i think there is more of an urgency and we i'm willing to consider and have a conversation about opening up to floor for action items where i'm taking a vote i do
363not see the logic of compulsion to have to have it right then and there for all other items that we're not taking immediate action to when there are other venues for them to say oh i just had an aha moment and would concur with josie on that because we have to respect everybody's time and that includes the people who signed up at seven and agreed to wait for it and if i start adding a bunch of people to that that's not necessarily saying that i respected the time you took compared to yours and i suspect there's repeaters um in the mix with it but i do kind of think i'm kind of leaning towards an action item i think before i vote i'd want to hear from someone but on the non-action items i'm not
364compelled to see if we add technology to this that would justify that by the modification to the whole it's i want to clarify something the current procedures we're only talking about people who are signing up for public comment not on agenda issues so for instance if 40 more people showed up tonight to talk about shadyside they could do that because it's an agenda item that we would ask them for so they are not limited by far they are not limited by filling out a card by the time it's only for items that are not on the agenda just want to make make that clear to have in there i do want to say too this is not something we'll take a vote on tonight this is um under our procedures in our handbook it says
365the procedures are set by the board president in consultation so this is something that we would go back and discuss that we're not going to vote on today when we made this change to the policy we stated at that time at the meeting we're going to put this in place and we're going to see how it works and what the feedback is and it can always be changed so it was never said it was kind of to see what happens some of the history that goes behind it is that we did have more than one meeting where people they do become passionate and it became a little too passionate and we had um outburst from from the crowd and we actually at one meeting had to call a recess to get there and so this
366was kind of to also an attempt to make it that to keep this as a business focus we want to hear from everyone but we also want people um to be to be thoughtful of what they're coming to so keep the meetings running smoothly so just again that's just a more um background for what that was ms howell i just wanted to add that whenever we have anyone from the public who calls our office to ask about speaking we do let them know that we open our doors 30 minutes prior to the meeting beginning and in addition to that if someone is not able to attend the meeting we always offer emails of ourselves personally or the board office email and those emails are always forwarded to our board members in addition to that we've
367had you know we had a gentleman today who signed up late and i went to him i spoke with him i gave him my card he may be coming to the next meeting but he you know we we tried to make sure that we catch everyone i wasn't able to catch every croft in person because obviously they fill out their cards i see them for a brief moment and then to remember them isn't always possible but i was able to catch a few people as they were walking out and just as you have you know received emails about croft and redistricting similarly if someone came here and wasn't able to speak they're able to to present that information in an email we also have you know mr mosher who puts our press releases out prior
368to the meeting so if someone knows they're not going to be able to come and attend these meetings they know in advance what's there and they're able to call our office send emails there's just a lot of other ways um that i feel is not limiting um our our public so that they have the opportunities to speak and that's all this summer may yes may i just make it oh yes your meeting tonight if you adjourn shortly will be a six-hour meeting and two hours and 45 minutes of it were public comment so that's almost three hours which is half of your meeting so just you know in future thoughts about the how you want to handle procedures and and i will say that was two hours and 45 minutes of public comment that was
369people that did sign up ahead of time and that is six people that had already left and didn't sign up so that was now this is an unusual amount for that but it is to let you know that's the important comment and the shady side right so and i do it's kind of i'm not gonna i'm gonna call on everyone but i do you know we're talking about public comment and being mindful of the audience we need to be mindful of our audience of staff that's here and move on for this but but um everybody's going to get to speak miss antwine so so this that we're discussing we can discuss it in closed sessions as well do we have to take it to the public is it if it's part of our board procedures
370in the board handbook it can be discussed in closed session can it mr burns yes so may i make a motion that we do that yes yes that we can but we can right because we discussed it before in public session and policy meeting so we did have the discussion there and we can also and we also discussed it further in closed session so we can't do that second all right i i don't think can we just buy consensus say we're all good with that all right so do we need to make a motion to go mr gillan that's his job okay that's my own that's all he does do we have to go yes we do um this so that we've come to the end of the december 19 20th board of education meeting
371um the next board meeting will be wednesday january 9th at 10 a.m the next policy meeting is wednesday january 16th at 1 pm we the budget hearings will be tuesday january 8th at 6 pm at old mill high school and thursday january 10th at 6 pm here at riva road both times have a sign up for to speak beginning at 5 p.m the budget workshop is tuesday january 15th at 6 pm here the public is welcome to attend but no public testimony will be taken mr gilliland madam president please don't kill the messenger i move that the board going to close session to consult with council to obtain legal advice on illegal matter second all those in favor aye off we go [Music] approximation [Music]