001The time now is 6:11 p.m. Good evening and welcome to the April 21st, 2026 meeting of the disability issues advisory board. I am Teresa Smith. I serve as the chair of the disability issues advisory board. As we gather tonight during autism awareness month, I tried to mention that there is I want to mention that there is a gap in basic understanding. The CDC's latest data shows that one in 31 children are identified with autism and over 67% of those children are identified in schools. That means that our classrooms are the front line. We un we have to understand the sheer scale of this and our job on this board is to ensure our school system is fully aware of the barriers these children may face daily. For me, it's not just statistics. As a mother
002of two autistic children, I stay like a sponge, constantly learning everything I can about this reality. I know firsthand why we must force the systems to see these children for who they are. And autism is truly indeed a spectrum. When people don't realize this, they may choose to compare presentations instead of understanding them. Excuse me. Which could create yet another barrier to access. We have to break this cycle. We have to actively remove these barriers so that children can truly thrive. All right. For those who are unable to observe the meeting, it is being recorded and can be accessed on the PGCPS YouTube channel for later viewing. For members, please remember to keep your audio muted unless you are speaking. Miss Vickery, can you please take your role? And yes, we'll start with um board
003member Aakay >> present. >> Chair Smith, >> present. >> Vice Chair Patrick, >> present. >> Miss Blackwell. >> Mr. Dwire >> present. >> Miss Katrell. >> Miss Payne, >> present. >> Miss Tori Meyers, >> present. Miss Dorsy, Miss Doyle >> here, >> Miss Wingate Robinson. >> Present. >> I believe we have Mr. Blackson in lie of Miss Bowman. and Miss Amaya and then myself, Miss Vickery. >> Our board liaison, Miss Oibo, >> present. Thank you. >> And is our other liaison, board member Brown, are you here today? for the minutes. We do have our administrative the board um of education office staff, Miss Tia Johnson available for as the administrative secretary. I believe I've captured everyone and I do believe we have a guest um just acknowledging for the minutes we have um Dr. Dana
004Edwards who will be speaking with us later on. >> Thank you Chair Smith. We have a quorum. We can proceed. >> Thank you. With the quorum present, the disability issues advisory board meeting will come to order. Item 3.0, adoption of the agenda. If there are no objections, the disability issues advisory board shall adopt the April 21st, 2026 meeting agenda. There are no objections. The April 21st, 2026 meeting agenda is adopted. Approval of minutes. The March 17th meeting minutes will not be approved this evening and are scheduled for approval at the May 19th, 2026 meeting. Dr. Edwards, you will soon have the floor. The chair recognizes Dr. Edwards, chief human resource officer, director of talent acquisition and management for the accessibility and inclusion update. Dr. Edwards, thank you for being here tonight. The floor is yours.
005>> Good evening, everyone. I am Dana Edwards. I'm the human resources officer for Prince George's County Public Schools. Thank you so much for the invitation and I appreciate just your patience and flexibility. Um I'm excited to be here and speak with you this evening just to provide some updates. I know there were some key things that we wanted to talk through regarding special education teacher vacancies um recruitment and hiring for those positions as well as for dedicated aids. I do have a slide deck to share if that is okay. Yes, that's perfectly fine. Do you have the ability to share? >> I believe I do. Um, yes. >> Okay, great. >> Give me one second. Oh, I do not. M. Johnson, are you still there to assist? I don't know if I have the ability.
006Dr. Ever, just give me one moment. Let me see if I have the ability on my Sorry about that. Um, Dr. Edwards, let me um I thought I had given Let Let me toggle with something really quick. >> Do you want me to send it to you, Miss Johnson? >> Um, yeah, you can send it to me and I can share it. >> Let me do that. That was super fast. That's awesome. Okay, wonderful. So, thank you again everyone. Um, it warms my heart to be here to speak with you regarding this subject. Um and just some things that uh our team has put in place that we do believe will be very impactful and helpful as we think about really securing the talent that's needed to be able to support our special education students
007um throughout the year. If we want to go to slide three. So this evening as I shared just one more want to spend some time just speaking about teacher recruitment and gaining the status. I want to share some information with you that we recently shared with our board of education regarding our special education vacancies and our hiring process as well as the dedicated aid role as well. On the next slide, I just want to narrow us in into the reason why we're here. And so one of the the main reason why we're here is the district uh by MSDE was placed into corrective action for a few things for special education. The area that is associated with me is for the special education vacancies that were within the district. We recently updated our board of
008education just in terms of the progress. Dr. Bowman and Dr. Malone who is our my director of talent acquisition management and we talked about the targets that we needed to reach in order to meet the key performance indicators identified by the state. We had a target to reduce vacancies by 10%. We far exceeded that initial KPI. We um we did meet that target by 68% and this is as of March 2026 where we made a 68% reduction. We were supposed to reduce our vacancies by 10%. For our support staff personnel, we were to reduce those vacancies by 10% as well. We exceeded that by reducing by 47%. And for our speech pathologist, there was a goal to reduce those vacancies by 5% and we met that goal by reducing by 50% and this is as
009of March 2026. So I want to talk through some of the things that were really important in terms of thinking about how we actually met that goal. one, especially knowing that it was extremely important to make sure that we were being attentive to what the state identified for us, but also being attentive to that every decision that we make in terms of hiring, preparing for hiring impacts our students as well as all of our schools. If we move on to the next slide, we took a strategic approach to recruitment and hiring. And it was really important for us to think about what are the things that have been almost roadblocks and barriers for us to rethink our approach to bringing in staff at the school level, but also for special education employees. One, as we
010know across the nation, teaching is a field that a lot of people are not going into anymore. Many people are still getting degrees in teaching. They are still pursuing education as a profession and then some people are finding teaching either as a second career or as something that they might want to try out. I'm a um a product of that. I was meant to be an English teacher or as I used to tell my mother, I wanted to be delivering the news. However, that did not work out for me and I decided to become an English teacher. With that being said, I did not have what I needed from in terms of the education component to really be able to be the best teacher that I needed to be. And so now we're seeing that
011as an all-time rise across the nation where te the teaching profession is a profession that we don't see a lot of people naturally entering into from the onset as they come out of college. We've created great partnership with the office of special education as well as with our teachers union. our teachers union. We've had some really good conversation about their commitment to the workforce, their commitment to bringing in new educators and really supporting them. We work closely with them this year to really think about what are the ways that we can start to hire earlier. So when we're hiring earlier, we're getting sometimes more people with experience and we are also getting more students who are coming out of school who've gone through education programs and or they have background in areas such as special
012education or other areas that we look to do. A one large piece that we did this year that we have not done in previous years. from previous years, we stopped hiring for the current school year around January. So after January, what would happen is if a school had a vacancy either that they had from the beginning of the year, possibly someone left, they went out on sick leave, that position would remain open. And what has been critical for us this year is we've kept those um we've continued to hire for this year and we c we want to continue to hire through May through the end of May and so that has really supported us in the work that we have been doing and that has really helped when we talk about reduction of vacancies.
013an example that I'll share with you. This time last year for special education teacher vacancies, we had 140 vacancies across our district. This time right now in Prince George's County Public Schools, we have 53 special education teacher vacancies across our district. We attribute that to that. We've continued to hire. When we bring a teacher in, we put them in the classroom, it creates an opportunity for students to have someone who has made the decision to work for us, but they're also committed to what children um need for the year. our early initiatives. We started, as I shared, we started to secure top talent throughout the year, which has been a big component for us where we're looking at saying to people who are interested in working for us. We want you to work for us.
014We want you to sign an advanced contract. We want to tell you your salary right now. At this moment, we have um a total of 36 special education teachers who have signed contracts to work for this district next year. They don't know what schools they're going to, but they have committed to being with us. That's huge because remember, every school district is competing for the same people. And so, if we can gain those people first, they know that they're Prince George's County Public Schools employees. Our job now is to make sure that they get to schools in a timely manner and we want to continue to capitalize on our resources that we have in human resources and really really leverage um the folk the people that we have. We do have a dedicated recruiter specifically
015for special education positions. That was a part of the corrective action plan. we wanted to narrow in and ensure that we had one person working with a team but really leading that work for us um as as our district to be able to gain what we needed for our students here. And so we really looked at our internal processes and one thing that I've often heard having been in this position since December is we don't get in contact with people. they apply to us and then they go into like this dark abyss and so um if people send me a candidate or they share someone I do pick up the phone and I actually have conversations with people and it is my expectation that my team does as well. So be um I just spoke
016with them uh before I came into this meeting. I said the week is coming to an end. I want us to go back through the pool, make contact with people again, and make sure that we can close out the week strong with a good pull of talent. Next slide. So, this just kind of gives you the breath of all the things that we've done just to really kind of structure ourselves around special education and take a different approach. As I shared, we've had that dedicated recruiter. um that dedicated recruiter is not only out at different events, they are also speaking to candidates as well. And that's really, really important that people know that they have someone to be able to talk to. They also are a conduit over to our special education team. We have
017specifically added to our recruitment cycle 10 special education classroom teacher events for this year. um four dedicated to speech pathologists and three dedicated to a aiologists. Um one big event that we are attending um for aiologists is the noted event in Youngstown, Ohio. And so that will be really a good opportunity that we believe to really um procure folks to be able to bring them to our district. And then we do a lot of talking to people. Um, and that's important, too, because we want people to know, we don't want to romanticize what teaching is. We don't want to romanticize what it means to work in special education because we want people to stay. And so, we want to give them the reality. But I often feel like when people connect with someone, then they
018have the opportunity to really ask really thoughtful questions. Our presence on social media has increased to really be able to make our presence known. Many of our recruiters will tape a video before they go to some place to say that they're coming so people can put faces with names. Um, and then the biggest opportunity is we really are working with our principles. We just sat with our principles within the last two weeks to really understand the needs of their schools. So while we see candidates come through, we're really looking at and being thoughtful around the matching there. Next slide. This gives you just a brief overview of just where our data is. This is some data that we shared with our board of education approximately two, three weeks ago. My timing might be off. All
019the days start to run together at some point. But if you look on the left hand side, you'll see our our fill rate around our school-based positions. We just talked through that from 2025 up until 20 last year to 2026. As you see, we're at about a 94% fill rate. We want to continue to maximize our hiring between now and the end of May. I'll tell you why. Because that's one more person that we have in the district going into next year. Um, and so that really makes a difference for us. Our pair professional fill rate has increased as well. From March 2025 of last year to March 2026, we're at 93%. our speech therapist which is a critical role as we all know if that service is needed for students that fill rate um
020went up a little bit um from uh August of last year to March of this year to about 90%. That is a niche field that we continue to look in and continue to recruit people for students and then to also think about how that model is delivered. Um, and then finally, the two categories at the bottom are dedicated aids. As of March 2026, and actually I would say as of yesterday evening, we are 100% filled with our dedicated aid position. Um, with the dedicated aid position like the PAR professional uh position, those are attached to hours. So, every time a student, you know, receives an updated IEP or goals and they're provided additional hours or hours are taken away, then we have to then recalibrate around what those vacancies are. Um, and the three main
021reasons for separations f by our educators are pretty consistent. um you know between the two years I think the two that stand out most as of March of 2026 um where there's some people in terms of they're returning home they may be from outside of this area or they or they're going with their families somewhere and then we have this dissatisfaction so I want to dig into that more to truly understand what that means. Next slide. I want to transition and just talk about the hiring strategy for the dedicated aid position. Dr. Bowman shared with me that this was of interest to this committee. So, I wanted to just, you know, talk through a few slides with you and of course have some discussion afterwards. We do this in high collaboration with our office of
022special education um because we have to know the needs that are there in order to be able to provide the staff members um to be able to meet that the number of hours that are identified. We trigger an action in terms of being able to provide employees when the office of special special education says it's a need. And so we have to be on the same page and we have to have a good communication line that's there. We do recruitment. One thing that is different from last year to this year is the advertisement for this position used to stay open endlessly. When that happens, you can get thousands of people who apply and it becomes difficult to figure a lot of things out in terms of who's there. We've changed it so now that it
023closes once a month. And so the people who apply every month, we have one person who's dedicated to this particular group of um to this particular position. And they kind of use this, they're like the case manager for this particular um role. And so they go through this talent pool once a month. They see who is available. They pre-screen them. they get them ready for hire and we kind of keep this qualified pool of people in case we do get the call from special education so that we can then move the candidates along. Once we've identified that there is a need, our principles come into play and we provide names of qualified candidates to our principles. Um, and then the principles have to determine how these staff members work best based on the needs that
024they have at their building. So, it is really a a high collaboration between the office of special education, human resources, and our principles to be able to make sure that we're providing as quickly as possible and meeting that need. Next slide. And so the dedicated aid is a temporary position. Um, and it meets an immediate staffing need within a school system. Um, and by that I mean when when a dedicated aid is needed, that means that there is a need for a child at that very moment. And we have to be able to be responsive to that in that moment. And sometimes um when you think about staffing, you know, temporary positions work out well because people are often flexible. Um and that's one of the things that I have there that if you're someone
025who doesn't want to commit to a career, wants a few hours, wants, you know, wants the ability to continue to do things, this definitely supports that need for folks in terms of creating that flexibility. It's also a good entry point um from that perspective because for those who are interested in pursuing education, you have the opportunity to be able to enter through this role. Um and for those that have an interest in working with students with disabilities, it also gives you a good perspective as well as working within a school and working with other adults um in that particular role. and last slide. So, I want to open it up for questions and discussions. I know I said a lot this evening, but I do want this to be an opportunity for any questions that
026you may have um and some discussion with this particular committee. Thank you, >> Dr. Edwards. Thank you so much for your presentation. And for the record, I need to correct myself earlier when I introduced you. Um I thought that Dr. Malone would be here. And I think I gave her title, so I apologize for that. >> Oh, no, that's okay. Um, I gave her the night off. >> All right. All right. All right. So, we do have um a couple of hands up and I also have some questions. I believe the first person is Miss Payne. >> Oh, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Edwards for being with us and bravo to Prince George's County Public Schools for recruiting you and uh we're glad to have you and glad that you uh you know we can
027see measurable results. I I wanted to ask uh two questions. One on the dedicated aid, could you uh tell us the number of dedicated aids it and you did say um you know it goes according to the hours. So I don't know if that equates to people or if you can give us um the hours um that we have now given your 100% number. And my second question is are there any efforts to recruit um staff from our student population of disabilities within the county? Are are there any efforts around recruitment uh of those individuals? >> Miss Payne, thank you so much for the question. I'm going to share some of this with Mr. Black um if that's okay. So, um, what I can share is the hours can range and one is probably the
028lowest number, 1 hour to 6 and 1/2 hours, which is a workday. And so, it really depends on the student and it depends on the needs that have been identified. I may have to do a follow-up item with you in terms of the number of dedicated aids, but that's where I will tag in Mr. Blackton to be able to answer that. And go ahead, Mr. Blackon. I'll pick up the last question after that. >> Yeah, I believe um that at this particular point we're at somewhere around 455 um dedicated assistants who are currently employed working with us and as Dr. Woods indicated that fluctuates um depending on student need. We always want to work with our students so they could be as independent as possible and so they can live without us. I know that's
029what every parent wants is that for their kids to live without them and um we really want to create a situation where we can support them with those needs and then transition them to being as independent as possible in the appropriate circumstances. >> Miss Payne, you had a second question in terms of recruiting students with um who receive special education services. So, we have not done anything specifically this year. I did have a meeting with the ARC um in one of my previous roles uh in human resources and even when I was a principal, I set up the opportunities for students as well as students who had recently transitioned out of the school system where I was working to be able to come back and really be thoughtful around those roles. So, I've had two
030meetings with the ARC this year because they do work with some of our student groups and my interest was really thinking about those student groups and what roles those students should have. We have not finalized anything because our vacancies in some of the positions that we discussed are very very low, but we were thinking about what those opportunities are more so for the summer months. Thank you, Dr. Edwards. The next person is Miss Patrick. >> Hi, Dr. Edwards. Thank you so much for joining us. Um, the presentation was really informative and I hope the county considers sharing this success as a model of special education staffing recruitment because I've never seen um increased numbers like that. My question is, is there a goal or plan to track and focus on retention of all of these
031professionals now that we fill these roles? And do we have an estimated attrition rate? Miss Patrick, you speak my language. So, um, one thing, and I haven't said it as as loud as I probably should, but it is unsustainable for us to recruit the number of teachers that we are doing every year. It just is. Whether it be 900, 1100, 1,200, we have to start thinking about recruitment and retention as twins. And right now, they are fraternal. I would like to make them a little bit more identical. So, and one of the big rocks that we have is a district that focuses on organizational culture. That's a huge component. And so, I started to chip away at that a little bit by making sure we continue to hire throughout the year. When people feel better,
032they have people in space, they're not as stressed, they can do their job. But you will hear more in the coming year around how we have this balance with recruitment and retention. We want people to come here and stay. And so that's really important. So I don't have the attrition information this evening, but what I do know is that, you know, you have your natural folks that step off because of retirement. I didn't like my bulletin board. You know, there are a lot of different reasons why people go, but we want to minimize a lot of that moving forward. So I'd love if you have any ideas, I'd love to be a partner with you at any point. Thank you, Miss Patrick, Miss Vickery. >> Good evening, Dr. Edwards. Um, I know you and I
033end up in a lot of meetings together, and it's good to see you tonight. Um, I have several questions, as you are probably already aware, so I'm going to start with one, and I'm going to put my hand back up and let it go around um, instead of like just putting them all out there. Um there you indicated that um when people are applying they seem to feel like they're going into a black hole and that you guys have kind of put um a a method in place in regards to making sure that you reach back out to those who submit an application. Is that a formal policy within your department at this time? um like did you formalize that and is that method actually working? >> Thank you for that question. It's an expectation.
034Um it's an expectation. I think as a district we have an expectation around the frequency in which we should return emails and phone calls. I think because of the quantity of people we receive and the systems that we were working in things just you know we get to folks we know we will hire them but what I do know is when people don't hear from us is when they start to make different decisions. The second part is it's just not good customer service. Even if we say no thank you at least people know it's a no thank you. So um you know our goal is we want to have that touch point with people at least 3 to 5 days after they apply. We also know that we had to automate a lot of our
035correspondence back so at least it generates something. Um I believe in the human and human resources. We have to follow a lot of rules. It's very technical but we still have to you know understand that people are people. Thank you, Mr. Oils. >> Hi, thank you for the informative presentation and I too was really impressed by the um vacancy reduction numbers. That was really impressive. Um but one group that I think is really important to our kids that I did not see list is occupational therapists. And you know, I just hear chatter and it seems like the occupational therapists are really overwhelmed and some of these uh COVID kindergarteners since, you know, our kindergarters this year were babies when COVID happened and they have more, you know, speech and occupational needs and I'm wondering if
036that's being accounted for in the numbers um and how the numbers are looking for our occupational therapists And that's not just that's not from like school staff. That's like I just know professionals in these fields. Thanks. >> Sure. The numbers that we spoke about were the classroom teacher uh vacancies, not the service providers, the specific service providers. We talked about speech language pathologists, but the um I have to be careful. I often call them OT's. Occupational therapists were not identified. I I've been tracking more of our speech therapists more than our occupational therapists. So, I will add that to one of my my roles that I look at. So, I do appreciate you bringing um them forward. >> Thanks. Cuz they're they're magic makers in the classroom. So, they definitely need the same attention. Agreed.
037Mr. Blackson, I didn't know if you had any information there. >> Sure, Dr. Edwards and U. Mrs. Doyle. Um, one of the things that Dr. Edwards team will look at when they make a decision about, you know, targeted recruiting for individuals um is looking at our um allocations and our FTE. So we have a certain an allocation would be that there's a certain number of staff that we've allocated to carry out the workload um based on our projections and what I can share is that I know that we're pretty close to if we're not there with filling have filled all of our allocations for occupational therapists. So um there could be one two that fluctuates. Um I'm not you know looking at that on a consistent basis. I don't know, you know, I didn't look
038at those numbers coming in to see where we actually are with our occupational therapists, but I think when we go out and I know um with the team that Dr. Edwards has assembled, when we think about um our recruitment, that recruitment connection is with our uh office of program, support programs, and related services. So there may be a surgical approach to look at speech pathologist, but I can tell you in their conversations, they're looking holistically, Miss Doyle, at related services. So they be get the same type of you know exposure. Um I think within our offices our specialists make sure that they that they are heightened you know as a part of that recruiting uh uh campaign. So yes, they do um get included in those discussions and we do take a look at what
039that workload looks like because it we notice as you notice it is increasing and we will have to account for that moving forward. >> Thanks. >> Thank you student board member Aakaya. >> Thank you. Um thank you Dr. Edwards for this amazing presentation and just like everybody else I'm really um happy to see that we're increasing our retention well increasing the recruitment and also like you know looking forward to increasing the retention in the future. Um my question is more so looking towards like the breakdown um for district by district level um in districts where like first I want to ask like are there certain districts where there are like less people being recruited or like there's more vacancies right now and then um the other question that I want to ask to um follow
040up with that question is that are we like looking to fill the fill the vacancies in those districts first before like you know continuing to equalize the vacancies well fill up the vacancies in all the other districts. Thank you. >> We are always going to have certain not certain schools but some schools who have higher vacancies than others and it's for a variety of reasons I would say. Um we could have people who go out on leave you know for natural life things that occur retirement times for our teachers vary. And the reason for that, I want to narrow us in just to really think about that. We've had vacancies over the years. So people start at different times. We don't have these natural like August, September start times. So when people retire, it's all
041in different places. We do and we are very thoughtful around who are our schools that have vacancies, especially if they have specialized programs, if they've had vacancies for a very long time. Um, and I would say Mr. Blackson's team is good with letting us know we really need to look here because we might have multiple vacancies. So, that's such a thoughtful question that we're just not sending people out, especially during the year. And then we also focus on our innovation zone because they are identified set of schools where we've said they have a higher you know academic need. So we try to be strategic um there and then we also try to one of the things that I'm trying to do this year is to educate new hires. Um, and this is the thing. When
042people come to our district, they have the most power when they come in because they can determine where they like to work. Um, I like to navigate you to different places, but they also can share that. So, I appreciate you bringing that up. But we we do, you know, our work is to focus on being as strategic as possible. >> Thank you, Tia. I just saw something pop up that sun is up, but we can keep going, right? >> Yeah. It's just to um allow just to keep the conversation flowing. Um typically there's two and a half minutes that's allowed for discussion um questions for each member that has a question. >> Gotcha. Okay. Thank you, >> Mr. Dwire. >> Hi. Thank you um Chair Smith for recognizing me and thank you uh Dr. Edwards
043for such a thorough presentation. We all really appreciated it and we all learned a lot. Um I have a question sort of surrounding dedicated aids and the retention of dedicated aids. I know from my position with PGCPS and I believe it is um well first let me ask the first part of my question. Um am I correct and I'll just ask both questions so we don't have to go you know so you can have the floor to answer them. Um, is it correct to assume that dedicated aids are temporary employees? And if so, is it the schools is it each individual school's responsibility to reapply for those dedicated aid positions? I know that I received notification um that I believe May 15th might be the um when applications for temporary employees are due uh within
044PGCPS. So I guess the last part of my question in regards to dedicated aids um does that follow the same protocols as uh other temporary employees and is it the responsibility of the each individual school to make sure that they submit um the paperwork in a timely fashion to receive those aids. >> Mr. Blackon, I'm going to if you could tag on on the last part. So yes, Mr. Dwire first. Thank you for your question. Um, your four-part question. I just want to say that it's okay. It's all good. I'm going to answer it all. First, yes, these are temporary positions, meaning um they uh do not receive benefits. They are not permanent employees within our district. Uh so their employment at any time if they decide they would like to leave, they are able
045to do that. However, um we we do encourage people to let us know in advance because your work is connected to students. Um the other part is it's a professional piece of you never know when you would like to return to Prince George's County Public School. So, we want you to leave in good standing. There is a provision um that for any temporary employee um and that goes for substitutes as well. They do have to fill out and the term escapes me at this moment. Um they do have to fill out a um they do have to let a district know that they want to continue or an employer know that they want to continue to work in the next fiscal year. Mr. Blackson if I left anything out there. I just can't think of
046the the I think it's reasonable assurance and I think that's incorrect. I can't remember the term right now. >> Yeah. No, I think you you you covered it. I think the key Mr. Doyle is um as Dr. Edwards had explained earlier, the dedicated position is one position that is tied to the IEP team process directly. So depending on the specific identification associated with a student's needs and determination of a team that they require this additional support this dedicated support then we tend to track that in what in a apex system and it goes in we look at it per student per school and as a student continues to require that year overyear um because it's always an annual process uh we will um include that information annually review it and there are certain specific requirements
047of school teams to make those requests for continuation. So yes, they would have to understand because students could transfer right to a new location and then that dedicated dedicated aid would travel with them if they so choose to take that assignment once they arrived in that new location. >> And thank you so much for answering my four-part question. Um uh just to communicate a concern that I would have is that if a school uh did not submit the paperwork in time or um in a timely fashion to uh get a dedicated aid u assigned to them. I would just be concerned that that student wouldn't be having their needs met. And um you know I just just want to put that out there. Um but you know thank you for such thorough responses and for
048keeping up with such a long- winded question. Thank you, Mr. Dor. It's a great question, Miss Blackwell. >> Good evening. I just want to thank um Dr. AS for her team being responsive very quickly. I had a situation with the um with the job announcement and u Miss Butler who works in HR responded very quickly. So, I can tell the difference how HR is running right now. Thank you so much for sharing. >> Well, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, chair. >> It's okay. It's okay. >> Thank you for sharing that. Um, Miss Wgate Robinson. >> Good evening. Thank you, Dr. Edwards, for joining us tonight and for your presentation. I was just wondering for the recruiting process, is it possible or do you ever work with any of the local colleges for train for hiring.
049>> Thank you for that question. Are you speaking for any of the positions we talked about or >> Yes, for any of them? Yes. >> Oh, absolutely. This is the time of year. They're two kind of peak times we stay at colleges and universities um actually from September all the way through graduation to be very honest. And when we're there in the fall, we're looking for December graduates. We're not only just looking for people who um have education background, but we're also looking for people who have other backgrounds and other um disciplines as well. Uh I want to drop in before I leave out our recruitment calendar so that you're able to see where we are, where we're going, and who we're looking for when we're out. Um it does include opportunities not only for
050teachers but also other positions as well. And we have a about 10 different job fairs that we will host between now actually in the next two weeks through August. So yes, we we love our college grads and for everyone who's completing like their student internship here with us, we've offered them an advanced contract because we're training them. So we stand by, you know, what they're learning. So if you have a place where they want people to come to, please let me know. We'd love to be there. >> Thank you. So, Miss Vicky and Miss Payne, I just want to say that I do see your hands, but I want to jump in here before we go around again. Um, Dr. Edwards, I have a question stemming from the policy side, but it's more so operational,
051and I just want to get some clarity and then I do have um some specific operational questions. I first want to say that accountability for me is very important. It's a very good thing u to ensure that our children are getting their needs met. But I am concerned and I realize you just coming into this world but I am concerned that it seems like we have met targets on the basis of the the state coming in and putting us in corrective action. So I want to start there but let me ask my policy question first. Um during the legislative session this year, SB 86 86 863 was on the table and a portion of that bill talked about converting dedicated aids to be full-time employees. The bill didn't pass, but I would like to know,
052can you talk a little bit about the scope of duties and the hours? Like I I hear that the work or or the hiring of the dedicated aids are based on the IEP hours, but is that all that they that individual works? So So do you get where I'm going with my question? >> I believe so. Um did you want to add anything else to it? Yeah, I I I think I think for me, if this bill was to come back next legislative session, I think I want to be sure that I understand what does fulltime look like. >> Understood. Um I will share a little bit um and then Mr. Blackon, I'll have you join as well. So remember the the way the positions are kind of allocated out for lack of a better
053word is based on need. So it can be in 1 hour is probably not the best maybe 2 hours up until 6 and a half hours which would be the entire school day. their role is to really be able to support with the needs of the the student based on what's written in the IEP and to really be almost a one onone with that particular student. So sometimes we have pair of professionals that are in a classroom. May I keep talking or no, my time is a okay. Sometimes we have pair of professionals that are in the classroom that work with all students. they they work to make sure that the IEP is functional and that they're they're taking the curriculum to be able to to to to um make sure it matches and the
054students can access it. Whereas this dedicated aid, I think the word dedicated um they are assigned just to a particular student. Mr. Blackton, did you want to provide any additional information? >> I think you did a great job. Um that's exactly it. And u Miss Smith, I definitely understand your question, you know, and understand um hopefully um the perspective, the lens that you're looking through. Um it is one that you look at and say, hey, if we had this pool of individuals who were already employed, ready to roll. And I think that that's what, you know, the premise behind that bill is we could always be on the spot, ready to fill in for a particular student. But I think the thing that we find is we never know because there can be this fluctuation,
055Miss Smith, in the numbers that we actually need. Um there's history into how we get to certain numbers and how we arrive at certain spaces. And I think that in this particular case at this moment, it's really about student need. We have other positions as Dr. Edwards indicated our PAR educators to include our instructional special education assistants who can offer um a a a more um comprehensive or robust support across the scope of a school, across the scope of a classroom. But the individual, the dedicated assistant is specific to an individual, specific to spec certain needs. And those needs can fluctuate and be different based on that individual student during a given period of time. So um I think that that would be the best answer that I could provide at this moment to sort
056of add it and extend on what Dr. Edwards had already shared. >> Great. Thank you. And then just one one other question Dr. Edwards from the operational side. I understand corrective actions and the line of work that I do. I get it. So my question is based on the the the strategic items that you guys put in place, what is really going to be permanent to ensure that we don't face this as an issue in the future? >> That's such a great question and I know you you identified like this spawned from corrective action. Everything I shared with you in terms of our strategic recruitment and hiring approach is what we're going to do. It's what we're going I mean it's what we're going to do. We have to organize ourselves around the work. We
057you know allbearing we should be hiring throughout the year you know at the school level. Um it it stops the focus and the work. um we should do robust recruitment. Um we really should look at different ways in which we're engaging people. The part that you didn't hear that hopefully, you know, next year should I be invited back is to talk about how we're now retaining people that we brought in and really kind of surveying them and connecting with them and celebrating those successes so that they they're a part of our work. And so I do believe that the HR team was doing much of this work. It just wasn't taken to scale. Um, and then sometimes you have to step back. Sometimes you get too close to things like when I talked about one
058person really focused on hiring the dedicated aids. We have multiple people doing it and it made sense because it was so many, but then multiple people have different lenses. So when we brought it into one person, now we have one person who's solely responsible and they take pride in that work that they do. So these are really just good solid HR practices that really just have been taken to scale and codified. >> Awesome. Thank you, Miss Vickery. >> Thank you. Um I know that in the interest of time, I'm going to actually ask both my questions. one because um Miss Wing Robinson asked part of my question, but I wanted a little bit more information. I'm specifically wondering when you have the connections to the schools, do you guys have a specific pipeline like a
059specific school that you have an agreement with that this um education school, this school of education, their their graduates are coming directly to you? um I undergraduate I went to the University of Florida and we had lab schools and so when you were in um the education field you knew you were working at a lab school when you left whether it was FAMU lab school, Florida lab school, UCF, you were going to a lab school. So do you have that? That's my very specific question and and that's a spin-off from Miss Winggate Robinson. And then my second question um and I do actually have another one but I'm not going to ask that right now. Um, you talked about the dissatisfaction in the separation and you wanted to dig in more in that. When you're
060digging into that, are you guys getting specific reasons around dissatisfaction and around those moving home? Is it because they just graduated and this is not where they want to live? Are they going back home to like what does with family mean? What does that mean? Are we literally relocating because the cost of living here has changed? What is that? Um, so those are my two questions and then I have a third if we have another round to go. Thank you. >> I really like this committee. You guys asked all your questions at once. I I I I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Um, a couple of things you talked about. Do we have partnerships with universities? Um, we have something called professional development schools. That's across the state of Maryland. The ones we
061work with the closest closest of course Buoie State University. Um, I met with them as soon as I arrived. Um, I really wanted to just create this clear pipeline especially for elementary education, special educ people who are dual certified in elementary and special education. Dr. Bowman met with them with me. We had that general interest. We also have an interest in how can our staff um, also teach people in that program. So now if you're, you know, you're getting taught by a principal, you're getting taught by Mr. Blackon, by me, you're even more excited to come here in the northern part of our county, one of our professional development schools is the University of Maryland, College Park, because they're in the northern band of the county. It's easier for the students to be able to
062get to those locations. And then we also have other students from other locations, but those are our two major ones that we work with the most. Um, and that it's just really a direct pipeline, you know, back um back and forth between us all the time. Your second question, just remind me really quickly. It was about >> the separation. You had two, there were two separation things that stood out for me. you had other ones, but mine was the dissatisfaction. So, I wanted to know if you actually had exit interviews and what are the dissatisfaction reasons? And then the other one was home. And I just didn't understand that. While I am a transplant myself, I want I'm trying to figure out like this is home now. I've been here 14 years. Like this is
063home. So, like what what does home mean? Like are they go are they like recent grads and they're going back home because this was not what they intended to be home? like I'm trying to figure out what does that word mean? >> Sure. I don't have additional information around those who identify dissatisfaction for home. Couple of different things. Um many of the people who um we hire from not all of them but from our colleges are not from Maryland. Some of them are returning home. Maryland is a very expensive state to live in. I mean we're just not going to get past it. We've been fortunate where we have the blueprint that's increased teacher salary, but other than that, and we work in Prince George's County, which is a very expensive county to live in.
064So, we have those two double hitters. We also have some of our more seasoned teachers um who they have family out of state. They may have elder parents. they may need to return home to be able to support them as well. And so I think you have a couple of different things of what home um may mean. >> Thank you, Miss P. >> Um yes, my my question uh Dr. Edwards is um I'm a member of the recruitment and hiring subcommittee um as part of DAB. Several of us are on that committee and I'd like to know how might we support some of the initiatives and strategies that you are thinking about? How can we be partners and what might be some of the contributions that we might make? I love that question because everyone
065recruits for this district. It is just not this team. So I would love to have an opportunity to speak with you um and to talk about that more. Um we are trying to infiltrate more spaces uh and we would love to just have that partnership and for you as well as members of your committee to have some items that you carry with you uh that you're able to share about this district and point folks in the right direction. We have several job fairs that come up and so even having you there, I think it speaks volumes when you have community members uh who are saying, "I'm invested. I'm here. I want to talk to you. I want to even help navigate you in the right direction." So, I would love to follow up with you
066afterwards just to really like be thoughtful around that that you know, work that we can work in conjunction together. Thank you. Excellent question, Miss Payne. And if you want the disability issues advisory board with you at that meeting, let me know. Um, Miss Blackwell, I do have one question. I wanted to know, do you do you all still partnership with Grand Canyon University? I am one of those pair professionals who decide to go back to school. I graduate next year with a degree in um, behavior psychology. and will be further my education as a in the masters. >> First of all, congratulations to you. We are excited for you um as you finish your journey. I don't know that answer directly. I believe we do. We have a lot of partnerships uh here and I
067do believe Grand Canyon continues to remain one of them, but I'd love to check into it more to give an accurate response. >> Okay. Thank you. Mr. Oil, >> is it me or is it Miss Vickory next? >> It's It's you. I'm trying to catch people who who I haven't yet. I know you did the first round, so that's that's why I called you. >> Okay. Thanks. Um Dr. Edwards, one thing, I'm also on the um staff and hiring committee, Miss Payne, and something that we have talked about is um our concern that when staff are asking for accommodations for their workplace needs, it is taking it it's taking an absurdly long period of time for them to hear a response. And then we've brought this to HR before and they said, "Oh, that's legal."
068But I have feelings about that. Like our our staff deserve better. And you know, you had a question earlier about um having peers become paraprofessionals and I think that's extremely valuable. Um, and just wondering if you have any thoughts on that and how we can make sure that uh people are getting their accommodations appropriately because we've asked, oh, can principles kind of do a little something and the answer is like no, they have to wait for legal, but it's like but legal's not doing their job either um with that response time. So, would appreciate your thoughts, >> Miss Doyle. Thank you so much for that question. you know, just as as we have a legal obligation for to provide accommodations for students, we also have it for staff. Staff go through I don't want to
069say a similar process like a student IEP, but we do um it uh we we have our equity assurance office that takes a look at that. Um, we also work with an outside vendor that really serves as like a nonbiased space to be able to evaluate what staff share and to be able to work with our district to be able to make sure that we can provide a reasonable accommodation for staff. I work in conjunction with equity assurance uh to make sure that we do implement fairly um and also recognizing where we may have um to work with supervisors as well to make sure that we can support those employees. So, um, it does take a little bit of time, but we want to make sure that we have all the information to be able
070to support and we don't have internal staff at this moment that do that. And that actually is a is a mini plus for us because it does create just a nonbias um, uh, review. But I do I do agree with you. I would like to see the time lessened uh for staff to be able to hear what they need to hear. Uh it is a little long at this point in time, but we also um have a very large volume, too. >> Yeah. Last time we got data, it was around I want to say I haven't looked at the data in a while. I want to say four months, three months. Um which I I sounds like you agree that that's just not an acceptable length of time. It should really be we would like
071to see 30 days. Thanks. >> Thanks, Miss Doyle. Miss Patrick. >> Yes. I have somewhat of a um unique question. I'm wondering if the HR department has considered or done an audit or a deep dive of the application process to determine how accessible it is to like educators with disabilities for example, those who are neur neurode divergent, those who um may use various mobility devices. Just wondering if if um that has been done or considered. >> I appreciate you bringing the question of um we have done an audit but it has not been around that particular scope. It was more in terms of what does it look like to apply? Why aren't we moving forward efficiently? I do think it is a space to be considerate of because we want everyone to be able to
072come to our school district. We do have a good opportunity coming up. We are um trying to take a look at what business systems we need including the application to be able to approach. But this is not something that we've done and it would be something that I would be interested in as well because I don't want people to turn away or be turned off as a result of it. >> Thank you, Miss Patrick. Miss Vickery, before I call you, um I just would like to make one comment. Um I my question initially was going to be around what support systems are being implemented to ensure talent stays. But Dr. Edwards, you already spoke that you know in the next year or so when you guys are um re-evaluating this is something that you're going
073to address. The only point I would just make here is that um we consider how professional development looks from the parent side. I know that there are concerns that training is lacking, but we know that you guys do training. In fact, I hear from other educators that's outside of this district that PGCPS is the place to be at to get training done. So, there's a gap somewhere. I just don't know where it is. So, um I'll just put out there that we consider what our professional development um looks like and how it's applicable to this retention standpoint. Um Miss Vicky, I'm going to call you next and then are there any other questions before we get ready to close out our meeting? Miss Vicky. >> Thank you, Chair Smith, for recognizing me and um thank
074you, Dr. Edwards for being here again. As I said, you know, you you and I end up on a lot of meetings together and I always end up having a lot of questions, but this is my first time actually having questions for you. So, I'm actually excited to hear from you. I've always um en enjoyed your um IG posts because they get sent to me from my husband who is a principal in another district. He's like, "Oh, look at this." Um but specifically around um and he's not coming here, Dr. Edwards. So, relax. I know. Relax. Relax. Um specifically around um our um our heart of hearing and our um deaf and hearing community um I know that you're going to a lot of um different schools and things like that. Do we have any
075partnership with Galudet? Um are we working with them to bring in any of their staff? Are we working with them to do any professional developments for our staff? I know that the population is small but they are here. So, I'm wondering are we connected to them in any in any way? Um because from my understanding right now, um while we are physically close to Galudet, we tend to send a lot of our children who are in the HOH and do community up to the Maryland School of Deaf, which is absolutely wild to me. It's a whole hour away or more. Um so, just wondering, are we doing anything with Galudet? They're right here. they're the in the nation's capital and they are the national like one of the premier schools for that community um in
076the United States. >> I don't have a direct response to that. M Mr. Blackson, I saw you get excited. So that's the only reason I'm calling on you. Uh so that means you have a response. >> Yeah, that's a really great question, Miss Dickory. And what it probably does for me is um um share that we probably haven't exposed enough of the relationship that we have with Gaadette. Um one of the things that you know Dr. Edwards has done with her team that has excited us has been the marketing. It's been incredible. I mean I I walk into our office into our building and I will see the marketing campaign there. Um and and it is absolutely really really something wonderful to see and even their partnership with us um to support hard to fill
077positions. Our teachers of the visually impaired and the relationship that we're looking to build with KZtown who is the only real um um um provider or educational system that trains and develops teachers of the visually impaired in our region. Um but to answer your question directly, we partnered with Galia debt for the past four years. We've have a robust partnership and contract with them where it began um through their federal outreach and they came in did some workshops and from there we decided that we would want to increase our teachers capacity and especially when you start to think about understanding the deaf and heart of hearing community and what it means to acquire you know language. One of the things that folks don't realize is we often believe that you can um exist so to
078speak in the acquisition phase in both worlds and we know that that's not necessarily the case that you do have to strengthen and have that singular language first which is ASL American Sign Language and then you can move off of that. the thing that we needed to do because we do have that um simcom where you have that simultaneous communication where someone is signing and speaking sign at the same time and we were doing that you know you have to look at yourself closely and um in order to get better you have to tell the truth and so we understood that that was a component that we were doing but we we didn't know at that time because a lot of individuals were doing that around the country but once through our partnership with um
079Goliath they indicated that we need to have our teachers turn their voices off and that was huge. That was something that we had to really wrap our minds around. Every year annually, our teachers go to Galaet. They go to the Kindle model school. They go there and um observe. Galadeet comes here and in a non-evaluative way, they review what's happening in structure in our classroom and they give feedback to our teachers. The thing that that's one of the things we really have to get around in this process and we work with human resources, we work with the unions so that folks understand this is non-evaluative. This is not about their individual performance, but it's about our programmatic features as a district. So, great question. We do partner with them. We're excited about where we're going
080with them um and what it's meant for our staff and what it's meant for our students and our families. Um we even have um um many um of the um family nights that go comes out to um where um at and I'll say at Dwell Brooks um and they um will bring their whole entire family for um this instruction. One of the things that we have is we have a lot of families who their kids are deaf but they don't sign and that creates another barrier but it's something that we have to work through with them. So I'm sure my time is over so I'm going to stop but uh definitely Miss Victory it it it is something that we are excited about about that relationship. >> Thank you for sharing that Mr. Blackon. So
081Dr. Edwards, I do not see any more questions, but of course, if questions come in via email, I hope that you are open to addressing those. Thank you. Um, I appreciate your time this evening and providing this detailed breakdown. We celebrate the recruitment efforts and the wins that your team has done. I mean, as you said, the the the target was 10% and you guys car exceeded that. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. um because this impacts our children and is there anything else I wanted to say here. I think that that is it unless you have any closing remarks, Dr. Edwards. >> No, just wanted to thank everybody for the time and of course the great discussion. It is truly a partnership um the work that we do in conjunction with every division
082in this district. Want to thank Mr. Blackon and his team um for just being really really good partners. And now we have more new partners here. So, thanks everyone. Thank you for the invite. I hope to get another one um and to continue to get feedback. Thank you everyone. Good night. >> Have a good evening. >> Um board member Olivio Olivo Oliv. Um and board member CJ where I think I saw her name come up here. I just wanted to know, do you guys have anything um to contribute this evening? I wanted to give you all an opportunity to speak if there was anything that you all wanted to share. >> Um I'll jump in and then um if board member Jackson Saunders has anything to say. Um I just want to join all of
083you in celebrating these um these HR wins um that we heard about tonight. And um Miss Smith, I I heard Chair Smith, I heard you loud and clear and I want to just um reiterate to everyone that um from our board of education's standpoint, you know, many of us, you know, this kind of sounds a little odd to say, but um we are, you know, not upset about the corrective action because it has really forced this focus, which we are as a board and we know that our staff and our interim superintendent and and Mr. Blackon is shaking his head. We are 100% committed to this and you know the fact that we we had this corrective action by the state you know did kind of force us into this but we actually see it
084as a really positive thing because we are able to put this focus and to make these strides. Um and so I just want to let you know um while certainly we are seeing some of these results because of the corrective action, it is something that we are all 100% um committed to um just like every single one of you are and and I want to thank you for that. I do want to give um an an update that we have um done our first iteration of um our first discussion around the updated um DIAB policy at our previous um policy and governance committee meeting. I was hoping to have an answer for you and I apologize. I just I asked the question too late um for when it's going to be on the next agenda,
085but I will absolutely make sure to get that out to you. Um I think you know board member Brown has shared in the past we've we've really put forward um nearly all if not all of of your suggestions um including the name change and and the other items. So um we will make sure that you all know as that discussion is moving forward. there is still lots of time if we if we missed something or got something wrong. Um we still have time to to make those additions and corrections. Um and that will then also formally go out for public comment which is yet another chance to to make those. So I'll keep everybody appraised of that. I know it's taken a long time. Um, you know, policy is inherently very slow, which is very
086frustrating, but it also lets us get it right because hopefully this policy will be in place for many years, maybe not the decades that some of our policies, remember, we're like looking at this policy from 1992. Are you kidding me? Um but um again just just want to thank you all for all of your hard work on that and um let you know that it it is absolutely moving forward um in our policy and governance committee meetings. And I'll get you all I'll get um Chair Smith the the dates on that so that she can share with the group and um happy to answer any other questions as well if you have them or um if board member Jackson Saunders has has anything to say. But thank you all for your commitment. board member Olivo,
087I do have one question. Um because it is April with the current policy, this particular board is required to do a a annual report and I know one of our recommendations was to adjust that timeline. Um and since you know policy takes the length of time that it takes. So my question is I mean are we able to ask for some discretion in that regard >> or I mean >> I think so. Yes. Absolutely. >> I think so. You know I mean >> what are the consequences if you're late? And you know, I mean, not to I know we all we all want to follow the rules and do the right thing, but um >> I would suggest that because we anticipate this policy moving forward that will allow that flexibility, we can kind of
088um you know anticipate that that will happen and and and allow that flexibility. Now that that would be my kind of formal response. >> Okay. Thank you. Board member CJ, welcome to the disability issues advisory board. This is the best board to be a part of. >> Absolutely. But don't let my other committees hear you hear me say that. So listen, thank you all very much. I really appreciate the opportunity to sit in um full transparency. I am not an official member of this committee, but listen, I am doing my professional development and sitting in on as many as I can to learn the faces of everyone so that I can certainly identify and know who to go to when I need something asked and who's going to be asking me to get something done.
089So, thank you for this. And let me just say as a retired school psychologist, like this is my groove. This is my lane and I have appreciated everything that has been discussed here tonight. I'm so happy to hear the progress that PGCPS that we are making on behalf of our students um who could be classified as our most precious and vulnerable um individuals and this advocacy on their behalf is is tremendous. And so I'm grateful for PGCPS, Mr. Blackon and of course um Dr. Edwards and the work that they are doing. but also to the members of this advisory group. You know, you all really elevate the issues that we have to address whether it's under um duress or whether we do so with a smile on our face. They h these issues must be
090addressed in order to better serve our students. And so just thank you for um the level of intensity and um the the genuine spirit that you all bring um to to PGCPS. I'm I'm grateful. So if you see me hanging around this committee, know that I'm just uh trying to get more information, but obviously I there's an affinity here and I just appreciate what we've done so far. So thank you very much and kudos to PTCPS for the work that you all done. These vacancy rates are looking great and I know we still have some more work to do. I appreciate the response about the dedicated aid. It is complex but it is a onetoone and the job is not you know a full day job necessarily and nor can that person be working with
091two or three different people at a time. It's one-on-one based on the legal needs of that student which has been determined by an IEP team. And so it is indeed hard to look at that um as a full-time position for a whole host of reasons. So just my little spill, but thank you again chair for allowing me to have those few words. >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay guys, we are pretty much at the end of our meeting this evening. So I just want to ask again, are there any other questions or things that need to be addressed before we close out? Seeing none, the chair would like to inform the public that the next meeting of the disability issues advisory board is scheduled for May 19th, 2026. Please continue to visit
092the Prince George's County Board of Education website for meeting details and any updates. Thank you all for the great discussion as well as your attendance. Thank you to the viewers who are watching this evening. There being no further business, the town the time now is 7:34 p.m. The April 21st, 2026 disability issues advisory board meeting is adjourned. Good evening everyone. >> Good evening. Thank you all.