Board of Education - Board Business Meeting - 6/11/24

001[Music] good afternoon buis and Welcome to our June 11th Board of Education business meeting Welcome to our board members mcps staff and members of our community who are joining us here today and those who are watching this meeting via live stream now let us Begin by standing for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I will call the role to recognize board members and established we have a quorum Miss Evans good afternoon great to see everyone shabber Evans District 4 good afternoon Rebecca smoski District 2 good afternoon everyone Lynn Harris I you see her pronounce and I'm an atlarge member of the board good afternoon everyone Brenda

002wolf District Five good afternoon bues Grace Rivera oven District One good afternoon Julie Yang District 3 Mr say good afternoon everyone uh I am here virtually Sami SED student member of the board and I'm very excited to be here today and I'm Carla sylvestri president of the board now we can begin the meeting but first we need a motion to amend the agenda to remove consent item 6.2 from today's agenda so moved second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous and we also need a motion in a second to move item 9.1 final action homework policy um and item 15.1 so moved second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous now can I get a motion to approve the meeting agenda as amended I move we approve the meeting as amended

003second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous okay very good uh we can now move on to agenda item number three the human resources and development the monthly report good afternoon and thank you uh president sylvestri and so uh we have uh two that I'd like to bring forward uh so whereas to death on April 23rd 2024 of Miss shelda A Philip par educator at Newport Mill Middle School deeply has saddened the staff students and the members of the Board of Education and whereas during her more than 22 years of service at Montgomery County Public Schools Miss Phillip made significant contributions to create a positive work environment her caring and supportive demeanor made her students feel comfortable and valued in her classroom and whereas Miss philli was highly dedicated par educator who worked

004tirelessly for the success of her students she was an advocate for their needs and deeply cared about their academic achievements her unwavering commitment to creating a positive and secure educational environment has had a significant impact on her students colleagues and the community now therefore be it resolved that the members of the Board of Education and the interim superintendent of schools Express their sorrow at the death of Miss Phillip and extend deepest sympathy to her family and be it further resolved that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to the family of Miss Phillip move approval second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous next whereas to death on April 12 12 2024 of miss Connie a Edinger par educator at Dr Charles R Drew Elementary School deeply has sat in the staff students

005and members of the Board of Education and whereas during the more than 25 years Miss Edinger worked for Montgomery County Public Schools she fully understood how her role contributed to the success of students she demonstrated dedication to students and staff by contributing to an enjoyable learning environment and whereas Miss Ed singer was a highly valued staff member at Dr Charles R Drew Elementary School she consistently maintained a positive attitude and worked collaboratively with other staff members to meet students needs Miss Ed singer's interactions with students were always kind and encouraging which made them feel safe and welcomed in her presence her positive approach significantly contributed to students happiness composure and prepar Ness for their school day now therefore be it resolved that the members of the Board of Education and the interim superintendent of schools

006Express their sorrow at the death of Mrs Edinger and extend deepest sympathy to her family and further and be it further resolve that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to the family of Mrs Ed singer move approval second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous and I give skipped over the monthly report so can I get a motion to pass the monthly report please say so moved second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous okay and now we move on to 3.2 recommended appointments thank you and so uh today we have seven appointments the first is Dr uh Genevie L Floyd director division of career and postsecondary Partnerships and career advising office of curriculum and instructional programs Office of the chief academic officer Office of the Deputy superintendent attending joining

007her today are her colleagues stakeholders mentors and close friends from Montgomery County Public Schools Dr Floyd has been employed with mcps for 24 years she has served in a role as a teacher Career Academy lead teacher assistant principal executive assistant coordinator and most recently a supervisor of the division of career and post-secondary Partnerships and career advising she looks forward to serving in her new role and to working collaboratively with mcps staff partners and stakeholders in service to our students shout out to her family watching online from Florida Georgia and South Carolina [Applause] move approval second all in favor raise your hands that's uh Mrs Evans Miss Harris myself Miss Yang Mr s abstaining Mrs madrasi um Miss wolf Miss Retta oven okay the motion passes congratulations I do want to just take a minute to

008let you know it's not about the people it's about the process so just make sure everybody understands that next is Mrs Meredith L Benning assistant director department of human Capital management office of human resources and Development Office of the chief of staff attending joining her today is her husband Robert daughter Gemma and her father Preston livers Mrs Benning has been employed with mcps for 17 years she has served in a role of substitute teacher teacher resource teacher content specialist Consulting teacher and most recently as coordinator department of human Capital Management Mrs Benning looks forward to continuing the work of the department to recruit and hire for excellence and diversity as well as supporting the current Workforce move approval second all in favor raise your hands Mrs Evans Miss Harris myself Miss Yang Mr s abstaining

009Mrs madrasi Miss wolf Miss Riva oven congratulations motion next is Miss Charlene M peria supervisor Department of special education services office of special education office of the chief academic officer Office of the Deputy superintendent attending joining her today is her father Dr Robert E Pera and friend Sarah Smith Miss Pera has been employed with mcps for 30 years she has served in the role of par educator special education teacher instructional specialist supervisor assistant principal and most recently as acting supervisor Department of special education services she looks forward to joining the department of special education services move approval second all in favor raise your hands Mrs Evans Miss Harris myself Miss Yang Mr say abstaining Mrs madrasi Miss wolf miss rera oven congratulations next up is Mrs Rachel M Carson supervisor Elementary English language development department

010of English Learners and multilingual education a office of curriculum and instructional programs Office of the chief academic officer Office of the Deputy superintendant attending joining her today is her husband Andrew son Mato and friend Amanda K Mrs Carson comes to mcps with more than 12 years experience in education as a teacher and administrator Mrs Carson is honored to be joining mcps where she looks forward to empowering educators of multilingual students expanding instructional opportunities and supporting students and families move approval second all in favor raise your hands Mrs Evans Miss Harris myself Miss Yang Mr s abstaining Mrs madowski Miss wolf Miss Rea oven congratulations next is Mr Daniel R Yip supervisor secondary English language development department of English Learners and multilingual Education Office of curriculum and instructional programs Office of the chief academic officer Office

011of the Deputy superintendent attending joining him today is his wife Ruby an mcps teacher and his two sons Kaden and Hunter Yip both mcps students Mr Yip has been employed with mcps for 14 years years as an English language development teacher curriculum specialist teacher and most recently as English language development teacher Parkland Middle School he looks forward to rejoining the Department of English uh Learners and multilingual education to support emergent multilingual Learners and their families in grades 6 to 12 towards College and Career Readiness move approval second all in favor raise your hands Mrs Evans Miss Harris myself Miss Yang Mr s abstaining Mrs madoski Miss wolf Mr R oven congratulations next is Mrs kishana J Dean principal Green Castle Elementary School joining her today is her husband Keith Dean and Mentor Miss Stacy Brown

012principal William Tyler pagee Elementary School Mrs Dean has been employed with mcps for 24 years she has served in a role as a teacher focused teacher staff development teacher instructional specialist supervisor and most recently as assistant principal William Tyler page Elementary School she looks forward to joining Green Castle Elementary School to support their community and its commitment to providing students with a well-rounded education shout out to her children sha Jasmine and Miles who are watching online and to the countless friends and family who have supported Mrs Dean on her journey move approval second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous congratulations next is Miss Allison L Sereno principal banck bur Elementary School attending joining her today is her husband Brian baskowski media specialist Beth Bethesda Cherry Chase High School and her children Bobby

013and Khloe Miss Sereno has been employed with mcps for 30 years she has served in a role as a teacher student support specialist assistant principal and most recently principal wesland Middle School she looks forward to joining the community of care and academic Excellence at banck bur Elementary shout out to her mother Marilyn Sereno who is watching online from Massachusetts move approval second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous [Applause] congratulations real quick if I could point if I could just say one thing uh Miss Sereno was a former student member of the board so uh from a current student member of the board to a former congratulations and thank you for staying with the system thank you Mr s uh moving on to agenda item number four recognitions Dr Felder yes we I

014am excited because we have several recognitions uh today so uh the first recognition uh is regarding counselor of the Year Awards so we're at the Montgomery County Public School Council of the Year award is celebrated to Spotlight the exceptional contributions of Professional School counsellors and their significant role in guiding students towards academic success career planning and college readiness and whereas the academic achievements of students intricately are connected to their overall learning and personal growth with school counsels uniquely equipped to address diverse student needs across the academic personal interpersonal career and health domains and whereas school counselors demonstrate unwavering dedication to student Welfare by identifying obstacles to learning employing datadriven decision-making processes implementing evidence-based interventions evaluating outcomes and enhancing accountability measures and whereas through fostering collaborative efforts among parents Guardians and Educators school counselors cultivate a

015supportive learning atmosphere conducent to student student progress and attainment and whereas it is appropriate for Montgomery County Public Schools to honor the indispensable role of the school counselors in students personal and academic Journeys by recognizing outstanding individuals with the Mongomery County public schools coun schools counselor of the Year award one exemplary counselor from each educational level now therefore be it resolved that the Montgomery County Board of Education the interim superintendent of schools staff students and families congratulate the recipients of the 2024 School counsel of the Year award and that is miss Ann Marie uh hetrick um School counsel at Candlewood Elementary Mr Richard B Solomon resource counselor Silver Spring International middle school and Miss Melanie a Kahani school counselor bethesa Chevy Chase High School move approval second all in favor raise your hands and that's

016T is with those present great next is National Association for the advancement of colored people scholarship Awards so where as the Montgomery County branch of the National Association for the advancement of colored people at its annual Freedom fund dinner award awarded 23100 ,000 scholarships to Montgomery County Public School students and whereas the National Association for the advancement of color people selected embracing our Legacy as the theme for its 49th Freedom fund dinner held on Sunday May 19th 2024 to recognize black or African-American students for their positive contributions to our schools and community and whereas mcgomery County Public Schools recognizes and celebrates the students dedication to their academic Pursuit and personal and community service achievements that make a difference to our County our state and our country and whereas the mcgomery County Board of Education takes

017great pride that mcgomery County Public Schools honors the many contributions of black and African American students now therefore be it resolved that on behalf of the interim Superintendent of Schools staff members students parents guardians of Montgomery County Public Schools the members of the Montgomery County Board of Education congratulate this year's National Association for the advancement of colored people scholarship award winners move approval second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous with those present the last recognition is regarding Montgomery County Public Schools higher education Partnerships so whereas Montgomery County public School celebrates its commitment to partnering with local institutions of higher education in an effort to support aspiring Educators and bring the best possible professional development and academic opportunities to our staff and whereas Montgomery County Public Schools recognizes and celebrates the more than

018942 employees enrolled in 11 institutions of higher education offering 23 partnership programs of these more than 324 or 2023 2024 higher education partnership degree and certificate completers who have earned certif CER certificates certifications and bachelor's and master's degrees and be it resolved that on behalf of the interim superintendent of schools and all Montgomery County Public School staff members and uh members of the Board of Education we congratulate and recognize our higher education partners and their graduates for their contributions to the school system and for creating a culture of lifelong learning and the pursuit of academic Excellence move approval second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous with those present okay thank you we are um moving on to agenda item number five which is public comments public comments is one of our opportunities

019to hear sh the views and receive advice from community members board members will take your comments into consideration but it is not our practice to take action at this time on issues that are raised we encourage public input on policy program and practices this is not the proper Avenue to address specific student or employee matters so we encourage everyone to utilize existing Avenues of address for complaints this is a public meeting and we expect the conduct of all speakers and members of the audience to be within the bounds of proper etiquette inappropriate personal remarks rude retorts and other such behavior is out of order and will not be tolerated those who demonstrate disruptive or disrespectful behavior during public comments may be asked to leave the room please check our website for information about upcoming board

020meetings hearings and work sessions including any changes to our meeting start times we have 13 people who have signed up to provide inperson testimony each speaker will receive two minutes for comments when your name is called please approach the table speak clearly and directly into the microphone 30 seconds prior to the expiration of a speaker's time a yellow light will go on accompanied by a beat a red light and a buzzer signals your time has expired please push the flat button below the microphone to turn it on and begin speaking push the same button once more at the sound of the buzzer to turn it off in addition to our in speak inperson speakers today we have five people signed up to provide video testimonies we will play these submissions on the imperson testimonies have

021concluded copies of testimonies can be found on bardocks where they are posted with other materials for this meeting okay so we can get started with our first six speakers uh if you could please come forward and I call your name suit hedge Christine handy Jennifer Martin uh let's see Evelyn Chong Julia Rogers and Amy I okay s HED here you may begin good evening Dr Felder and members of the Board of Education my name is sujith heg and I am currently a junior at Richard Montgomery High School I am here to advocate for Narcan training for all high school students in mcps as an EMS provider at Rockville volunteer fire department opioid overdoses aren't foreign to me as First Responders we are taught that timing is everything the moment we see signs of an opioid

022overdose we know we have to act fast it is ingrained in us that a body without oxygen for more than 5 minutes may as well be pronounced dead to this day I remember the first overdose I was dispatched to we arrived on scene to find a young female with the usual symptoms pinpoint pupils unresponsiveness and a lack of breathing through our prompt use of Narcan we were able to resuscitate the patient for weeks after the image of that young woman who looked not much older than I did remained in my mind if we had arrived on scene 5 minutes later or if we had waited any longer to deliver Narin our life would have been lost anyone could have been in my position data shared by mcpd shows youth overdoses continually spiking increasing by 77%

023in 2022 and Rising year by year this data shows that opioid overdoses are very real and can happen to anyone especially in minority communities in these situations people must be prepared hesitation can be the difference between life and death it is vital that we give our students the training to handle these emergencies decisively I propose to do this through Health classes in our high schools a Narcan tra training session includes education on recognizing overdose symptoms locating Narcan administering Narcan and a final test to assess knowledge and understanding in all these sessions will take around 40 minutes and could easily be adapted to a single lesson this is the preparation our students need to act in a vital moment thank you for your time thank you Dr handy you may begin good afternoon Dr Felder Miss

024sylvestri and members of the Board of Education First I would like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to Samy SED our student member of the board of education on your graduation and upcoming College enrollment Samy your dedication and advocacy for the students in our entire School District have been truly exceptional your willingness to seek feedback from a cap on your proposals and there have been a few is a testament to your commitment and Leadership on behalf of map we wish you all the best in your future endeavors and I am confident that your name will be on a ballot in the at the polls in the near future members of the board today today you're going to be voting on the operating budget for next school year and while we have done all that we can

025to Advocate with the County Council for the mCP s budget items that we believe are important we fell short this year budget is pretty much done so I sit here hoping that we can begin the next fiscal year with the end in mind it is imperative that we work closely with the County Council and ensure they fully understand the needs of our school district and that we do not wait until official budget season uh to start that discussion the FY 26 operating budget is already projected to be more challenging than this than this this year and that is hard to imagine it will be up to you and our superintendent to start working on budget advocacy early and to mend and build Bridges with our County officials we are counting on you Additionally you must

026work to collaborate work and collaborate with our unions when we work together we are better much better Dr Felder I want to express my deep appreciation for your calmon spirit instructional and fiscal leadership encourage and leading mcps during such a challenging in time your unwavering commitment and resilience have truly been inspiring it has not been easy but your steadfast fastness has never wavered and I've never seen you clutch your pearls so thank you so much thank you Jennifer Martin good afternoon let me first correct a statement I made previously regarding the fy2 24 budget line item superintendent scalla I've since learned that this did not refer to the superintendent's holiday party which mcps did not fund it was in reference to the superintendent Gala for the Arts I've sent apologies to the former superintendent and

027a letter of Correction to this board yesterday over 100 mcea Educators parents students and community members gathered in Downtown Silver Spring to draw public attention to the serious underfunding we're facing for next year the the we were there to draw that attention the council's failure to honor this board's barebones budget request and your lack of passion advocacy on behalf of our students has led to anger and fear about our working and learning conditions in the year ahead hundreds of us are facing involuntary transfers and hundreds of new teachers contracts are at risk we realize that among elected leaders we have few if any effective champions for Education while all of you on the board say you care about schools and the souls who work and learn here where is the courage of your convictions when

028are you going to speak forcefully and act with decisiveness in seeking resources we desperately need it's not easy for us to fight on to the on the streets as we did but we are frustrated by the empty words and dismissiveness we receive from our elected leaders we Educators can't save the school system by ourselves right now all the good things that happen in our classrooms and school buildings each day seem to happen in spite of rather than because of mcps and County leadership in the year ahead mcea will continue to fight to restore the Excellence of our schools we need you to be there with us now is not the time to be polite and meek stand up to County leaders and demand from them what our students need and deserve thank you is Evelyn

029Chong Evelyn Chong oh sorry I missed you that's okay there was okay members of the Board of Education my name is Evelyn Chung and I'm speaking to you today as a vice president of Education of the mccpta as an organization committed to fulfill furthering the potential of every child the mccpta hopes that our vision is shared by our elected officials the final mcps budget does not meet that standard this mcps budget was troubled from the time of its release when it was presented publicly without being available for review when the county EX itive recommended budget was released in March offering mcps less than their request mcps should have opened it its books that transparency was and still is missing we urge the County Council and Board of Education to work together with the public in

030the interest of our children and engage the community in a transparent and honest manner to provide greater transparency and accountability going forward at this point the board and mcps should provide a list of cuts and additions for FY 2025 by office and school and all major contracts including but not limited to digital licenses instructional materials contracts and contractual Services it should communicate what happens to unspent funds and what reserves it has in addition mcps should publish projections of major contracts and labor expenses for the next 5 years to ensure stable multi-year Financial Planning and finally mcps should clearly identify which new programs and initiatives will be required by the Maryland blueprint in the next 5 years in addition we ask this board and mcps to mitigate the impacts of the $30 million shortfall especially on

031class sizes we ask you to ensure accommodations for the Virtual Academy students who otherwise would lose access to compacted math or who have special education needs to prioritize instrument funds for high poverty schools and to explain and address the loss of the office of the chief medical officer and finally when mcps spends money they must follow up mcps has been engaging in significant systemwide improvements including the shift to structured literacy we need stable leadership during this transitional period and urge the board to consider this as it determines a timeline for selection of a new superintendent it is important that the board creates a transparent superintendent search process that is calculated to restore public trust and confidence in their final selection and thank you for your consideration thank you Julia Rogers May begin Julia Rogers good

032afternoon my name is Julia Rogers and I'm a special education teacher here at the MVA I know I'm good at my job and that voiding of the boards and mcpss Mission is not a reflection on me my ad colleag at the MVA or the 14,000 Educators I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with today we know our mission and that is to provide not just an education but a safe and supportive environment where all can Thrive at the MVA we provide a full school day to over 800 students we have a diverse student body of students and have that have had social interaction both here and at their home schools a closure of this program would disproportionately impact students of the global majority which is 85% of our population and those receiving Farms which is 55% this is also

033not the same as IIs it just isn't the equivalent 68 hours a week of instruction is not the same not receiving all IEP service hours as students do at the MVA from speech to OT to classroom support is not the same as IAS at the MVA our students have test scores that show progress for example K to2 reading proficiency specifically for African-Americans and Hispanic students there was a 79% and 25% increase respectively in proficiency from Fall to Spring take back your PO board from mcps and steer us as you see fit we have students placed with us who are chronically absent some by parents some by their homeschools a sample to show how we are moving that needle we went from 27 students on The Chronic weekly absenteeism list in October to just 11 in

034May and now our graduation rate is at 86% I leave you with a quote from a student mcps Prides itself on the diversity of this county yet you are planning on taking away one of the safe spaces for those in need board take back your time take back your power the final decision rests with you not the superintendent not the Chief Operating Officer but with you the board who are elected to make decisions to ensure support of our students don't let today's vote be a reflection on your dedication to students of MC mcps the Educators your quality of work your legacy is now support the MVA don't increase our workloads and don't lay off Educators thank [Music] you thank you amyi you may begin good afternoon my name is is Amy I I have been

035an elementary educator with mcps for 25 years and have proudly served the Virtual Academy for the last three I am here to speak with you about the value and impact the MBA has had on students who are thriving and excelling at their online learning I would like to share one of the mba's currently thriving fifth grade students testimony about why the mbaa must stay Adrien a 10-year-old who is finishing fifth grade is thriving because of the mbaa when she attended in-person school she was struggling with all of the distractions and being shy the MBA has not only allowed to do well in school but Excel that's because teachers have allowed her to go to quiet breakout rooms by herself to complete assignments she has consistently tested in the 99th percentile percentile however when she does

036in-person testing she does very poorly due to all the distractions if you insist on closing the Virtual Academy she won't be the only excelling student who will fail to thrive many of her classmates will too her questions for the board are don't we count do you think putting us in huge noisy classrooms is the right decision the Virtual Academy is her Pathway to success and if you close it you're dooming dooming students to failure another testimony that I would like to share is from my current third grade student Arnav who is exceptional and thriving with tremendous growth in all academic areas he comments on why MBA must stay Arnav believes that closing the MVA is a bad idea he has made good friends has had great teachers and done well in school he wants his

037success to continue by learning at the MBA he is requesting to please not close the MBA the MBA provides an equitable opportunity for students to receive a comparable education we are providing education to students where Staffing is not available in hybrid math classes without the MVA students like Arnav will not have access to enriched math instruction students who took compacted math at the MBA this year will likely end up having to repeat a half Year's instruction next year because in-person schools do not have the resources to provide enriched math instruction that is not meeting the needs of our students all MVA stakehold holders were promised in February by the Board of Ed that MVA would stay now families are left to scramble and Patchwork educational plans for August while educators are now searching for jobs

038that are not by choice this is just not right to do to Educators and families in June when all board members agreed to extend the NBA just three short months ago the NBA must [Applause] day thank you for your testimony if we could get our next six speakers to please come forward Victoria Hill Julia Gan Williams Samir Hussein Charles Rollins teimo taiwo and Lea kademian Victoria Hill you may begin good afternoon I wrote to you in April regarding the lack of eem emergency communication infrastructure in our elementary schools I recently discovered that some elementary schools not only lack cell service they do not have landline phones either one school noted that 12 classrooms only have access to a single phone at the end of a hallway for use in the event of an emergency although

039I have previously discussed Elementary School communication issues with you through a security lens the reality is that the lack of 911 calling capability schoolwide intercoms and panic buttons in our elementary schools is not just a Safety and Security issue it's a public health issue recently a Montgomery County teacher had to stop life-saving Care on a faculty member because they could not call 911 inside the school they had to run outside to call for help when anyone attending or visiting our schools experiences a medical emergency seconds count today I am here to ask that you direct all Elementary School principles to utilize the the Department of Homeland Security's school security assessment tool the setet is a free tool designed to help schools take stock of what security measures and supports are in place and recommends where

040improvements can be made the tool does not store or process any information meaning it collects no data on the name of the school principal or students the results of this zeroc cost thirdparty assessment would give you in all 136 Elementary School principles basine knowledge of where vulnerabilities exist and it will only take each School 10 minutes to complete in April a student was arrested for writing a Manifesto that outlined plans to carry out a shooting at one of our elementary schools I have since begun a campaign to raise awareness of the communications vulnerabilities that risk thousands of K through five lives across our elementary schools please mandate the use of the free non-attribution tool at all elementary schools assess the results and act accordingly thank you for your [Applause] time good afternoon my name is

041julen Williams and I'm a founding member of poet Educators we are a collective of mcps Hispanic Educators from all three unions passionate about our colleas and the students we serve today we are here to testify on behalf of the Hispanic Latino staff students and community in March the board asked for feedback from the community as the search for a new superintendent began among the tools the board deployed were Community forums a for focus group of community stakeholders and a survey sent to mcps stakeholders I'd like to give you feedback on that survey the survey had 4,880 responses mostly parents and teachers a majority of the respondents had the opportunity to indicate their race or ethnicity 23 and a half% of respondents did not disclose their race or ethnicity were those respondents Hispanics or Latino for

042the majority of the time the survey was open Hispanic Latino was not an option that could be selected in the final few days of the survey one of our leaders alerted someone in central office and within minutes Hispanic Latino was added to the survey giving our community precious few days and zero notification to participate share our voice ideas and expectations of the new superintendent with you the May report citing the results of the data collection effort says that 1.3% of the respondents were Hispanic Latino that may be because we were only allowed to identify ourselves in the final few days of that the survey was open the effect of this egregious error oversight mistake is that we were virtually erased from the conversation the Hispanic Latino Workforce in mcps deserves better we are members of

043the community parents of in the school system and the backbone of this entire operation we have been overlooked erased and silenced in this process the board failed to engage the community that represents 35% of the student population in mcps we were rendered mute in a process that impacts us all thank you ladies and gentlemen good afternoon uh my name is Samir Hussein and I am a community advocate and a recent mcps retiree who has provided over 30 years of service in the past few months I have listened to many speakers in this room well the old room who we have who have dehumanize Palestinian people and those who are personally connected to Palestinians more incidents um are happening in schools uh again against Palestinian students and their families by adults including School administrators I want

044to believe it is not hate or racism but a lack of knowledge education is essential solution to this matter it costs less than a ignorance one example as um you witness the last board meeting on May um 9th one speaker who is in the leadership role in her child's School kept referring to those who Express solidarity for human rights as Liars they continue she they continue to harass some of us in the audience and outside the boardroom thanks to the security and other staff members who escorted them away from us what kind of example is this being around students inside a school individuals such as hateful racist conduct should be restricted from being around children I can only imagine how uncomfortable and unsafe students may feel in that in that person's presence as a person

045who is not as a person is not distinguished over another by appearance or race but rather by quality of one's character and conduct I was raised in a community to follow teaching the identity racism as a system of arrogance in the heart no person have superiority over another except impiety and displayed through actions by the by led by respect um I wanted to congratulate Sami s for all his leadership and I wish I wish him a continuous success thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is Charles Rollins you may begin good afternoon is it working yes all right good afternoon Dr Felder members of the board my name is Charlie Rollins and I'm currently a sophomore at w high school I will be The Treasure of both the my student government Association

046and my black student union I'm here today to address a critical need within our school system that need is for allocating funding towards addressing anti-black racism and to include appropriate resources for school-based staff to support this work I'm passionate about resolving matters that regard my peers so that I can ensure that it feel safe and secure at all times the recent incident involving the printing of the nword 1,000 times on 1,000 separate pieces of paper emphasizes a significant Gap in our current uh procedures School administration needs adequate training and accountability measures in place when expectations are not met the learning curve of the current administrator at our school who did not investigate the incident properly is unacceptable our school administrators are tasked with being the leaders who keep student safe and ensure that everyone feels

047valued equally the delay in the reporting of this incident has only been salt in each one of these 1,000 wounds inflicted by each hateful word on those sheets of paper however I can't make my peers feel safe if the administration lacks the ability to address hate and bias inance properly in addition to appropriate training and adequate consequences for administrators I believe that there is a serious need to allocate funds to support the staff members who Provide support to the students in our school won's restorative justice ghost Mrs Vance and uh our social worker Miss Brenham both of whom are African-American provide critical social and emot support and representation in schools that goes a long way in making black students feel seen and hurt I understand that mistakes happen however they are often times preventable taking

048these steps to ensure that the issues such as these uh do not repeat themselves in the future is an important First Step I'm one of four children in my family two of my sisters have already graduated from Wen and experienced similar acts of racial harassment and discrimination however I have one younger sister who is a seventh grader attending cin John I urge you to please consider all that I presented for you today I don't want my sister or future classes to endure these preval traumas thank you thank you Teo Taio you may begin good afternoon Dr Felder and members of the Board of Education my name is Tero ATO and I am a junior at Wen high school and the co-president of the black student union on Wednesday May 15 a student printed the nword

049on 1,000 separate pieces of paper until the printer ran out a staff member came across this printer and reported it to an administrator despite their actions nothing was done to rectify the matter as a result an additional incident occurred on Friday May 17th when a black staff member went to refill the printer and was met with hundreds of the remaining Pages spilling out first according to the mcps hate bu incident reporting procedures individuals should first make a verbal report to staff or Administration in this case this was promptly done by the staff member the second action item is for the administrator to submit a hate bias incident reporting form to the principal however this was not done the question remains for which we never have an answer why was there a two-day period wait two-day

050waiting period until this incident was reported to our principal and why did it take an additional staff member this time a black member to come across this printer for Action to take place we may never know the answers to these questions but I've come up with a few potential answers first our Humanity only matters when it is elevated by black staff members of which there are only a handful and secondly when an issue arises we are in the hands of Administrators who need to be told how and when to act even when the incident is as egregious as this one all of these answers are unacceptable which leads me to ask what consequences if any came as a result of the administrator's actions fil thankfully to the IT specialist the 1,000 page job was able

051to be canceled in minutes it took minutes minutes to prevent anyone else from experiencing this act of hate minutes that an administrator did not take to prevent immense damage thank you for your time thank you Lea comedian you may begin good afternoon everyone my name is Leila kadamian and I'm the co-president of Thomas Wooten High School's black student union in August I'll be entering my senior year it is beyond disappointing that I a 17-year-old old child need to be here to tell the adults to do to do their jobs I was elected to fight not to be a figurehead I want to start off by saying that these disparities never happen in a vacuum this is not just a Wooten issue but a countywide issue it is extremely it is an extremely unrealistic expectations to

052ask to ask students and staff to come to a building that they do not feel 100% comfortable and protected in this involves discrimination and Prejudice job security mistreatment via employers and stable infrastructure we cannot perform as our best selves both professionally and academically if we did not have the resources we need to thrive we've seen many shortcomings and responses to acts of hate and aggression it makes us wonder how much effort is being put into training staff to handle these kinds of issues and how competent they are to hold these positions clearly some type of reformation needs to be made we propose that more funding be put into diversity equity and inclusion inclusion training for administrators and staff and that adequate background checks must be conducted as part of the hiring and recruitment process when

053we do not acknowledge these disparities it makes it seem as though our collaboration and all our hard work are performative at best tying into this the recent budget cuts will spell nothing but trouble for the schools affected it is no secret that our educators are often more are more often than not overworked and underpaid on the other side students will suffer because there won't be enough attention and centralized learning for them to properly understand the material they're being taught with the increase in classroom sizes and reduction in supporting staff with larger class sizes and reduced staff it is unlikely that issues such as the one stated before will be reported as frequently when they arise or or are addressed properly we value your vow to commitment to an anti-racist school system but we must also

054have your word that you will protect those who are responsible for implementing it because trust that the handling of this incident will not happen again we've heard your words and now we demand action thank you thank you for her testimony if we could get our next speakers to please come forward Marta Rio Amy Oram and Barba galasso Leah heagan Meadows Maro you may begin good afternoon my name is Marta riio and I've been an educator in mcps for over 20 years and a math teacher at the upper school at the Virtual Academy since our launch three years ago I'm asking that you find a way to fund the MVA for our students we have over 800 students but have you stop to think about each student each story and the new chapter you're writing for

055them today with your vote here are some of my students personal MVA stories and how their attendance has improved because of the MVA I teach a bright 9th grade girl who used to miss days of school at a time because of traumatic experiences in her school that left her attempting self harm feeling suicidal and then going into a psych psychiatric W she shared that the Virtual Academy has truly allowed her to heal and she's anxious and afraid that if she goes back in person she'll relapse I wish you could meet the astute nth grade boy who due to mental torments in middle school with was at the point of contemplating suicide after the thoughts of dropping out of school he came to the MVA he shared that the Virtual Academy has been his lifeline and

056he's recently started talking about going to college I teach an amazing nth grade girl who I've taught for two years she has a topic dermatitis that's triggered by dust mold and stress that often left open wounds on her body when she was in person the Virtual Academy has allowed her to manage her condition better within her home and attends school daily another person you'll affect with your vote is an 11 sth grade girl with drug resistant epilepsy after sustaining a concussion from falling down the stairs due to a seizure on her way to the health room the school told her and her family there was no way the school could ensure her safety she wrote in her story please consider the needs of the disabled Community before you make your decision being able to attend

057school online in the safety of my home has allowed me to thrive and given me the public school education I am promised through the Ada do not take away the Virtual Academy what of the greatest 504 accommodations for people like me when voting today think about these four students I wish I had more than 2 minutes to share countless more stories think about our over 790 other students and their stories and what chapter you will write with your vote I urge you to find a way to fund the MVA thank you Amy Oram you may begin my name is Amy Oram and I am the mother of Theo Oram sixth grader at the Virtual Academy I am speaking today because I am dismayed that mcps would close a school without taking a deep dive into

058why it is essential for so many students what started as a program to protect children from covid has become a Lifeline for students for a variety of reasons I personally chose it because it allows my son to have a quality education but in a setting that has less distractions and more flexibility I feel that no other school in the county provides this unique environment that keeps our children safe included engaged and happy I have listened in on the classes at the Virtual Academy almost every day I did this because I wanted to ensure that my son was receiving the same quality education that his peers do at our local middle school and every day I am impressed with the High Caliber of teaching in his classes if you visited a classroom you too would see

059that the students are engaged in learning where they get immediate input and feedback on their work unlike in at inperson schools with fewer distractions and behavioral issues teachers aren't spending class time disciplining or lecturing students but taking the time to connect with them I cannot ignore the very real successes that my son has had at the Virtual Academy and that other children are having and why families keep coming back year after year one of the core values on the MCS mcps website is equity if you vote on the budget cuts and eliminate the Virtual Academy you are taking away Equity from virtual students by forcing them into an educational environment that that does not work for so many of them you need to do everything you can to find the money to keep the Virtual

060Academy open thank you for your time thank thank you Barbara gaso and Leah Hagen Meadows hi good afternoon I would like to give something to Dr Felder please as she does that we're part of the MVA PTA and Barbara and I are here because our children have been affected and all the children of MBA have been affected by the decision to close MBA there's a mixture of disbelief and really righteous indignation 111 days ago we you assured us our school would remain open and we trusted your commitment however in a shocking reversal you've chosen to school close MVA by citing budget constraints attendance and graduation rates all of these factors were not initially presented as decision criteria to us as parents who are stakeholders and also to our students who are your data we request

061that you honor your prior commitment to keep the NVA open at least for another year to fund this program and because our children they deserve the stability the continuity in their education and not a sudden upheaval in a sudden upheaval based on your guys' sh shifting criteria good afternoon microphone pleas microphone gone back on its word I teach my children to tell the truth and I had a really hard time trying to explain them this situation to them our school is a community a safe place for our students my twin daughters just graduated from the eighth grade yesterday with all A's and B's one even making the honor rooll for the first time ever this year because they had amazing teachers enough time to get help with class CL being with the classes being smaller

062and the space to remain focused my other daughter learned how to read she started below level and went up over 150 points in her Deo score and up in her her other tests and she does really well with math and guess what she's only been in the NVA there are so many awesome things that I could talk about regarding the NVA but the one I'm most proud of is how we come together to protect our kids to give them the freedom to learn how they need to learn to show them that they you don't give up you stand up for what you leave in or you fall for anything and how much these students and staff care about our school the bond we have made is unbreakable so I beg you to please please keep

063the Academy open for all 800 current students and families and for the ones that are on the wait list hoping and praying to get in the NBA cuz the NBA must stay NBA must thank you for your testimony [Applause] we received five video testimonies the first one comes from Diane n please play the video my name is Diane Mason and I've been a dedicated mcps teacher for almost 20 years I'm certified in math and special ed when the Virtual Academy started I was excited to see this long-standing need finally addressed Co brought attention and resources to a population that's always existed but has been quietly falling through the cracks as a longtime special ed teacher I know there isn't one Universal Design for learning conventional schools simply and quantifiably do not have the capacity to

064serve the needs of every student the MBA was needed the cost of the programs been cited as a justification for its closure mcps will not save money by closing the MBA in a long term in fact they must consider the added cost to support this vulnerable population these students in their needs won't disappear if the MBA does and ultimately accommodating them elsewhere will be more expensive poor graduation rates also been cited for the last three years I have been the case manager for every senior at the MV with an IEP these students have a near perfect graduation rate especially impressive considering they may not have succeeded without the MBA our data doesn't reflect the success last minute administrative placements from in-person schools artificially deflate our graduation rate fourth quarter seniors placed with six credits to

065their name simply cannot graduate by the end of the year it's an impossible expectation to use that data against us is wrong three months after you the board committed to funding the Virtual Academy it was announced abruptly that we're being closed this last minute shutdown has caused extreme stress and anxiety over our futures I had a student tell me that while attending in-person school severe bullying caused a suicide attempt she wants to drop out and not go back another student stopped turning and work because he said why bother I'm going to drop out if I have to go back in person another student had a baby and doesn't have child care lined up she wants to drop out these are just a few of the scenarios of what our families are facing as a 10e

066veteran teacher I have my own concerns about the Thoughtless and careless threats made by mcps that teachers may be ripped plowed laid off or involuntarily transferred past the deadline in our contracts please consider the real people and the real lives impacted by your choice do the right thing find the funding focus on the important things prioritize our students and teachers keep the MBA thank you our next video testimony comes from Jonathan and Kristen Lasco please play the video we're Kristen and Jonathan Lasco our son Max is a fourth grader at the Virtual Academy please continue funding the MVA as a safe and Equitable option for students with diverse needs Max has a disease called spinal muscular atrophy it is degenerative lifelong and life-threatening he uses machines to breathe swallow speak sit and move despite all

067this Max is cognitively unaffected with the Mind interests and humor of a typical fourth grader the MBA provides a safe learning environment a common cold can put Max in the hospital for weeks since attending the MVA Max has not had a single respiratory illness if Max were to attend school in person his academics would likely suffer the MBA eliminates barriers to learning brick and mortar schools are heavily optimized around assumptions that cater to typically abled people school buses bathrooms playgrounds desks paper and pencil these facilitate learning for the many but create barriers for the few in Max's case he utilizes multiple rooms of complex medical equipment throughout the day keeping him safe and healthy ongoing medical procedures like respiratory treatments feeds and toileting are streamlined in the home setting keeping him learning without interruption while

068minimizing distraction to others the MVA increases accessibility for Max academically and socially before the pandemic Max attended School using a telepresence robot despite his teachers best efforts he fell behind Max can't turn his head to look down at a book he uses a computer to write and speak the mv's digital curriculum offers Max greater independence with equal access to the same modes of learning and submitting work as his peers while Max cannot raise a hand in real life on Zoom he can he can share his ideas in the chat collaborate with his peers in breakout rooms and enlarge the view of his teacher and assignments at the MVA Max has the same opportunities for friendship and collaboration as every other student Max is thriving at the Virtual Academy the academic and social benefits are irreplaceable

069board members please don't leave Max and his friends behind fund the MVA a safe and Equitable option for students of all abilities thank you our next video testimony comes from Ethan Evans please play the video hi my name is Sterling High I'm the father of two children a fourth grader at MVA and a kindergarten who's receiving IIs like many families when we found out the intent to close the MVA 3 weeks before the end of the school year we were left scrambling to try to find appropriate alternatives for our children and the two Alternatives provided by mcps are both inadequate and sometimes unsafe for our children let me tell you exactly why the first option is to take a kosa to send your kids from from their home school to a different school but for

070many families and children that go to the MBA they go because it is inappropriate or even unsafe for them to attend to Brick and Mortar school at all to take these kids from a safe learning environment like NVA and try to force them back in person is unsafe for a lot of these kids the second alternative is interim instructional services and we have personal experience with the inadequacies of IIs as our daughter has been in it for her whole kindergarten year imagine you're a bright and eager young learner like she is and your whole kinder Garten year is no classmates and only 4 hours of instruction a week in just math and reading alone as opposed to the full education that kids get in the MVA another way to look at it is an IIs

071student is actually absent from a classroom the equivalent of 153 days out of 180 Day School Year talk about an absenteeism crisis and to think a lot of these kids were in IAS for years at a time before the MVA came along imagine finally learning what it's like to be a part of a full community of Learners and to have that taken away it's unacceptable it's also inappropriate for a temporary supervisor to permanently eliminate a school for these kids just 3 weeks before the end of the year there's Surplus money to fully fund the MVA thank you our next video testimony is Susan Herod please play the video Suzanne Herod fifth grade teacher at the Virtual Academy every student will have the academic creative problem solving and social emotional skills to be successful in College

072and Career these words should sound familiar they are posted on the mcps website labeled as mission statement as an educator it is my duty to abide and agree to this mission statement it's the board of education's Duty to uphold This Promise by continuing the MBA the MBA nurtures students creativity through choice and experimentation the MBA encourages problem solving skills in an environment when where students feel safe to take risks the MBA develops social emotional skills that can't be developed in the traditional classroom the MVA provides security to some of the most vulnerable students in our County the MBA is privileged to enter the homes of our students each day where we often problem solve in real time with parents mcps Prides itself on equity and diversity never in all of my years teaching have I

073served such a diverse population as I have these past three years at the Virtual Academy students needing enrichment in reading and math students needing enrichment in technology students needing enrichment and Leadership skills students have grown exponentially in confidence because they have been given the space the time and encouragement they would not have received in the traditional classroom students struggling to fit in have discovered their importance their identity their worth and their voice that's Equity how do you justify the dissolving of an organization that you put into put in place to serve this population fund the MVA do not ring on the mcps vision we Inspire learning by providing the greatest public education to each and every student our students need you to do the right thing fund the MBA thank you our final video testimony

074comes from Natalie stall please play the video my name is Natalie stall and I'm about to complete my 23rd year of service in mcps with me today are my teammates Lauren day and Karen Conrad we are the elementary hybrid math program that is currently part of the Montgomery Virtual Academy together we provide Equitable access to accelerated math instruction for over 200 in-person students at over 25 elementary schools across the county despite what appears to be imminent closure of the MBA the hybrid math program can and should continue we are here today to advocate for elementary hybrid math to become an independent program within an established Department in mcps my name is Lauren day this program Grew From just 19 students 2 years ago to over 200 currently enrolled many of the schools we serve would

075not otherwise be able to provide this level of enrichment to their students due to staff shortages and the small number of students identified for compacted math if we take away this program we are taking away from these students direct educational needs every single student in our program has shown high achievement on the mapm assessment this year this program is not a want but a need I'm Karen Conrad in our efforts to save the elementary hybrid math program the hybrid math team asked families and schools to share their feedback 127 schools and families Express their overwhelming support common Trends in our collected data include Equitable access for all students across the county to an advanced math curriculum without this program many famili stated their child would not have access to an advanced math in short Natalie

076Lauren and I urg the Board of Education and mcps leaders to please allow us to lead an independent El Elementary hybrid math program for the fy2 school year and beyond our current and prospective hybrid math students their families their schools are depending on us thank you for this opportunity to share our advocacy thank you this will conclude our public comments the next business meeting of the board of education for public comment is Tuesday June 25th 2024 signups for public comment will open on Tuesday June 18th 2024 at 6: p.m. in addition to online signups for public comment we allow for inperson same day signups when space allows an allocated slots may be filled on a first come first serve basis on the day of the meeting in order to sign up in person please arrive

077at least 15 to 20 minutes before the start of the Open Session and sign the form inperson signups will close 15 minutes before public comment begins or when all slots are filled I will now turn to my colleagues to see if there are any questions or comments please turn your light on Mrs Evans yes so um we always start off by saying thank you to everybody that comes out to give public comments this is probably the first time we're going to have a discussion um during the operating budget but this is probably the first time since I've been on the board in eight years when I have not been in agreement with any of the cuts that we're making it gives me um grave consternation to have to cut prek staff development the MBA CU

078I did I at a public hearing I I said that we would support that for another year so I do we have I've received all of your emails appreciate the comments that you've been making um so as I say I'll get into that further um during the operating budget section but I did want to speak directly to the students that came from Wen High School um thank you for your bravery and your courage um today's a school day I believe so it meant a lot for you all to come here to share with us your experience um I had not heard that incident I don't know how we need to make certain that um we're Gathering what is happening in our schools around um racism um anti-hate um I know we've heard from several groups

079but from our students um a copier machine of a thousand um copies made with that type of slur is very disturbing so if we could have have someone look into what is happening at Wooten high school around this incident we want our students to feel safe and secure um so thank you for coming out to share that information I heard um Miss um Sam Samara husan come out and also State the comments that you made this is we've said it a million times this school system there's no place for hate right and so all we can do is to get better there are um there's a study group going on around hate and bias that we're going to take a look into but we do need to ensure that the people that we're employee right

080I don't know how we get deeper into um behaviors right but we do need to be serious and more focused on who we're hiring who we having in our schools I hope I can't remember if you stated that you're a sort of Justice coach that you do feel comfortable with that person in the school okay very good very good because we do want to make sure that they have the adequate training and the wherewithal to do that job but I did want to make mention there were three of you that came today did not want that to go unnoticed so I do um appreciate that I I know that my colleagues want to be able to comment possibly on other um testimony that we've heard today but I've made note um particularly I think it

081was uh Victoria heel that talked about the um the free tool around school security Safety and Security is very high on not only my list but all of my colleagues list so whenever we say we feel so passionately and strongly about something all of us have the same needs we want everybody in our school system to be safe we don't want any incidents to happen there if there's a way that we can use a free tool that can help us we'll look into it so I'm not stating that we're actually going to use it but we're going to look into it but I don't see why a free tool that would allow us to look at um what advancements or enhancements we can make why we couldn't do that and that was stated at our

082Safety and Security meeting that we held um like maybe a month or a half ago that we're going to look into that so there's always more that we can do we school system that absolutely at every opportunity wants to get better and then I'll just um speak to um Dr handy and um Miss Martin's testimony I appreciate Dr Handy's comments that she made and um to Miss Martin this is what I'll say so our we talk indiv like one onone and in groups about how we feel and we Advocate to the County Council so this is what I'm not going to do I am not going to blame the County Council on what we h on the decisions that we have to make because they have various agencies that they have to fund as well

083so we know there's a limited amount of funding right there's something that we can do here what we can do is consistently have ongoing regular meetings in advance like Miss handy Dr handy said that we should be having ongoing conversations we've been doing that but we need to continue doing that particularly as the Esser funding is going to be gone right nobody wants to talk about covid but we do have to distance ourselves but we do have to be serious about as a result of covid we were giv money that we had never had in the past to do the things that we've always wanted to do and so now we're coming up on a time where we can't continue to do all those things but what we can do is talk to our partners

084about ways that we can offboard some things that maybe should go to dep Department of Health and Human Services that as a school system we should be focused on education but what we've tried to do at least what I can say as a member on this board what I try to make certain that we continue to do at every point is to make certain that our students are well if they're not well if they're not fed they cannot be ready to learn and we need our students to be ready to learn so there are a lot of things that we've done that maybe we can't as a educational system and this is Across the Nation we can't do all the things related to um Health mental health but we've tried to do what we can

085to make sure certain that our students can access their education so um I I just took and I'll say this I have very thick skin I took a little offence that as a board member that I'm not doing my job at every turn I'm doing my job I'm having conversations with people and we're trying to make certain that we can get the funding that we need to make certain that our Stu our students can we just I heard acknowledgement of Samy say and congratulations Sammy for um graduating he's not online anymore this is we do our work to ensure that the students can walk across the stage to do whatever it is that they desire to do that is that is the goal of everybody up here that is our goal and so to to

086think that we are are are perceived as not doing our job we're doing it right we're doing it but guess what we can always partner and do better and work more together so I just wanted to say that I'm not speaking for my colleagues I'm speaking for myself that I'm trying to make certain that we do all that we can to make certain that this is a quality Premier school system and our kids are getting the highest education and that's it for me in terms of my comments Mrs moski yep so I will associate myself with many of the comments that Miss Evans made um you know I was going to talk about this more at the budget but I while people who are speaking about these issues are here rather just get some information

087I think I hope everybody knows that we would love to fund everything and it's not for a lack of trying to find the money um despite what other agencies might say um and we want to do what's best for kids if you go back and look at board meetings 12 years ago I was advocating for the MBA slightly different um options but it's important to me and it's going to kill me to raise my hand to and I I actually me I actually mention to to sheber that it's GNA be hard stand us please we have to have uh silence in the audience so we can move on with our meeting thank you but I do want to have a I have a question um for um Mr Hall um two questions actually number one

088back when you know a long time ago as I was mentioning 12 years ago when I started talking about the virtual classroom stuff it was more of a hybrid type of thing I know you're not the chief of schools but um I'm curious as to what kind of funding would be involved to put something like that into place for some of our students you know that really the virtual learning is what's best for them um so I'm curious about that and um and whether or not that's a possibility um I also you know I agree with Miss Evans that you know we are always looking for areas where we can partner with other agencies and try and do more um but my last question for Mr Hall was after our budget is finished um are

089we able to ask the County Council for uh supplemental appropriation type of thing thank [Applause] you so thank you for those questions um as far as the hybrid uh learning options that you discussed um that's something that I would need to discuss with Dr Moran and and his team but we certainly can look at that and then provide the board with um some information as far as what that might look like and what it would cost um as far as the supplemental appropriation the board can certainly request of the County Council um a supplemental appropriation after July 1st after the turn of the um fiscal year so that would be a board decision okay well I would like to Advocate that we uh go ahead and do that U when possible [Applause] Miss [Applause] wal

090Miss wolf uh thank you um I too want to associate myself with the comments of Miss Evans I um was particularly moved by the testimony from the students at Wooten that was an incident that I had not heard of but I'm also concerned because I've always believed that there is an Under reporting of incidents of bias in the schools and I would like to know specifically was a hate bias report filed for this incident I'd also like to acknowledge Samir I I think she might be gone now she mentioned um here she is an incident that I heard about this week also where this the student or parent was called a liar I think it was a child wasn't it that was was presenting on something it was called a liar at a fifth grade

091graduation I'm not going to call out the school here but I will be getting with you about checking to see if there was an incident report on that also because we're never going to get a handle on these things if we don't have the Stu this the schools accurately reporting the information and in addition Who's involved in what consequences there were I believe that that's something that we really have to start taking uh a deeper dive into and that is consequences I'd also like to acknowledge as Miss Evans did Miss Hill who raised the issue of a tool that homeland security has I'm not familiar with it but I would be um interested in finding out exactly what that is and what it might be able to do for us like Miss Evans I'm a

092little bit uh disturbed by by the the testimony of of the Union because I believe that we have done everything to make it known what we needed in order to run this school system in fact we haven't backed down from our original request but they have decided what they wanted to give us and we do understand that there are several competing interests that they have and so we have made the best decisions that we could make with what we have I do agree with Miss handy Dr handy when she said we need to start earlier we have this year spent many more hours with the County Council working on the budget but it's never enough because still there are things that I don't believe that they quite understand about our budget and uh that we

093need to start even earlier educating them about different things and I think that's pretty much everything that I have I do understand the concerns of the parents at the MVA this has been a very difficult discussion and decision so just know that we heard you and we do understand how you're feeling right now thank you Mr Retta oven thank you Mr Retta oven thank you I um I just want to say a couple of things um and uh I you know I I am a product with mcps my kids are products of mcps um I have nieces in mcps and people who are very close to me I have somebody very close to me in the uh Virtual Academy um but before I go there I want to say thank you to suit um thank

094you for your service uh for for serving as an EMS I such an example my son was um a volunteer fireman at the age of uh 14 and uh so I appreciate your testimony so so know that we have actually moved the needle on that um on that whole issue of naron training in fact we had students use Nar another students even outside of school saving lives so I appreciate your advocacy um and I appreciate the fact that you WR it that it should be part of the health curriculum I think this is something that the system should look into it to ensure that um every young person uh in high school taking health class is um and knows how to properly um use Naran um I want to say thank you to Mrs Hill

095also for her testimony and I just cannot imagine having a colleag collapse and you're not being able to communicate with 911 that should not happen in 2025 so we need to ensure and find the tools to make sure that that doesn't happen um and I want to talk to Mrs Julia Gillen from P I am I'm very disturbed by by the testimony and this is the first I heard of it I don't know if if staff could talk to it but that the fact that the that you know you could not identify yourself as Latin know this is now it makes sense Mrs Yang and I where we're talking why there was such a low participation of the um the Latino staff on the survey and it wasn't because they were disengaged or they didn't

096care because that you know could be an assumption right it was because they were forgotten so this is what I'm going to say to that it seems to me we're forgetting a lot of things lately when it comes to our uh communities especially our minority communities disadvantaged communities communities of color communities you know that are handicap it seems to to me we need to really did really really just have a deep search in our souls of why this is happening and it needs to be a clear message from leadership that this is unacceptable at any level um and to say that I am deeply tra troubled by what the young um our young leaders because they are leaders in their own rights who came from wooden high school is to minimize what I'm really thinking

097I am appalled I am appalled that in 2025 in the most diverse communities in the United States we are still having these really hateful Acts towards people who think differently look differently act differently than we than than the rest of us this is absolutely unacceptable I am looking forward to uh our leadership to follow up um to ensure that you know that the message is clear that in mongi County public schools these kind of actions are not going to be tolerated at any level from staff from anybody else who are in that building because every person in that building should feel safe accepted and welcome and value as a human being and not feel that they don't belong there so that that was just very disturbing so hopefully we'll follow up on that and let

098me just say to um to the members of um and the parents right um so I don't have a child but I do have somebody very close to me who is who is a student um so this is very very very very hard for me but I I do not I'm a very straight shooter talker we can ask for the appropriate I don't want to mislead you however right because in order for for for that to happen from point A to point Z there's a lot of lifting that's going to happen have to happen on the side of the council right they're going to have to have majority vote right they're going to have to have public comments by the time all that happens it's going to be probably in Late July I just want

099to make sure that we're not misleading you into giving you hope that something's going to happen it is my hope that something does happen and you know we're going to do everything we can for that to happen but at the end of the day and I am one of those people at from the beginning that I said that I I I I was not seeing a positive outcome and that you know this was you know this could have been a result from back then when we were talking about it and I spoke to a few of you and and asked and and said please and and I and some of you are saying yes we and I was very candid and saying listen I think you know this is going to be an issue later

100on and I'm sorry that it has been but at the end of the day we have done our diligence and let me yes we have't I'm sorry to disagree with you but at the end of the day some some of us the advocacy that you do what that we do you might not see it directly but the advocacy that we do the work that we put in calling into the late nights and meeting because you know what I have somebody who I care greatly in the MVA okay so this is to me is also very personal so I am incredibly sorry that you know that you the parents are in this position and you know as as someone who um who cares greatly and is in this position because I truly love every child every

101160,000 kids who might not know us but we all incredibly care for the children we would not be in this position we would not be running for office if we didn't and if we didn't want to have positive change and outcomes for everybody but please know I really need you to hear me that we truly truly care about every child in the academy and we're doing our best we can and with that I'm going to say um I appreciate you coming here and I appreciate the students being here um and um just know let's move on thank you um Mrs Evans sure I just wanted to to state for the record um in my comments I was not saying that the County Council is not aware and um fully understand our budget what I do

102know is that um as a system we've made some missteps right in providing information that wasn't always as accurate to make the decisions that needed to be made so I just wanted to state that as well okay um I just want to well uh for the record there has been no conversation in this board about a special ation for the MV I just wanted to clear that up thank you that's why I was asking if we can have one there has been no discussion I just want to don't want to give people false I do not want to give anyone false hopes we are now uh concluding with public comments thank you for being here today we are now moving on to consent item number six board members if you have any items that you

103would like to pull please um let me know by turning on your light 6.9 6.9 Miss Harris um 6.20 and 6.24 620 624 okay can I get a motion to move the rest in Block so moved second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous with those present okay if we could get 6.9 um to the table so we can discuss that is contract approval request for proposal 41811 student information system extension sorry thanks I I really just wanted to clarify something more than anything else whether or not this is the same um data system that we've extended for I don't know I want to say at least 8 years now um to be built and um if if well let's start with that if this is the same thing that we're still that

104we've been working on for quite some time so this is our student information system um we have had the student information system that houses our grade book that houses um our registration it's parent view if you've heard I know we hear about parent view which has been existence I believe we launched it right before the pandemic 2020 in 2020 okay okay I just wanted to clarify because I'd had an issue with um raising my hand for this kind of allocation when we's there's no commitment on a timeline of when these things but again it's a different data system that I'm talking about so sorry I apologize thank you okay thank you uh 4 point 4 point excuse me 6.2 yeah um this is a pretty straightforward change order for uh the um Woodward construction project

105but it has uh we've heard a lot from some community members that remain concerned about um a couple of issues primarily related to the situation of athletic fields and so I just asked Mr Adams if he could um share and um and just for context this is a uh this site has been a high school for over half a century um but in the redesign the site has been reconfigured um so why uh we decided to uh lay out the site in the way we have and the concerns also go to uh concerns about noise abatement related to tennis courts and the playing of pickle ball thank you Miss haris so um yes this is a project that obviously we've been working through design processes for at least six years now um there's been robust

106Community engagement throughout each phase of this um you are correct this this was a school that was an operation from 1966 to 1985 um there was obviously a Hiatus where uh it was temporary location for Tien and we transitioned into creating a new High School uh for Woodward High School um part of the the challenges that we have had is that we have been working with a variety of different Community stakeholders um if if the board recalls we we started out looking at a variety of different amenities athletic functions orientations and we had robust Community discussions just around locations and quite honestly what makes most sense for students that's what we're all here for right it's the what makes the most sense and um this is the a plan that was was decided on it

107was uh it it makes sense for operational efficiency and for us we are going to continue to work with the communities and neighbors but we are not going to back down on what um what amenities are provided at our schools for our students and of course tennis courts pickle ball courts these are all part of the PE curriculum now it's all part of um what we provide at these schools and and certainly I know there's some folks that still are not quite happy with the plan or the approach but um we feel that we've had robust Community engagement we've had robust census building and this is the best approach for for our students and this change order is is just um as we're moving from phase one to phase two this is phase two work

108that we're accelerating uh so that the Northwood students have the amenities that they need um when they arrive as the temporary swings Space School while their school is being constructed and could you talk just a little bit about what is done around noise concerns when we have a school whose facilities athletic facilities and others are are really closely located in a neighborhood and I think a lot of us think of of BCC which is you know right nestled in in a neighborhood so we do have schools that are very active that are neighborhood bounded and so how we do address concerns about noise um for the the surrounding neighborhoods sure and that's a question that comes up quite frequently right we are nestled in communities I mean every one of our schools we're not we're

109not in commercial locations we're in communities um particularly our high schools there's a lot of activities that happen between you know athletic events or other extracurriculars um we do work to to see what we can do from a from a noise abatement to try to make sure that we don't exasperate any any of the the noise concerns but the reality is it's a High School site um there are Elementary School sites there's Middle School sites and um there's activities that happen there's there's play there's there's fun there's events there's athletic functions um so I I do think that we work to try to position and and figure out how to minimize impacts on neighbors but the reality is it is an educational use it's a High School site um there will be some noises coming

110from obviously these events um we'll work to obviously be as as good a neighbor as we can but I think the reality is that it's still a High School site um there's still going to be activities that generate Noise We like to think that you know people like to hear the sound of kids playing and laughing and having a good time um we'll certainly work to to make sure we manage that and and fit well within the community but I do think this is the right plan the right approach um for for the future students of the school and we are working to um make sure that we are good neighbors working with with the neighborhood associations and specific individual neighbors along the way as well and we'll continue to do so and so part

111of the concerns that we've heard is the tennis courts are located within and I have I I've not measured this myself so so I'm just I'm relaying the comments we've heard uh 50 ft away from the closest residence um and wondering about what we're doing as far as uh noise abatement technology for those tennis courts specifically there seem to be concerns that pickle ball is very loud um I can't say that I have direct experience living next to a pi ball court so I I I'm relying on what I'm being the information that's being shared but are we looking at technology specific to that kind of an athletic uh uh facility that would help alleviate concerns about noise sure and we have hired a landscape architect to do screening so evergreen shrubs and and and

112bushes we're looking you know once once these spaces are constructed we're able to do some acoustic testing so if we need to add some soft surface so that we don't create reverberation um of noises that that sort of echo in communities we'll we'll install that but the again the reality is is we can do we can do things that um that will help uh again from screening from from you know Landscaping to other soft surfaces uh but but we do have a number of schools where there's U pro close proximity to neighbors um I know BCC High School even Damascus High School there's there's quite a few facilities that are very close to neighborhoods and and so we've worked to provide as much as we can to to minimize uh the noise but the reality

113is we're close and you're going to hear some of these functions and we're just going to work to make sure the the school operations are fit within um again that neighborly Spirit of uh of cooperation um and minimizing impacts okay all right thank you thank you thank you um 6.24 monthly report yeah um thank you Mr Riley again um we are this is we have what 18 days left in the fiscal year 19 days left in the fiscal year so this is our last monthly financial report and just if you could walk us through where we are um budget bottom line sure so as you mentioned Miss Harris this is the last time uh that we'll be talking about the fy2 24 monthly budget uh but there's nothing really new here we've been having this

114discussion since September on a monthly basis uh we discussed where we're at with the um with our Esser spending with our employee Benefit Plan spending and with our budget to actual for the operating budget so uh no surprises here but I'll kind of walk us through this um this also gets shared with the County Council too on a monthly basis as well um so uh one of the things that you'll see a couple extra numbers in the Grid on page two um so what we've done as as as everybody knows at this point our employee benefit plan is in trouble it was in trouble we've been talking about this for a few years uh the amount of claims and the the rise in inflationary expenditures um have risen dramatically um multi-digit increases uh um over

115the last two years so we've been working to try to make that fund more sustainable uh one of the ways we can do this is by looking at our current year funding so um the uh the status of the fund when we talked in January was that we were um going to be having trouble paying our bills for the employee benefits so that necessitated our our expenditure freeze as you know so this document uh Records some of that savings that were that were um that came about because of that freeze and what we're doing is we're putting this we're allocating this as a supplemental for this year as well as some funds for next year as well too to put us in a better position uh but I do want to re I do want

116to uh iterate that this is a one-time funding um what's really going to help is uh the investment that the this board has made into next year's budget that's where we're really going to be able to to kind of correct this situation where we currently have a structural deficit because our recurring expenditures exceed our recurring uh Revenue uh as for the uh so so I I as as for Esser so there is right now according to the report uh we have uh $36 million left to spend in Esser as you know this funding runs out in September of 2024 as of right now we have 29 million left uh that will all be spent there'll be nothing on the table in September of 2020 for um for the uh EBP as I as I noted

117um some of the one-time things we're doing is going to help us get through this year we still have work to do next year and the year after it's going to be a multi-year plan to to write that ship and then finally our operating budget so uh one of the things that's new here um is the reduction of our fund balance or our uh uh savings account you know $25 million um it's created some uh uh difficulties during the course of this year on how to navigate um without that uh savings account what's happened is as we all know not only has inflation affected our EBP fund it's affected almost all of our services and and supplies and contractual services so we've had to find ways to kind of meet that those needs um with

118savings elsewhere so you'll see for the first time uh there's actually in the details there's six categories out of our 13 State categories that will be negative um at the end of this year uh the county does afford US the ability to do a a categorical transfer at the end of the year um but um you're not going to see those uh balances that were in the past where we kind of had 20 where we we were saving $25 million so um that that's uh some of the big changes that you'll see in this monthly financial report thank you Mr Riley and just um Coming Attractions on February 27th the fiscal management committee meeting we're we're going to meet and one of we are going to be looking taking a hard look at the uh

119ins and outs of this year's operating budget but also looking uh at strategies we need to um start to implement for to have a long-term strategy to correct our structural budget deficit to safeguard our employee benefit trust funds and our employee Healthcare trust funds to make sure we are as fully funded as we can be to give us some protection against this sort of inflationary and other pressures that you've mentioned um and um also taking a look at some of the work that the County Council government operations committee has done around their um opep work to see how we can be uh tighter on and um create um processes that uh provide us more stability when um inflationary and other fiscal pressures um come and go so thank you very much coming attractions on the

12027th Mrs Evans Mr Riley yes yes so it will be important that the community SE that we're getting our benefits plan back healthy um is this correction plan going to come back to the board before September because you you mentioned September 2024 um so for Esser um or the Esser funding ends in September of 202 are you're talking about but the corrective plan for our benefits we wanted to get back healthy you were mentioning how we're just not quite where we need to be yeah so so for further detail U an investment of more than $40 million was made for the fy2 bu budget um but we're going to be looking for an additional investment for FY 26 as well too because um in essence what we're investing in 25 um covers uh the inflationary

121aspect but not the structural deficit that that was in existence I understand I know in fiscal management you'll be having that discussion that's the sexy committee yeah we'll get more detail but I'm saying that the full board should also have that discussion I think is important the community knows and hears the information as well yeah and we and we certainly can provide that you know a big piece of this um you know like any budget the EBP is no different there's the revenue side and the expense side and so this board as Mr Riley noted uh has put $40 million of additional Revenue in to cover the additional costs that we're seeing this year there's also the expense side and that's something that we are working closely with our association Partners uh through because any

122changes that need to be made there need to be done through the uh collective bargaining process and so uh we have met once and we continue to meet to see how we can uh bend the cost curve because we can keep dumping Revenue in but if the uh costs are out of control and continuing to escalate um that's not going to be a long-term sustainable solution right I'm just asking for the discussion to continue and to come to the full board y thank you we're having agenda setting planning meetings uh next week I think for our summer session so we will certainly U that into consideration I didn't have a set date just want us to come to the full board is important thank you um all right could we get a motion to move

12369 620 and 624 move approval second all in favor raise your hands that's unanimous with those present okay we are now moving on to agenda item number seven uh item of discussion and action on uh the final adoption of the fiscal year 2025 operating budget Dr Felder good afternoon president sylvestri and members of the Board of Education today the Board of Education will adopt the fiscal year 2025 operating budget for Montgomery County Public Schools the FY 2025 operating budget for mcps totals 3.3 billion this is an increase of 147.300 increase compared to the current FY 2024 operating bud budget without question this has been an extraordinarily difficult budget year for all of us with the loss of the elementary and secondary emergency relief also known as essr funding and increased inflation costs we requested a

124funding level for an operating budget that we believe is essential to support the teaching and learning needs of our students in all 2011 schools in late May our County governing body provided less funding than we requested as a result we have a short period of time to make very difficult decisions about reductions in the operating budget since we asked for a limited financial budget that represents our needs uh there are no easy reductions to take we recognize that every reduction to the budget has a significant impact I would like to thank our students our families community members employee associations and our staff for contributing to the FY 2025 operating budget process for mcps we also could not have done it without the board of education's continued support of the more than 160,000 students we are

125honored to serve each and every day in this school district I also agree that the work of the 2026 budget begins immediately we must be began that process working in partnership with um our stakeholders and and County governing body I now ask Mr Brian Hall Chief Operating Officer to introduce the team and to begin this presentation great thank you Dr Felder uh good afternoon president sylvestre and members of the Board of Education uh before I begin the presentation I would like to take a few minutes to recognize the entire budget team who worked long hours and often over weekends throughout the course of the year to produce the FY 2025 operating budget the team is led by Mr Rob Riley associate superintendent of Finance the division of management and budget is led by director Ivon

126Alonso Windsor supporting Ivon and her is her coordinator Miss Carly Thompson and their seven budget Specialists and support staff finally the budget team is assisted by executive director Tom clausing can we please give them a a round of applause so each year in June the Board of Education meets to adopt the operating budget for the following fiscal year that begins on July 1st this adoption by the board follows the action of the Montgomery County Council to appropriate funding for Montgomery County Public Schools and other uh government agencies the County Council sets the funding level and allocates by state category in their budget resolution today the Board of Education officially adopts that funding level which this year is approximately $30 million less than the tentatively approved budget the board passed this past February uh this leaves

127a gap of $30 million between uh revenue and expect expected expenditures uh that needed to be closed which led to as has been mentioned already today some very difficult uh decisions for this Administration and this board uh closing a $30 million gap is never easy but it is made especially difficult this year because the superintendent's recommended budget back in December already included $14 million in reductions to Central Services on top of over $12 million in reductions to Central Services that were taken last year so uh a total of $26 million in reductions before we received the additional $30 million in reductions for a total of over $55 million in reductions over the past two years this cannot be done uh without some difficult decisions the budget process is a year round uh actually if we

128can go to the next slide please um the budget process is a year round process that starts in July um back in July of 2023 we began engagement with many of our Community Partners uh our departments throughout the um throughout the organization we held uh several uh meetings with the superintendent's budget advisory committee six Community forums uh the board held three public hearings along with multiple work sessions with Staff last year at the start of the uh fiscal year 2025 budget development process the board identified four priorities if we can go to the next slide please there we go four priorities that align with the three pillars of the mcps Strategic plan the first pillar is academic excellence and within that pillar uh the board's priority continues to be improving math and literacy rates throughout

129the county for all students the second pillar of the Strategic plan is well-being and family engagement within that pillar the board identified two priorities the first is building a safe and inclusive School climate in every school the second priority is supporting two-way communication between schools and families the third and final pillar is professional and operational excellence and the priority under this pillar is improving recruitment retention and distribution of a highquality Workforce both the district's strategic plan and board priorities at the start of the fy2 operating budget development served as road map served as a road map for us that led us through the budget process and brings us to adoption today next slide please so as Dr Felder mentioned earlier the FY 25 operating budget uh you are adopting today totals $3.3 22 billion this

130is an increase of 147 million or a 4.6% increase above our current FY 24 operating budget of $ 3.175 billion next slide please each year uh the change in revenue must equal the change in expenditures so that we maintain a balanced budget for fy22 we have an increase of $1 147.300 County historically the local contribution from Montgomery County makes up the largest source of funding at around 65% this year that total is actually 84% of local funding the next largest source of revenue for mcps that mcps receives comes from the state of Maryland for FY 2025 mcps received an increase of $ 38.3 million in state aid as well as grant funding for the blueprint for Maryland future this comprises about 26% of the funding increase for fy2 uh in fy2 we will also receive

131a small increase of about $1 million in funding from the uh from the federal government so even though the funding will go up by 1 million we are also losing our Esser funds which we currently have budgeted at a level of 120 million do in the current fy4 so again losing revenue of close to $ million uh is significant and impactful the next line reflects um $9.8 million increase in Revenue projected for other other grants as well as our Enterprise and special Revenue funds these funds include our food service fund our entrepreneurial activity fund and our Real Estate Management fund finally our anticipated revenue for fy2 reflects a decrease of 25 $5 million in the mcps fund balance in the past mcps would budget for use of endof year fund balance from the previous year

132for the following year budget including this current year we started this current year budget with $25 million um that was saved from FY 23 for fy2 that Revenue will not be available and so that is a decrease of approxim well of exactly $25 million that we are starting this budget process with so I will stop there and turn the presentation over to Mr Riley thank you Mr Hull and good afternoon president sylvest members of the Board of Education and Dr Felder so as Mr H just noted our changes in Revenue um from FY 2024 to what it will be in FY 2025 uh is being adopted today and that is 147.300 the fy2 operating budget for All of Montgomery County uh this uh next slide sorry this slide shows a visual of the three different

133stages of the budget in December the superintendent recommends an operating budget to the board of education and at that point we need to estimate the amount of Revenue based on our projected enrollment and County wealth relative to all the other leas in the state this is certainly not an exact science based on a $10 million projected state income increase at the time and and $167 million increase in local funds the budget proposed increases in compensation and benefits moving $33 million of Esser investments into the operating budget and addressing inflation the superintendent fy2 recommended operating budget also had to address the prior elimination of $25 million of mcps fund balance and to be fiscally responsible there were efficiency reductions in the amount of $14 million focused on Central Support Services in February the board tentatively adopted

134its operating budget for fy2 and at that point we had learned that we were receiving a $38 million increase in state funding or 28 more than what was originally projected keep in mind that 5 million of the state funding increase was restricted for Community Schools the rest of the unexpected increase in state revenue allowed the board to increase uh additional funding for our employee benefit plan for which the system had recently moved into an expenditure freeze i' Z it before um to to address an unprecedented year-over-year increase in cost and claims we were also able to reduce the ask from the county local government uh by a small amount at that point as well in May the County Council finalized their budget of $3.3 billion next slide please so the final appropriation for the fy2

135from the County Council necessitate necessitated us to reduce the budget that the board had tentatively adopted in February this is perhaps the most difficult aspects of budget development as our budget is centered around the pillars of the Strategic plan and the board priorities and the needs of all of our students any reduction will have an impact the largest reduction in this budget is an increase in class siiz guidelines by one student in elementary and secondary schools by increasing class siiz guidelines there is a reduction in the number of budgeted teachers due to anticipated teacher vacancies from resignations and retirements it will reduce the need to eliminate currently employed teachers as the result of the increase in class guidelines another reduction as you can see is the delay of our prek expansion planned for next fiscal

136year this budget also eliminates the Montgomery Virtual Academy the MBA came about in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic however enrollment has been declining over the last year students with medical conditions will still be able to access interim instructional services in fy20 additional reductions uh include uh central office staff as Mr Hall mentioned uh as noted there was a reduction of $14 million to central office and this final and the final budget adds an additional 20 positions and $3.4 million in Cuts there's also a reduction in contractual services this budget reduces contractual Services by over $3 million from the board's February budget much of the contractual Services as ADD mcps represent critical system needs and at 3% of total of our expenditures mcps contractual spending also ranks one of the lowest out of our peers

137in Maryland in addition a reduction has been made to staff development teachers and secondary schools finally we have eliminated the accelerator for musical instrument repair and purchase although the mcps uh Educational Foundation may be able to fund a portion of these expenditures next year next slide please in addition to these reductions there were other adjustments needed to balance the fy2 revenues to expenditures for instance due to the Staffing related changes mentioned on the previous Slide the investment in our employee Benefit Plan needs to be increased to recover from the structural deficit that currently exists also since the board's February tentatively adopted budget the needs of special education have been reexamined and an additional $3.1 million has been added to next year's budget the county also revised its estimate for school bus fines that are collected

138by mcps and turned over to the county finally there were two technical adjustments related to State and local Revenue regarding Community Schools and instructional television next slide please so this slide summarizes the changes from the Boe budget request in February that adds a reduction in total expenditures and revenues of $30.6 million on a positive note due to the increase in investment rates mcps was able to recognize a $3 million increase in the FY 25 budget for projected interest income this additional funding helps to cover some of the additional expenditures at this point I'm going to turn it back over to uh Mr Hall to cover the final slide thank you Mr Riley if we could go to the next slide please so I did want to take just a minute um to uh recognize what

139this budget does fund obviously has been stated here multiple times this has been a very challenging budget year with some very difficult decisions that needed to be made uh however we were able to fully maintain the second year of our two-year negotiated contracts with our uh employee associations that represents a 3% uh the equivalent excuse me of a 3% increase uh and a step for eligible employees and makes up between the um health care and the Sal about $120 million of the increase uh we were also able to add about $13.5 million of additional money for special education we have added or we are adding additional Community Schools um and about $20 million to account for the inflationary increases that we have seen in goods and services across the district uh inflation is not something

140that we can control but something that we must address throughout our budgeting process finally with the expiration of the federal uh covid relief funding the fy2 budget provides continued funding for social emotional supports and other expenses that were previously funded through the federal Esser Grant this includes social workers psychologists parent and Community coordinators and a new Elementary uh English language arts curriculum with that I will pause and we are happy to answer any questions that the board may have okay colleagues please turn your lights on for any com uh questions or comments um I wanted to ask uh Dr Felder and the administration in terms of our Communications plan this is a complex budget with a lot of moving Parts um how will people in the community I think we had some testimony about um

141understanding what what has been cut and you've done a great job of kind of outlining the big ticket items but like you said we started this budget before you even presented it to the board by cutting $15 million to uh Central Services so how will people know what is no longer there besides what you have outlined um here today so I your microphone so I can start and and Dr Felder please um chime in but we will work you know closely with our Communications Department and have been we've put out a couple of statements over the past couple of weeks uh obviously waiting for final adoption today before we you know share uh additional details with the community but we stand ready to partner with the Communications Department to make sure that happens that's exactly

142right and so we've started that process and we're just waiting to um get through today's meeting before moving further but that is the goal to ensure that there's Clarity and that we're communicating thoroughly with um all stakeholders thank you Mrs Evans yes so I know tomorrow we'll begin a new budget um so my recommendation and my colleagues I know it's whatever one individual recommends it has to be the will of the board but going forward so that not only the board can see as um providing oversight and accountability to the school system but the community as well we should have like two budgets alongside like the the we should have three years out to kind of give an estimate of of where we're going so people can see what the projections are like three years

143out because we can't keep just thinking about the next year and I know that you're thinking about the next two years but I'm saying publicly we need to display and show the numbers so that we have an idea that our um body that's elected to give us the funding has an idea everybody L Dy and everybody should know what it's going to look like for the next two to three years so that we don't get ourselves caught up in the position that we're in right now um I tell you what I woke up this morning and I thought about this budget and all the things that we're not going to be able to do and the time is going to be able to take for us to get back on track it's like one thing

144after another we had covid right we did the virtual learning our students had a loss of learning uh we had our uh Educators teaching in the virtual environment and so now as as I stated earlier like in eight years I've never been on the budget where it's just I have the worst taste in my mouth ever um and as someone who has campaigned from the very beginning on Equity there's not and this is not a fault of ours but the decisions that we made prek staff development just everything it just it just makes me not feel good about this and my colleagues have heard me say this um Dr Felder has heard me say this but publicly you have not heard me say that this is not a budget that makes me happy at all

145there there are to me there are no winners there are no winners in this budget um particularly for our students and so I I I'll I'll give my vote but I will I'm not giving my boat but I will make my decision as we before we raise our hand but I'm I'm not happy with how we have to do this it does not make me feel good um and these are just really tough decisions that we're in but I think that going forward what we can do what we have to do is we need to show three years out two years out more than one year cuz we cannot end up in this situation again and what what I've heard is that it'll be even tougher times um next year that we have to really

146think about next year and um how difficult it will be but with knowing that we have to come back with better plans early and uh communicate as often as we can to our funders to us and to the community that's all I wanted to say Miss Yang yes um thank you and I um want to um Echo Mr evans's point so we can never look at our budget um our Year's budget in isolation right in our budget now we include more services and item added in the last few years it had it adds up for example items such as more seats for prek Education reading specialist math coaches restorative justice stien and coaches staff development teachers mental health support in terms of social workers psychologist trauma consultation for our new arrival arrivals IB AP test

147fees dual enrollment tuition and we can never look at it also merely by enrollment numbers and per pupil fun in because our demographic has changed we have more Farm students EML students more needs of our special education students now we are putting more money like you say in this area in this budget but just take a simple ex uh examples so we so appreciate federal government and state provide breakfast for our students which is very much needed they provide the food but guess who have to serve the food we have to hire the people ask them to work more hours and compensate them when they serve the breakfast so to say this so so to to say all this is to put in simple words that we have many more pieces of our pie now

148right and and also so when we look at a budget like this year we are also honoring our negotiations with our uh associations so when your budget is 90% um people that any Gap is going to impact our services and people right so what I'm looking at is next year we have talk about program uh budgeting and I would really hope that we can do uh program budgeting so we are more clear at the cost of each program we have and we need to I think uh this year I think the board has asked more questions and have met more times um and I I remember even starting the summer meeting different departments understanding the budget however there's still more line items that we can further break down of for transparency for public understanding and

149even for our different level of government agency uh to to understand so so it is the work does start tomorrow do start tomorrow and and what I want to say is that we need to uh continue to do program evaluation I would love to see a Personnel audit and and to see where we deploy our people and continue to Advocate a different level of the funding agencies and really also look at as a school system we do teaching and learning maybe more partners and agencies can join us in supporting our family and students so they are ready to learn in our schools so every item that we discuss here it's not what we want to do but in order to make the number work but the work starts tomorrow and I would really like to

150see some specific things for the coming budget thank you Miss Harris uh yeah thank you I um Echo the comments of my colleagues um and I just in observing the fact that I think we all acknowledge that the conversation around the FY 26 budget starts well essentially tomorrow but no later than July 1st um I think one of the things that we have to to really be intentional and direct about is acknowledging I mean one of the concerns that I hear from many County council members and others is your budget has gone up so much and your enrollment has declined and it's not recovering and they're not wrong and so we have got to confront that reality headon um and and situate our conversation with a solid understanding of why that is and what those

151dollars have meant to supporting the enrollment that we have even though it's less than you know we where we were in the fy20 school year um and because that it it doesn't do us any service to sort of do a dance around that that reality and that fact um and then just for me personally I want to acknowledge and I think Miss uh ch's testimony alluded to it and also that I think Mr hegy but he I believe he's gone um but his testimony also really highlighted this for me is one of the things that we are having to sacrifice in this budget is our medical officer and um as Mr hegi noted in his concern that we are very um proactive in addressing the opioid crisis uh Dr cuna's work has been transformational and

152um we have to find a way to continue her work Mrs Evans I'm sorry Mrs maoski that's I was like I don't think our lights's on um I I in the effort of being very short I'm just going to associate myself with my colleagues comments most specifically um Miss Evans um I have spent the last two days not knowing what I was going to what I'm going to do and I feel like it's it's making me emotional it's making me um it's just these are difficult decisions that we have to make and none of them are good in my opinion the one thing I would request um in addition to everything that everybody else has suggested in terms of reaching out and starting tomorrow and all that kind of stuff is a way of us

153letting people see a little bit better line by line what things are costing and what things um you know where where we can look because I think it's easy to say we should keep everything it's harder to pick out what can go um and I do think I think it's important that we need to let people know the cost of these cuts and um and that we as a system continue to remember what the cost of these Cuts is so that's all I'll say Mr vavan thank you um just concur with what everyone has said but I I am just going to say this uh and Mr Hall you you can um correct me if I'm wrong but I thought we were pretty clear in this process uh with especially with County Council I think

154we were the only agency that went back what four times right of any other agency and I thought we were pretty thorough pretty much going line by line and this is you know a system that is 90% human this is we deal with people we deal with students with theal teachers and so on so I thought look this is my second budget so I'm not the biggest expert in town but in my opinion as somebody who has been following mcps closely for years and seeing the process of the budget you know being in the inside it's a different story right being on this side of the aisle it's quite different than just right so I thought we were pretty thorough correct me if I'm wrong I agree and I thought we were pretty transparent in

155what we presented and whenever you know and I think if we ask our colleagues at the council like you know um uh chair jando and um uh Council woman Meg and the others that especially that were there um they they said we were pretty thorough so although I agree that we should have you know we should foresee what the next three years are going to be I think the message is that 90% of our budget goes to people who make the system work and that there is a human cost at the other side right that um some folks might not be able to have the empathy or or whatever because but as a parent there is an impact there is right so even if we C folks like Dr kapuni Who has been amazing and

156her work you know um with the Nar and training and so on that has made a difference in kids' lives and adults lives right that there is a cost and I think the message needs to be that we can look at it as much as we want to but we're going to be in the situation where we need to do the funding and the 90% go goes to people in the system right that we need to have audits in certain areas totally agree right that these are things that we need to get done but at the end of the day right people who are making decisions about the budget of mcps have to understand that 90% goes pretty much to our kids to me that's like very clear I don't understand where the mystery is

157so I just want to say that when you look at the list right it breaks my heart that we are delaying certain things that we're cutting you know um programs that have a direct impact on individuals on folks who have a name right who who are part of our community who are part of the who we are as as a county that's that's all I want to say and I just um I know this was really hard and I just want to thank um my colleagues for having been so patient um you know with um with this budget and if I could just respond I I appreciate that and I appreciate the feedback from all of the board members and certainly um we can always do better uh and that that is our goal every

158year we start the new budget process tomorrow and the goal is to uh increase transparency increase understanding uh increase communication um and I do think that we made some significant strides this year so first you know we do uh internally look at multi-year budgeting certainly um we are going to be applying for the asbo or the association of school business officials uh Meritus budget award which requires multi-year budgeting and so that'll be something over the next couple of budget cycles that will be fully Incorporated um we also through working with our technology department are rolling out some really neat dashboards on the budget that will provide uh drill down opportunities and just more uh information for our community to uh find what they need to do you know advocacy and and and uh advocate for

159their interests uh the program budget is Al on the way I was talking to um the budget director Ms Alonso Windsor this morning about that uh also will be part of the dashboard that's coming um we also meet monthly with DHHS to make sure that uh our efforts are aligned and um streamlined so that there's not a duplication of effort and the positions and the people and the services are in the right place um I personally met with every single council member uh between last budget year and this year just to ask uh if they had any questions to answer those questions to try to um address those uh this board provided um as Miss Rivera oven mentioned scenarios clearly laying out you know what was likely to happen uh at each of the uh

160possible funding levels um and as far as our enrollment goes well that has unfortunately kind of flatl lined over the past few years we're still seeing significant increases in many of our uh subgroups including uh English language Learners and students receiving special education services and so although the overall enrollment is down uh we do continue to see increasing costs in some very specific areas so um and I think we can do a better job of laying out the line by line costs getting those out there early so that people can ask questions and provide feedback uh but I truly appreciate the feedback of this board of our community of our association Partners so that we can continue to improve this process and make it even better next year thank you um seeing no other comments

161um Dr Felder did you have anything to say before I conclude uh no uh well I would like to say that I too appreciate all of the input and the process I Echo what um Mr Hall said I thought it was very thorough and um there's always room for improvement and we're already thinking about ways that we can improve so this additional information is is helpful in that improvement process thank you thank you um so we um I just wanted to say that um you know we've we've called this the Esser Cliff year what does that mean we received additional funding during the pandemic to do a lot more for our children and families and we knew that when this dried up this summer this fall that we were going to have to make difficult

162decisions about what stays and what goes in the meantime inflation has skyrocketed we have new uh requirements of the school system through the Maryland blueprint so the cost just keep going up and up um so as has been stated here today we have made decisions that nobody wanted to make because we know that our children and family need all of the services that we are currently providing and more um we have a fantastic school system and there are great things happening in every corner of this County and in order to do that order to have a high quality education worldclass education we need resources so as this budget concludes and as my colleagues have stated we start the the next budget tomorrow we have to come together as a community our children and our families

163are too important this is too important of work for us to um get in the way of ourselves we have to figure this out we have to work with our elected leaders we have to work with our families um again we have uh work to do but we can do better and I have hope that uh we will uh work well as a community to fully fund uh the services that our students and families need um in the future thank you and with that I believe there is a resolution can I just say one quick thing I'm sorry I just wanted to I don't like this budget but I greatly appreciate all of your all's work um Mr Hall I've heard from many um that there's a been a real Improvement in the relationship building

164and and um and the work that you've done as a team with other um offices Partners whatever we want to call them so I just didn't want it to go unsaid that we really do appreciate how much work you've put into this um and working with us and the and the rest of the staff and Mr Riley as well so um I just wanted to throw that out there because people have no idea how much work goes into this thank you resolution so um I'll read the resolution so now therefore be it resolved that based on an appropriation of 3 b322 mil 36,525 that includes an allocation of 2 b128 m642 338 in local funding $971,000 63 Federal funding um18 m76 826 and funding from other sources $ 89,4 59,2 se1 for Enterprise funds and

1651, 15812 for special Revenue funds the Board of Education approved its fiscal year 2025 operating budget reflecting the changes as indicated an attachment C and be it further that the Board of Education approved the 2024 special education Staffing plan as included in the fiscal year 2025 recommended operating budget and be it further resolved that the special education Staffing plan be submitted to the Maryland State Department of Education and be it further resolved that a copy of this action be transmitted to the county executive and County Council move approval second all in favor raise your hands mcps Dr you said you care about please we need to continue with our meeting thank you thank you thank you excuse me please we need to continue with our meeting I appreciate your cooperation families the vote is please

166put your hands up so I can see the vote Miss Yang Miss Riva oven Miss wolf myself Miss Harris Miss madrasi Mrs Evans that's unanimous with those present thank you we will now move on to our next agenda item our students our next agenda item is the Montgomery County Regional Student Government Association it's an oral discuss discussion's your and we now ask our students to please come [Music] forward and we will wait uh we will wait to transition before we get started we welcome our students people okay with that we are going to hear from our students at this time and I ask Dr Felder to please get us started thank you president sylvestri so Montgomery County Public Schools has two countywide Student Government associations that represent students across the school district and provide support

167to the school-based student government associations that they serve the mcgomery county region of the Maryland Association of student councils also known as MCR is the organization that represents the voice of 26 high schools and the mcgomery County junior councils in MC JC which represents the 40 middle schools from across the county today we have the MCR student officers from the current school year and the officers elect for next school year to share an introduction of their organization and provide an overview of the accomplishments of the 2023 2024 school year to include the work of their General assemblies leadership development events and programs and advocacy days as well as the goals for the coming school year I will now turn the presentation over to uh Mrs Cherry director of student leadership and extracurricular activities to introduce

168the students and to begin the presentation Mrs Cherry good afternoon uh board president sylvestre members of the Board of Education Dr Felder thank you for having us today again my name is shella cherry and I proudly serve the district as the uh director of student leadership and extracurricular activities had the pleasure of running four districtwide programs to include our student service learning programs non-athletic extracurricular activities parent community volunteers and of course our district-wide student leadership programs one of the great joys of my job is serving as the adviser to the Montgomery County Regional Student Government Association an incredible group of passionate high school students from across the county who outside of their academic and their extracurricular commitments serve endless countless hours uh to improving the youth experiences and here in mcps in the state of

169Maryland and the greater World Beyond Today gives me great pleasure to bring forward the officers of this illustrious organization to you to share an overview of their organization their Great accomplishments from this school year and their goals and aims and aspirations as they prepare for summer and the school year to come thank you good afternoon members of the Board of Education my name is Anusha Krishan and I was a senior at pville high school and ser served as the president of the Montgomery County Regional Student Government Association or MCR for short this past school year before we get started I'd like to give the 2023 2024 officers a chance to introduce themselves as well starting with peral hi everyone my name is peral saarna I served as the MCR vice president for the 2023 2024

170school year and I now currently sit as the student member of the board elect for the 2024 2025 school year I'm a junior at Clarksburg High School Rising senior um and I use Heim pronouns good afternoon members of the board my name is Nigo gazio I served as the treasurer to MCR last year and have just graduated from mu high school thank you good afternoon members of the Board of Education my name is Sophie nunun I served as the MCR secretary but I'm now the MCR president I'm a rising senior at Rockville High School thank you for your time uh next slide please we are so grateful for your time and the opportunity to discuss what we have accomplished this past year as an organization we seek to represent the voices of all 26 high

171schools and over 40,000 students we work to raise awareness and Lobby legislators on issues about which we are passionate in terms of our structure we have a hierarchy pyramid where every high school student government Association in the county falls under MCR MCR falls under the Maryland Association of student councils which falls under the national Association of student councils next slide please our board is composed of nine different departments and5 students from every single high school and mcps we meet every month to discuss future goals and initiatives and work to continuously evolve and alter our structure to best fit the needs of the county and our goals as an organization our main goal as an organization is to promote leadership and advocacy in students to help them fight for the change they wish to see in

172our County each of the different departments represents a different side of student advocacy our legislative affairs and educational policy departments work to write white papers testify and research on uh testify and research on current bills on the county state and National level that we would be interested in supporting we use our workshops and services department to ensure highquality member uh mentorship and charity events our Communications Team Works to ensure access to MCR through school visits regular events and social media posts next we have our finance team that's run by our treasure which you'll hear more about later finally MCR Works closely with our Middle School counterpart the Montgomery County junior councils also known as mcjc uh to instill leadership skills starting in sixth grade and advocating uh for issues in a similar way to MCR

173together mcjc and MCR use these structures to ensure that students are represented in multiple ways across multiple areas next slide please as pringo mentions MC's conviction is to represent mcps high school students in a variety of different ways serving in this role MCR strives to bring the voices of Montgomery County students to a Statewide scale in partnership with our repairing organization the Maryland Association of student councils also known as masc we have hosted a variety of Statewide conferences right here at Montgomery County in fact each year we host the 3day MCC Advanced Leadership Camp which training students to League workshops and provides the M executive board with a place to meet and conduct and conduct sorry and conduct its business last year we subsequently hosted the MC fall leadership conference at Sanka Valley high school

174with over 700 students attending from across Maryland and engaged in leadership development activities furthermore by supporting Northwood High School in in Pro in hosting the Mac State leadership convention and sending a delegation to the Mac spring Leadership Conference we've provided hundreds of Montgomery County students the opportunity to develop their leadership schools meet peers from other counties and voice their opinions on Statewide issues I'd also like to note that many of the Mac officers and executive board members have been members of MCR including this coming School Year's masc Vice President Madison wats a rising senior at Rockville High School next slide please moreover we held five general assemblies this year where 300 to 500 students from schools across the county came to Essentials like centralized location and provided input on issues that impacted them student leaders

175voiced their concerns during breakout discussion centered on school safety the drug and opioid crisis and much more afterwards MCR compiled all their feedback and included it in their list of policy priorities to focus on WE invited guest speakers including our State student member of the board abisola Ula County council member will jando and the Board of Elections next slide please in addition student leaders in MCR help support Next Generation leadership day as Workshop presenters and support staff this leadership conference consisted of nearly 500 fourth and fifth graders from all the elementary schools in the district here the work shs aim to build confidence and Leadership skills among the student leaders providing them with a space to connect with others next slide please within MCR we present more opportunities for student leaders to involve themselves and

176Advocate through our issue specific task forces which focus on a multitude of pressing issues ranging from environmental sustainability to mental health our five distinct task forces have worked hard this year to put on several issu specific events the gender equity and sexual misconduct task force held numerous period product drives to redistri redistribute products at schools across mcps further the Equitable education task force has run multiple AP and IB book drives to help provide books for those who could use them and lower barriers to entry for AP and IB core studying the opioid on drug task force which is new this year has focused on pushing for better access to Narcan within the county and its coordinators are certified by DHHS to train others in Narcan Administration as well moreover the environmental and sustainability task force

177has hosted numerous trash pickups and worked on educating its members about environmental issues happening in the county lastly the mental health and wellness task force has held numerous events and serieses uh about managing stress within schools and ensuring students feel comfortable talking about their mental health struggles this is just a small list of the events hosted by our task Force's Department new this year our school Communications Department hosted a School Summit focused on Bridging the language barrier Gap Le by our multilingual English sorry English language development Liaisons this Summit focused on calling attention to various issues emergent multilingual Learners faced within our schools then through reflection and processing students identified various ways of combating this these issues and advocating for the rights of mcps EML students featuring current AL student Advocates as our guest speakers

178non- student participants also had the opportunity to hear even more about how the firstand experiences of el students affect of them in schools and how to better understand how to implement the aacy that they identified during our workshops and breakouts we are especially proud of the School Summit because it sparked advocacy solutions to critically underrepresented issues that students see within their own El programs next slide please every year the MCR legislative affairs Department hosts aacy day in Annapolis where nearly 50 students have the opportunity to meet with 34 state legislators an advocate my name is Diane n an advocate for youth Centric bills that span different topics ranging from sustainability to educational policy for instance MCR advocated for the credit for all language learning act which would require community colleges to award all pel Grant

179eligible eeld courses with college credits supporting multilingual English Learners in community colleges MCR also took a stance on Mental Health by supporting HP 74 or the Lifesaver schools program this bill would recognize and reward schools that provide health and safety training through initiatives such as peer mentoring and wellness programs these bills were all voted on and supported by the MCR executive board next slide please this year we had the privilege and honor to be able to elevate our advocacy to the National level we held our very first Capitol Hill advocacy day where we lobbied our national legislators in a simil similar format to our state advocacy day we were able to highlight many key issues and prominent platform points such as mental health menstrual Equity school safety and gun control and Equitable education some of

180the bills we lobbied for included the Janet L Hoffman loan assistance repayment program for mental health professionals in schools the gun safety act of 2023 and civil actions for SE child sexual abuse and its statutes of limitations in preparation we equipped a select group of students who showed interest in these topics with leadership and lobbying skills and provided training and preparation to advocate for these bills over the course of a month it was a huge success as we established stronger relationships with our national legislators that we know will continue to provide us with strong mentorship and support we hope to continue this as an annual event in the coming coming years next slide please another impactful event we held this year was our save the student Summit planned by our service coordinators and in partnership

181with the Maryland students against drugs or msad and the Maryland State's Attorney's office and the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services students engaged in a series of activities throughout the day such as workshops and discussion spaces to discuss the ongoing drug and opioid crisis they then spent the second half of the day learning to use Narcan and we were able to equip over 120 middle and high school students with Naran and the proper knowledge to administer it this event was extremely powerful as we heard from families directly affected by the issue the speakup Save a Life PSA winning videos were viewed and each winner was then awarded their prize money we also hope to continue this as another annual MCR event next slide please MCR has also been able to host a number

182of different leadership events throughout the year as well starting off with our annual summer workshop Series where student leaders are taught fundamental skills of email writing testifying and policy research public speaking and event planning additionally our workshops Department held a Leadership Academy where nearly 50 middle and high school students receive certificates for participating in introductory workshops to advocacy and developing various leadership skills in preparation for MC's advy days in Annapolis in Capitol Hill our Department's Health trainings prepare students to have conversations with their legislators MCR guided students in being knowledgeful about the bills creating prepared talking points for their conversations and how to effectively convey their message additionally Ms hosted a lawmaking lab where students familiarized themselves with the Statewide legislative process and gained the opportunity to voice the concerns to legislators these events were

183both open to student leaders across mcps so students could learn about the legislative structure in Maryland and be involved in the decision-making process as constituents lastly MCR has remained committed to fiscal responsibility throughout the school year in fact with the great help of my finance department MCR has raised nearly $4,000 this year furthering our impact our fundraisers have been structured to ensure that all students can participate be ensuring Geographic inclusivity by hosting our TIY fundraiser at an executive board meeting or allowing students to py both me and Sophie during a general assembly we take pride in the Open Access of our fund fundraisers further by winning bids to host Statewide conferences we not only bring leaders opportunities to Montgomery County but we use the funds that we raised to open opportunities for even more mcps

184students this is because our fiscal policy has always been to channel funding back to students nearly all of the funds that we have raised are both directed directed to our grant program and to offering leadership development events for mcps students in particular our grant program offers micro grants for school clubs who give back to their communities including Blair's elll robotics Club psv's minority St program and weedend bacon donate Club we've had an extremely successful year but are so excited to accomplish even more in the coming year I'll now pass it off to the current MCR officers to discuss their goals for MCR in the coming school year next slide please in April student leaders were able to elect the new MCR SJ officers for the 2024 to 2025 school year by over 200 students across

185the county my name is Sophie n and I'm the MCR president and I'm also a rising senior at Rockwell High School I'd like to take a minute for everyone else chose themselves good afternoon my name is Sidra du I'm a rising senior at ween high school and I'm serving as this year's MCR vice president good afternoon my name is Nar othman I'm a rising senior at Northwood High School and I'll be serving as this year's MCR Treasurer good afternoon my name is Anna John and I'm a rising Jr at Walter Johnson High School and will be serving as MC's next secretary as we prepare for the upcoming school year our first school is to continue equable representation from every High School on the executive board last next year we aimed to consistently maintain communication with

186each High School through school visits ensuring that mere is promoted to the student body and that we represent the voices of all high schools we would also like to stay involved in local Affairs by directly bringing student feedback to the board of education and County Council we plan to help bring every voice at the table through increased student testimonies our next goal entails continuing to amplify student Voice through various methods of increasing student engagement for which we'll employ several strategies these include leveraging our task force Department which offer students outside of our executive board the opportunity to address specific issues such as the drug and opioid crisis gender equity and sexual misconduct Equitable education mental health and environmental Affairs additionally we'll collaborate with our school Communications Department to work closely with respective school sgas and

187school affiliated organizations and finally we'll utilize our community relations department to build connections with organizations that work to further promote student advocacy this opportunity alone to be able to present to all is a great step in the right direction moving on our next goal is to strengthen relations with student local and State national politicians for political engagement and efficacy specifically this year MCR has been able to Foster opportunities for students to speak with legislators and advocate for areas that they are passionate about we are looking to further strengthen our relationship with legislators and local stakeholders our last goal is to focus on developing an official policy platform that accurately reflects student needs this past year we reviewed our policy planks at executive board meetings and general assemblies ensuring that student concern is shown throughout the

188policy that MCR supports next year we're looking to strengthen our policy platform and make sure we remain completely transparent with the policies MCR wants to push forward we also strive to ensure that we accurately represent the needs of the mcps high school students so as you can tell MCR is devoted to representing and providing opportunities for students all over the county we look forward to working with you all in the coming year and F fostering a strong relationship with the board while bringing student perspectives to the table thank you so much president sylvestre members of the Board of Education and Dr Felder for the opportunity to present that concludes our presentation and we are open for discussion thank you for your time thank you thank you so much for um for your work that you

189have done throughout the county and your priorities of this year and for the upcoming School Year and thank you for Miss Cherry also for uh guiding our students through their leadership Journey so I will now open it up to our my fellow board members to see if they have comments Mrs wolf I just want to tell you that we are in great hands I say that all the time and you all exemplify it every time you come before the board uh I also want to thank Miss Cherry she does amazing work I I just want to know was the leadership academy that you held at weaton part of this yes so next Generation leadership day um was something that was uh not run by MCR but many of members came out and were Workshop presenters

190we helped with setup and cleanup as well um and did a lot of the sort of behind the scenes work on that event I I thought that was a fabulous event I did see Nico there so I thought it was run by you um I I think that is very important particularly for our fifth graders to get them interested in leadership opportunities in the schools of course I have a personal interest I have a a rising fifth grader but I do think um that's very important just one question about your summer workshop series it's excellent but you referred to it as being available for student leaders have you thought about expanding that to more students to bring them into what the work is about and what you're doing yeah absolutely so our summer workshop series

191um is open for our executive board members to prepare them for the coming school year but that's also we recognize that these are skills that we want to open to all students across the county which is why we started our um MCR Leadership Academy um so that is open to all middle and high school students that sign up and we're able to teach them um similar skills that we learn uh for the executive board through the summer um and additional leadership skills as well and so that had a pretty good turnout rate we had two different sessions so we had a fall session and um like a winter spring session um with a lot of Engagement so um you know we were able to Garner more interest into advocacy and MC are specifically um but

192we feel that we were able to equip them with a lot of different leadership skills I think that's very important and I'd really like to see you keep that up and expand it if possible thank you you're doing a great job and congratulations to those are you the only one here Nico that still left that graduated both me andha have graduated well congratulations to both of you I i' also like to add in reference to the workshop series we do tend to advertise it through our social media and through our email networ and so any student who is interested whether or not they are an executive board member it can apply it's just geared more toward our executive executive board members by providing them skills that they would need to serve on the executive board

193Miss Harris yes um thank you it's so nice to see you all here so nice to see so many of you that I've had the privilege of getting to know and work with over these past several years um and I wish everybody that had left this room had stayed so that they could hear directly from our students about this school system and the work that you do on an ongoing basis to engage to support others to empower others and to really speak to the issues that you care about because I really do think from you know having visited other school systems around the country and and and talk to people from other school systems around the country mcgomery County Public School students are truly unique in the power they bring um to to the voices

194that they raise and uh you all really have set a very high bar and you've been so very very effective and I'm looking at at Miss Nan right now who is instrumental in getting the access to Care Act passed in the Maryland general assembly this year when in January the electeds that we met with around that Bill said don't get your hopes up not going anywhere and sail through both houses so the power of these students is real and the substance they bring to their work is real and I deeply appreciate that substance and I did have a question so I think you mentioned the plan for the coming year to be more engaged around presenting a policy platform to the board of education to this delegation to council what are your plans for that

195yeah for sure so again um like we mentioned before we plan on doing school visits so I think that's one of the most effective and direct ways to get more student input from you know students across the schools um so every year in the beginning of the year so probably in around September um we create these planks or like this policy platform where compile a lot of our policy priorities um for example we have like the environment um educational policy school safety Etc um we gather all of those student input from our executive board but also non MCR members and we just kind of create a list of all the things we want to focus on and hopefully directly work with the County Council and Board of Education members to work on um implementing those

196policies later on well I would encourage you to share that with us directly when you finalize your platform um send it on because I think it it it really informs our work um and really seeing what you all because I you know the things the issues that you elevate are the issues that are resonating with with you and your your fellow students and I so appreciate we see seven student leaders here are seven different high schools represented and I and I really I really appreciate that because sometimes people think the leadership in this County clusters and that you guys are very direct representation that that is not true and um but I do strongly encourage you as you work on policy issues and platforms to to to share them with us very directly um and

197I hope to see you at this table a lot next year Mrs madrasi yeah I'll just associate myself with much of what my colleagues have already said um very very impressive and this work that you're doing is just amazing um I love the how much effort you've put into trying to expand and grow the program and let people know about it um I um do well first I'm going to thank Miss shella Cherry as well I for all your work I I see you everywhere you're obviously a 24/7 kind of person um you always go above and beyond your events and stuff come out spectacularly and the kids love you so thank you for that um my question is um how are you trying to engage the kids that don't even know about it so

198I don't I know that you kind of touched on it like you invite them whatever but like I attended an Esau class um a couple years ago and was asking them about you know are you involved in student government they didn't know what that was and I said well did you vote for your student board member they didn't know what that was how are we reaching them because there is that perception sometimes that you know all you guys you're going to be great and um we need to use utilize this type of tool to help some of our students who maybe struggle a little bit more more yeah so I can speak for the past year at least um and then maybe Sophie can speak on what she's doing for the coming year um but

199you know it is really difficult to be able to reach out to demographics that like you said they already they have no idea you know what the organization is as a whole and so that's why we strive for our board to have departments that represent um different demographics of our student body um so for example when you were talking about like English learning students um we have an ELD um you know liaison that works to go to different schools and have school visits to talk to those students to try and um help them understand what MCR is uh we also do our best to do as many translations as possible so we're reaching students that don't necessarily speak English um we've also worked this this year um to try and have um you know students

200with disabilities to be represented on our board but also in our platform and like the policies so that um students that attend our general assemblies can kind of feel themselves um or resonate with themselves on the board and with MCR uh cuz ultimately we are trying to you know represent every single student in in Montgomery County and help them feel like they have a voice um and so again aside from just like our uh board itself and our executive board we try and host these events that are um going to kind of Garner in more more interest oops sorry um into uh Student Government so like the Next Generation leadership day even starting from an early age of like fifth grade um working with our montgomer County junior Council so starting with middle schoolers so

201that they can continue that interest into high school um but also um events like our save a student um or Save a Life Summit um trying to kind of you know reach different areas of our of our County um we try and hold these different events so that we are able to reach out to students that didn't necessarily know what MCR was before but try and make it known that we are here for the students and we want to do our best to represent and reach out to as many students as possible well I appreciate that all very very did you want to add something yeah I did thank you um I also want to mention that you know next year we're going to try to diversify how we out to students for example we

202also noticed that not every student or parent uses Instagram right so we kind of thought of this idea called MCR minute um which just kind of these like one minute morning announcements where we can send it to every school um they can just kind of um it's kind of just like a MCR report about everything that we've done and how students can get involved with student government um hopefully this will Garner more student engagement and just kind of um you know increase student involvement for student adequacy that's amazing this sounds good I just wanted to add on to what Sophie said and I also want to highlight Miss Michelle Dean for overseeing MC JC she's amazing um again like anusa mentioned we want to work really closely with them to make sure that we're starting

203these things from middle school so that people are aware of these things and I can say that in while I was a freshman ween was once highly underrepresented on this board and now it's like one of the most represented schools so it's very important to note that there's power in our school sgas and the students that are on those boards because again we oversee those directly um so just making sure that we have this culture of uplifting students so that they feel as though they should go to other students within their schools cuz again it does trickle down and it does depend on every individual um all of us here have been people who have been you know pushing other students to talk to everyone in their schools talk to every kind of student and

204we want to see more representation for them so a huge part of the culture that we're pushing in the environment that we'll have next year is going to be structured around talk to every single person no matter who they are thank you so much for the question I that's amazing and very impressed by all of you and the and the work that you're doing with that keep it up keep doing that Outreach because everybody um needs somebody so thank you all for what you're doing Mrs EV yes so Mrs madoski actually touched on the question I was going to ask about student engagement so we need to invite you back next year same time and put you before the budget discussion that way everybody can see and hear from you right but I do want

205to hear um what your responses like on student engagement and pulling in um The Not So Usual Suspects and then we can use you all as a resource when we're looking to gather student voices from the various um groups that we want to hear from that we need to hear from we can reach out to you as partner so um come back next year share with us this is a great introduction so that we can know your um faces in advance before we have our um meeting with you all but it was great to to hear from you and to listen to all that you've done been so thoughtful so Miss Cherry you've been M Cherry's been recognized I'm G say it again she is amazing and has kids right and they're super busy but

206she still makes time for um her work so of course we can tell that you're very passionate and um and that has transferred over to the student so appreciate the work and hear from you all and um good and so I want to say um I hope you had a great year and and you enjoy your summer it sounds like you're going to be busy and congratulations on graduations yes and our graduates and then yep thank you again for coming to us uh here today and um look forward to seeing uh the work that you are doing uh in the upcoming year Miss Ren has a comment just I wanted to say Dan nio and um has been a pleasure meeting you in your leadership and the seniors who were involved in in your group

207but I do want to say that you guys did do the summit on language barrier right I want to highlight that um because I think this is a topic that is you know close to many of you guys' Hearts some of you know some of who are first generation are very conscious of the fact of what that takes and that what that entails and um I just want to say thank you for that because that is one of the largest growth in our in our school population and the fact that you also um somebody said you're including um kids with disabilities as well and with the special education I think that is so important as well that they have a voice at the table um it's always wonderful to to see young people they're always

208ahead of the curve right they're always thinking ahead and and I just have so much hope when I see you all especially after the budget um meeting right that we're here because um because we are here for you in in a sense right for you to ensure that you guys go on and do wonderful things and then come back to mongan County and do more wonderful things um but I did want to uh say I know you had a lot of your Summits around the county I do want to plug in East County right that that might be an area that you might want to explore um as well it's an area that is growing quite a bit um and there's some incredible things happening uh in this County be nice also to kind of

209capture that but I'm looking forward to working with you all and good luck to to the seniors and the group Dr Felder thank you I too want to Lord Miss Cherry and uh each of you for your leadership and creating positive change and contributing to improving your schools and the district overall and uh would be open to uh really learning more about how we as District leaders and as school board can support you in your efforts but thank you thank you again for coming today [Applause] okay we are moving on to our next agenda item action uh item number nine on our board policies and I will pass it on to our uh committee chair Mrs madoski yep thank you um so today we've got two policies that we need to take action on or

210I'm hopeful we will take action on um the first one being policy IOD education of English language learners for a little background um on April 11th um the board met uh the board tentatively adopted a revised draft of policy IOD um the tentatively adopted policy was distributed for public comment from April 12th to 2024 to May 6th on May 16th our policy management committee reviewed the public comments received and is now recommending final action by the board today to adopt the revisions to policy IOD and considering the public comments received and the policy management committee's review revisions have been made to this policy to line with guidance from the US Department of Education the Maryland State Department of Education the Center for Applied Linguistics evaluation of Montgomery County Public Schools program and current research so

211with that I will turn it over to you my name is Sally Davis I'm the supervisor of policy and regulations in the office of the general councel good afternoon my name is Tamara hulet I am the director of the Department of English Learners and multi lingual education good afternoon I'm Stephanie Williams from The General Counsel no turn your mic on uh Miss hulet has been instrumental in the rewriting of this policy so as we present the changes in response to the committee's efforts and the public comment I will turn to miss hulet to give an overview of the uh commenters and some of the general themes thank you Miss Davis good afternoon board members uh you will notice in your public engagement summary for policy IOD that our stakeholder engagement began well in advance of

212the public comment period extensive feedback was sought and received during the July 23 uh period from close to 200 students as well as teachers who completed questioners uh participated in discussion groups um and all of these things helped to inform the initial policy drafting stage commenters provided feedback on Staffing which was very prevalent uh language of instruction and assessment that was also very prevalent uh we had fewer comments on instructional models particularly two-way immersion uh sheltered instruction uh SLI students with limited or interrupted formal education uh about two to three comments for each of those categories we heard about curriculum what are we calling a curriculum the absence of a curriculum resources in the curriculum we had some comments about naming conventions EML versus elel versus elll versus esol versus ml uh some are okay

213with the naming policy some suggested changes some equated emerging with WEA level of emerging some just wanting to go with ML uh some noting that there should be a difference in the naming uh in order to identify ml's receiving Services uh some wanting to stick with esel we had some comments about reclassification that's the students who exit uh the English language development program we had some questions about certification grading expectations of emerging multilingual Learners being similar to that of monolingual English speakers and um that not being okay um and then uh we had uh you know some with some of those comments were connected to grading as well um and some connected to assessments so when it comes to the naming conventions you'll note we've changed the name of the policy to English language development

214programs and services to clarify that the policy addresses multilingual Learners learning to understand speak read and and write in English in school at the same time that they're learning at least one other language at home Miss Davis will address our recommended responses in the draft thank you misset so on May 16th uh Mrs madrasi and the policy management committee members received a thorough review of the 11 changes we made in response to comments and so Mrs M sylvestri Mrs mski I will just pause and ask if for the record you'd like me to go through those changes or just hit a couple more highlights I just want to know what my colleagues would like no highlights everyone's good well we're good so hit the highlights okay um let's see so just a few um we

215wanted to appropriately reference some of the rights under federal law that English Learners have uh so we have referenced that um we've clarified some the understanding of what we mean by multilingual Learners and um regarding the the expectation language we wanted to clarify that we wanted all students to have the opportunities to learn and then um so we could did some rephrasing there let's see I think that's it I think the overall policy tries to stress the shared responsibility um for all Educators not just those teaching in a specific program okay great thank you I really appreciate that um I was say do I need to read the resolution I always for I always forget to read the resolution and just go ahead and move it from committee you can move the Green Sheet okay

216I'll just move the green sheet from committee and I don't need a second so all in favor of making this final action by the just to clarify okay that's unanimous of those present so thank you very much thank you one day one thank you sorry okay so um this policy is um policy GAA board appointment of mcps leaders um on March 19th the Board of Education tentatively adopted a new draft policy GAA board appointment of MCS leaders um and the tentative uh adopted policy was distributed for public comments from March 20th to April 24th on May 16th uh the board's policy management committee reviewed the public comments received and is now recommending final action by the board today to adopt policy GAA in considering the public comments received this is you know it's pretty standard

217now um we did to make some recommended um changes based on some of the uh feedback and um we are looking for final action to ensure effective and enfor formed board decision-making regarding candidates for mcps leadership positions recommended To Us by the superintendent of schools the new policy establishes criteria for leadership positions subject to appointment by the Board of Education requires due diligence in vetting prospective candidates sets forth processes to appoint leaders in a timely manner and identifies information to be included in the superintendent of schools recommendation of any candidate and with that I'll turn it over to Sally okay um joining us now is Miss April key the chief of the office of human resources and development again we'll be presenting the changes the writing team proposes in response to public comments and then

218further committee um and first I'll turn to miss ke for providing an overview of the commenters and engagement activities thank you Miss Davis Dr Felder Miss sylvestri members of the board thank you for uh allowing us to move this policy through you'll notice in your public engagement summary for policy GAA that our stakeholder engagement began well in advance of the public comment period throughout November December and January we engaged a variety of stakeholders in conversations and through opportunities for public comment and they raised a wide range of changes of I'm say a ride range of themes since reviewing the public comments with the policy management committee I'd like to highlight a few changes number one to minimize the use of long-term acting or temporary administrators updates provide for the board to approve in closed session

219any administrator vacancy anticipated to be filled in an acting capacity by Consultants temporary part-time employees or current staff you'll see this change is on page four two further we take very seriously the comment that stakeholders who are impacted by the appointment should participate and be part of the interview process which is why we call for identified categories of stakeholders to participate on interview panels and we can elaborate on these categories and selection processes further in the regulation writing process you'll see this changes on page five we we've also codified the board's existing practice of surveying interview panelists after the interview with that feedback going directly to the Board of Ed and you'll see this on page six lines 180 and 181 I'd like to briefly address the professional growth system as it applies to administrators

220and how they are evaluated after they are appointed to the position you'll see this on page nine a few comments related to evaluation and we added language to reference the professional growth system which has been in place for over 20 years the professional growth system provides mentoring for administrators supervisors and more and has clear timelines for professional review finally I'll say that we take hard the need for Trans parency in this process and appreciate the need to codify the board's commitments in policy and implementing procedures in regulatory language that will follow and I do use the word codify deliberately so I would like to say a few words about that while a number of these practices were in place we appreciate the opportunity to formally document our procedures institutional memory was insufficient and previous documentation

221needed to be reviewed revised and published to bring about a greater transparency and accountability Miss Davis will highlight the remaining CH changes thank you Miss key and in addition to the updates Miss key has already raised I'd like to briefly point out two further amendments um on page eight lines 222 to 230 the language has been expanded to read sorry that no candidate for any position will be considered until the outcome of any investigation of the candidate is complete implementing regulations shall clarify those complaints grievances allegations subject to investigation and applicable to this requirement the outcome of such investigations shall be fully available to the board and the the last one I'll point out is on page nine line 2 54 which highlights the need for consistent screening and intervention uh interview and appointment protocol

222so it now reads consistent uh I'll I'll start back at the stem um the superintendent shall establish regulations or other administrative procedures necessary for carrying out the objectives outlined in this policy to include consistent and efficient interview and appointment protocols that appoint mcps leaders in a timely manner thereby providing continuity of leadership that is responsive to systemwide needs and time in process of no more than two months whenever possible and with that we will conclude we're ready for your discussion great um thank you very much um before I turn it over to my colleagues to see if they have any questions or comments the um the one thing that I did notice that we discussed a committee um was only just about the section um 225 two line 225 it's not specifically that line I'm

223just saying that that section that we that was adjusted we had talked about making sure that it was clear that it's past and present um in terms of ongoing investigation so if or investigation so if someone had investigation had an investigation in the past it would still be we'd still be notified even if it was found you know not um whatever I did go back to the transcript and I listened to it a couple times so I caught everything that was in that discussion so what I what I understood as to say at the committee level was that the regulation would um seek to clarify three three main issues right one was timing um pre present or prior investigations the second was the status completed pending or open and then we also needed regulatory language

224to clarify I can't hear you oh sorry we also needed regulatory language to clarify um you know grievances versus allegations versus those kinds of complaints that would rise to that level we also needed to clarify the investigations that we would have conducted in-house or externally that we would have information about so I I I think we we know what we need to get in direct but it is several layers yeah I was going to say the only other thing I can think of that we talked about for the regulation aspect of it was um clarifying the process of things like what does a um what's the what's the term um application administrator the manager who picks the whatever that's called um so that we don't have two people um picking for one job and five

225people picking for another job and stuff like that so um I just I'd like to make sure that that gets clarified in the um regulations so colleagues anybody have any comments questions or concerns I had a question about um there and I apologize I don't have my notes with me they're in the other room the 45 day um length of time before the Board needs to be notified if someone's going to be acting for longer than 45 days just wondered where where the 45 days came from is that why 45 why not 60 why not 30 I was say Mr say had asked for 30 so I'm just just wondering where that number is coming from why does that make sense administratively in terms of placing per per a person in a job administratively um

226there wasn't really an impact we were flexible it was what the board wanted wasn't something um that we suggested we just want to fall in line with what your need is with regard to notification and um the I don't a policy says that um the board has to approve it as as we would have done in appointment of that correct level right yes that's correct anything okay anyone else no all right in that case I will move the green sheet and I do not need a second all in favor of taking final action I don't know why I keep doing this on policy GAA that's unanimous of those present thank you very much I really appreciate all your work again I I know I tell you this at policy committee but I know how much

227time and energy you put into these things so I'm grateful thank you okay um Let's see we now have a recess um so we are now at 3:23 so we'll come back at the 350 [Music] are we live are we ready setha Brenda has a comment for you later okay we are back from recess and moving on to our next agenda item number 11 uh discussion on Charter Schools Dr Felder thank you president sylvestri so uh this evening we will discuss the mecca business learning Institute MBL and the contingent Charter School agreement in preparation for the board's action on June 25th 2024 on November 9th 2023 the board awarded the mentoring by example Foundation mbef approval to open and operate the MBL Charter School in Montgomery County contingent upon demonstrating the ability to meet the

228financial requirements for attaining and renovating a building suitable for use as a public school in Maryland today MB EF will present a final financial and facility plan to address the requirements outlined uh in the contingent Charter School agreement on June 25th 2024 the board will vote to determine if the MBL charter school has met the contingencies for the opening in 2025 2026 school year and I now invite Miss Nikki Hazel associate superintendent of curriculum and instructional programs and Dr Kenneth Marcus Charter School liaison to provide an update and introduce our presenters thank you Dr Felder uh good afternoon uh on May 17th mbef submitted its final facility in Finance plans to demonstrate the contingency to demonstrate the ability to meet the FI Financial requirements of attaining and renovating a building suitable for use as a

229public school in Maryland as Dr Felder stated um they will present these plans today and you will be here just to ask uh questions and hear responses there will be no voting today um our Charter School lays on Dr Kenneth Marcus who is a retired principal of mcps um has been helping support this work and he will share more about the technical assistance that's been provided um before he uh shares I would like to just thank our mcps team in the audience we have folks from the office of Finance Facilities Management general counsel and our curriculum team who've been working together and with our our contingent Charter School um just to provide them with technical assistance so at this time I'll turn it over to Dr Marcus good afternoon the contingent Charter School met with

230mcps representatives from Finance Facilities Management general counsel and curriculum in instruction programs nine times from January through May 24 technical assistance also included meetings with the office of human resources and Development Special Education schools Safety and Security and the Maryland State Department of Education in addition in addition there was a technical assistant meeting with mbef the mcps associate superintendent of facilities management and the mcps charter school liaison at the proposed Charter School site I'm now going to turn it over to miss LeAndre Graham who's going to introduce from mbf who's going to introduce her team good afternoon board members Dr Felder thank you Nikki and thank you Dr Marcus for giving us the opportunity to present today like Dr marus said I'm lean R Graham to my right is Tracy Cooper in the audience we

231have with us today Lynette our project manager and then to my left is Alex our financial advisor today we are here to discuss the mecca business learning Institute Public Charter School and our plans to clear the contract contingencies related to its facilities next slide please our presentation topics will cover the following introduction facility and financial contingency requirements facility development Partners facility design plans facility budget and financing ensuring operational Readiness completed actions and please move to the next slide Mecca is dedicated to revolutionizing education through collaborative and Innovative learning environments we aim to open the mecca business learning Institute Public Charter School and fall 2025 to achieve this we seek your support to clear the contract contingencies related to our facilities our goal is to ensure that our facilities meet educational standards and provide a conducive

232environment for Student Success next slide please our presentation objective aims to demonstrate our compliance with facility contingencies in the charter agreement ensuring a smooth and timely opening of the mecca business learning Institute or MBL in the fall of 2025 to meet these requirements we've had to complete several key Milestones one the execution of a contingent Charter agreement in which all parties had to sign and finalize the agreement ensuring all conditions were met two a preliminary and financial report we had to include proposed operating budgets funding sources and contingency plans for continued operations if projected revenues fell short three preliminary and financial facilities plan the plan had to detail facility locations spatial requirements potential expansions renovation costs timelines strategies final budget secured financing documentation and a contingency plan and for technical assistance meeting mcps as Dr

233Marcus indicated earlier had to schedule at least three meetings with MBL to assist with completing and revising required reports ensuring all requirements and deadlines were met next slide please additionally MBL had to also complete the following task ensure the charter school is within the Montgomery County public School boundaries submitted a cop submit a copy of the facility lease or agreement submit an agreement with the mtgy county parks department notify the Maryland National Capal Capitol Park and Planning Commission about the plan to open a public charter school contract with a facility professional experienced in Code Compliance to survey the facility and submit the report contract with an accredited asbesto management company approved by the state of Maryland next slide please here is the future site of the mecca business learning Institute Public Charter School located at

23420261 Golden Rod Lane in Germantown Maryland this site part of the Golden Rod industrial center and adjacent to mcgomery college has been carefully selected to provide an optimal learning environment for our students this spacious location will accommodate both academic and extracurricular activities the existing building will be converted into a two-story structure of approx approximately 7 ,000 Square ft to meet our growing students population's needs our phase development approach ensures effective cost management and adherence to our fall 2025 opening timeline this site will support the sustainable growth of our middle and high school programs effectively serving the community's educational needs we are excited about the potential of this location to become a vibrant hub for learning Innovation and Community engagement next slide please our facility development Partners in this work include Architects and Engineers construction management

235and general contracting firms financial advisers and lenders real estate professionals and legal advisors next slide please the architectural vision for MBL involves converting the existing single story building into a two-story structure of approximately 70,000 square ft this will be done in phases to reduce initial project costs and ensure a timely open in the fall of 2025 next slide please we are targeting an initial enrollment of 250 students in the first year with a six-year plan to incre incrementally increase enrollment to 700 students next slide please the first uh the floor layout plans the first floor plan ensures accessibility and functionality featuring multiple classrooms for various grade levels a flexible multi-purpose space for gymnasium Auditorium or cafeteria use and a centrally located library administrative offices are near the main entrance for convenience specialized rooms for science

236technology and other subjects support Hands-On learning additional area support in additional support areas include restrooms storage and staff lounges again some key Focus Features of the first floor it is designed to ensure accessibility and functionality while supporting a wide range of academic and extracurricular activities next slide please the second floor plan includes additional classrooms for higher grade levels specialized labs for advanced subjects like computer science and engineering and study and collaboration areas for group work and independent study faculty offices provide private spaces for teachers and support areas include restrooms and other facilities ensuring a comprehensive and conducive learning environment the key flow focus of this floor is that it enhances the learning environment with Advanced labs and study areas ensuring comprehensive support for students and faculty next slide please our phase development plans include the

237first phase which will be done in 2425 in which we will renovate the existing buildings to house the sixth and seventh grade classrooms and construct a new multi-purpose area for various school activities additionally we will complete the core and shell for the second floor to prepare for future expansion phase two which will also be completed in 2526 will create a new classroom for 8th grade allowing us to accommodate our growing student population and continue expanding our educational offerings this phased approach ensures effective cost management and timely development next slide please phase one also includes the establishment of the coure and shell for the second floor laying the foundation for the future expansion in phase three phase two also includes where we begin partial construction of the second floor to accommodate ninth grade classrooms ensuring continued

238growth and development for our student population next slide please in phase three which will happen in 2627 we will complete the second floor to accommodate 10th to 12th grade classrooms finalizing the expansion and ensuring a comprehensive educational environment for all high school students next slide please the estimated total School development budget is 8,546 308 this funding comes from multiple sources including lending by Civic Builders who are purchasing the property on our behalf and funding the renovation a startup Grant from the Maryland State Department of Education a continuation Grant from the Maryland Alliance of public charter schools and fundraising efforts and contri contributions from Individual donors next slide please ensuring operational Readiness Meeting the contingency requirements ensures that all necessary Financial facility and Regulatory conditions are satisfied for a successful launch in the fall of 2025

239this comprehensive process involves securing funding finalizing facility preparations and adhering to all relevant regulations and standards next slide please we have completed the required actions including timely negotiations with for the charter agreement with mcps staff submission of preliminary and final facility plans and financial reports participation in technical assistance meetings next slide please this slide outlines the additional actions completed as required to fulfill the charter school contract The Chosen site at Golden Rod Lane complies with with the mcgomery County Public Schools boundaries and was toured by key officials on May 23rd 2024 Mecca secured a letter of agreement with Civic builders for the lease draft lease term sheets and letter of support from Civic Builder CEO Quiet Waters Park was confirmed as the preferred location for Student Activities covered under the district's existing agreement the mandatory

240referral process with Maryland National Capitol Park and Planning Commission was initiated within the required frame time time frame a comprehensive Cod compliance survey was conducted by Alpha and Associates Mecca will contract with ACM Services Inc for bestos management ensuring the process is completed before staff occupancy in July 20125 these actions demonstrate our commitment to meeting all facility requirements and ensuring a safe compliant environment for students and staff next slide please in conclusion Mecca has success met the contingency requirements ensuring that all necessary Financial facility and Regulatory conditions are in place for a successful launch and fall of 2025 we request the board's favorable consideration to move forward realizing our mission of providing an exceptional educational experience for the community next slide please thank you and this concludes our presentation thank you for your time and

241consideration and we're happy to answer any questions that you may have okay I ask my colleagues to turn their lights on if there's any questions at this time Mrs Evans M are comments this is great this is a lot of detailed information um I know it's um probably been a a long road for you but this exactly what we need so I don't have any questions I got that big old thick book that you all had us looking at over the weekend but um but thank you we appreciate this or at least I do y Miss Harris yeah um could you just remind us about um now that you've finalized your site size and we've seen your your projection uh enrollments and and the progression over time um how are you going what is your

242um engagement and Outreach plan to um identify students for in your in your first so I think you start with the grade six and seven yeah we're opening with six and seven yeah and also um how your your plan to engage and and identify and provide the application process to prospective students and what you're how you're thinking about if as we're all seeing sometimes our enrollment projections don't quite materialize the way we think that they're going to sure so as Miss Evans indicated earlier we have been a you know down a long road and we have not stopped our engagement with the community because we believ that we would get to this point so we have continued our engagement speaking largely with the middle schools that are in the surrounding area for the the property

243um but we have refrained from providing any correspondence we want to make sure that we are in compliance with the district's plans on how to do that but we have been asked in we inviting ourselves to their community events trying to be as present as possible and continue in our community relations and attending events we have a upcoming schedule this July and August where we're going to float around in the 10 very community events by the County council members so that we can also share the uh the experience countywide so we are continuing our engagement we've never stopped engaging we have our website we have our flyers and our materials we are uh bringing on some social media interns this Summer that will help us with that social media engagement that's really important to the

244Youth and Young adults of today's generation so we want to be able to be as active as possible in that Arena as well so we we've continued our engagement and we're confident that we would still be able to support our operations and our plans we have multiple contingencies in place to support making sure that you know our budget has allocations to cover any overs or unders that the enrollment we had in our application process done a sensitivity analysis around what it looked like to have a five or 10 15% change in our enrollment plans um our financial advisor this is Alex our financial advisor with first try on has been very uh instrumental in helping us model what that needs to look like to make sure that we can you know successfully afford our facilities

245and and maintain operations so I think with the professionals that are supporting us we're not alone in this work I think we are confident and can stand confident in our ability to complete and open and remain open and successful so um looking at your uh enrollment your proposed enrollment size are you thinking that you're going to focus your um sort of uh Recruitment and and engagement in sort of regionally or are you are you are regionally to start or what well charter schools are open I'm sorry charter schools are open to all students in the county so we we cannot say that we're only going to Target the area of course we will make sure that you know the communities that surround the school we are very active in that because we know that it's

246it's going to be convenient for those parents and those families but we don't want to act as if parents are not willing to travel for their children to participate in various school programs various stem programs you know all of that so we we acknowledge that we need to sort of M ensure that the full county is aware and apprised of what our plans are and that they understand that the opportunity is open to students that live in the countywide versus just only relegated to where we are so it's not we're not going to Target a particular area we're going to be active in the community that surrounds the property but we will also be just as active in the community at large to share the experience and are you are you planning um on sort

247of a lottery process well lotteries happen based on the app so we know that we're open with 250 seats if we have more students than the 250 that applies then the lottery is the randomized process that you use to ensure fairness in the selection if we only have let's just say 240 students then we're not subject to the lottery it is when it goes above the the the seats that have been allocated okay thank you you're welcome Mr V upen yeah um nice to see you all again I think it's been a year right yes it has good to be seen okay well welcome back again I do have a couple of questions um I just want to get an idea of a timeline and um so you you're doing the construction all the way

248through year 226 2027 I think but we have a we have a phase construction plan to make sure that pH right so so but in phase one uh when that is completed um are you going to have that's when does your first student walk through the doors I guess that's what fall of 25 August of 2025 yeah fall of next year the school will open with sixth and seventh grade okay so your construction then is going to be going on when the kids are in school for the second phase no no no no so what the plan is for the second phase with when we add on the eighth grade classrooms we're going to use modulars and that can be accomplished in the summertime so it does not affect School operations okay so that construction

249for the second floor is going to be outside of school it's going to be over this summer yep okay and then just for accessibility uh is there going to be an elevator on the first floor okay I me see I'm not an architect but there's a lot of stuff here I just want and it may be hard because we had to try to condense it for the presentation and the plans but yes we had uh actually we've had multiple elevator shafts in there but we do definitely have elevator shafts and the the other question I had for you was so you're going to have your plan is in the first year to have 125 kids in sixth grade 12 25 kids in seventh grade yes ma'am and you say you talking to the middle schools

250which I think is great but are you talking Elementary to the elementary schools yes ma'am okay so and I guess the Middle School's also too right because well yes but in terms of like feeding and planning we're we've been looking at the Elementary grades because we've been at this for a couple years now so we actually started in the elementary hoping that we would follow those kids and catch them from middle school but we're not just we're not just going to only focus on the elementary we were just looking at the elementary students because we hope by by the school year 25 that those students would be preparing corre middle that was my question and your so is there a timeline where you um expect to have like half of the kids there will we

251we expect to have 75 of the kids by this by by the month of whatever whatever like do you have a timeline like you know as you are recruiting that you want to hit certain targets of kids that you want to have in house well we will follow the enrollment program and the enrollment timelines for the special programs that is under Nikki Hazel's office there's a time frame for when those the application programs are published so we'll follow that timeline and then have our enrollment I believe Nicki is in the spring so we would like to be able to have our opening and our enrollment be able to be confirmed in accordance with the district's timelines right I guess what I'm trying to say is um by the you want to have 125 kids in

252each grade by the beginning of the school year or you hope to have but in order to achieve that are they like Target Target times that you start thinking now saying by such and such day we should have so we we're we are like on target to hit that Target uh by the time the school starts yeah I I guess now I understand the additional context I understand what you're trying to say so ultimately we would like to plan to have the full enrollment for the 125 so we the goal would be to have all of our pre-enrollment all of our engagement happen heavy so that by the time the enrollment opens that we are looking for hopefully a lottery scenario where we have filled you know we have plans to fill more seats than

253we have available so our goal is 100% but we would like to be at least at that 90% Mark at the time of the the applications open and the the enrollment information is available to officially enroll so we will um have them join um our choice programs when we do open houses and things of that nature so that starts in the fall this fall this fall um I think what I hear is maybe um putting together a plan that by certain months you would at least have a certain number of students as a goal in increasing that number as you go over time so that you can ensure that you reach your total by the end of whatever said date sure and I think it's also we have a Back Field plan as well so

254that any event let's just say to your point that we are planning for 125 we open with maybe 98 right so we can take if we have more students in the seventh grade maybe our interest is higher in seventh grade versus sixth grade we can pull in some additional students in the seventh grade to back fill what the sixth grade uh slots have left open um but ultimately for us we would like to be able to plan to have full enrollment so we want to you know our goal is going to be 100% for the enrollment but plan a backfill should one of the grades have the additional slots and opportunities okay and I guess my other questions I I you know we all want this to succeed but I'm thinking what is Plan B

255if you do not meet your enrollment goals by then like what is how does that affect the program economically how does that affect the program you know because the goal is that the following year to bring eighth to have eighth graders like they're going to be moving up right and so on and so forth so how does that affect if if you're not able to meet those those um those numbers those standards that I have uh you know and I think to what Miss Harris had brought up earlier the enrollment sensitivity analysis that we did as a part of our application is a big part of that planning and that understanding of where we can comfortably operate so we've tried to look at that at the 5 10 and 15% reduction levels to make sure

256that you know where we need to land and our Target and our goals so we have done that sensitivity analysis so that we understand where we need to be um but like I said we're going to plan to effectively engage with Nikki Hazel's office under Dr Marcus's you know Aid and tutor tutorship as because being a former principal around how we can make sure that we're effectively marketing our services at each of the opportunities that are presented to us okay and the last question um is this Char school going to be able to serve EML students as well yes we have plans for English language Learners special education tag we folded all of that into our curricular programming yes ma'am that was my other question for a special okay thank you very much yes they

257did address that in their application how they would serve all of the students in service yeah I'm sorry I didn't read that it was kind that's okay it was large it's just a little B but but thank you thank you no problem Mrs mki yeah um thank you very much for the presentation looks phenomenal I'm not going to lie I did not spend my weekend reading the entire book that you sent home um I did glance through it go through it a little bit but couple of questions um how are the kids going to get there we're still planning for yellow bus transportation for all enrolled students so you're going to hire a company or you're using us um well we will negotiate that when that time gets here we will work with the district

258so what whatever plan is the most viable for us is what we'll pursue whether it is with the contracted services or directly through the district but we are still planning for yellow bus transportation okay I just because I was I wasn't sure if that was incorporated in your financial factors yes ma'am it's still in there the bus is and the drivers um what and what if um well you know we build a lot of buildings here in mcps and uh no offense Seth but while things normally go pretty well sometimes there's delays sometimes construction materials increase um there's you know all kinds of different things that can hold the project up what happens is this your lease or ours cuz what happens okay so if things don't go the way we're hoping we don't mcps

259doesn't have to pick up no any financial responsibility that it's all on us okay then my last question is um I don't know how to say this right way what how is this different from our College and Career program like Edison and um senica Valley well first of all we're starting at the middle school level so career don't currently exist at the middle school grade so that's what's different first and foremost is that we're introducing careeres at the middle school level so the current process right now the current plan right now is to introduce careeres at the high school level because students have early opportunities to internships and everything in the high school but we've created and brought it down a level so that we can begin early engagement with the students in early planning

260for College and Career in the Middle School level and introducing them to opportunities for future whether it's College whether it's direct into the job Force we're starting that engagement in the Middle School level which is different from the district so this program is really intended for middle schoolers well yes that's our target audience it's just we're following them to high school grade 12 okay I didn't know if um you talk to Miss Hazel or anybody about potentially partnering you know if start if you're starting with the middle schools and then it's in Germantown so they could go to Sena Valley or something too if if we needed so I just I was just needed to understand why what what the need is well we're starting at the middle school grades because that's where we found

261the deficit of support is for that that grade and that grade needing a little bit extra handholding the sixth to eth grades and so we're focused on them but we wanted based on what our parent feedback has been is a continuous program because often times with attending a charter school you may be outside of your neighborhood and so the concern was that if they go back to their neighborhood let's just say they don't want to continue on for high school their High School may not have a business program that they can continue on in their neighborhood so there was that was the concern of why we added on the middle the middle school and high school and partnered those together so that the kids could maintain the continuation of learning so is your curriculum then

262um what's the word on for corresponding with um mcps is yes yes the high school the high school programming is consistent did you I just meant like the even like the English and math we teach um the subjects are very similar in terms of making sure that students are prepared for normal accredited subject area such as language arts English math reading social studies science all of those subjects as well as art music Etc the foreign language we added another element of business to help students focus on financial literacy economic development business practices and Entrepreneurship and so that additional class allows us to give students a little bit more emphasis in the business spaces without sacrificing traditional learning and then at the also Mr madoski at the high school level the CTE program has state level

263standards so the same standards that the District employees is what we're following for the high school programming and so we are going to make sure that everything continues you know in sequence with what the district will be providing because that's what sort of dictated at the state level as well I just wanted to make sure like if someone was in your program and left they're not going to be you know a year behind or year ahead we don't promote people ahead not at all so then my last um question is will miss Hazel have the opportunity to or someone have the opportunity to review the choice of of careers I guess and certifications that you're planning on this St of course as well as all the board members who will be invited to participate in

264our business Symposium and speak to our students and talk about your careers outside of your board membership here and your leadership here because all of you all are Professionals in your own right outside of your board duties so you all will get an annual invitation to speak to our students and share your backgrounds with them as well Nikki Hazel Dr Marcus will probably be very regular faces in our programming uh as we establish he doesn't know that yet he just found that out just now today whatever but the goal the goal is to continue the positive partnership and the engagement with the district making sure that everything continues on and maintains the level the level of Excellence that we know Montgomery County expects thank you you're welcome Miss Harris yeah I'm sorry I had one

265additional question looking at um at the agreements and things um you indicated because of the site you need you need access to a place for I'm guessing PE outdoor activities and uh it's noting here that Quiet Waters Park is the preferred location and that the Park Service said you didn't need a formal agreement because it this would be covered under the district's existing agreement how are they ensuring that you have Priority Access and use during the school year during the school hours that you would be for instance taking a PE class over there because we do have schools right now that kind of struggle with that on an ongoing basis when they're out there on their athletic field trying to have a PE class and members of the public sort of think they can come

266yeah for sure so but what the office has indicated to us is that the districts will the district receives corresponden Every Spring around the fall plans for that year and then the schools are encouraged to designate their preferred Park of use and then Carl who we've been working with indicated that we need to the best way for us to secure our space is to put in a full permit so we we will be participating in both ways we're going to do a permit for use of the park um as if we were a private entity and then we will also be engaged through the district's email uh the email correspondents and things that come out for the schools to be able to select their sites okay all right thank you you're welcome um just following

267up on Miss Retta oven's question if you could just be real specific for me if you don't meet your enrollment Target on day one you get 50 students instead of your target what will happen we will continue on because we're full enrollment at 700 students right but the financial how will the financials work for you in that case you need to hire teachers and you only have 50 students so you just hire how do you pay for your rent how does the money work if you don't meet your full enrollment um so I mean it really depends I guess on on what so for on for list like look at the the lease payment right so the lease payment is structured where there's about 30% of cushion um already built into that so it's not

268like we're kind of operating on a dollar for dooll Razor's Edge so there's always a little bit of contingency and cushion built into all this um additionally other kind of revenues like for example the grant you know we're kind of back holding that as kind of like a a nice to have but not a must have so we are building in um some cushion around these numbers you know we don't you know our firm never recommends any Charter School operate you know kind of down to the dollar um and so at the end of the day if something you know you could say well what if only 10 kids show up I mean that'd be a serious problem you know we can't um so all we can do is say you know we build in

269a healthy amount of cushion and then you know that's what we you know have to do um I'll also say that um the last startup charter school that the state of Maryland saw um was Legends in PG County and they actually compared to this swung for the fences they wanted 600 kids on day one ramping to 900 and they took on $26 million in debt you know way more than what we're doing here at a much higher interest rate paid crazy fees that developers I mean this was like maybe twice three times the risk they fully enrolled to 600 kids they fully enrolled the 900 kids completely on schedule with great demand um and now they're doing healthy and great and we'll probably you know be working with them to refinance that debt soon so

270um you know if it helps at all in 2020 it was kind of the last case study and it went really well and was in a situation that was much higher risk than this one in Prince George's County yes yes in FG County okay I see no other questions so thank you so much for the presentation and look forward to seeing you next time thank you thank you thank you so much our next item uh on our agenda is item number 12 the FY 24 school and office climate survey results and I will ask Dr Feller to get us started thank you president sylvestri so this evening we present the results of our recent District districtwide survey on school culture and climate which was conducted from February 12th to May 1st 2024 we gathered feedback

271from the students parents Guardians and staff on the academic and social environments safety equity and inclusion and communication we know the importance and value of hearing from those we serve as this provides insights into how well we are meeting the needs of the community in these areas it is important to note that we remain committed to inclusivity transparency and continuous Improvement in fostering a positive learning and working environment for all in Montgomery County Public Schools Community the presentation of these results this afternoon and those available publicly online at the conclusion of this presentation demonstrate our commitment to being open and accountable for feedback received from families students and staff the team will share our engagement approaches and Improvement opportunities additionally they will highlight key strengths areas for improvement and provide actionable recommendations based on the

272survey results I now turn it over to Mrs Stephanie Chiron chief of strategic initiatives who will introduce the team before they begin the presentation Miss shiron thank you Dr Felder uh good evening so today we're going to be talking about the school and office climate survey results I'm here with Dr Peter Moran chief of schools uh Dr Kesha Addison who is in charge of shared accountability and uh sorry Mr Shawn McGee making sure everyone's title is correct who is um the future right currently acting but going to be the permanent associate superintendent of the office of school support and wellbeing if we can go to the next slide please so for the agenda today um we're going to first talk about the survey Focus areas how the survey was developed what was involved in the

273development of the survey so that we could truly make sure that we got the input and we were going to be surveying the right questions of our community for both staff students and families and we're then going to talk a little bit about the survey Logistics how we deployed the survey um how we were intentional about um our Outreach into our community um we're then going to be talking about our response rates and what they look like and the ongoing feedback that we continuously collect as we're thinking about how we engage in continuous Improvement uh Dr Addison is going to provide us a deep dive on our survey key findings and then we're going to talk a little bit about our action steps what are we doing as a result of what we see here

274today next slide please so um when we developed the survey uh the department of shared accountability um initially created the survey questions for student staff and caregivers and they um Drew on Panorama which is a uh research-based organization to draft the survey questions but they didn't stop there um after the survey was drafted we collected insights and suggestions from a variety of focus groups ranging from students to our um Community to our staff members to our association leadership um in order to see are we on the right track through that process we refined our questions to ensure that our survey was more inclusive and was really meeting the needs of our targeted audience um we also really wanted to make sure that we were ensuring Effectiveness and capturing the perspectives and the needs of those

275that we serve throughout the district so through that feedback and data collection process we revised the survey and the feedback that we received actually directly influenced improvements that we made not only to the survey questions but the survey process which was hugely helpful and impactful as we um engaged in this work next slide so before we actually dive into the survey and the data we want to make sure that everybody has a clear understanding in what are the areas that we were actually assessing because it was strategic to ensure that the areas that we were assessing were areas that are directly aligned to our strategic plan and the board's priority areas to make sure that we were collecting data that was going to be useful in both school and office planning so um for our

276students you can see that we uh had a number of questions on school setting and academic environment school friends and relationships and their social environment school safety and discipline and fairness and everyone belonging which gets to that equity and inclusion piece and I believe it was Miss Evans earlier today uh when we were having the budget conversation was mentioning that you know when we are engaging teaching and learning it can't just be about the content we know the conditions have to be set so a lot of these questions get to what are the conditions that our students are experiencing so that we know what we need to do to optimize the environment for kids next slide please for parents and Guardians you're going to see on the left- hand side that a lot of the

277categories mirror the questions that we ask the students and this is really important for when you're trying to try angulate information between the three different stakeholder groups that were um surveyed in addition there was one additional category that we added for parents and Guardians and that was around uh communication we asked not just about communication at their school level for instance and what that communication plan like looks like and feels like but also and we got a lot of feedback to add this and uh communication from mcps in general so it wasn't just about the school that was actually a big big enhancement um that we heard from a lot of our stakeholders as we were revising the survey is how do we actually also Elevate this to talk about um the districtwide communication that

278we are receiving next slide and then you have our school-based and central office uh staff question and you do see there are some similarities again in the areas that uh we assess but we assessed work environment the social environment equity and inclusion excuse me safety and also communication because similarly when we think about how our students thrive in a learning environment and how the the conditions need to be set same thing is true for our staff um in order to maximize our staff's potential in both central office and schools we want to make sure that we are setting the conditions for that to occur next slide so survey Logistics um this was we had a unique year this year it has been quite some time since we sent out districtwide districtwide surveys to parents students

279and as and school-based and central office based staff if you recall last year we only sent the survey out to staff um so this year it is a much more um holistic lens to which we're looking at our community and our responses our Administration window was from February 12th and March 15th that was decided based on a lot of feedback um from our community that said don't survey us at the end of the year um everybody is tired they don't want to look at a survey they're ready for the school year to end please move that up we spent a lot of time trying to figure out where that where that Niche was going to be and that's a difficult thing to do when you're trying to look at all the other things that are

280happening in the district and this is where we landed on I will say that based on our response rates in collaboration with sswb we did make the decision to actually keep the survey open through May 1st um even though that was pushing a very tight timeline for shared accountability to be able to turn over data quickly so that schools and offices could get that information by the end of the school year but the reason we did that is as we were going through the process we realized our response rates across all three areas were not as high as we had initially um anticipated so we worked to really try to bring some of those up across the board so that's one of the main reasons that we extended it's also important to note that the

281responses on the survey were confidential um and the results were available were available internally the week of May 27th to principles um we did provide our principles their survey data via memo they had an internet code to which they could access that information so they could process um what their results are and today they are publicly available to our community on the shared accountability website next slide so engaging families um previously and what how this was a little bit different we did parent uh service surveys prior the to the pandemic we did a sampling approach where not every single parent received um a survey but we sampled different um groups of parents throughout the community so this was a little bit different this year so we decided to actually fully survey or provide the opportunity

282for all of our staff I'm Excuse me all of our families to participate in this survey so with this in mind knowing that we were um doing this full fully through across the whole District we started working in the summer of actually 2023 to uncover the barriers to engaging families and to develop a comprehensive and culturally responsive engagement plan around the survey um we actually used the culturally responsive engagement planning tool which all leaders were trained on in order to get to to engage in this work and we also started with focus groups um last summer of staff and Community Partners to identify the barriers to families actually participating in the survey to help inform how we were going to be engaging our families um we then collaborated with the mcps anti-racist community engagement Charter

283team which was um a group that was developed out of the anti-racist action plan to develop strategies and materials for outreach and engagement with families that were traditionally under represent under represented in District surveys so through all of that engagement we created a comprehensive engagement toolkit for principles and Community Partners so the toolkit included cultur uh culturally responsive samp Le language electronic templates for them to use Flyers that could be printed everything was provided in the eight languages the toolkit also included some best practices and suggestions for how schools individual schools could engage their families because although we can do a lot of uh communication on the district level we know that the trust is often more so with the schools and and our and our families will respond more um on the school level

284sswb directors actually distributed and explained and went over uh the toolkit and expectations during the February ANS meeting and then through multiple Communications over the next few weeks supported schools in doing that and then the office of communication um also additionally sent out messages to fam staff and students multiple times using a variety of communication Vehicles they even did a Facebook live um with our Hispanic families to work on trying to get our participation in the surveys up so wanted to make sure we provided you all of that context and I'm now going to turn it over to Dr Addison who's going to be able to provide you a deeper dive into both our response rates as well as the results that we had thank you good afternoon Kesha Addison director um shared accountability next

285slide please so before we get into the results we wanted to take some time to share with you the response rates of the survey you just heard Miss Sharon share the process used to engage families and on this slide you see um our response rate and to the right which you can't really see well but to the right is an equation for how we determine response rates which is about how many surveys are sent out based on the total number of surveys that um we received back and so um prior to launching the surveys um to each Target group we had Target response rates and on this slide you'll see for parents and Guardians we had a Target response rate of 40% for students 80% and for staff School based or central office staff respon

286um a Target rate of 60% of surveys received you will notice that we did not hit our response rates this time um and we recognize that and we see an opportunity for us to improve in this area the couple of things I want to point out as it relates to response rate um one you're probably thinking while these are pretty low response rates which is true and when we have low response rates one thing we need to consider is the potential for bias in the responses right so when we think about a low response rate there could be bias in terms of those who responded as opposed to those who didn't respond and so for those who responded they could have a strong opinion positive or negative about the topic which could bias the information

287that we receive so that's something to consider um and it wouldn't be responsible of me to present this information without pointing out the potential in that area area um so as we reflected on the why as it relates to these response rates one potential culprit was survey fatigue so our community received multiple surveys from us um to share their perspectives on a variety of topics this school year um and this likely led to survey fatigue causing this survey to be ignored um so one thing we will be bringing back for this upcoming school year to reduce the overlap of surveys administ is a survey calendar which is managed by shared accountability so we're going to be re-engaging in that process so we do not have this overlap in for surveys being launched at the same

288time um additionally another factor that may have impacted response rates particularly for central office staff was our login system uh we tried a new approach to our login system to ensure accuracy of reporting and um at the conclusion of the survey and however based on ongoing feedback I heard from some of my colleagues they weren't comfortable with that login system and so for some they opted not to complete the survey because they did not feel that it would be confidential even though we put some intentional language out there around um only one individual will see who may have completed the survey for some it just that wasn't enough and I fielded a call from a a parent one time too who also was concerned about having to enter their child's ID to get into the

289survey so these are things that we have to consider and re-evaluate how do we create a system that allows for us to have accuracy of reporting because that was a um request of principles to say how do you know that the information you receive is for my school and also create that comfort and confidence for people to report in that way um and then finally another factor that U may have impacted our response rates is just for some the perception that what difference will it make right and so for some people they felt why why should I do this what what change is it going to bring and so they opted not to complete the survey and so those are some of the things that we have to consider as we go forward in terms

290of how do we create that confidence in individuals um so that they will complete the survey and we have higher response rates and can have more information to improve our practice next slide please so um in addition well while the survey was open uh we always re reive ongoing feedback um it was a lot of the questions were fielded by our ask mcps team so I'm grateful for them and then they were all sent to me and I answered uh all of them or hope I answered all of them um but on this slide you'll see some of the comments and feedback we received from individuals who took the survey they might not have taken the survey but they decided to provide feedback um and a couple of things you'll notice so for example some

291individuals did not like that our response scale did not provide them with a neutral option so some people like to be in the middle um they just they want to say a neutral response they don't want to agree or disagree they want to say stay in the middle so we got a few comments related to that um some individuals did not like that there was not an option to provide written feedback some people like to create you know open-ended items we intentionally don't have open-ended items just to um support with turning around the analysis but it's something for us to consider going forward um and even further there were some parents or Guardians who believe that there were not enough survey items focused on academics and the successive students um and although not included on

292the slide some did not like that the response scales were not consistent so one of the things you'll notice as we get into the findings is that you'll see um options for agreement so strongly agreed to strongly disagree or you'll see some options for um positive so quite positive to not at all positive and last year when we launched the staff survey we got feedback that our response choices weren't specific enough so we were intentional this year to make them more specific um but it didn't work well for everyone um and so our intent is to use the feedback that we received to continue to modify and improveed survey and future administrations next slide please so now on to the survey findings in an effort to have fewer slides but cover multiple response groups you

293will see results from each School level additionally some items from the survey will be highlighted during this presentation however results for all items are available online as Miss Sharon shared earlier um we begin with responses from parents or Guardians on the academic environment um for three questions and before I begin I want to point out I I did notice like Punctuation is missing so we have it accurate on the SL survey tool but it stood out to me so I had to call it out um so um the three questions we're going to highlight is my child is given challenging material to learn at my child's School administrators create a school environment that helps children learn and my child's teachers expect my child to do well in class and the response scale the response options

294were strongly agree agree disagree and strongly disagree for this Slide the percentages presented are for those in the agreement scale only so meaning they agreed or strongly agree and that's what the two colors are so agree is blue strongly agree is um orange and at the elementary level close to 5,800 surveys were returned from parents and Guardians at the middle school level close to 2,400 surveys were returned from parents and Guardians and at the high school level it was close to 2,00 ,600 and so the percentages on this slide are representative of those who not only responded to the survey but also responded to the specific items indicated and in almost all instances for each of these items you will notice High percentages of agreement across all three levels in all instances percentage of agreement

295was 80% of respondents or higher next slide please can I ask a question yes uh it takes a certain level of education and understanding to even be able to answer that question if you're a parent which question that my child is given challenging material to learn doesn't it I think you have to know I think you have to know what is meant by challenging material right and it may mean different things to different people but that certainly could be um POS some concerns for parents to uh just one of the concerns I have about the questions because to me it takes a certain level of understanding yourself to even be able to respond to that question or to miss Wolf's Point can we um from the data we can determine which schools responded in this

296way to see what you're getting at right um but even if you don't do the schools at every school you have a certain level of parent I don't know if you can you can tell whether or not it was your more I don't want to use the term educated but maybe more sophisticated level um but you take a an immigrant parent they're not going to understand what you're asking here so your feedback is noted in terms of the wording of the questions our um goal and as M Sharon shared in terms of our engagement in advance and working with different groups to review the items our intent and the feedback from them was that these questions would work well for all families um but that is something that we can consider in terms of the

297wording but again our intent was to ensure that it was relevant for All Families regardless of educational level well thank you but I because I I want to know who was involved in the focus groups that you examine these questions around we can provide you the list of individuals that are on the community engagement Charter group yeah yeah but it's always the same people that's okay I just okay it doesn't matter I I just was going to interject there that about counting your numbers counting the numbers of individuals I was going to ask if you were had the ability to see you know when you were talking about how many people um participated were you able to see who logged in and then didn't like if if you I was surprised by the agree and

298strongly agree and no disagree if I were a parent I'd probably log off because I'd be like well this isn't you know an accurate and I see that going forward you have the disagrees stuff but I was just curious if it maybe people participated that didn't actually fill it in so for the purpose of this presentation and for and because there were high levels of agreement for this slide and a few more slides the disagreement options were not included but they are on the website and you can see for what percent of respondents said strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree and I um understand your point we can see for example how many may have logged in and didn't complete the survey I think that's the question you're asking um so we can look into

299that and just say how many nonresponses we had um we did a lot of we didn't talk about this but a lot of Cleanup in terms of um individuals indicating the incorrect location so even with our login system we ran into um challenges more so for schools but sometimes for families where they selected the incorrect school um and so we had to do a lot of cleaning up to reassign and so that's part of our challenge as we look to get some of this done is that because they didn't want you to know what school they were at well I don't know but our our you know as a as a um we assured principles that the feedback received would be for those who were in their schools so we were intentional to ensure that

300we realigned and reassigned individuals to where they were where they're enrolled and I do want to just add one thing before we go on a lot of these questions can be mean different things to different people not just the one that at uh Miss wolf mentioned but any of them and this is why and you'll hear a little bit about this when Mr McGee shares about the action plan and how you're using this data you know the survey is an entry point of conversation to figure out where you might need to dig deeper within your community and a lot of times even the absence of data tells you where you need to dig in deeper with your community so if I'm in a community and I'm looking at my individual School results and I had

301two parents respond on the survey entirely well I'm not going to say well these two respondents this is how I'm going to judge action plan right I know that my next steps are going to be like okay great now I'm going to have to do more parent Outreach I'm going to have to sit and I'm going to have to invite families in so that I can dig deeper it's the same thing with any of these questions is that the the investigation and the action planning which is the most important part of this work doesn't end with this with it it starts with the survey but it does not end with it if that makes sense all right continuing with responses from parents and Guardians across the three School levels um we shift to a focus

302on school environment and the items included on this slide and I'm reading them out because some of them are cut off is I feel connected to other adults at my child's school at my child's School adults show me respect the school does a good job teaching my child how to work out problems with other students I have a adults from my child school that I can count on to help me no matter what and again with this slide there's a focus on the percent of respondents who agreed with these statements you will notice High reports of agreement with the item related to adult showing respect across elementary middle and high school parent or guardian respondents and there are uh lower levels of agreement indicated for feeling connected to other adults particularly for Middle School which

303was about 53% agreement and high school um which was 54% agre agement compared to Elementary next slide please we now examined feedback related to communication based on responses from parents and or Guardians um the items included for this are it is easy for me to talk to my child's teacher about things concerning my child my child's teacher teachers keep me informed about my child's progress in school I am satisfied with the ways I currently receive information about mcps and I generally feel well informed about mcps and again you'll see high percentages of agreement across elementary middle and high school on the majority of items with a slightly lower levels of agreement observed at middle and high school for the statement regarding teachers keeping them informed uh they both were around 70% next slide please this

304is the slide for responses for parents or Guardians which is aligned to the final few questions in the survey where we asked um for grading not only of their child's school but also providing mcps with an overall grade and this slide also includes respon um response options of a b c d and f and what you will notice across all levels um is that parents or Guardians graded their school with a or B's um at higher rates than they did the overall District next slide please we now shift to responses from students um similar to the layout for the results from parents results from students are presented elementary middle and high and for the academic environment the items identified for today include I believe school will help me in the future my teacher or teachers

305seem happy to be teaching classes at my school and my teachers help me when I don't understand one thing to note is that for the student survey items were modified based on level meaning the items for the elementary survey were written to ensure readability based on their reading skills and as a reminder the survey was available for students in grades 3 through 12 and so close to 28,000 Elementary School students completed the survey about 22,000 middle school students completed the survey and close to 20,000 high school students completed the survey across the three items highlighted you will notice high levels of agreement at the elementary level for each of the items similarly high levels of agreement are observed at the high school level as well um one item that stands out is at the middle

306school level where there is a lower percent percentage for agreement with the statement related to teachers seeming happy which was about 67% happy to be teaching classes uh next slide please remaining with results for students we have several items related to the social environment of the school you may notice that the item numbers do not match for elementary students to those of middle and high and again this is related to the modification and adjustments of items that were relevant for student um at that level the items highlighted here um overall I feel like I belong at my school I matter to other students at my school the energy of my school is positive I have teachers and or student other students from school that I can count on to help me no matter what my

307teachers care about me as a person and my teachers respect students for almost all of these items there is observed High percentages of agreement what may stand out to you which out to me is the lower percentage of agreement about 52% at the middle school level regarding the energy of the school being positive next slide please and as we look at the items and level of agreement um for this section which is focused on school safety and discipline it makes me wonder if the positive energy question might be related and so that's an opportunity for us to kind of do some cross analysis of the items um and we have not yet engaged in that yet but for these questions related to school safety and discipline we highlight the following items at my school the

308behavior of other students helps my learning overall I feel safe at school most of the time my teachers can teach without being interrupted by students who misbehave and you will notice that of the students who completed the survey there are high percentages across all three levels agreeing that they feel safe at school over 80% at each level um this is the middle bar that's in the chart where you will notice lower levels of agreement are for the two items related to student Behavior at the elementary and middle school levels there was less than 50% of respondents who agreed with the top and bottom statements and at the high school level are slightly higher percentages of agreement compared to the other two levels next slide please similar to the questions for parents and Guardians students were

309asked to grade their school Andor the district I mean and the district please note that uh elementary students were only asked to grade their school we we didn't ask them to grade the district um unlike what was observed for in grading of the district in the school by parents or Guardians middle and high school students responded who responded graded mcps higher with as's or B's than they did their um school next slide please we're now transitioning to results based on responses from school-based staff at the elementary level slightly more than 5,000 600 staff responded at the middle school level a little over 2,100 responded and a little over 2,600 at the high school level the items focused on uh the items we're focusing on for this academic environment section is I have a schedule that

310provides me time to plan my instruction for students teachers are staff in this school believe every student can learn the school administration encourages School staff to talk to one another about instructional matters and this school sets high standards for the academic performance of all students again overall there are high levels of agreement with these statements across each level at the high school level you will notice about 62% agreed that is agree or strongly agree with the statement of the school setting high standards for all students next slide please on this slide we continue with responses from staff with the addition of a chart that includes central office response um and as a note 900 central office sta central office staff completed the survey and additionally on this Slide the response scale all response scale options

311are included strongly agree through strongly disagree and the two items highlighted here are school or office staff members respect one another and I look forward to going to work each day and across schools and central office staff there were high percentages of agreement with each of these statements percentages of disagreement range from 12% Middle School um at the middle school level to 15% uh for central office for staff members respecting each other and for looking forward to going to work uh percentage of disagreement ranged from 21% for Central it was a tie between central office and Elementary School to 26% at the middle school level next slide please continuing with results for central office staff and school-based staff we shift to a focus on the social environment with the following items um being highlighted overall

312how positive is the working environment at your school or office overall how positive is the working environment in mcps how positive is the tone that school leaders or office leaders set for the culture of the school or office and how positive is the tone that District leaders set for the culture of mcps for these items we transition from a school focused on agreement um a scale sorry focused on agreement to a scale that ranges from not at all positive which is the blue somewhat positive which is orange quite positive which is gray and extremely positive which is yellow the more positive responses again are those in the gray and the yellow and respondant who completed the survey had high percentages for quite and extremely for having a positive working environment for their office and or

313school um what you will notice are the percentages who indicated not at all for the working environment in mcps ranging from 18% at the elementary level to 24% at the high school um and central office level similarly you will notice percentages of those who indicated not at all for the positive tone that District leaders set ranging from 22% at the elementary level to 32% at the high school level next slide please next we focus on support and safety for school based and central office staff across all group groups High percentages of respondents reported staff interactions with each other as quite supportive or extremely supportive as shown in the gray and yellow on the slide and additionally High percentages of Staff across all groups reported feeling quite safe or extremely safe in their school or office

314at the high school level about 10% reported not at all safe and about 9% of Middle School respondents also reported not at all safe next slide please sorry how how many people filled out the surveyance central office 900 9900 yes uh do you have the number for last year how many fied out uh I can get that for you okay uh this is my final slide just cion up all right so ending with um grading of the school or office and mcps by school base and central office staff so similar to what was observed for parents and Guardians higher percentages of A's and Bs were indicated for office or School compared to those for the district mcps as a whole I will now turn it over to Mr sham mgee who will share additional information

315related to results from school-based staff so we can go next slide please thank you good afternoon oh it is oh we're discussion okay we we switched this around so we'll go back um colleagues if you have any questions please turn our light on and I know there's a lot of uh questions that we have so if you could keep your questions brief I would appreciate it thank you Miss Yang yeah I will keep the other portion of question after Mr McGee's uh presentation but I do want to first thank you for bringing this to the board this year in a much more timely manner uh as opposed of waiting a semester to see the result so thank you for that I think you heard our feedback and that's an improvement and now now I noticed

316that the staff participation has increased this year compared to last year is it because now it's a all system uh participation instead of no so it's not so last year was a whole system staff right so can you link one measure that have helped increase participation from the staff it's a 10 10o gain I'll let Dr Addison uh ring uh join in but I do think one of the thing we only kept the survey open it was very it was a very late um Administration last year I believe it was June correct Dr Addison and end of May and it was only open for two weeks okay so we had this open for multiple months okay thank you so I think that's a good thing for us to remember then parent participation is 6% that's

317very sad okay so um I think it's significantly lower than you know we didn't do it last year but previous years we have done it so I is the number higher in previous years I I just wanted to make a connection back to what what you just first said and it goes back to what um M Ron was sharing around the idea of taking action or doing something with data so this year we developed the school Improvement plan specifically around the questions from the climate survey which the staff participated in you saw a 10% increase in participation okay at the same time you have a low return rate on parents I think that kind of speaks to why you see an increase in staff I don't know that parents see themselves in the action or

318responsiveness to what the feedback that they're providing is okay if they did which they will um this this summer I think there will be a a much more significant increase in their return okay that's good reflection and I also know that U some parent has mentioned that they don't tend to go to a email to do things but we have that remind app uh does it ever occur to us that it can be on a mobile device uh for convenience for parents I'll let her speak to the the mobile uh um utilization but we did send out remind messages we did use QA QR codes um as well some principles were really creative and they they created they had the QR code and they put them on little um like index cards and in the

319pickup and drop off Lane they were giving them out the windows to the principles and that those were some strategies we had suggested right then let me move to the students we have a Target rate of 80% for students do we give time in school for students to fill out this form so that that that' be the best practice that one would take right so at the high school level you'd have the advisory period you could administer the survey all at the same time throughout the entire school um similar at the middle school um might be a little bit more challenging at the elementary school level but essentially you know taking a f a fifth grade class and you know having them building 30 minutes into their schedule so um they that number should be

320higher than 55% okay so um that's that's about participation now I have a question about the data presentation so when preparing for this meeting the link wasn't working for me and I just understand you make it live today so it wasn't helpful for me to prepare for the meeting because I couldn't see anything having a PDF presentation for me doesn't tell me when when part of my role is overseeing the whole school system so I would really like to make a request in the future if we can have a spreadsheet right so I can see multiple schools that I can see some Trends and see some um areas uh uh of concern or area of improvement right and I'm wondering um I just went on uh as a parent I could I can see our

321schools compared to our cluster or all mcps schools now I'm wondering for our directors um Associates or or chiefs do you get to see the whole spreadsheet or do you get to see just sections too so I'll just chime it in terms of how we prepare it and then I'll turn it over so the um tool that you see online was originally developed because we weren't doing central can't hear you in the manner that we do them I can't hear you I can't hear you are too many just you just need to be closer to all right so um the tool that we have online was designed for school base it was not designed for central office and so what we did last year when we launched the survey and the results we created um

322results for each director each associate each Chief in alignment with their response rates and so our goal is to provide them with that same level of information this year so they see specifically for the individuals that they oversee in their um department or office or whatever um what have you in terms of the overall result can you do that for the board members so we have a more comprehensive view on because this PDF doesn't really tell me a lot about what happened at the school level um I would like to be able to see what happened at the schools uh you know not just one school I have to click one school by one school that's not helpful for me okay so I I think it's important to recognize we have over 200 schools um

323and so preparing a spreadsheet with that level of anal may you take time it's gonna take us some time we can definitely do it but I just want to caution that with the volume and the number of schools and the number of items that's kind of why we have the online Dr could you share what you share with the directors yes so the director the directors receive for schools they see the same thing you all see so they see it in the same manner that you see it online um for the schools and it's a navigation it's not at a glance for it is not a manipul it's not a spreadsheet that you manipulate and you drill down it really is right there interactive and you pick which schools you want to compare so you

324can bring in the different schools that you want to look at and look at their results and compare it okay I think going with longstanding I remember we do school at a glance before like that each PDF sheets and we have long said that that is not the most effective way for us to do uh to see it I I don't want to have this discussion now giving the interest of time but my interest is really at a easier comparison for trends no I just want to clarify the online is not a PDF it's not a PDF I know but it's just that one school that is no you can put in multiple schools uh well and I don't know how to do it I click on one Elementary School and for example I click

325on Lucy V bonley and it's showing me your school you can compare to all mcps school and then you go back click another button say cluster that you can compare you to a cluster and that's all I'm seeing right we can definitely provide more clarity there's an option to pick which schools you want to compare in the tool okay so I'm pretty like I think I have a regular level of computer Sav and Technology ability so I I I I don't see that right now okay let me move on one last question because there lots lots of lights on we have to get to everybody I understand now um you know what at all the other questions I can wait till after Mr McGee's presentation thank you Miss wolf um I want to thank you

326for this um it needs some work for sure but it is help helpful in some ways um I I was talking to our chief of staff who mentioned that there used to be a community Advisory Group I'm thinking that maybe some of the questions could be tailored a little bit better for the parents if you had a community Advisory Group we did use a community Advisory Group for this okay I wasn't you you talked about using the the anti-racist focus group so they are a community Advisory Group that focused specifically on how we're engaging with the community um so they are a community Advisory Group okay I guess what I'm trying to get to is that we always use the same people we need some of our naysayers if you would want to use that

327term in the group they were I I can give you the list I would like to get the list because I think that's part of the perception about us is that we are not as inclusive as we need to be but I do want to thank you for it because it it does give me some information and I'll look forward to getting that those group lists from you thank you Mr Retta Avan oh thank you just very quickly um the response rates that you you I would like to have a little bit better idea to to see it as more desegregated data like I know like 6.6 parents right percentage of parents responded um which is about 11,000 parents for me I would like to know like out of those parents if you could break

328down like how many were in Spanish how many were in Mandarin how many how many actually used the language um the different languages that we provided the survey on and um I would I also like to have an idea of the geography right is there a way to do that based on the survey um so so like for for example my district right district one like I would like to know how many parents in District One participated in the survey how many students in District One participated in this survey staff members um and maybe that's easier than going school by school but kind of like by cluster but just to see if they are any holes there that we are not seeing participation and then I guess the question would be why are we not

329seeing participation is it that maybe we need to support our principles a little better on ideas on how to get parent engagement or is there a you know is there a disconnect with that I just would like to have a better idea because that's that's even though you know it's almost 11,000 parents it's like okay but in the you know we have 160,000 students right so that's a very small number and I know you guys are not happy with that number either I just kind of like to to figure out what what what is it um and I know there's survey fatigue I don't know how many questions there were for the parents do you do you know like how many questions were in the survey there're about 35 35 so our original goal and

330this so this is where the fee but our original um plan was no more than 25 items and then we we actually went to more groups so we went to principles we went to The Advisory Group um we checked in with some pcc's on the items and a lot of the feedback was around things that we were missing and so we were intentional to be responsive to the things that were missing to add them in which increased the number of items but our goal was not to have more than 25 items originally okay so I'm just going to say for me personally that that gives me uh fatigue sort of fatigue what is that what you guys said earlier like 35 is a lot so that would be also to the point that I don't

331know who one of my colleagues said about how people actually opened it started it I'm one of those people I'm sorry I'm going to I'm going to confess now like I start a survey like they say you know and and I had such a good you know experience and I want to and then the next thing you know there's like another 40 questions and I'm like no I cannot do this right so I just I just want to know how many actually people clicked on it and how we can you know maybe go back to those folks later on when we do another survey right um just to encourage that I I I just I'm sorry I am one of those people but thank you yes that's what I have this mki I'm one of

332those people too so but um that you know kind of goes in hand inand with what I was saying about the or asking about can you tell how many people have clicked on it and then logged out that that was basically what I was referencing um you had mentioned that so like on page 11 you said that you have the disagree or whatever the other one was um what's the middle one Sor strong strongly disagree or disagree I don't know yes anyways but on page 10 at least two of the comments suggest that there was no option for that because that was a complaint that I heard out in the public no the the complaint for um is that we did not have a neutral option so we had strongly what some individual were looking

333for was strongly agree agree neutral or undecided disagree strongly disagree so we didn't have a middle category that's what that item is in reference to they wanted to have some type of neutral or moderate designation they didn't want the firm kind of well I just one way the other I appreciate that you just a firm because I was going to kind of ask about that in a little bit of way but um I I I'm read that very different ly than than you do it to me it reads um that being because the questions are so General moderately agree or SL disagree or a neutral option should be available meaning both moderately disagree or disagree and neutral should all be on there that's how I take it so if I can look up the responses

334I will do that um my other question was in reference to using a firm um cuz this is going to sound like a silly thing but um when it's the ABC DS they were they're ABCD um but when it's the written out it's the negative First not at all disagree somewhat disagree I don't know and I just know a lot of times least me when I'm going down I won't reread it so I just make an assumption that they're all on the same block if you know what I mean maybe you're looking like you don't have any idea what I'm talking about are you referring to the layout for the slides or on the web page on the web page I'm saying like the order of if I start a survey and it's you know

335rate one to 10 10 is strongly agree one is not agree I go on the Assumption as I continue to go down that they're all like that that one would be negative and 10 would be positive this flips them around and I'm just concerned that people may have not realized that well thank um and so but oh that's I was gon to ask about the firm because I'm glad to hear you had a um committee that um that helps work on this um so that they can provide better feedback like you know kind of stuff that we're doing so anyways thank you sens yes um so on page is it is it page 177 where um we talked about we show the elementary middle school and high school on school safety and discipline and the

336um the response rates for um question 22 like this for each at each level the question around most of the time my teachers teach without being interrupted by students was fairly low can you talk about in getting this survey data back I um at both the school level and central office level what is it that we would do like what is the response to information like that are we checking to see if it falls into class management or like what is the response to try to get to the issues that come about I'm looking Sean I don't know why I'm looking I'm looking at you but I'm looking at anybody I'm looking at anybody who can respond like give me an idea or give us a like walk us through the thinking behind what a

337school and what at central office we would think to do to help support the schools based on this data yeah everyone I think it's a it's an individual um experience I guess when you have um Like A disruption that's happening in the classroom whether it's the staff's perception of that or a students perception of that um if we see that at the school level obviously there are resources that the school can put into place in regards to mitigating that trying to determine why that disruption is happening um if it becomes something larger than what the school can handle they can always reach out to central office um for our support typically our office would be involved with that because sometimes we do get um requests from schools to help with students um if it's something

338that cannot be handled through um you know the typical measures that a school would do with restorative justice or with class discipline U class management those type of um structures that are in place so is it not a and like I'm at central office I'm the director or higher up and I'm going say oh I saw your data and so what's happening are we thinking to do this or are you just waiting for the school to respond to say they need help no I think it's both right so I think you can look at the data and have a conversation which part of what I'll talk about in just a second we'll talk about that but I also think there's the other part of that too to say that sometimes this happens um where it

339isn't reflecting the data and the school is reaching out or um sometimes parents reach out too they'll say and and sometimes you all might receive emails about that to say There's A disruption in the classroom and we need help because it's distracting the learning so on both sides of that we're responsive to supporting the school um because in both cases we're going to the school to say to them what support do you need okay so um in looking at all the results my initial thought was in thinking about the low response rate particularly for parents was okay so how do we think about an opportunity to get this in front of parents when they're in the school which is parent teacher conference right do we have um computers available for them to fill out the

340the form at that time or just give their feedback because we have a great bit of people coming in it still may not reach everybody but it's an opportunity to get more than 6.6% right because everybody wants to know how their child is doing but then I heard Dr Addison make the comment about um just some apprehension about people wanting to respond because there is still at least one person that can see the information and I know in talking with teachers in particular their apprehension to responding is because it's not Anonymous right and so paper would be difficult but at what point should we think about hiring somebody on the outside I think at one point we talked about the amount maybe I'm not maybe I'm Mis maybe I'm forgetting but I would think that

341at this point in time because there is mistrusts right on the inside externally and internally that we take a year to see what the response would look like if we use an external firm to gather the data and if in fact our our targets are met then by George we got it we got it right but if not then we we try the internal but I just think that because we're in the place that we're in right now and prior to the pandemic Dr Maran you were here Brenda I can't remember her last name but she left you all were charged with coming together to do the climate survey we were going to do it in a different way and then the pandemic hit and we weren't able to do it and of course Brenda's

342no longer with us she moved away and I can't remember her last name but I do know that there was intentionality intentionality behind wanting to do our climate surveys in a different way to gather information from everybody the students parents and staff but right now people just don't feel comfortable saying what needs to be said and we actually really need to hear what they need to say cuz it'll help inform our work right and so I just believe we should give some thought to we tried it we've come back and we've tried it right so last year we did it at a point when everybody was tired so now we tried another opportunity to do it in February I don't know if you do it in January when people are happy and they just come

343back for break for right but they're thinking about the end of the year already and that's a good time you just leave it open completely but I really think that is it would bod us well at this moment in time as we're trying to build back trust that we just do things a different way and listen to what our um our educators are telling us and they're saying we don't trust you we don't want actually tell you what we have to say because it could be used against us right people believe that and I think these numbers show it so that's just my thought um let's try and look to see if there's somebody on the outside that can do this work for us that's that won't um break the bank but could get us

344some return one comment I'd like to make upon that and and I think we're seeing it across our schools is the reimagining of back to school night so we've tried to think outside the box with that and when you ask schools now about back to school night and what they did this year it turned more into a interactive almost like a Carnival festival and all of a sudden instead of having um you know half or or 75% everyone's coming because of this experience and what you were saying is that would be a perfect opportunity so I thought about that but then I thought about so do you so I thought about back to school night as I was sitting here but then I thought if you a new family coming to the school for the

345first time then you actually can't really answer those questions because you don't know so unless you say this this is only going to be responded to collect data from returning parents then that is perfect at the beginning of the school year you're feeling good right so what you say might be different but I just I thought about that um Mr McGee and so the only reason why I did not bring it up is because I don't want to skew the data because it could be a new parent right but guess what at the beginning of the year we're all happy we're coming back so the conference conference right your conference and by that time you've kind of settled in you kind of you you're getting your feet a little wet you're trying to figure it

346out I just think how you would respond to be different than at the beginning of the year at the end of the year ask me at the spring break and that might be something different too from parents right just had vacation or maybe not because your kids have drove you crazy they've been home for a whole week I just don't know but I just I was trying to think about a way to collect data in an intentional way where we just really want to hear from people and get their responses and and at that time when your as your child is going to the next level um you might get the response that you you you're looking for and then it's also an opportunity we talk about you know what do we want parents to

347get from what we're doing right what do we want them to understand and know and I don't know we throw some questions in there at that time to get a a feel are are you getting what you need do you understand do you know the the next um Milestones or touch points for your student so I that's just a that as I was every question that I had every every question that I had over here was kind of null and void after thinking about the mistrust and not being able to get the information is not Anonymous putting your kids's ID in there or one person seeing it it's just it's not Anonymous right so how do we do it in an anonymous way to get their information or do we really actually really want it

348I do how do you do that so that's me for me last I was just just want ask you last question and then we'll move on yeah that's fine I just I want to associate myself with uh sher's comments because um that's why I was asking about even something like flipping responses can skew the um results and um I um thought you said that you did work with a company though I I thought you said you did hire a firm I just want to clarify cuz I thought you said we did not work with the company we um when we started the develop of the survey we leveraged the items that came from Panorama education which um is research based and they have a lot of their items and so we started with that as

349our base in terms of those items and then as we went and gathered feedback we made some adjustments and modifications okay well then I 100% agree with uh Miss Evans that we should look at using a firm okay let's continue okay we could go to the next slide and this just connects to the conversation that we have we now we're looking at the the school-based responses the number of responses that we have and you can see there's a year-to-year comparison between elementary middle and high school um and you can see that there's an increase of change uh 10% change from uh 2023 uh a 9% change from 2023 middle school and then 70% change U from uh from high school for 40 to 40% 7% next slide please and this is um just bringing out

350a few questions and this was something that I that we wanted to talk a little bit about certainly the the last question but again you can see um some of these questions where we have positive changes um we we pulled out four questions how positive is a working environment how positive is the tone at the school how safe at school do you feel how often do you receive feedback for your teaching and your work and you can see the change over time from one year um to the next year and the the one that I I really wanted to bring out here is the the last one of how often do you receive feedback on your work for a lot of the schools that were supporting that would ended up being one of the lower

351lower marks um that they that the staff had responded to um and so when you look across the board of that high of a response rate um the difference of 34% or 35% or 31% we can attribute that um to what we're going to talk about in just a second is the emphasis of building an action plan based upon these School climate goals having a climate goal itself and then for us as our office as we went in for supervisory visits we built questions that were designed for climate designed for well-being into the questions that we're asking the schools about so in one of the things you can see that schools responded and I had several principles that said that was interesting that we we have staff members who said they're not getting enough feedback

352on their work and so they put structures in place this year um in order to increase their their number of times that they're coming into the classroom and having some informal or formal feedback forms for them to get feedback on their work and um it is really made for an our perspective you know certainly going to help improve teaching and learning so it's just a way that we've used this and connected um through throughout um the school improvement process um next slide please and so we talked about this already so I'll kind of go over this really quickly obviously this is a cohesive approach we've worked with all of our unions um in order to go through and make sure these questions obviously the points that we just talked about are well taken um next

353slide please I'm going to try to move fast because I know we uh have some time so it is uh Art School climate remains a shared Endeavor um it's not owned by the administration it's not owned by any group it's a collective effort by all of us the data from the school climate plan is red viewed by each school goals and action steps are created by each school team the process is the same for all of the schools and the climate the building is a frequent discussion Point uh during school Improvement meetings School check-ins um and with with directors and Associates this is a constant conversation that we're having to underscore the importance of the climate survey um that is positive to Student Learning next slide please and as you can see there's we wanted

354to just bring out you know two different types of data points one for climate data points or one for well-being data points and these are all things that we are considering schools are considering as we monitor um obviously you can see the climate survey is a climate data source there is local climate voice data typically we see that coming through what we would call the Triad meeting where the Triad meeting is with the principal a representative from mcea the efr a representative from um SEIU which is the ESR and they meet monthly so typically they could get the climate and see how things are going but there's also other ways to do that as well on the other side of the slide we have other data sources that we do monitor in we ask schools

355about quite frequently which is absenteeism suspensions the number of students that they're talking about at their well-being teams the referrals um and also you know you can see disciplinary referral suicide risk crisis centered referral data as well so those are just some data points that we are looking at as well um as we're having these meetings next slide please so this is you know just kind of a a summary of our process where we are examining the data just like what we're talking about we're making goals based upon that data we as a as a office go in we assess in terms of where we are with the data checking in um participating in professional development if professional development is needed once again checking again it's kind of a continuous cycle for those of us

356who've been a while around for a while for Baldridge the pdsa cycle that we have it's very similar with that when and this is one part of our school improvement process that we make sure that the climate data is included and next slide please and at this time I'm going to turn it over to Dr Moran and he's going to give us a summary just in terms of key takeaways and next steps uh thank you Mr McGee I I um and just listening to your feedback I I would uh I would share the the old adage um that when when everything's important nothing is important um and I'm going to tie that into the feedback question so if there's 35 questions on a survey and you isolate one and turn that into a goal for

357your staff you get a return of a 30% increase and so I think the thing that we really need to continue to do is and there's two pieces to that feedback question that I think I want to pull out for you if you look at the schools who had that growth in feedback they also had a higher response rate which means the principle this year has created a culture where feedback is reciprocal it's not just flowing one way the staff feels like they can give feedback and therefore they have a higher response rate on their survey so there's a cultural piece that Mrs Evans was pointing out to this around creating trust I'm trusting you to give me feedback on my performance in the classroom as a teacher at the same time you're trusting me

358to give feedback on the climate of the school the morale your leadership and how it's impacting that so I just wanted to pull that out as like an action item those four questions our principles do take the questions and they do there are questions that are more important than other ones and so when we're talking about the number of questions and everything I think it's also important to consider which are the most valuable questions to the staff that they put more stock into and I don't you know I don't know what that looks like in the you know moving down in the through the future and the other thing and Miss Rivera alen and I talked about this recently is um a survey is also it is it is something that should initiate other things

359it is something that is and so it people want to get people want to engage in discourse now like they don't they don't necessarily want to take 30 minutes to complete a survey they want to talk they want and so I I think the the trust piece is is creating environments around the school Improvement plan like Mr McGee was discussing where people feel that they can enter a space and just say what they really feel and think without with knowing that it's going to be taken and turned into action um and I and so I think you know the survey fatigue part I think is is something that we need to work together on I I you know and I think principles um when we look at you know just the regular monitoring also when

360you administer a one survey that is that comprehensive how are you collecting dat data along the way in addition like like a five question survey boom you can get that everybody will fill fill out a five question survey at your school and so I think like a lot of the principles have taken the questions from the survey the five like most important and made those key benchmarks that are aligned with their school Improvement plan and asked them during each evaluation at the quarter and gotten a return so um I I just I think this has been a great conversation I think there's opportunities for us to to to take back um and improve upon and um and and I mean we we certainly have you know work to do around the the response rate but

361I but I do think that there's Solutions out there and I don't you know and I don't know necessarily more surveys or more questions is the solution to get a higher response rate so is that the end that is the end thank you um I'll ask my colleagues who turned their lights on uh and I'll start with one question what is the role of the direct dor if a school is showing multiple areas where it's scoring low on on climate well it's part of that action plan so if I see a school that has uh multiple low data points I'm going in asking them have a conversation with that school have a conversation with the staff create an action plan that is based upon data based upon actions that they can see and make improvements

362and then my touch points as the Director there cuz if it's it's showing up there it's showing up in other places then I am have a kind of a laser focus on that school um to help them to support them to see you have to unpack to see where that's coming from what you know is it like we talked about when this evence is it Behavior Ro is it something that there's um the students that may not be allowing other students to learn is it something that um through the Triad meeting that's coming up that's climate based that um that's something that we can support is it something that is coming from the staff or from the community from maybe it's a communication part I feel like I'm not getting a lot of communication so

363you have to unpack what that data is but from our perspective as directors and Associates what that does is allow us to say there's a big priority here for this school for us to go and support so our touch points and our frequency of visiting with them to help support them increases greatly and I know your case laws are great so um that also makes a difference in in terms of how much support you can give Mrs Evans yes I was just going to say and and what I am very much aware of is that um the climate survey is just one measure right um but because it it's something that we use then we got to figure out how to get use it right yeah yeah exactly um so yeah I had other thoughts

364but my head is kind of floating all around but anyway so but I do think the schools are they take it very serious and I'm not insinuating not no no no I was trying to figure out um how you know how do you get people to feel comfortable enough to respond yeah to say what we need to know right and for them to believe that we actually really want to know and we plan to do something about it so I I'm glad that there are schools that take the information and are instantly able to do something with it and then show um and the staff is able to see that reflected in the work in the school but how do we um help support other schools to do that yeah do think it's trust and

365I'll give you an example of there's a few schools there's actually probably many schools when this first came out when we had the data early in the in the school year you know many of my principles felt so strongly about it that they wanted to give the climate survey again in January we want to check we want to do a dipstick and at that point we had made the decision well hold on a second because we're going to give it in February so hold but that's in terms of like what they you know building trust right to see I want to see what we've done those actions that we put place in place have made a difference and if they haven't then let's go back to the drawing and again it's a collective like I

366said it's not just the principal leading it it's it's the ilt it's the community let's get together and see what else do we need to do so I I do think it's about establishing that trust and and like you said I can I can speak freely with you without any we just want to make this better for everybody absolutely Miss R oven oh thank you um I just want to just speak a little bit on on on the whole um support for principles on um something to Mrs sain said I I think what she was I think what you were trying to say is is how can we be strategic about about using this data to get better and to grow and to get more more communities that are not necessarily feel involved or that

367they feel that they can take you know the survey and one of the things that I see at least in my district is I see incredible parent involvement from especially immigrant communities but when it but when it comes to connecting them to something like this there is a disconnect right because one um there's a language barrier um they don't do we don't do a lot of you know um other school districts in in Latin America so in other places they don't do surveys right you go to school you go to school um and how how you know how there's a cultural comp you know uh ingredient right in the schools but there's also a cultural component and presenting surveys to communities that are not historically um taking surveys right so but you have engagement right

368you have engagement so how do we then support the the the directors and the principles to kind of make that leap right so for me is with when you have that piece missing in some of these communities you are missing a lot of information and a lot of good feedback that we could be getting back to make us even more receptive um and deliver on some of the things that we do so going back to somebody who said you know maybe getting somebody from the outside and so on I'm thinking from the outside but that has that cultural component you know that has work with with uh districts who have a very diverse Community like ours and then it got me thinking and maybe this is a little derailing from it but I know we

369had ask about exit interviews for our staff right and them feeling comfortable and telling us exact exactly why they're leaving and maybe having the third party where they feel comfortable enough or even the folks who just retire right being comfortable enough in a safe space where they can say you know the things that you know they truly feel right um so anyway that those I I know that was a little derailed but um but I I I just think that having all those components to be able to get to the to folks who are not usually engaged are really important can I make one comment on that and I this one example that I think hit your point was um with our Northwood transition to going to Woodward so when we are holding our community

370meetings at Northwood we were missing an entire population and so we we ended up organizing and having you know all in Spanish a meeting to try to get out right having everybody come and be a part of that and that was greatly attended I think that's kind of the out of the box speaking what you're talking about the things that we need to do as a system in order to get that because they're engaged because people are coming they know there's you know they want to be a part of it and I think we we've got to think about that in a different way I appreciate that cuz I think we sometimes think that people don't want to be engaged we make assumptions and also we're not the only agency that has this issue by

371the way right there's many other agencies in the county for parking planning to HHS to others who the police who have this issue so but if we can be the the catalystic in and and Paving the way on how to do it and how to do it in the best uh way that would be amazing thank you Miss I just want to follow up on on Grace's point I think um particularly for my community if they see results from this they will be more inclined to respond so the question that you had where you showed that the staff number had gone up to 71 from 30 that's the kind of data they need to see then they believe it's worth answering the questions for thank you Miss Yang yes um first of all I I

372really want to congratulate you all on that question how often do you receive feedback on your teaching and work right 35% gain when you focus on that it's tremendous it's tremendous now um I also have a question about trust right so for some of the questions like how positive is the tone that school leaders set for the culture of the school if I'm a staff member or I'm a parent my exact issue is with the school leadership and how do I if I already feel the environment is not so positive how do I in how do I go about this if that person is in charging of now um improving this right and and would I because right now is an supposedly they don't know who's filling it out and then but if you say

373okay then everybody talk then would I really say anything because now then all of a sudden is not anonymous is with name and face attached to it so how do you handle that as a leader uh in the central office supporting principles so I I think the the um and I won't use any specific examples of schools but we have you know encountered that um this year where we've engaged in um listen and learns and collected feedback um sometimes on behalf of the principal and then um themed it and uh looked at it with them um and then worked with them to create a um an action plan that they then you know present to their staff or partner with key members to their staff to to create so that that is one way we

374we've in the past called it a a listen and learn uh session um to take out also kind of any personal pieces that that might be a part of that um the other I think I and I and I commend our principles um one in particular who has um encountered a lot of challenges with um with her community um she did a marvelous job just making herself very vulnerable and asking the the the questions and and listening with the intent of making it a better learning experience for children um she certainly you know needed some some support um with that from her director um but her um climate data from last year to this year has um grown up has grown significantly um so we have processes in place um from the from the parent

375engagement part which I think is sometimes the most complex at the staff part which is something I want to share with you because it was an action item that we did discuss earlier in the year is that um all of our principles uh to standard set are receiving professional learning with their efr and their ESR their elected supporting staff um representative elected faculty representative to start the school year so we're going to standard set that process process because that that structure um you find you know you find out things ahead of time and you're able to intervene proactively and resolve things before they you know gather negative energy and move across your school um unfortunately I know we use this line a lot Triads F following the um the pandemic um the implementation of new

376principles um of new efrs requires it that 216 schools need to receive the exact same professional learning the exact same expectations so that they're functioning entirely the same I think that alone will demonstrate a significant bump in our school climate and then you also have the accountability measure when you've standard set things for 2116 people they've received the information they've received the professional learning you can then hold 216 people accountable to the exact same thing when as a director you go out and start and are having those kind of conversations now to follow up on that um I appreciate what you talk about that sometimes um you know in terms of the community that the directors can have direct conversation with the community I think part of it is uh we are Montgomery County um

377that our students come from all different cultures and backgrounds um there are some cultures confrontation or even just honest conversation can be uh really a difficult thing to do especially when you are doing it with what we perceive of people of authority and people who have bigger power than your family you are very vulnerable when you send your children in the care of these uh adult right so that um the the every step of discussion collaboration uh uh uh problem solving that um it's wonderful step I think people all appreciate but how we do it who is the person to do it needs to be something carefully consider and consult with the community thank you yeah um um I think to me this gets to one of the most essential relationships in mcps and that

378is um directors with the principles that they supervise uh because this work can be very fraught and in order for a director to do this work and to look very objectively at the climate data and I do appreciate we're seeing aggregate data here I very much appreciate you're saying this is disaggregated by school so you can see and make comparisons whether it's how many families and staff and students are actually participating in the survey or you know what is the data that that's bubbling up and how does it compare um to to the prior year but you know having this conversations can be very very difficult and if you don't have that that trusting relationship with the person that's coming in to have that conversation with you it's not going to go very well and

379to me that gets to why it is so incredibly important I mean the only okay I I'm just speaking for myself here but I really do believe the only job of central office is to support principles in schools because if we're not you can't have a successful school if you don't have a successful principal and so that relationship having and I think having the director Cadre we need to support principles well means we cannot overburden those directors and because you can't build those tight trusting relationships if you are trying to supervise I don't know 25 principles who are all in different places in their climate data and in their communities they're serving and they all have different needs and you're trying to be everything to all of them and you just can't with those numbers

380I that's why I think is so essential we really focus on that role and creating the and reducing that the load of our directors so that they can build those tight close relationships with their principal to have these very difficult conversations um and really support them in moving through them you cited the example of a principal who had a very she was not getting good news and and and a very vulnerable conversation with her community but if she was supported and you know they wouldn't have done that if they hadn't had that support so and a question I have is so we've emphasized the survey this is one data point so when you get these so you've get you've get your data it's it's disaggregated by school you've got your director you know what your

381schools are you're looking at your school's data are you triangulating what you're seeing there with other pieces like what's the staff turnover rate like right um you know are there you know complaints being filed by by by staff against other staff that kind of thing you are you looking at that kind of data too to to further inform this this piece of data yeah absolutely and that was what missas you was asking earlier absolutely we look at multiple pieces of data but this is a very good indicator of the health of that relationship of the climate in the building and a lot of times it is connected to like you said staff turnover it's it could be also be connected to a student achievement so we're looking at all of those things and when we

382go in and and I'm glad that you said about the relationship with the director and the principal it's essential um to have um you know frequent and back to that trust and that um openness to be able to just say okay here's where we are and build that relationship with each with one another and in my position and Peter's been here a little longer than I have five six years it's so important that we do that um and and I think that's essential to getting us to the point to have that conversation with them to say not only is this data point but it's also this data point in that data point and so we're going to work together and when I was listening to Peter the thing the word that comes to my mind

383is coaching we're trying to coach adults to be able to look at data and to be able to make change and then just like Miss Yang said if we have positive data we can see that then we celebrate that and we see that a lot through through our our interactions with our schools but absolutely it's it's not just one data point uh we want to make we and and we want to be fair to be lots of data points to look at that too and have opportunities even to interact with staff and with the with the community as well thank you I mean this is such important work so thank you uh for the presentation as has been stated this is one tool in the tool boox in terms of how we determine how well

384our schools are doing for our students for our families and for our staff um let us remember that February was a very tumultuous time here at mcps and so I'm hopeful that as we you know make plans for administering the survey next year um you know we will have greater participation because of the learnings that you had this year but also hopefully u a better time uh to get survey uh to survey our families and our staff and students so thank you so much for the presentation moving on to our next agenda item uh we are at number 13 which is for informational purposes only agenda item number four 14 may I get a motion to move 111 and two in Block so moved can I get a second second all in favor raise your

385hands that's unanimous with those present 14.3 is a new business item I will ask Miss Evans to explain her business item sure so um the timing was not on purpose but actually it works out very well um today as we talked about our over $3 billion budget um the resolution that I wanted to bring forward is actually not for administration but for board staff um we've talked a lot here lately or I'll just say this as everyone knows the board is part-time um our salary is um a nominal amount but we are in the top 20 of the school districts in this nation and we have more than 160,000 students speaking more than 150 languages the needs are very diverse and um continuing to get complex as we um as we go on and so

386what I want the board staff to be able to do is study and assess our duties and responsibilities with us having to provide oversight and accountability and govern a school system of this size we need to be full-time and so who better equipped to gather that information than our board staff and um I would like our board members too to be able to add to the um the study their level of effort that they provide on a weekly monthly basis and all throughout the year as We Gather this information I know that we'll be able to show that we do a lot and that doesn't even include if you are in a leadership role um as President and Vice President there are additional duties that people are not aware of and so I just want

387us to be able to study um the time that it takes for us to review and do our homework and um also look at how we engage our community particularly as um we've heard legislators talk about looking at providing or looking at making our positions fulltime and I and I know that there was a commission um done by our County Executive prior to the pandemic where he um had the the people on the commission what they did they interviewed every board member at that time I was the board president but it was a conversation and so it was a conversation I hadn't gathered all the information I don't think any of us had we were just having um a conversation and giving them touch points on what the work look look like but I really

388want us to gather I want our staff to gather all of the information so as our legislators are making decisions possibly um the next legislative session they have accurate information accurate data that details um very specifically what our work looks like so what I could do is just read the resolution and what I do know is that it will lie on the table until our next meeting but I think it's important just to read it whereas the mcgury County Board of Education is the publicly elected body charged with leadership policym and oversight of the Montgomery County Public Schools one of the 20 largest school systems in the United States serving over 160,000 students in 211 schools and employing nearly 25,000 members and whereas executing the necessary leadership and oversight for mcps has grown more complex

389over the past decade as a school system serves students with different needs including changing demographics an increased number of students impacted by special education like language differences in varing social economic status including the need for increased free and reduced price meals services and whereas the board is charged with overseeing the administration of critical student services that include not only the traditional teaching and learning program but also academic recovery initiative social emotional and therapeutic supports and technological integration efforts and whereas to provide an excellent and Equitable educational experience to all students in this changing landscape the board is responsible for for analyzing adopting and stewarding an approximately 3.3 billion annual operating budget and an approximately 2 billion six-year Capital Improvements program and whereas the board seeks to engage in meaningful meaningful two-way Communications across the county

390as it undertakes its work which is time intensive and often requires extensive multi-year planning and travel and whereas the board promotes the incorporation of continuous improvements in all parts of the organization and believes that the same commitment should be applied in assessing its own work now therefore be it resolved that the Board of Education directs board staff to collaborate with the board to conduct a comprehensive study of the board's current and projected scope of responsibilities by the date is blank but I want to say by August ahead of when all of our um County officials get together um for their anual retreat in um moo that's usually um in in sometime in August there's not a date but we'll say you have a date oh oh no a date on the resolution yep and be

391it further resolve that the results of the study be leveraged to shape the board's annual work plan build public understanding of the vast scope of services in mcgury county that fall under the board's oversight including but not limited to Capital and operating budget reviews and approval process educating appeals advocating in federal state and local political Arenas hiring and evaluating the superintendent engaging in community events and meetings and numerous constituent engagements this study will enhance the board's capacity to serve the community by effectively and efficiently performing its many responsibilities Miss Evans the May code this year is August 14 to 17 okay thank you for that information so um did you want to add that data yes I want to add um I want to add just to be on the safe side will say by

392August the August 1 yep August 1 it's a th it's a Thursday August [Music] 5th okay and so good we don't need to act on it today no no we don't need that has to sit any questions or comments from yes and I would love any feedback or response from our Mr Ren it's no secret that sh and I have had this conversation multiple times it's no secret that as soon as I got on the board and a couple months into it I I made comments and I think Julie and I made comments that this is this is quite a full-time job and I I think the time has come that um we need to do the advocacy um because I I believe it's in the best interest of the system of our children and

393the teachers that we represent and that um you know the the job is immense and um some of us are killing ourselves trying to do the job because we want to do a we want to do a good job because of of the kids and I know this year and everybody said this has been a lot of work that usually this is not what it's like but guess what this is our reality now and I think this is what the job is going to be like and if we want to due diligence to to what we're doing and I think people people are sometimes surprised that we are part-time they are surprised that you know um most of you know all of us for this job work from home that we don't even have you

394know Offices here we don't even have you know like some some of the staff that that we need so um and um you know it really I stien what we get right it's not really a salary um my kids make fun of me sometimes they go say Mom you could be making more at the drive-thru of McDonald's part-time and without having all these uh stress in your life right so um I just want to say that I totally supported and I've been supported of it I think since I got on the board and I think it's the right time um and uh I I you know I I hope everyone will support it as well um I just wanted to add um have you thought about the intersect of compensation because we can be full-time

395but still make less than minimum you know minimum wage and it won't attract people that need to make a living wage in Montgomery County for example right so that so the thought did occur across mind but I thought that um it would be easier to make the case for compensation if people actually see that this is a full-time job right and so I don't know that we're in the position to attach a dollar amount but when you when you take a full-time job and and and and you look at the fact that our budget is 3.3 billion for the operating um over 1 billion for the CIP we should be able to leverage that for compensation I just didn't want to mix the two I just really wanted to focus on this is a full-time

396job and you the how you attract diversity and voices and um is you make it such that anybody would want to do this job if they can make a livable wage doing it for so long um I you know I think that people go back to how this this is what I remember when when Sydney so Sydney is now she'll be a senior in college in the fall when she was in elementary school her her her principal at that time when she retired she gave me um I I have the letter still but on the back of a letter that she gave me just writing a letter to me through our partnership um me being the PTA leader at the school her being the um principal she showed me the CH how the demographics changed

397and the needs changed from the time she started being the principal until the year that she was retiring and she was at that school for 27 years and it was a huge change and huge shift and so when we talk about when we hear people come and Advocate um before us for the budget and talk about you know the times when um our the it didn't look so um dire in terms of the our fiscal um climate we're we've just changed I mean yeah you I mean it was it was a little less complicated but now it's it's just changed a lot I just really want us to write down so guess what I'm going to ask each of you to really document how much time you spend reading um revie doing your your work

398getting prepared when you talk to um various Community me um community members out in the community in addition the time that we spend going to Cluster meetings I mean I want us to document every part of our job so that people can really see how much time and effort goes into this work so that when people decide they want to run for the school board they really know what they're getting into because people don't when you look at us you don't get a good picture of what we do and we do a lot I have two kids one is about the second one's about to go to to college and I really had to take time this year and I know I caught a lot of flack to be there for my child and I

399felt bad right I shouldn't have to feel bad this is a part-time job um that I love doing but it takes us away from our family more times than not and it's really seven days a week and um if if we do the job the way I know most of you do there's no off time people are buzzing my phone at any time like right so they they email you and guess what I don't mind cuz I I say contact me right I respond when I can but I just think there's way more to this job than um what it appears and I just want to document it I want to document it so when people say you all are part-time we're not we're we're we're full-time we get paid part-time we run as part-time

400yeah yeah yeah so anyway um but looking forward to having further discussion the next board meeting with everybody here to to make the decision as to not um as whether or not we'll move this resolution forward I think it's important yeah um just wanted to I mean documenting all of our time I'm not sure people believe it how much time goes into this job honestly um but I did want to I know and I appreciate where we're starting with this resolution and and um not tying any kind of a dollar amount to it just did want to contextualize in the the 2019 commission did make a recommendation on dollars um and context um looking around uh the but way that you know if we if we're looking for sort of benchmarking ourselves by size the

401closest Regional School District to ours is fair facts they're a little bit bigger than us but not much and um just uh less than Lily a year ago they they have 12 board members they raised their salary to $60,000 a year so that that is a regional sort of Benchmark for us a regional Benchmark to sort of look at because the truth is this job isn't we talk about Equity all the time is not Equitable it is not an equitable opportunity because if you have a family you're trying to support this is not something that you you cannot you cannot do this job and and support your family you cannot do it it is not an equitable opportunity and it should be anybody who wants to put in this time who wants to put in

402this kind of work who wants to devote themselves to the kind of of you know multifaceted non NeverEnding um breadth and depth of issues that come our way they should be able to but you right now they cannot and so that is another lens to look at this through is is is this an equitable opportunity because we talk continuously about Equity of opportunity I was add one more thing and so the advantage the work of living in mguy county is we have a highly engaged Highly Educated community and the benefit of being on the board going out the community and talking to a variety of um community members is you know they talk and share and I I feel like this year more so than ever um everybody has been talking about you all need

403to be full-time right and so I took that to hard I did want to say that this this year was very trying but you know what it's getting us to a place that we needed to be in the first place right so it's unfortunate that we weren't there but I did want to state that every year is a really there's always a big issue um and the job is no more difficult um this year than it was last year than the previous year but still this will help so I just need a second second second third four and then it'll lie on the table till the 25th okay okay so uh we amended the agenda so we're not doing item 15 um and we do have a Clos session after this so we will need

404to adjourn the open session and then read into the closed session so can I get a motion to adjourn the Open session so moved second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous with those present can I get a motion to um for close session okay I move that the board meet in close session to address topics listed in the posted revised resolution for today's Clos session and for the reasons and on the basis stated therein second all in favor raise your hands and that's unanimous with those present we will now go into close session [Music]