Board of Education Budget Work Session & Public Hearing February 19, 2026

001Recording in progress. Thank you, Miss Barton. The time is now 535. The chairman would like to inform the public that Spanish interpretation is available by clicking on the globe at the bottom of the screen. Because the Spanish interpreter assist with translating this announcement in Spanish? Baja de la. en la pante derecha token language interpretation y toque es Spanish. Thank you so much. Good evening, and welcome to the February 19th, 2026 Prince George's County Board of Education budget work session and public hearing for the Fy 2027 interim superintendent proposed operating budget. I am Brandon Jackson, chairman of the Prince George's County Board of Education. Thank you all for joining us. For anyone unable to join us live, this meeting is being recorded and will be available for later viewing on the PGCPS YouTube channel. In keeping

002with the Board's rules of procedure Section 4 Internet meetings, the Internet Standing Rules are as follows. Members shall keep their video on and remain on camera at all times, keeping their microphones on mute until recognized by the chairman raise their hand icon and to wait and wait to be recognized by the chairman and unmute their microphone to speak and unmute. And when you're done speaking. Members may speak twice on any motion for 2 minutes each time. Failure to adhere to the Internet standing rules will result in the member being removed until the member can rejoin when the rules can be adhered to. Um, for recording purposes, the chairman reminds all to ensure that their microphones are muted when not speaking and turned on while speaking for recording purposes. Before we proceed, the chairman reminds everyone

003to adjust their wireless communication devices. To prevent technical interference with the meeting's recording. Please ensure all microphones are muted until the chairman grants you the floor. Lastly, in line with the policy 8345 public comment, it is established that the public can register on-site for public hearings until, well, this will be virtual until. um, notify that the testimony registration form is closed. The chairman wishes to inform the public that the registration link for tonight's public hearing will remain open until 7:30 p.m. To accommodate additional comments to register. please visit the link displayed on the screen or scan the QR code. Ms. Woolwich, would you please do a roll call? Miss Ajikaya? Dr. Anderful? Miss Booster Struther? Mr. Briggs? Mrs. Brown? Ms. Goins McCants. Here. Doctor Moss? Mistress Oliva? Mr. Jackson. There are 8 present, a quorum

004is present. Here. Thank you so much, Miss Wilbridge. Now for the adoption agenda, the chairman would like to inform the public that this year's final budget work session will follow the standard format of presentations, followed by public comments, and then amendments. In prior years, the final budget work session consisted of public comments followed by the amendments. However, because presentations have been added to the this year's final session, the agenda order has been adjusted accordingly. If there is no objection to February 19th, 2026 meeting agenda will be adopted. There being no objection. The February 19, th 2026 meeting agenda is adoption adopted. Excuse me, now I'm the chairman recognizes Board Member Goyne McCants. the chair of the operations, budget, and Fiscal Affairs Committee to open the budget work session. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Jackson, and

005thank you to each of you for being present at today's budget work session, as this is our final budget work session. I would like to take a moment to recognize and sincerely appreciate the tremendous effort, commitment, and collaboration that has brought us all to this point in our budget process. This budget work session is intended to address questions and provide answers regarding the budget. Each division will have 10 min to present and provide an overview of its mission, core services and budget changes for this year. With that, the committee chair recognizes Dr. Joseph for our budget process overview. Okay, good evening, and thank you so much this evening. We'll continue our presentation of the proposed budget reductions by division designed to preserve the integrity of our primary mission and ensure that there are no compromise

006to the sustainability of the instructional Quality Leadership. development or delivery of services. If we can, um, put our PowerPoint up. here. Thank you. You know, I'll start off. I'll start off with just recapping kind of how we got here in this budget season. I mean, this this was a tough budget season, and it required discipline and moral clarity. We started by. doing surveys of our stakeholders to ask where we should focus. We got about 990 some odd responses, and in addition to that, as we started this year, we had 20 listening and learning sessions. And we had an opportunity to speak with each board member. So we gathered all of that data to really focus our efforts and be clear about where we were going this year. As a result, I called our. new initiatives,

007or the things we wanted to focus on accelerants. And I'll talk about how those accelerants directly responded to the community's voice and structural needs that we had in our programming. Next slide. When we put the survey out to the community, we got clear feedback. 62% of respondents indicated that they wanted this budget to address mathematics and literacy, that that should be prioritized. 45% of the respondents indicated that special education and multilingual learners needed attention and should be a priority in this particular budget cycle. We had 43.9% of respondents communicate that climate and culture were issues that they would like to see addressed in this budget. And then we had 32.2% of respondents communicate that college and career readiness should be prioritized. And then finally, 21% of respondents communicated that chronic absenteeism was something that they

008hoped that this budget would address. Next slide. So as a result, we identified 6 big rocks, and our big rocks aligned directly to those priorities that I just discussed. So to move our big rocks, we're concentrating resources into these bucket areas. And we hope that the investments would focus… the focused investments would reduce fragmentation. One of the things we noticed in the first semester was that we have pockets of excellence in Prince George's County Public Schools, and our goal is to scale. excellence across all schools. And we knew we couldn't cut our way into excellence, as we have to realign 15 $150 million this year, but we could do a better job aligning our way. Into excellence. So, with the resources we have, how do we become more efficient, effective, and how do we ensure

009that the dollars that we're using are touching as many students as possible to reduce that variance. Uh, that differentiates our very best schools from our most challenged schools. Next slide. So, the rocks we said we'd focus on would be literacy and mathematics, a special education and multilingual learners, uh, focusing on internships, dual enrollment, addressing chronic absenteeism, and looking at organizational culture. Next slide. And so accelerant one with special education. We knew from last year and going into corrective action that we must do something to strengthen staffing and compliance within the school system. We want to make sure that our special education practices and the investments that we make. Increase inclusiveness in instructional practices, and we wanted to center our students who have experienced fragmented services, primarily due to absences and, you know, with many teachers

010being extremely overwhelmed with the administrative. Challenge as well as the teaching strategies. We wanted to figure out how could we make the work doable to give our kids a strong quality education. Next slide. We talked about AI literacy. One, because again, recognizing teachers are overwhelmed. There are tools out there that can help them be more efficient, more effective, and provide more consistency. to reduce the variance that we see. So we're hoping to provide more targeted professional development and more tools to teachers across the district, and particularly starting next year within high schools to help equip our students to use AI. Efficiently, effectively, and responsibly. Next slide. As we think about climate and culture, we know climate and culture drive performance. And so we're looking to accelerate learning by ensuring students and staff can focus on

011teaching, growth, and achievement. Part of our investment with professional development and with strengthening enhancements in technology, uh, in schools, and making sure we have stronger security presence in schools. strengthens culture and safety, and we felt that that was foundational to our learning. Next slide. As we look at professional development and employee compensation. Again, this budget, I call it a stabilizing budget, because our goal is to attack variants. And one way to address the variance is having clear job-embedded professional development. Uh, in schools, particularly in reading and mathematics, and making sure we continue to recruit and retain high-quality teachers in our buildings. You know, accountability systems reduce variance, so the more. We make professional development mandatory versus voluntary, and the more we make it job-embedded, uh, we believe we can decrease some of the variance that

012we're seeing. And we recognize that we hire between 800 to 1,000 new teachers. annually. So with that constant churn, we have to have systems in place to ensure that we can scale quality and support across the district. Next slide. So these accelerants matter because they respond directly to the priorities that families and communities communicated were important to you. They address structural drivers of variance, they position us to scale. Excellence system-wide and they protect high impact levers in a time where we're reducing 150 million. Clyde. So again, our commitment is to stabilize the system and strengthen our system. That's what we're trying to do in this. This isn't an expansion budget, this is a stabilization budget. Uh, and we hope to build a district where excellence is the expectation. Not the exception. So I hope with

013that background, it gives the context as to the why and how we came up with what we're proposing. And now I'll turn it over to Chief Howell, that'll walk us through some details within the budget. And then, uh, the board has requested that we revisit, as we were looking at the. Immersion programs and speaking, uh, and hearing from a multitude of community members. We will present an Option B proposal for immersion, and so, uh, Chief Howell will turn it over. Uh, to, uh, Dr. White, uh, to talk about that consideration for the board and community. Thank you, Dr. Joseph. So I wanted to provide just sort of a grounding starting point of where we are in the budget process. I'm pulling an excerpt from our budget book. The fiscal highlights section in particular, starting on

014page 13, for those who have. fell in love with the budget book and spending time with it. Um, one thing I do want to highlight that throughout our budget book, for those who have taken the time to go through it, it includes our entire operating budget, which includes our unrestricted resources. Which are those that we have flexibility to spend a little bit more without fewer restrictions. And then we have our restricted budget, which is really tied to our grant funds that we pursue. Um, so when we've been talking throughout this budget about a gap. It's on the unrestricted side, not the restricted side. So I wanted to kind of just clarify that. So if you are looking at the budget book, the numbers might look slightly different, because it includes our entire operating budget. But

015this here provides a. want to kind of walk through how we got to where we are in terms of the gap that we have, um, and supporting the request that we have to the county for additional funding. So you've heard us talk about the mandatory compensation costs that we have built into the current proposed budget of around 150 million dollars. That's inclusive of all of our negotiated agreements, as well as retirement retiree benefits. Along with removing the salary lapse that has been baked into the budget previously. In addition to the mandatory compensation cost of $150 million dollars, we also have 23 million dollars in ongoing operational costs of just maintaining existing services. That includes our textbook adoptions. We have our. Our bus and non-bus vehicle refreshes. We have our technology Chromebooks and devices for staff

016that we refresh annually. The cost of utilities have continued to go up every single year. Um, we have our ongoing licenses and softwares that we use systemically that have annual escalation costs built into those. As well as additional student supports. All in, that's another $23 million dollars. And then you heard Dr. Joseph provide an overview around the program enhancement or the accelerants anticipated for next year, proposed for next year. So now let's kind of walk through the math of what this all means. When you consider just the mandatory compensation costs. And the $23 million dollars related to the cost of doing business. That gets us to $173 million dollars, which I refer to as our essential operations. We then compare that to how are we going to fund. those essential operations. So at the very

017top of this chart, you'll see that our proposed unrestricted revenue is projected to increase about $10 million. So just let that settle in for a moment. $10 million, but we have essential services of $173 million. I do want to highlight that one of the key reasons why our unrestricted revenue for 2027 is not increasing as much as we may have seen before in the past. It's because we're not utilizing fund balance as much as we have in previous years. So that is certainly having an impact to our funding source for this year. Um, so revenue is projected to increase by about $10 million. The other funding source, just like your own personal budget at home is when you have a gap, things you're trying to cover, you have to either increase your revenue or decrease

018your costs. So for us, we had to decrease our costs, and that is the $148 million dollars that we've been discussing. all these last several weeks. So the sum of those two, the $10 million in our expected revenue increase, along with the reduction in cost of $148 million gives us funding sources, if you will, to go towards our essential operations. But it's not enough. So there's still a gap between those essential operations of $173 million and the funding sources of 158. that leaves a gap of $15 million dollars that still remains. So then you consider the accelerants that have been requested for next year as well of $35 million dollars. That is how we get to the request to the council, to the county of 50 million dollars to help stabilize. Um, as well as

019invest into our accelerants for the coming year. Without that, it's definitely going to have an impact on just our essential operations, for sure, but also have an impact on the investments that we're looking to make for 2027. So this is a slide that we have reviewed over the last several weeks, and it provides a high level categorization of the reductions that we've taken across the district. We spent some time in the first work session with the academics team walking through their reductions of around 23 million dollars. As well as operations, walk through their reductions of around 25 million dollars. School support and leadership spent some time talking about their reductions of $39 million dollars. And then last week we have presentations from information technology. They walk through their targeted reductions, went through the accountability office

020as well. When you get into some of the other areas, they fall under operational and central office efficiencies. So that's where the reductions are for. Uh, the Accountability Office, which has already gone, uh, Chief of Staff, BMS Division will be going today, superintendent's Office, General Counsel. The other central office functions kind of fall in that bucket of 17.6 million. And then we'll spend just briefly a little bit of time shortly talking about the last. section of this pie, if you will, of our financial strategy and reserves, a reduction of 37.5 million. Now, I did want to go back to a question that I received yesterday, and I would promise that I would come back with a response. A question came from a community member. Around what percentage of our cuts relates to schools or central

021offices. It's not an easy black and white question to answer. One thing that I've really believe in trying to articulate to our community stakeholders. is really thinking about the operations of the district, not as school or central office, but more so the activity itself. We have a lot of the operations of the district that directly support schools that are sitting in central office cost centers. That's the way we just help to manage and execute the work. And I'll give you a good example of that. In the Division of operations, as an example. One of their reductions was around overtime, and that reduction is tied to a cost center, a central office cost center, where all of the bus drivers reside. But those bus drivers, obviously, their focus is really around getting transporting students safely to

022schools. So when we think about school-related costs, it includes. all of the costs tied to a schoolhouse, whether it's instructional, whether it's security, transportation, maintenance, utility costs, all those types of activities directly support the schoolhouse. Um, so when it comes to answering the question, what percentage of our costs are tied to central office versus schools, it's not easy to bucket it into those simple categories. But to try to provide some response to that and what that looks like out of this $148 million that you do see. About 20% of that is specific… was specifically targeted towards the budgets that are managed by the schools, which included, um. a reduction in substitute costs, as well as discretionary spend. I do want to point out and emphasize, um, the substitute costs and our overtime costs, um, because

023that was also a reduction that was captured on the operations side. that that's really a reflection of removing redundant expenditures that are now no longer needed, because now, instead of having vacancies, we have positions planned to be filled. As such, you don't need to have the cost of having a full-time FTE along with. The cost of having substitutes, and so that's why we have the reduction in the substitute costs, and that's why we have a reduction. And over time, because now our budget reflects the fact that we're going to have the cost of the full-time position captured therein. So when you back out substitutes, the actual reduction to schools specifically relating to that portion of it. is only 3%… only, excuse me, 3%, and that is tied to the reduction in our discretionary spend for

024school. for schools. Um, now we have spent quite a bit of time talking through the other reductions across the other divisions, and I know we've spent some time talking about the specialty programs as an example, and as Dr. Joseph has stated before in the past, the management of those programs, those resources, are sitting in a central office cost center. So again, it's, you know, answering that question is a little difficult to kind of specifically tease out what that looks like, but just to kind of give you some context, when it comes to the costs that we're specifically ties towards central offices only, those reductions were around 20%. So I will go on to the next slide. This here is just to provide a little bit of overview of one of that last piece of that

025reduction slide around some of our financial strategies and reserves where we did make some reductions or had an impact on our overall budget for 2027. Number one, we have a transition of some of our costs, so it's not a cut, but it's a transition or a change in the funding source of some of our positions, as well as, uh, um. school-based health center costs, moving from our general funds over to our community school funds. So not a cut, but a shift in funding source. That was around $17 million. And then we had a reduction as well to some of our reserves. Of around $9.4 million. We also have reflected in the budget right now expected savings tied to an ongoing hiring freeze for the central office going into 2027, and then the elimination of long-term

026vacancies. I do want to emphasize that we're still early in the budget process, and we're going to continue to make adjustments and refinements to the budget as we go throughout the remainder of this season. Having a hiring freeze extending beyond 2026, which we are currently under one now. into 2027. It's not necessarily a sustainable business practice. But right now that is the plan to ensure that we're able to stay within the budget authority that has been allowed. So with that being said, before we begin our division updates, I will transition it over to Dr. White, who will provide us an update on the immersion option B. for 2027. Thank you so much, Chief Howell. If you could go to the next slide. One of the messages that I think we continue to hear throughout this

027process was that all immersion programs were closing. So I want to start here, um, and really talk about what's remaining unchanged. So when you look at the slide, you see both of our French immersion programs. And for our Spanish immersion programs, you see Overlook, Cool Spring, Phyllis C. Williams, Cesar Chavez Elementary, and then Kettering Immersion Middle School. These programs are not touched, and they remain unchanged. The other thing I just want to note about all the programs that you see on the screen is that they are application and lottery based. Meaning, children apply to come to them in kindergarten unless they test in at any other grade. So now, when you go to the next slide, what we did present on for an option A that we'll now call is to… adjust our paintbranch Chinese

028immersion in our Capital Heights Spanish immersion. So I'm going to start with paintbranch, and what you see on the slide is our current model. Our original proposal, and then our new proposal or proposal B. So, our current model, Paint Branch and Capital Heights both are boundary programs, which means they are neighborhood schools. When you live in a certain community, there is a school that is your neighborhood school. Both of these programs were not application-based. If you went to that school, you received. The immersion model. However, because of that, we know that students move into a community at every single grade level. When that happens in both of these programs, they are staffed 50% higher than all the original programs I mentioned, because we're trying to make sure we can grab a fourth grader who drops

029in with no language. An example of that at Paint Branch is that in 2024, we had 194 students drop into the school. Which equated to about 40 to 50 students at every grade level that had not had any Chinese language. So our original proposal was to transition from an immersion program to an elementary world language program. That world language program would not run. As our other 12 elementary world language programs, because we understand that the students had more language. So we would have built a special program for them. But this would have created equity for every child in the building. Our new proposal, and that cost would have been at $220, $220,000. Our new proposal is that we treat paint branch the same way we do with Cool Spring, which is one of our application-based.

030So it becomes an in-school lottery immersion program. What that means is that at every single grade level, grade K to grade 5, we would have 25 seats per grade, with applications filled out for parents who are interested in their child being in the Chinese immersion program. all the applications, if they reached over 25, we would run a lottery at every grade, if necessary. That means that now at this school, we would need 3 teachers, and we would put back the academic dean. The language would be taught in math, science, and they would still have their 20 min a day of Chinese immersion language. That cost, if we go with that proposal, increases from $220,000 approximately to approximately $493,000. When you go to Capital Heights, we would put in place the exact same model. Capital Heights

031is a school where currently we have the six teachers and the dean, and we're teaching math, science in that language. We made the proposal to turn it into an immersion elementary program. Now becoming a part of the 12 current programs. Our proposed option B would be to also make it an in-school lottery immersion program. So some of the students in the school would have immersion if they apply and make it through the lottery. The remainder of the students would be taught everything in English, taking us from, again, approximately 220,000 to approximately $330,000. If you go to the next slide, we talked about Greenbelt Middle School, which had the Chinese immersion continuation from Paint Branch. Our original proposal was to phase out the current 39 students in that program. Because we never have more than 40,

03240% of the students from Paint Branch wanting to enter into the program. We would… The current students that are at Greenbelt Middle, we would allow them to stay and allow them to receive their immersion program until they exit 8th grade. However, we would not take any new students in. The new proposal is that we want to maintain that original concept for Greenbelt Middle. However, we would like to add one world language teacher to Buck Lodge, which is the natural feeder for Paint Branch, so that any student leaving Paint Branch can choose. To have world language Chinese 1 and Chinese 2 and receive their high school credit. That takes us from our first proposal of 106,000 approximately to approximately 212,000. And then we have our immersion high school, which services, currently. Spanish, French, and Chinese. In

033that program, we are currently at grade 11. Next year, we will be adding on grade 12. We have 3 teachers for every content there, so we have 3 Spanish teachers, 3 French teachers, 3 Chinese teachers. However, we should currently have between 300 and 350 students, and we have 100… about 119, 120. And so our original proposal is to phase out immersion at Largo, which means that every current student at Largo High School would be allowed to stay and finish their immersion program through the 12th grade. We know that we will not take in any new enrollment students, but we also know that at our other high schools, we are… have dual enrollment, where they have an opportunity to gain language there. We still have the opportunity for all of our high school students, should they

034choose to earn the Maryland State Seal of Biliteracy, and we know that our students can continue on through our AP languages. So our new proposal for Largo High School is the same, which is to phase out that. program. And that is our updates. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Dr. White board members, do we have any questions? You're welcome. Dr. Moss. Thank you so much, Dr. White. Interim Superintendent Joseph. for doing the hard work and and and coming back to the table on this. You made a comment about, um… The proposed model would have created equity. The original proposed model would have created equity for all students in the school. Um, if we had had changed in the paint branch model and the Capital Heights model that you all have put together a

035plan that would have given all kids access to some type of language. Would the plan be, um, not give kids that? And yeah, walk me through that shift in terms of equity, because we had proposed a plan that, although it was cutting what was originally there, we had proposed a plan that would have given all children access to. Uh, some… to language acquisition. What is changing about that in the in the B plan? Sure, and what I mean by that is, so in this type of model, which we know immersion, you start in kindergarten, normally for us, all of our other programs start in kindergarten, and you are immersed in the language from day one. Our students are currently receiving in our two neighborhood schools in science and mathematics, and they have some in language

036arts. So, when Dr. Joseph talks about math and reading in the accelerants and really pushing, you could have a fourth grader that drops in, in their mathematics, they come, they move into the neighborhood, and immediately they're having math in Chinese. And so you have a child that's been there from kindergarten, because they've just been there and they have a language, but because it's a neighborhood, if you're just dropping at any time. You struggle for a period of time as you're trying to learn the language. Um, just another point to mention, as we heard our community, for as many of our parents that advocated for this program to stay were as many of our parents in that school who would choose not to have Chinese. So, with this new… in the original proposal, adding world language,

037um, would create, and again, I made a statement that we would not offer world language the same way we would in our other 12 programs. Mm-hmm. Because in these two schools, kids have some language. That meant we would have been building something new. However, they would not have been in their math and science speaking the language immersed, but we would have created an experience that could have been tiered, that could have said we have more advanced learners, we have learners that aren't as advanced, and we could have created a model that would have given every child access to Chinese language in a way that made sense for them. Thank you. I I just had one other quick that that clarify my question. I'm out of time. So I just wanted to ask one other question.

038How much more do we? Oh, sorry. That's advice. Dr. Moss, could you save it just for second round to make sure we get all of the questions? A quick one. Thank you so much. Board member Booza Struther? Yeah, thank you so much, uh, board member, and thank you, Dr. Joseph, Chief Howell and Dr. White, and you know, Dr. White, I, you know, I'm thinking about our language immersion, and when you add that to ESOL, I mean, these are just two of the most outstanding. Uh, leadership programs we have in this nation, and we just won the Magna Award for immersion programs in 2023 from the National School Boards Association. So, uh, thank you for hearing all of our concerns. Um, I'm gonna… go bigger on this topic, combining all three, Board Member Goines-McCants request that

039we begin to share with the public some of our thinking before next week when we actually vote, and… What I… what I would like to see is that this proposed increase of $50 million that we proposed to the County Executive be increased to $95 million to provide Dr. Joseph with this additional $45 million to roll back. academic programs and other… the other cuts, including language immersion, and that I feel like we need to give the county executive, um, brave boy and the County Council an opportunity to approve the funding, and we need to give PGCPS stakeholders and all Prince George's. an opportunity to advocate for PGCPS as a county budget priority when we don't put this in the budget request, it looks like we're fine, and we're not. And so this needs to be in

040the county executive's budget. And, you know, we learned last year during May and June, uh, you know, that the. the impending PGCA contract would have some significant implications, and that the fund balance, because of vacancies, would certainly help this year, and it has, but we knew that couldn't continue. We also knew we had a lot of pressure from the County Council to spend our fund balance. And so we've met that requirement asked of us. Um… And Dr. Joseph, when you were announced as the new interim superintendent. By incoming County Executive Aisha Braveoy on June 13th. Uh, there is quite a bit of public support that there would be this partnership, that there should be a lot of hope, that there… that this is an opportunity for the two of you, uh, for the school system,

041and the… then also the PGCEA contract was announced on July 2nd. Celebrated in our board chambers with the county executive, county council members, which is unprecedented. And so, for these reasons, I believe we need to send at least $95 million of the $150 million gap to County Executive. brave boy to have an opportunity. Thank you. Thank you, Board Member Boozer Struthers. Dr. Anderful. Building on Dr. Moss's question, in looking at the new proposal that you've put forward for both Paint Branch and Capital Heights, I know that what you're suggesting here is kind of a shifting to an in-school lottery immersion program with applications for 25 students per grade. I'm hoping you could speak a little bit more to that. Just explaining. Um, quite simply, how that would differ from how the schools currently operate when

042we talk about enrollment, and, um, what potential impact, if any, that would have on currently enrolled parents and those who will be looking to enroll in the future. So thank you. It's a great question. So it would have no impact on those that enroll, and it's it's actually more complicated for me to explain it, but I will try to explain it this way. Students will be… if I had 3 classes. at a grade. So, first grade, 3 classes, all the students are in there. We would give a Chinese teacher for kindergarten, and when it's time for math, science, we will block that together, and the 25 students will come out of those 3 classes, they would get their math and science with the Chinese teacher that teaches Chinese, and everybody left behind in those 3

043classes. would receive it in English at the exact same time. The reason I have to run a model that way is because what you don't want is the inequity of the Chinese classroom staying at 25, while new kids continually come in first grade throughout the year, and your comprehensive classes are steady rising. So we have additional classrooms in those buildings where those students will come out of their class, receive all of their language, and then go back with their classmates. This also creates a nice environment because students are classmates for the classes that they receive in English. Now, one of the implications that's gonna be big is that, again, like any other program, it is application and lottery. So this might sound great to a parent who applies for one of the 25 seats and

044not get it. And if they thank you so much, Dr. White. You spoke to some of what I was hoping you would reference. Thank you. Thank you, Board Member Olivo. Thank you so much board member Goyne McCants. Dr. White, I also want to thank you for all of the thought and work that you've put into this kind of be proposal. Along the lines of the questions asked by my colleagues, can you share with us? So I very clearly understand the 25 seats per grade. Do you know, or if you don't know off the top of your head, can you share with us how many students on average per grade are there at these two schools? So is is 25 students half of the of the students at the school who will be able to participate?

045in this immersion program? Is it a quarter? Is it a third? And I understand that it would vary by classroom and by year, but do you have a rough estimate of what that means? Yeah, so a paint branch, it's probably going to be a third paint branch's enrollment is approximately 500 students off of the top of my head, I can't indicate if they have pre-K, so I don't know if that's tied into the number. Capital Heights is a much smaller school, so it would be up to 25. It would be a smaller amount, not exactly 25. Because they have a much smaller population, but we also know, uh, Paint Branch is 100% boundary, uh, Capital Heights is 48% boundary, because 51% are our TAG students, the TAG program that we have there. And so, it

046is not a 50-50 model, but the other school that we offer this in, which is Cool Spring, is not a 50-50 model either. This levels out by the time we get to, um… Our newest kindergartners coming in, because parents from the very beginning are going through, you know, the application and lottery model. So, right now, it would be 25 seats, which we believe is something that we could… we would have to fund and just be reminded. that we… our original proposal allowed us to make cuts, and now that we have to add, this will be approximately adding over 400,000 back would be later on trying to figure out where that's going to come from. Thanks, and just really quickly. Can you share? I am aware that, especially at Capital Heights, it seems that in the

047bound right now in the boundary immersion program, there seem to be at least a few students, if not a higher number of students who actually are not boundary students, but are in that immersion program. Do you know why or how that is? So they're not in the immersion program. They have tags, so they have Spanish. As a part of our TAG programming for all of our tech programs, um, as a part of that program is offered world language. Did I answer your whole question? Okay, thank you. Well, I just, I… I've heard… I'm aware of some families who are in the immersion program, not the TAG program, but who do not live in the boundary. So so this is an example, and I think I know where you're headed, and tell me if I'm wrong.

048So I don't know. Oliva and Dr. White, we saved the clarification for round. Sorry. We'll save it. We'll save it. Got it. Thank you. Sorry. I have it. I have it. Thank you. Chair Jackson. Thank you. I was actually going to ask the same question. So I'll just continue Amy's question for you. Dr. White, you want to finish? Sure, absolutely. Thank you so much. So remember when I say programs are neighborhood schools, right? Boundary schools, your neighborhood, anything can happen, which is how why in 2024, we had 194 students get added in from another school to Paint Branch. Capital Heights. probably because they're a small school, could have open seats. And so, you know, once a year as a school system, we open up certain schools for transfers that have open seats. They're not going

049to say, oh, well, that's a neighborhood school that has immersion, so we're not going to allow those 10 seats to be filled. Because it's a neighborhood school on that list, they have an opportunity to take students in as long as parents provide transportation. Gotcha, thank you. Um, and also, I just, I do want to just make a quick comment, and I really appreciate the collaboration on this. Um, I know that there's there's not a perfect, you know, fix when we're when we're dealing with cuts, but after speaking to the team and you know, Dr. Joseph and yourself and. You know, just telling them, uh, you know, being able to just talk about the concerns from the community, especially that area, you know, in my district, District 6, especially with, you know, Capital Heights and, you

050know, other schools that we've talked about. I'm just glad that you all were were able to listen and come up with another plan to help us. Um, figure out a happy medium, and I'm willing to, you know, keep talking and having conversations with my community until we make the final, um, decision. But I just want to say thank you, um, you know, for your cooperation and teamwork, uh, in this effort. Thank you both so much board members. We will now move to second round board member Moss. Yeah, thank you. My question is, and what I want to dovetail on the Capital Heights issue. I've got a real question. If right now 48% of the students who are in that immersion program are from that boundary. There's a real question to me if the citizens of.

051Capital Heights really want that type of program in that area if they're not choosing, we're having to go get kids from other areas. I wonder how that perhaps is disenfranchising kids who could have something that they really wanted in their community. I don't know the answer to that question, but it's important for us to raise that in terms of. boundary schools. But I do want to flag, we spend disproportionate amounts of money for these 2 boundary programs than we do other traditional boundary schools. How much is how much is that? And I hate the question that I'm asking because the real issue here. is that we don't have a large enough pie. And so we're fighting over slices of a pie because we don't have a larger pie. So I hate the question that I'm

052asking, but it's important for us to know when we have 200 schools, and we have to ensure every kid can read, write, and count. proficiently. So how much more do we spend on these 2 boundary programs than we do other boundary program, other boundary schools? Well, thank goodness we have our chief of finance on the call. So I'm going to yield to her or Siobhan Smith. Okay, we don't have that information off the top of our head, but we can certainly provide. you know, we can follow up and provide that information to you. I mean, I I will say that when it comes to developing the school budgets and how it relates to minimum school funding, we look at the entirety of that school's budget. So it's inclusive of. all of the various specialty programs

053or locked resources that are provided at that school. It includes the school's student-based budget, which is the portion that the principal has autonomy to determine. And then we have our centrally managed costs that directly support schools, such as the school nurse, as an example, sits at a central office call center. But the position supports his school. So we look at all of that and very generally speaking, and this is a very general statement, for some of our schools that do have specialty programs, the minimum school funding percentage. does tend to be a little bit higher than those schools that don't have those specialty programs. Yeah, thank you so much. Going back to just some, you know, more of the the global issue here. Chief Howell. if we're already looking at, you know, if we're not.

054going to at least try for the additional 95, which I'll be proposing next week. That means, you know, we have this reduced starting point, FY27 going into Fy 28. And all indications are that these gaps, that we could see a gap even bigger for FY28, uh, if everything stays the same. And for me, what that means is. If we are not… right now, we are a massive constituency that is not loud and massive in Annapolis. It's just true. If that stays the same, if there's no tax and revenue reform, which we have a governor that has refused to do so to fund our schools. That's what I'm talking about. All that stays the same. We then, next year, that 150 is going to be yet another 150, right? I mean, so how do we even

055sustain a modified language program? I mean, we were going… I mean, from what I can tell, that if we do not continue to be much more vocal about this and push. This is just gonna be a repeat next year, and it's just gonna be deeper. So, are those your projections as well? Yeah. So a couple of things to keep in mind that we know for certain when it comes to 28 and beyond. We know enrollment is going to continue to go down. And our funding formulas are tied to student enrollment. The per pupil amounts, those will vary by year, but those can also be subject to change as well. But if those remain steady as they are currently outlined in legislation, but enrollment is expected to go down. the revenue will be impacted by that

056for 28 and beyond. Number two, we know we have negotiated… labor agreements that are going to continue to have an impact on our budget when it comes to the annual enhancements that are going to come through. So even when you sort of think back to that one slide that I presented that showed for 20… Seven, our revenue is only going up 10 million, but our mandatory compensation costs are going up nearly $150 million. So that is something that we would expect to see going forward. We're always going to have the impact of our compensation costs that are going to continue to compound. Every single year, and we have to be able to balance that with the set revenue sources that we have coming in, which may also possibly be going on a downward trend because

057of declining enrollment. Thank you so much, Chief Howell, board members. Are those all of our questions for first and second round? With that, thank you all so much. The committee chair recognizes Dr. Joseph for the Division of Business Management Services Budget presentation. Thank you. We will now begin the Division of Budget Management presentation with Chief Howell. Thank you. Share my screen here. All right. I think everyone can see that. Okay. Let me put my glasses on so I can see. Okay. First off, I want to start. I want to publicly acknowledge the business management services team. I want to publicly thank them. Many of whom are watching this evening, for all of their hard work. their sacrifice and dedication to this district. The work this fiscal year has been brutal and unforgiving. We're a little

058tired, but we're hanging in there. This team has worked tirelessly, routinely working long days, weeks, weekends, winter breaks, winter storms. making sure that the budget deliverables are met, making sure that employees continue to get paid, making sure that contracts are being executed, vendors are receiving their payments, and that we're still meeting our local. state compliance requirements. The work that they do each and every day may be behind the scenes, but it is valued, it's needed, it's important, um, and we see the work that they're doing. I want to thank them for all of their efforts. Um, their role is important. Um, and ensuring that our students receive the quality education that they deserve. All right. So let's get into the overall view of the BMS division. Overall mission is to provide financial oversight, ensure integrity

059and the effective use of our limited school resources. We like to say that our work directly supports the adults. who support our students to ensure that all students are academically prepared for success. Our core services for the division as a whole really focuses on effective planning, management, and use of those resources, providing clear and accessible financial information. to the community, maximizing the use of those resources, stretching that dollar, and providing financial insight to help school leaders make informed decisions. When you look at the overall organizational structure of our division, we've got 7 functional areas, each under the leadership of a director. We have a total of 194 positions planned for 2027. We have reflected in our budget reductions of 4 positions. So the 194 already reflects. the elimination of four positions that are being cut.

060Those roles are primarily administrative in nature, so we're moving towards a shared administrative support model to ensure that we're able to retain the core services needed. We have 12 vacancies. Currently, right now, most of those actually reside in the Budget Office and in procurement services and supply services. We are under a hiring freeze, have been since the fall, but we are hoping to have those positions filled as we move into 2027. So what are the key highlights? What is has been cut out of our budget? We had a reduction of over a million dollars, 640,000 again tied to those 4 positions that I just referenced, and then the remainder is all of our discretionary funds, classroom equipment, non-local travel registration expense. temps, contracted services. We don't have a lot of that. You know, office supplies,

061another discretionary items. We often find ourselves during challenging budget times, having to justify ongoing resources needed for our work, and. You know, we want to make sure that we are being fiscally responsible across all areas of the district, including our division. We cannot afford to continue to dig too deep because it will have an impact on core services, which then puts our district at risk for being able to successfully service our students and our community. But what does remain in our budget that we are planning for 2027 will allow us to continue to meet all of our core services. So what is our vision? Where are we heading? We've been on this journey now for the last couple of years to really work towards transformation. Stabilization initially, but transformation as the school system has grown

062over the last couple of years in size and complexity. Um, with increased federal and state compliance requirements, the finance function has remained steady, taking on more work and responsibilities without sufficient resources to be operating at peak efficiency. We are at a critical state where we must invest in our people and infrastructure. As well as to continue to focus on transforming operational efficiencies and mitigating operational risks by having a high-performing, modern finance organization with the use of technology, but we also have to continue to streamline our processes to ensure efficiency. For 2027, we have 3 primary shared focus areas across the BMS division. We are preparing for our ERP implementation, which we are excited about that. We're in the process now of going through that procurement effort. But it's a lot of work before you even

063get to that point to prepare for an implementation, including. defining and developing our business requirements across each of the seven different functional areas, making sure that our data is clean, garbage in, garbage out. So we got to make sure that we're not putting garbage into the new system, and then really sort of redesigning what our workflows should look like, not our current workflows, because we have a lot of workarounds. But what best flow should look like in the new environment. Number two, we are continuing into our blueprint implementation. We're now year three into what that looks like and working through that implementation, particularly around minimum school funding requirements. mapping out all of our costing to ensure that the funding is aligned to the appropriate blueprint program, and the costs are flowing down to the school

064level. It is a challenge because we have about a half a billion dollars of costs that are sitting in central office cost centers that directly support schools. So we're working through a process to automate having those costs captured at the school level in order to meet those minimum school funding requirements. And then streamlining a lot of our mandated reporting around Blueprint as we go into the next year. And then third and final is just really around efficiency across. the division and all of our different workflows and processes. So our first functional area benefits administration, 13 FTEs, the primary focus and work of this organization is around providing administering our overall health benefit plan for our employees and retirees for next year. This team will continue to focus on managing. the health benefit offerings that we

065have for our employees and our retirees, making sure that we're continuing to manage the plan, keeping costs well below local, regional, and national averages. This team has done a really, really good job in managing those aspects of this plan. budget management services. I stated earlier. We are in a season of growth. We do have 20 FTEs, 5 of those are new positions. Some of those positions are going to be in direct support of schools as we continue to go through the blueprint implementation and making sure that we're tracking and keeping. The cost aligned with Blueprint programming. The other part of those positions will also help with our enhancing our data reporting and delivery of financial information, as well as blueprint financial compliance. The Budget Office is responsible for a lot when it comes to the

066overall fiscal health of the district, not only developing the budget, monitoring the spend throughout the year. We know that there's an opportunity for us to continue to enhance the public reporting of information relating to our budget and our actuals. And as we continue to expand the team. and restructure the work, we're looking to see some additional improvements in this area. financial services. This is an area that includes 4 different organizations underneath this overall structure. The accounting and financial reporting team, making sure that all of our activity is recorded in our systems correctly. We go through our annual audit. The accounts payable function, making sure our vendors get paid. The Medicaid office, they play a critical function in providing students who are Medicaid eligible going through and billing those services, which helps to offset the cost

067of those services that are being provided. And then we have our Treasury function. The main focus area that's planned for this budget for 2027, actually the work has already begun in 2026, is to transform from paper-based processing to digital. Yes, I know we still deal with a lot of paper. But it's a real thing. So we're going to continue to work towards that, rolling that out late in fiscal year 2026 as we continue to go into 2027. That's going to relate to the submission of the invoice processing piece, and we also have a. a process that helps to support non-local travel approvals. That's also paper-based, and we're looking to use. semi-automation for that as well. Grants and financial management team of 13 really excited. This group has now been fully stabilized for 2026, filled a

068few key critical positions on the budget side of the grants team. We've got an accounting team, and we've got a budget team all responsible for the full. financial life cycle of managing grants from the grant application process, providing support around ongoing grant monitoring and reporting, and meeting all the various state, local requirements with regards to that. Really, with having a fully staffed team, we're really looking to streamline a lot of our work that supports this. function. So payroll services. This function is obviously responsible for ensuring that our folks are getting paid on time and accurately throughout the year. They don't set salaries, they don't determine hours, but they pull all that information together from the. different areas, and they process payroll on a bi-weekly basis. They are also responsible for facilitating extended leave requests for

069all employees across the district. The focus area for next year will really be around continued automation of some of our core functions while we still are within our Oracle system. We're looking to effectively utilize that until we're able to get into a new software platform that will allow us to automate some of our key functions, as well as payroll costing, which is a big effort as we go into Blueprint for, um. Year 3. Purchasing and supply services. Purchasing is our procurement arm, supply services is the warehouse. Got a combination of resources that are on the operating side as well as a non-operating side. The main focus area for procurement has been and will continue to be around streamlining our overall procurement processes. We're looking at specifically, and this work has been going on since 2025

070and continuing 26 and into 2027 around contract and vendor management. And again, like I said, streamlining our overall procurement processes to support the different efforts across the district. And then also effective inventory management of all of our inventory at the warehouse. And then our last and final functional area is risk management and workers compensation. They're responsible for supporting that function, mitigating the risk overall for the district, as well as facilitating our workers comp program. They also are heavily involved in field trip evaluations again to minimize risk. to the district. One of the key focus areas for next year, in addition to, you know, existing core functions and services is looking to automate our disability leave program, where that information can be facilitated through Oracle. Um, whereas right now it's all done sort of outside of

071that through email between the employee and the respective offices. That is all I have for now. Thank you so much, Chief Howell Board members. Do we have any questions? Chief Howe, thank you so much for your work on this. I had a good opportunity to check in with you Friday around some of the work that you were doing with your team. And so I wanted to take a second to just really thank and appreciate your team. Because a lot of the work that is automated in many places, you all are still doing by hand, and it's important for us to acknowledge that that happens. Now, and I do have one other question that will get us to laugh a little bit in this crying situation that we're in with the budget. I have not been

072fortunate enough to have been overpaid. Lord, you know, if you want to, please do it tonight, and I can get overpaid. But I just want to make sure you have enough FTEs, because I get asked all the time, how do we overpay people? So do we have enough FTEs in this budget to make sure we don't overpay people? I'd like it to stay the way that it is, so perhaps I could get overpaid at least one time, but I just want to make sure. You have what you need, but at the same time, thank you for your team's leadership, and just let the general public know that you all are in a process of updating systems that are pretty aged. And so that takes time to be able to do. So thank your team and

073just want to make sure you got enough FTEs in this budget. We're not cutting something that you need. to make sure payroll is accurate. We're not cutting payroll. We're keeping all those FTEs, all 25 of them in place. They are fully staffed. So we anticipate, um, for them to be able to continue to process payroll accurately. In most cases, the majority of the time for 20,000 plus employees every two weeks. I appreciate you, Chief Howe lady told me, she says, my cousin got paid twice, but I didn't, and I'm upset that my cousin got paid twice. So I appreciate you clarifying that for the public. And again, thank you for your work. I know this is the toughest season for you all and your team's work. So thank you again. Thank you, Dr. Moss. Board

074members, do we have any additional questions? I do have one. In that same vein, we've had conversations about where in your office you are understaffed. Can you speak a little bit to where you are doing those paper processes, what we currently have in place in this budget to replace your paper processes. And if you currently have enough staff to ensure that that work continues. Thank you for that question. We. I'm very careful about adding resources within the finance organization, because we know some of our inefficiencies is just tied to the way in which work is currently being done. And so solving that is not necessarily about throwing additional bodies there. So we really have focused on where we have risks, and we know that we have gaps. in the work, and so over the last

075year or so, we have strategically filled some of our key positions that we've needed, and we have had the opportunity to expand some additional. resource authorizations where we've needed that additional strength in the 2026 budget, um, we did increase, um, in particular, additional positions in the Budget Office. We've had the same 15, and I joke about it all the time, the same 15 positions. For at least the same 15 years, even though our budget has become a lot more complex, and the work that's required of that office has exponentially increased, especially with the advent of blueprint. You know, we are working to get those positions filled, but we are also trying to be very mindful of the current space that we're in, where we are under a hiring freeze. And so we've prioritized schools for

0762026, but we have held on central office. So we're caught up in our own. Practice right now of not, you know, moving forward with those positions. They are essential. We really need to have them as soon as we can. Um, but we're positioning ourselves to try to have those roles in place. Before we begin 2027, but we need to get through this budgeting process to make sure that we feel comfortable with where we're headed into the next year. That is an area that I do, um. believe that we have some risk, and we have some exposure with not having enough resources. But once we're able to get those positions in place, I think it'll have a huge impact on the support that we can provide to the district overall. Also, procurement is another area where

077we also have had the opportunity to increase. and fill some of the vacancies that we had as well. But again, it's not about bodies, it's also about our… just our overall processes. And so, as we continue to get through, um. Looking at some of the changes that we're making for 2027, we'll continue to reevaluate our staffing structure. Thank you so much, Chief Howell. The committee chair recognizes Dr. Joseph for the chief of Staff Division's budget presentation. Thank you. Next, we will hear from the Division of the Chief of Staff. This division partners across the organization to optimize structures, enhance procedures, and modernize systems for greater efficiency. Simultaneously, they lead our effort in advancing equity and driving meaningful engagement through inclusive outreach with our community. Dr. Collins will now provide an overview of the division's primary

078responsibilities, and a summary of their budget, including core investments and. proposed reductions. Dr. Collins. Thank you, Dr. Joseph, for that introduction. Before we dive into the fiscal details, I want to just ground us in the why behind the division of the Chief of staff. Our work is really centered on a clear mission to build the systems and inclusive culture that allow our entire school community. Uh, to, to really thrive. Our mission is fourfold. We support the superintendent's administration, facilitate strategic initiatives, and promote an equitable education experience for all students. A key pillar of our office is ensuring transparent and strategic communication. between the superintendent's office and our broader PGCPS community. This includes the board and our county partners. Our core responsibilities, as you can see, range from high-level strategic planning and policy development to day-to-day

079operational oversight and crisis management. We see ourselves as serving as the connected tissue, so we say, that keeps the cross-functional efforts moving towards a single vision. Here you'll see the organizational chart for the chief of Staff Division, and we provide support internally and externally. Our reach extends into communications, the appeals and hearings, innovation and performance, government relations. and teaching and learning. The structure is designed to minimize silos so that our equity work and our operational work are always in the same conversation. As you can see, we are also organized to maintain a pulse on both compliance and innovation. And I just want to publicly thank the staff in the office of the Division of the Chief of Staff and acknowledge the leaders. They're joining us on the call this evening as well. So thank you,

080team. I also wanted to mention that the chief of Staff supports the implementation of the work in the Chief Accountability Office that was presented last week. Our family and community engagement team focuses on homeschool partnerships and volunteering opportunities. They provide training that builds parent leadership. And alongside them, we have our communications arm. It's one of our largest outward-facing teams. They manage our branding and ensure high quality content that's accessible for all of our families, and they really focus on bridging the language barriers through our district-wide interpretation. and translation services. And as you can see here, there's a wealth of other information and the positions that exist, but just kind of try to give you a high-level overview. The Ombudsman's office was new. We're super excited about it. It's really building focus on building trust by

081transforming constituent feedback into data and really using that feedback to refine our processes. While the office is built on trust, it really serves as a critical safeguard. We're really excited that in addition to this office recently, I should say, the office started around late December and has been really getting up to speed in partnership with our board team. But we've added a resolution specialist to specifically focus. on special education. And as you all know, this is an area that's governed by federal and state IDEA requirements. We know that processes and failures in this area can be costly. And so we just want to standardize procedures. and monitoring our performance, especially in partnership with the Department of Special Ed, as we look at our progress. So we really believe that this role will strengthen our compliance

082infrastructure and really reduce the expenditures we. uh, spend on legal fees. Ultimately, we hope that this position will transform the ombudsman's office as a strategic function to reduce some of the risks that we have, increase transparency, and really restore the trust in our school community. Um, in terms of our government relations and compliance team, they are highly productive team. Right now, they're really busy with legislative session, but they really partner with the board closely to manage our legislative platform, and they oversee also some very critical state and federal audits. for our district and 200. And this year alone, they've revised many of our policies and procedures, about 25, as well as about 70 administrative procedures. Next, we have our Appeals and Hearing Office. They are small and mighty team that they educate roughly around 900

083matters annually, and that covers student discipline to employee appeals. And they've really handled close to 900 matters per year across truancy, student discipline, employee discipline, and just other areas. Um, the… we're also excited, the Innovation Performance Zone, which is a new, uh, uh, strengthened area of focus for us that Dr. Joseph had the strategic vision to bring to the district to really focus and prioritize our highest need schools. Um, really looking at how we drive leadership and focus on rigorous monitoring to really transform our highest need schools. And so we're super excited. Again, this is new for the district, so a lot of heavy lifting in that area. And then the Office of Teaching, Learning, and Innovation is where our community schools and equity initiatives is housed really institutionalizing equity across the district, and also

084looking at how we manage all of the partnerships, vendors, and wrap around services that we have. During the next two academic achievement meetings in March and April, we will be providing updates on those two offices and the role that they play in the district and the work to reengage the community. Uh, now that I've talked about the team and the specific functions, I wanted to just pivot to the resources that make the work in our office possible. As we look at our core budgets, you'll see how our funding is directly aligned with the strategic roles that I just mentioned. And most of our budget is really dedicated to salaries and staffing. We don't have a lot of money. It's also important to note that in the Innovation and Performance Zone and the community schools, much

085of that work is federally funded. So that's through our. Title I funds, our IDA, and our concentration of poverty grants, rather than sort of the unrestricted funds. Um, our contracted services primarily focus on language access. So that's telephonic and ASL interpreting. Our safe schools training, and also some of the equity audits we've had to do. We're really trying to be intentional as much as possible, um, to make sure we have the translation work that's necessary to engage with our community. Regarding strategic shifts, we've realigned our community schools funding, as was shared in some of our earlier presentations when we started our budget presentations, specifically 42 parent engagement assistance and 38 pupil personnel workers. Um, to just ensure our resources were being used effectively. And we've also in that office to enhance fiscal monitoring the community

086schools concentration of poverty funding is a lot. And so we now have our arm that focused specifically on the funding. And then the other that focuses on the partnerships and programs, just to make sure we can see the return on the investment and we're using our funds specifically. Um, in terms of our target area of reductions, you'll see them listed here, but we had to identify about 2.29 million in reductions, and the largest portion came from our contracted services. But we also eliminated about 424,000 in vacant positions that we had. And then you'll see we had cuts to travel, software, and catering. We wanted to make sure that we can protect our core mission, but also meet the district's fiscal requirements. So that concludes the information about the Chief of Staff Division. And the team

087is here to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you, Dr. Collins. Board members. Do we have any questions? Thank you so much committee chair going to McCants, and thank you, Dr. Collins for this presentation. I wondered if you could share just a little bit more, since we have such a large audience of the public here. And it's my understanding that we have not had an oddsman for several years. And so I am excited about the potential of that office and certainly that position. Um, could you just speak maybe a little bit more, again, since we have such a large, um, public here, of how the public can… our constituents can, um, utilize or communicate with that office? Yeah. Thank you for that question. And I actually would like to put a name and

088face together. So Thea Wilson, Dr. Wilson, she's joining us. Feel free to come off mic and share a response there so people can meet you. Well, good evening, everyone. I am a super excited to be your ombudsman for Prince George's County Public Schools, and our website will be up and running next week, but we do have an email address where the community can reach out. Uh, to the Ombudsman's office. We are here in alignment with the interim superintendent's vision to have a district where excellence and equity are the expectation and not the exception. And we exist to help our families and staff work through the concerns in a fair and excellent way, a neutral way. So that issues stay manageable. And are… and aligned with our policies and administrative procedures. You can reach our office

089at ombudsman at pgcps.org. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Board members, do we have any additional questions? Seeing none. Thank you both so much. The committee chair recognizes Dr. Joseph for this division of the Superintendent and general counsel's budget presentation. Thank you. I will lead the presentation to provide an overview for the Office of the Superintendent, and then turn it over to Donair Henderson to share information about the budget for the General Council's office. Okay, next slide. Okay, so our, you know, our mission is to provide transformative educational experiences anchored by excellence and equity, enabling each student's unique brilliance to flourish and build a more inclusive world with the vision of being a culturally responsive district, a developing distinguished learners, leaders, and advocates for humanity, for the world of today and tomorrow. This is

090the vision statement of the school system. that is in our current Transformation 2026 that's currently in revision. Next slide. you know, so as we think about our budget, and our budget reflects our commitments to these 6 foundational beliefs, making sure students are a priority, that there's a shared responsibility, we have high expectations, we provide safe, supportive schools, we ensure community success, and that we're in. Um, always in continuous improvement. Next slide. Yeah, so I'm gonna talk about the, uh, four positions in my office, and then I'll turn it over to the General Counsel, who will discuss the 17 FTEs that are there. Next slide. And so, we're recommending, uh, in between both offices, $1.3 million in reductions. The reductions are coming from the elimination of non-catered miscellaneous food and supplies, office furniture equipment. And any

091overtime that would have been distributed in my office. Also, I have a reduction of 55% of the catering budget from FY26, uh, office supplies and non-local travel expenses. Have been eliminated there for me. We have a 17% reduction in contracted services. Uh, that's primarily in the legal office, uh, addressing lawsuits, legal service, and software licenses, and we are eliminating 3 vacant positions. For the general counsel, including the Associate General Counsel, EEO investigative specialist, and an EEO administrative position. And in terms of impacts, we believe that the impacts currently are minimal, uh, where we'll be able to find those savings and. realign work, but I'll allow Mr. Henderson to go into more depth about the vacancies and those impacts. Good evening, Board Chair Jackson, members of the board, and Dr. Joseph. Uh, the Office of General

092Counsel serves as the district's legal and civil rights compliance office. Our work supports the entire organization by helping leadership make sound decisions, ensuring compliance with state and federal laws, and managing legal risks across the system. Um, every day, our work contributes to the maintaining safe, equitable, and legally compliant learning environments, working environments, across Prince George's County Public Schools. In short, we protect the district's operational stability so schools can remain focused on learning and teaching. Tonight, I will briefly walk through the structure of our FY27 proposed budget, uh, staffing adjustments, and operational changes. Uh, the Office of General Counsel consists of two departments. Legal Services and Equity Assurance. Our mission is to provide legal counsel and representation to the board, to the superintendent, executive leadership, principals, and school-based staff. We support organizational goals while maintaining compliance,

093uh, risk mitigation, and student and staff protections. Equity and equity and fairness, fair treatment remain central to our work and cross-employment, programming, and accessibility. For our legal services department, the Legal Services team advises the board and administration on legal matters. We oversee litigation and liability claims, support procurement, contracts, CIP, and finance matters. We represent the district before the Maryland State Board of Education, and we advise on student appeals and student support matters. Our focus is to be proactive in addressing issues early to reduce risk and control long-term litigation costs. Next slide, please. The Equity Assurance Office serves as a district's civil rights compliance arm. The key responsibilities include. ADA and reasonable accommodations, discrimination and harassment investigations, Title IX compliance, workplace climate and bullying matters, employee dispute resolution, and religious accommodation. Uh, the work ensures compliance

094with federal and state laws. mandates while protecting the integrity of our educational employment environments. Uh, next slide, please. So in this slide, you will see our proposed FY27 budget. Um, as you can see, our budget is $5.24 million. It breaks down as follows, $2.6 million for salary and wages. $794,000 for employee benefits, and $1.75 million for contractual services. Um, and minimal funding for supplies and materials. The majority of our budget reflects personnel and legal services, consistent with the professional and compliance-driven nature of our work. Next slide, please. So this slide here is a staffing overview of the proposed FY27 budget. As Dr. Joseph mentioned, we have 17 full-time positions. That includes the General Counsel, Fair Practices Director, Attorneys, EEO Administrators, paralegals, compliance staff. and administrative support. Um, and you can see the breakdown on the

095screen of 8 positions in the executive staff side, and 9 positions on the administrative support side. This remains a lean legal structure for our district of our size, uh, given that we are the second largest district in the state of Maryland. Um, and operational… and our… and our operational complexity. Next slide, please. As Dr. Joseph mentioned at the top of the presentation, the FY27 budget reflects a reduction of three full-time positions, resulting in approximately $249,000 in savings. While we have streamlined staffing, we are confident in our ability to realign responsibilities, prioritize high-impact matters, and continue delivering timely and compliant support across the system. Our focus will remain on efficiency, strategic case management, and maintaining strong service to the organization. Next slide, please. Here you will see a breakdown of our business organization, and so what

096is in the budget? Um, operating expenditures primarily support external counsel, a contracted services, legal expenses, software systems for compliance and legal research. External counsel remains necessary for specialized and high-risk litigation matters that require subject matter expertise. Uh, next slide, please. So, as you can see from FY26 to FY27, we are reducing operational expenditures as laid out in the slide. These reductions reflect a disciplined oversight of our outside counsel, strategic case management, and internal efficiencies where feasible. And, uh, in closing. Uh, the Office of General Counsel's FY27 proposed budget reflects a streamlined and disciplined legal operation. We have reduced staffing, operational expenditures, while preserving the core legal and civil rights functions. We have, uh… our focus remains on risk management, compliance, and maintaining safe, equitable, and legally sound environments across the district. And I'm happy to

097answer any questions that you may have about the Office of General Counsel. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Joseph, as well as… Mr. Henderson. Board members, do we have any questions? Seeing none. The committee chair recognizes Miss. Adlin, Board Office Director for the Board of Education Office's budget presentation. Cindy. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I lost myself for a moment there. I'm sorry. All right. So I shared earlier by… all the other presenters. This budget was indeed a very, very difficult one. We have this inside joke in my office where whenever they ask for something, I'll be like, do you have McDonald's money? I'm or less, do you have money to cover the items that you're asking? Um, so, it was really hard putting this budget together, but I really appreciate the budget team for

098working with me, and also our financial analysts for getting this presentation together today. Um, so today I'll be walking you through the board office's proposed budget. We're going to be focused on, um, the adjustment we made to ensure fiscal responsibility while meeting our mandated and operational obligations. Um, at this time, if board members are able to, or like that, if you could just come off mute for a few, four minutes or so, a second or so, and introduce yourself and the district that you represent. Okay. Uh, Direct Adlan, we're not seeing the presentation. But in the interest of time I can go ahead and start Zakia going to McCann's. I represent District 8. Emile Levo, I represent District 4. Tiffany Andre represent district one. Brandon. And Brandon Jackson, I represent District 6. Director Adlian, you're

099muted. Okay, that's what happens when you have three screens. Okay, I got it now. Alright, so the Board of Education supports the strategic plan through meaningful community engagement, creating spaces for family and residents to share their voices. We strengthened governance by fostering collaboration among county leadership. PGCPS staff, students, and the community. We ensure fiscal responsibility by aligning budget and policies with the strategic plan goals. Together, these efforts keep us focused on student success while strengthening our community. why… what does the Board of Education Budget fund? So the Board of Education budget funds, the core operations and allow for the board to govern effectively and remain accountable to the public to the public. I'm sorry. It supports our elected board members and ensures the public meetings run smoothly and transparently. It covers policy development, oversight, and

100policy and governance responsibilities. and guide the school systems. It provides legal, audit and compliance action support to protect the integrity of the board's actions. It also funds our community engagement efforts, ensuring residents have access to the board's work and the decisions that we make. Um, one of the few things that we've done over the years to help with budget cost saving was that we've had this amendment where the board members had adjusted their $7,000 allocated fund to $6,500. Um, we have limited our legal counsel representation to a more on-call basis than a full days of work. We've increased our community engagement to a more joint effort that individual board member efforts. Um, we have limited our travel to the four primary state-recommended conferences, and this is aligned with Board Policy 8200, where we have to,

101well, pretty much have to have our professional development. And also, lastly, what we've done is relocated our retreats to local facilities, so we try to make use of the school… the different schools in the district to reduce on our revenue spending, venue spending, sorry. So currently, this is the organizational chart of the board office. We have one director, which is myself, we have an assistant director, a financial analyst. We have a budget specialist, the position is currently vacant. We have five secretaries and three community liaisons. In an effort to save on reductions, we had to do a few changes, which was, again, very difficult because. it was a lot to go into. Um, so right now, our proposed budget would be going down to 3 Administrative Secretary once. Uh, we're going to implement one FTE

102for legal counsel. And the reason why we're implementing this FTE is because the board needs its own independent representation. As you know, board members are sometimes pulled into different suits, and we need our own independent legal representation. That individual as well will take over currently what we, um, our hearing examiners task. and also our broad legal counsel, our current board legal counsel says. Um, we'll also be eliminating the Assistant Director position. Eliminating that position will fund the, um, legal counsel, sorry, position that we're trying to implement. Our two reduction in the administrative Secretary Staff will fund our one administrative Secretary III position. So technically, we will not be, um… needing any more money to fund our changes, but rather we'll be saving. So in the end, with all our changes, we will be saving $151,000

103for full-time salaries and benefits, and we would have a reduction in our legal fees by 162. $1,000. Currently, we have 10 board members. in 2023, there was a state-mandated bill that. proposed an increase for all board members, and that money again is going to be covered in our reduction. So we won't be needing any more money to fund the board members increase. That would be accounted for in the reductions we have currently. we are currently proposing with the State bill, it says that the board chair will be making approximately will have an increase, sorry, approximately 58% while all the elected board members will have an increase of 50% to their current salaries. Um, again, this was a state-mandated bill, so this is not a requirement of the board. It's just us right now trying to

104remain in compliance with state law. So with our changes, our proposed changes, sorry, this is what our organizational chart is going to look like. So we just want to take a few minutes to just look at it. And as I said earlier, none of this is affected with our… is effective with the funding, and in other words, we are actually saving money, um, implementing those changes. So, key highlights from our presentation is that one, the Board of Education, our total budget is only. 0.12% of the entire 200… 2.99 billion budget for the entire school district. Um, our total reduction with all our changes is going to be 265,000. Our reductions for the office is two reduction in secretary, one positions. Uh, reduction in one assistant director position, and one UFTE for legal counsel. We will

105be reclassifying our communication specialist position. That position is going to be downgraded to provide us more funding for our legal counsel position. And now I will take you to the Office of Internal Audit. The Internal Audit Director was unable to be here this evening, so I remember, oh, you're here. There you go. I'm here. Thank you for that. Miss Atlian. Good evening, everyone. My name is Dina Thorps, and I am the director for the Office of Internal Audit. If we can advance to the next slide, and I'll begin going through my portion. Okay, so the Office of Internal Audit, we like to think of ourselves as somewhat the watchdogs for PGCPS. Our goal is to add value by assisting the school system with accomplishment of its goals. And so in order to achieve that, we

106try to bring a systematic and disciplined approach. to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control, and the governance process. And so in dispelling our duties and functions in order to achieve that mission, we have the. Following primary functions. We do provide independent and objective assurance. With independence, that means that we do not operate from a management perspective. We try to just offer advice to help improve operations, whether it's best practices or maybe we're ensuring that. business units are following their own established policies and procedures. We also promote accountability and stewardship of public funds. So we want to make sure that those funds that we receive as a school system as a whole are being used in the way that they were intended. We also evaluate internal controls. We monitor compliance, and we also

107assess risk. This helps us to identify where we need to focus our efforts in doing our job and functions as the internal audit office. We also support the board with their fiduciary oversight. And so in doing so, we monitor how the school system is spending the money, and we also monitor how the board members are using the money that has been allocated to them. Um, and doing some additional, like, audit activities, we also evaluate how schools are using their school activity funds, and whether or not they're complying with the accounting procedures manual for school activity funds. And we also do operational audits. This is where I honestly feel like we provide the most value by looking at the different operational aspects within the school system to determine whether or not there are opportunities for efficiencies

108or improving effectiveness in completing those functions of those different. operational audit topics. Again, compliance reviews. Some of these just revolve around us looking at whether or not, for instance, MSDE audits and things of that nature, making sure that. We are complying with state mandated requirements or local requirements. And we also conduct investigations. We get a ton of hotline, um. complaints and allegations that come in that we assess and determine whether or not it's warrants an investigation for us to complete. And then we also do corrective action follow up at the end of our audits. Typically, if things need to be improved. We come up with recommendations and we want to make sure that the business unit, school, whomever has a recommendation, they're actually being held accountable to complete those corrective actions that they said they

109would do to address our recommendations. And so we follow up on those to make sure that those things are being completed and done in the time that they were. stated to be completed. Next slide, please. Next slide. Okay, and for our budget overview, the internal audit is a board-aligned oversight function. Again, everything that we do is to help the board members with their oversight and management of the school system to make sure that we are achieving our accomplishments and goals. Our funding primarily supports staffing and compliance operations. So the majority of my budget is completely dedicated to staff salaries. And then with compliance operations as well, we have different things that we have to have in place. Some of those include making sure that the staff has adequate training to meet our requirements as auditors,

110especially under Yellow Book or GAO standards. We have to have so many hours. So some of our funding is related to that, as well as different functionality that we need. So like our audit platform where we document our audit. work papers and activities, as well as the hotline. Our budget does reflect for fiscal year 27 redirected resources, which I'll go over a little bit more when we get to our slide on my head count or my FTE. And that came to a total of $32,000. We are a very lean office, so we do not have a lot that we spend in general. Again, the majority of my. budget is completely dedicated to salaries. We don't have any program expansion. Everything that we do is pretty much standard from year over year in terms of internal

111audit. So our increases are completely driven by the cost of just simply doing business. And we primarily, again, we remain a very small portion of the 2.995 billion district budget overall. Next slide. And so just some quick snapshots again. Budget is completely staff focused. We have very minimum discretionary spending. We are very lean, but essential. We are the ones that are kind of like the 1st layer of protection for PGCPS. And then there are no current expansions within internal audit as a whole. Next slide. And so for our current FTEs, we currently have a total of 10 that are in place staff. That includes myself, the director. I have a supervisor. I have an investigative auditor 3. 5 internal auditor twos, one information technology auditor, and one business analyst. There are 2 vacancies which this

112is where I did some reductions to try to help make sure that we did cost reductions on our side. Originally, I should have 2 or 7. internal auditor twos in order to make sure that I still have enough staff to complete the things that we need to do. I thought it was beneficial for internal audit to maybe have two internal audit, or ones that we could train up and try to help them learn the system. Whether it's through school activity funds or things of that nature. And so, um, we downgraded the two auditor 2 positions to auditor one. So we still have a current grand total headcount of 12, just maneuvered some things around. Next slide. And so why does internal audit matters again? I kind of touched on it earlier. We are like the

113watchdogs and the first layer of protection for Pgcps. We are here to protect taxpayer dollars, and we also find ways to help strengthen internal controls. This is how we make sure that whenever there's a risk that come to light, we know that there are procedures. and mechanisms in place to catch that before it becomes a big issue. We support compliance. We want to make sure that business units are complying with board and administrative policies and procedures. And we also can help improve operations as long as everyone is open to receiving those. corrective action recommendations. And our oversight also reduces risk. The more that we're able to get in front of risk and help to find ways to mitigate those risks, the better off we will be as a school system in general. Thank you so

114much for your time. Any questions for me? Thank you so much, Director Thorpe and Director Adlian board members. Do we have any questions? Board member Boozer Struther. Thank you so much. Director Thorps, in your opinion and the work that the audit internal audit does on behalf of the Board of Education. Do you think this 1.6 million expense laid out on pages 77 to 79. for the unfunded mandate integrity and Compliance Office, is that necessary? If I can answer honestly, I do not think so. I honestly feel like it's a duplication of what we have already been created to do. I also feel like. it's a lot of duplication. So you're paying for our office to be in existence, but they're also being funded as well with Pgcps funds. And we essentially kind of look. at

115the same things. I think the stance of it being an independent office kind of causes confusion when it comes to internal audit, because we are independent. We again do not operate from a management function. We are completely separate from the superintendent, his cabinet, and things of that nature. I don't tell them what to do. I just make recommendations and try to add value to make sure that we don't have a major mishap come into play. It's just an overlap of duties and functions. Dr. Moss. Director Thorps, I appreciate the work that you've done since you've been here. It's been integral. Um, and just what an audit division should be doing, um, and having a level of integrity at our work. Thank you. Now, you've done some integral work. Could you tell us how much money

116your office has helped us save since you've been here as a system or what you, um… recovered, um, and lost to the system since you've been here. and juxtapose that to what the other office has been able to actually find in terms of savings for Prince George's County Public Schools? So the number off the top of my head. the duplicative offer. I can't give you a number off the top of my head. Since I joined last March, they're like the team is very well oiled machine. They know how to do their jobs. They know how to execute things well. There are things that I'm working to try to implement and make sure that we can. report those types of details. So the only thing that I could potentially tell you would be related to school

117activity funds. A lot of our audits are not necessarily. dollar bay, so to speak, when I look at the operational aspect, there could be somewhere I can. estimate, like, where we have some cost savings and make sure that we save that money for the school system. But that's not something that I currently have directly available to report to you at the moment, and it's in the process of being developed. Mm-hmm. Again, thank you for your work, and I'd love for you to be able to quantify the kind of work. Even the risk that you are helping us to mitigate, I think is really important as we continue to do this work. Yes. I will make sure that gets into. Development. Thank you so much, Director Thorpe. Yeah, Calvin, can you hear me? Yeah. So, so

118question for Director Thorst. Yes. Uh, what about the volume of audit? I know as the, um… As the board shared, I've seen more audits have been completed than we've probably… ever had since I've been on the board, you know, in my almost four-year team now. So I have noticed that there has been an uptick in completion of audits. Um, and do you have, um, a number on how many guys you've done to date? For a ballpark. to date for this fiscal year, or… Well, I'll say this, this, uh… Since March, since you came in March, or… Yeah. since March. Oh. Um, I think when I started… I know for fiscal year 25, we have 58 audits total issued. We currently have 16. If I had to divide the first half of like the 58, I

119would say I'm somewhere in like the. You know what? I'm around 40. With more coming this week. So I've issued about 40 reports since I started at the end of March last year. Perfect. Thank you, thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Board members, do we have any additional questions? Seeing none. Thank you, Director Thorps and Director Adlian. Thank you. All of our staff, um… Superintendent, your. cabinet who has presented today. And I will now return this meeting to our chairman. Thank you so much. Can you hear me? Okay. Sorry, just making sure my headphones is working properly. Okay, uh… So now we move into the rest of the time is now… actually, the time is now 7.31. And this meeting will… I guess recess for one minute to reconvene with the public hearing. Please note

120that the same meeting link will be used for the public hearing. Alrighty. Okay, you ready? We're ready to go? Thank you. Alrighty, the time is now 7:33. And welcome back to the February 19th, 2026 Prince George's County Board of Education budget work session and public hearing for the FY. 2027 Interim Superintendent proposed operating budget. And those of us joining for the first time this evening, I'm Brandon Jackson, chairman of the Board of Education. The Board of Education thanks you for participating in tonight's public hearing. to share your thoughts on the FY 2027 Interim Superintendent proposed operating budget. Their involvement is essential. And as we work together to address the needs of the students and staff in Prince George's County Public Schools. Ms. Woolwich, please call the roll. Okay, Miss Ajacay? Dr. Andofo? Miss Boozer Strutter?

121Present. Mr. Briggs? Mrs. Brown? Present. Here. Ms. Cohen's McCants? Doctor Moss? Mrs. Olivo? Mr. Jackson. Here. There are 8 present, a quorum is present. Thank you so much. The chairman asked that all speakers, all quorum is present. The chairman asks that all speakers ensure the name used to register for public comments tonight matches the name you are logged in with for the meeting. Um, please understand that we have a very, very long list of speakers tonight, uh, registered. I think we have over 30 or so. Um, names, I think more than that, uh, now, um, because we just cut off the list at 7.30, so we will make a call once, um… For you, we will, uh, send you to the private chat room. If you are not logged in as your name, we will

122move forward to the next person. Um, and we will not circle back. We want to make sure that we are respectful of everyone's time and make sure we allow everyone to get their voice heard. So can we just make sure that we keep those housekeeping rules in order to make sure this. process is efficient and effective. The chairman recognized the registered speakers for public comments. To our registered speakers, you are allotted three minutes to share your remarks. questions and receive an answer. Speaking time may not be transferred to another individual. Speakers are expected to refrain from using profanity in derogatory language. A warning will be issued once continued misconduct may result in the speaker being muted or removed from the meeting. To support a professional and courteous environment, speakers are encouraged to refer to individuals

123by their titles, such as chairman. Board member, superintendent. Our first speaker tonight. Goodbye. Is, uh, for Zoom… Apologies about mispronounced your name. The mayor of the city of College Park. Keep the funding for the Chinese immersion program and play branch elementary school. Yes, we can hear you fine, so… Thank you. Can you hear me? Thank you so much. Good evening, Committee Chair Chair Jackson and the members of the board. My name is Fazal Kabir, and I have the honor to serve as the mayor of the city of College Park. Our city council is expected to send a letter to you at the next City Council meeting, which will be happening next Tuesday. However, I'm here tonight as both a local elected official and a community member. to ask you, to urge you to reconsider the

124discontinuation of the Chinese immersion program at the Penn Branch Elementary School in College Park. Along with the broader phase-out immersion pathways. The Chinese immersion program is not just an elective, it is a rigorous academic pathway that prepares students with global skills. That are essential in today's economy. In a city that is the home to the University of Maryland, global engagement is part of who we are. Our public schools should reflect that same vision. Language immersion builds more than vocabulary, it strengthens academic performance, cognitive flexibility, and cross-cultural understanding, eliminating the high school. Continuation program effectively dismantles the entire K-12 pipeline, leaving families and students without stability and clear path forward. Equally troubling is the lack of meaningful community engagement around this decision. Programs of this magnitude deserve transparency, data, and dialogue. Unfortunately, none of these happened

125before the announcement was made. I understand the fiscal challenges you are facing right now, but before we close the door, I urge you to explore alternatives. that preserved this opportunity for students. Prince George's County should be expanding access to high-quality programs, not reducing them. If we want to attract and retain families in College Park and throughout the county, we must continue strengthening the quality and diversity of educational opportunities. Available in our public schools. I respectfully ask you to pause the decision and work with the community to find a sustainable solution. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak, and thank you for listening, and thank you for your time and service. Thank you. Nicholas Rivera Rivera? Thank you. Speaking about the Chinese immersion program. Yes. Yes, um, can you all hear me okay? All

126right. Hello, my name is Nicolas Rivero, and I'd like to thank everyone here for the opportunity to speak tonight. I spent 9 years in the Chinese Immersion Program as a student, and I truly believe that it is an invaluable part of Prince George's County. The Chinese immersion Program is a community of dedicated teachers and engaged students, and constantly produces students who are ready and prepared for challenges. The Chinese teachers at this school teach with such passion and such dedication as some that I have never seen before. In addition to teaching Chinese, the Chinese immersion teachers are responsible for teaching the STEM subjects to students, science, technology, engineering, and math. These students have almost always placed in the countywide STEM Fair, even winning grand prizes multiple times. Through this program, students have gone to and won

127statewide STEM competitions. Further, through this program, Prince George's County was represented in the National Engineering Design Competition, and students have won multiple awards on the national stage. It is only through this program and through the dedication and passion of the Chinese immersion teachers. But these students have been able to achieve this. This is excellence and equity presented by both teachers and students at its very best. This program offers powerful supports to connect communities. At home, my brothers and I speak Chinese, and it will be really difficult if my youngest brother, who is in the third grade right now, will not be able to continue the program and lose that connection with us. My family specifically moved to this area for the Chinese program roughly 10 years ago, and have built our entire lives around it,

128just as countless other families have as well. Additionally, I regularly interact with native Chinese speakers, and I speak to them in Chinese, see their faces light up, and they always want to know where I learned it. I proudly say, print branch elementary Chinese Immersion School. I hope to use these language skills one day to work at NASA or the NSA and to support multilateral outreach. This program has developed students that are passionate for learning, ready for challenges, and with a zeal to share knowledge. It has helped students not just academically, but as human beings ready to face the world. Paintbranch is my home. It is the home of so many teachers, so many students, and so many families. Don't take this Chinese immersion program away from us. Thank you. Moving next to Evan. Evan Camero.

129Yes. Hello, can you hear me? Good evening, and thank you for having me. I wanted to talk about the immersion program because I'm in it and how it's impacted me. For many of us, this program is not just another class. It is the reason we feel connected to our education and to the larger world. Through the immersion program, we don't just learn a language. We learn how to understand other cultures, think differently, and see beyond our own experiences. That is what exactly. Pgcps. says it values when it speaks about developing global learners and advocates for humanity. If new students are no longer allowed to enter the program, it will eventually disappear. That would mean future students will lose an opportunity that has helped many of us grow academically and personally. It will also send a

130message that programs promoting cultural understanding and global awareness are not a priority. As someone directly impacted by this program, I can say that it has made school more meaningful and more engaging and more relevant to the world we live in. I respectfully asked the board to reconsider this proposal and continue supporting the immersion program for the students who come after us. Thank you, Mina House. It's gonna be the house available? Yes. You did so did say Camila House. Okay, thank you. Yes. Um… Thank you, and just, I'm gonna take a little bit of my time just to let you all know that some people are having a difficulty switching their names over, and there is an iPad that's listed, and that's Emily Harris, who is on the list. Superintendent, members of the board, you're seeing

131more of us tonight from the IB program. Because the stakes have become clear, and the families are paying attention. There are parents who are at work right now in other meetings caring for children who could not get into the meeting, but they are watching. They're asking for updates from me. I'm getting texts left and right. They're waiting to hear about the district's plan for IB, the new plan. But so far, very little has been said publicly about it. In fact, we haven't heard anything about IB at all tonight. Outside of these meetings, what we have been hearing repeatedly is that this is all about money. This is not about outcomes. And we understand that budgets are difficult, but these cuts are made, um… and they reflect priorities. If IB is being reduced and removed, then

132the district should have studied IB outcomes before proposing that change. As a minimum, families should see its documented results and a cost benefit analysis for formal. IB designation before it's actually taken away. Because despite what's said, the IB designation does matter. When something has a formal recognition, it carries weight, it carries accountability, and it signals priority. Formal IB designation is not just a label. It requires standards, training, evaluation, and alignment. It signals to families, teachers, and even more competitive universities admissions that the district has committed to a defined level of rigor. When that designation is removed, even if pieces of the curriculum remain as was said in a previous meeting. The accountability changes, the signal changes, and the priority changes. We have heard a great deal tonight about equity and equity does matter absolutely. But

133equity is not only about distribution, it is also about competitiveness. It is about ensuring that our students can keep pace. Not just within this county, but across this region and across the world. You approved the teacher's contract in the name of that kind of equity to remain competitive in the DC area and to retain strong educators. I am a former educator, and I believe educators should be paid. for their skills. I support investing in strong professionals. But if competitiveness justified investment in adults, it should justify investment in students. If we are willing to spend to retain teachers so we remain competitive in this region, that's forward thinking, then we should be equally committed to retaining the academic pathways that make our students competitive in the same region and in the global economy. and invest in

134their future. So let's speak honestly about performance. We… we over… our outcomes are lower than several of the neighboring districts, and what we know about IB is IB is a proven pathway. Please, please let us hear about IB and reconsider. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Yayla Hamert? Good evening, Board members.mente, nuesto probaba. Good evening. My name is Jayla Hayward, and I am a proud Spanish immersion student at Lorgo High School. I stand before you asking one simple but powerful thing. Please do not phase out our immersion program. This program is more than classes in another language. It prepares us to be competitive in today's global workforce. It gives us the ability to communicate across the cultures, to think beyond borders, and to lead in a diverse society. Next year, I will

135take a course that certifies me as a professional interpreter, meaning I can graduate with a real workforce credential. Ready to work in the field that I've been preparing for my entire academic life. Because of this program, I studied abroad in Taiwan last summer, expanding my Chinese and experiencing the world firsthand. I am a Spanish immersion student, yet this program has allowed me to study Chinese. Giving me proficiency in two global languages. That is not just education, that is also an opportunity. Please do not let dollars and cents determine the value of our futures. Our education should not be reduced to a line item in the budget. Our opportunities should not be closed because of administrative decisions. We are doing our part, we are succeeding, we are prepared. Now we are asking you to do yours.

136Por favor saba nuestro programa, tint voce enshu, please save our program. Thank you. Isaiah Smith, please. Isaiah Smith. Board of Education members and the superintendent. Mono is Isaiah, and I am in 3rd grade at the Maya Angelo French immersion IB World School. Si vous, please save our immersion path and IB programs. Learning a new language is not easy, but it is really… one and I worked hard. This makes me proud. was he recently? Recently, I earned my very first diploma. It felt good for others to see my hard work. But lately, I mean, my friends, and I. been worried. We heard that the French immersion might be cut for high school, and that we will lose IB right now due. You know what I gained from my IB. experience. This makes me sigh. We have

137spent so much time learning the. materials, and now you are breaking our bridge right before we can cross it. These programs make our school a special place. We are learning how to be global citizens. And how to understand people from all over the world. Please do not take. away our opportunities. Why do I have to come and do this? Why can't y'all figure this out in the boardroom? Thank you for listening, Maxie. Thank you for listening to me tonight. Thank you, Isaiah. Teresa Smith. Good evening, board members and the superintendent. Last week I stood before you trying to save the language immersion pathway into high school. Today I am back before you to advocate for the IB program at the Maya Angelou French immersion IB World School. This is yet another proposed cut that directly

138impacts my child and threatens the academic standard of our district. When the time came to decide where to send our son to school, we deliberately chose Mafi. We chose it specifically for the opportunity for the dual program offerings. Having navigated the education system as a private school, charter school, and public school parent, I did extensive research. I knew exactly where my son needed to thrive. He had already been introduced to Spanish and Mandarin, and while he is also an athlete, our ultimate priority is ensuring. He is firmly on track to college for his academics. Because I have been a parent of a student athlete at the tertiary level, academics is the pursuit for our mafi scholar. The IB program gives him the rigorous foundation he needs. For those considering cutting it, let me remind you

139of how the IB curriculum actually encrypts our children. It goes beyond standard education by demanding critical thinking, global awareness, and complex problem solving. It builds inquisitive, independent learners. who understand how to research and analyze, rather than simply memorize facts for standardized tests. It creates well-rounded scholars who are prepared for the academic rigor of higher education. My son has some areas that require supports. However, we intentionally sought out the IB program so that instead of focusing solely on those challenges. He will be grounded in the best possible educational environment. The IB program provides a framework where he can be challenged, supported, and ultimately given a distinct advantage when competing for the same college seats and career opportunities. Removing this program lowers the bar. It is incredibly frustrating to watch the very programs that draw families to

140PGCPS to be repeatedly placed on the chopping block. Why are we considering dismantling a program at a school that was one of the first in Maryland to be recognized with distinct international honors? Their complement is IB status. I am explicitly asking you all to go back to the boardroom, review the budget, and have a serious discussion about how to keep this program in place. Do not shortchange our scholars. Access to advanced globally recognized academic programs like IB should be… should not be a luxury reserved for private institutions. It is an absolute necessity for our children to compete. On a level playing field. Do not take this foundation away from them. Thank you, Teresa Smith. Chair Jackson, you are muted. You're on mute. Apologies, Kate Rob. Can you hear me? Hello? And of course. Hi, hello.

141Yes, thank you so much for the opportunity to share thoughts about the budget, and thank you to the panelists and students here tonight, lifting up your voice. I was already tearing up hearing from the students, so thanks for being here. I'm here to speak against the reduced funding for immersion schools and against investment in AI-based surveillance and AI-based. literacy tools. I'm a proud parent of a first grader at Cesar Chavez, which I know is not directly impacted by this budget, but I just want to share my experience as a parent of a child who goes to an immersion school. I cannot begin to describe the excitement I felt as a parent when I learned my son got into Cesar Chavez. I was thrilled that he would have the opportunity to learn another language. And, uh,

142learn about diverse cultures at such a young age, something that I didn't have access to growing up. And I felt even more joyful when he started kindergarten because I witnessed his excitement and curiosity about learning another language. meeting new friends and being in a safe, loving, and kind environment. We know and have heard the many benefits of learning another language so young, which I won't go into, but I'm surprised to see that there are plans to reduce funding for some immersion schools. I want other families to have the incredible joy and opportunity to have their children attend immersion schools, especially from kindergarten all the way through high school. I was quite surprised by the proposed investment into AI surveillance and AI literacy programs. I believe in the power of human connection, and I know my

143child and all students benefit from teacher mentorship and connection. We do not need to invest into AI surveillance, especially when we are seeing AI being weaponized. In our communities with ICE presence, we also don't need more AI tools in our classroom. Research shows that excessive screen time and gamified learning can lead to a thinning of brain cortex, diminished executive function, and reduced ability to sustain focus. I do not need my child to have more exposure to screens in the school environment. This seems odd that the county would spend such an incredible amount of dollars on AI, but also then reduce funds for immersion schools, IB programs. It's always hard to determine where to reduce funds for budgets, but we know education is an essential social determinant of health, and we need to provide high-quality educational

144opportunities for youth to do well in schools. This budget doesn't seem to be supporting our students in achieving the best educational outcomes. And I urge you all to reconsider the proposed budget cuts for this fiscal year. Thank you. Thank you, Brandy too. Brandy too. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Brandy Teal, and I have 2 daughters at Maya Angelou French immersion IB World School, and I'm here tonight to talk about priorities, asking you to preserve the IB and immersion programs at all levels. Because when you choose to cut educational programs, you are making a statement. You are saying that global readiness is optional, that bilingualism is expendable, that cultural comp. Competency is a luxury, and I refuse to accept that. IBN Immersion programs are not enrichment add-ons. They are not boutique experiments.

145They are high-performing academic models backed by decades of data and research. Students in both these programs consistently meet and often exceed district averages in reading, math, and critical thinking. They develop stronger executive function, sharper problem-solving skills, and deeper cognitive flexibility. So let's be clear, cutting these programs is about convenience to you and for you. We tell our students to think big. We tell them the world is open to them. We tell them they can compete anywhere. But now the Board of Education wants to strip away these powerful tools that prepare them to do exactly that. In a world where businesses operate globally, where diplomacy and national security depend on these skills that our scholars are being taught through these programs where healthcare providers serve diverse communities. The IB and immersion programs are not a bonus.

146They are preparation. They are workforce development. This is future proofing. And let's talk about equity. When you cut these IB and immersion programs, who loses access? Not the families who can afford private tutors, not the families who can pay for international travel. It is the common working families. It is the students whose chances at these opportunities sit inside Prince George's County Public School walls. Public education should expand opportunity, not shrink it. If you, the Board of Education, believes in preparing students for the real world, then you cannot retreat into a smaller, narrower version of education because budgets are tight. Leadership is not about trimming vision to fit constraints. It's about protecting what matters most. We can cut paper, we can cut inefficiencies, we can cut waste, but we should not cut opportunity for our kids.

147Every program eliminated sends a message about what you value, so I ask. Is the Board of Education telling the students at Maya Angelou French immersion, IB World School that you value their global readiness? Are you telling them that you value their cultural literacy? Are you telling them that you value equity? Do you value giving our students every possible advantage? If the answer is yes, then these programs must stay. Your decision will echo beyond this fix. fiscal year, it will shape the trajectory of the families and students who entrusted you to help prepare them for their future. Do not make their future smaller because the budget is tight. Make these cuts elsewhere. When you protect these programs, IB and immersion at all educational levels. You protect our scholars' opportunities and their future. Thank you. Thank you

148so much. Appreciate your time. Um, next patient on. Leo. Good evening. Hi, good evening, everyone. My name is patient Liu, and I'm the academic dean of the Chinese Immersion Program at Penn Branch Elementary. First, st I would like to thank you, Dr. Joseph, Dr. White, the team, the board member, and our PTA for revising the proposal. from the original version. Your witness to listen and make changes is appreciated. Since 2011, Pain Branch has proudly hosted the county's only Chinese immersion elementary program. I have devoted years to building and sustaining it's because I truly believe in its vision, its mission, and in the student is served. Every morning, students greet me with nihao, that is, hello in Chinese, and proudly demonstrate their language skills through activities, assessment. and school event. Mandarin is not just a subject.

149It is part of their identity. It will be heartbreaking to see this taken away. I'm asking the board to continue funding the program. The program took years to build. recruiting certified teachers, developing curriculum, and cultivating community trust and partnership. As a boundary school and the only Chinese emergency elementary school in the county, I recognize there are areas that we can improve to better meet the needs of all the students. I'm fully committed to engaging in meaningful conversation about how we can sustain and strengthen the program. And I deeply care about and being responsible as a dean for the program. With the new proposal, several questions immediately come to my mind. How was the number of 25 students determined if more than 25 students want to enroll? How was the decision be made? And most importantly,

150how can we ensure the process is truly equitable? I would like to be part of this process from the start, rather than simply being informed, like. a couple weeks ago, because I believe teamwork is essential to make the best decision for the students. I would like to make sure the Chinese immersion program is offering the best education possible. Chinese is being recognized as a critical language by the US government and major industry due to its importance for national security, economic competitiveness, and global diplomacy. It is considered identified as a top priority language. Eliminating this program would move our district away from this national priority, from preparing our students for future global opportunities. Our students deserve opportunity, so I sincere appreciate your recognition. of the importance of learning Mandarin Chinese. And also, please extend this thinking

151to recognize and reconsider other immersion programs and IB programs. Thank you for your time and all your service for the community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dion Smith. I mean, excuse me, Deion Roberts. Thank you. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. All right. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Dion Roberts, and I'm a proud parent of a student at Pink Branch Elementary School and the president of the Pta. I'm also a 16 year veteran in the US Armed Forces, where I serve for 2 different branches of the military under multiple administrations, and currently working. As a civilian in the federal government. My adult career has given me perspective with ongoing disconnect. that, uh, see at many levels of our education system. Many times I have seen higher ups

152make decisions that are intended to shake things up and solve problems, only to cause new problems in the process. I'm here tonight because one of the problems caused as a result of the current budget proposal, the decision to eliminate all emergent programs at the high school level and significantly cut the Chinese immersion programs at the elementary level, while eliminating it at the middle and high school levels. This has caused much frustration to many impacted families and communities, including my own. As a federal employee, every day I see those with Mandarin fluency being sought after as top prospects by organizations for intelligence, as well as diplomacy. Even in the private sector, China is the second largest economy in the world, and opening out children's possibilities to it could create an investment in our communities that we

153could see for years to come. China is the second largest leader in AI, which is the greatest emerging market of our time. What better way to ensure our children are college and career ready than providing them with a language that will increase their prospects? Though, when considering this and the additional benefits, the language immersion program provides, I'll children in community and county as a whole, it saddens me to see that this continuity is being threatened. And this brings me back to my experience in the military. While the decision to defund the immersion programs was made to accommodate a directive from higher-ups to appease a budget deficit, I truly believe that educators and community on the front lines were left out of the problem-solving process. Day in and day out, educators and members of the community

154come together to figure out solutions to issues and overcome adversity for the benefit of our scholars. We work as a team to meet the needs of our students every day. On that team, there are subject matter experts, creators, innovators, and much more, which are resources and are an essential level to give introspective. The issues thus are able to give an accurate solution. While a solution can be proposed from above, a true solution couldn't be achieved without involving those at our front lines. They will fight and advocate for needs if you involve them. They will decipher the more complex issues if you show them the symptoms of the problem. They will defend resolutions that were achieved with transparent mitigation and MAX participation. These are your forces. They will go to battle for you. If you show

155them, you are on their side. I urge you to work with our educators and community, and finding the resources to maintain our immersion programs. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Thank you. While I could never stop you for being… not being able to solve complex multifaceted issues, I can't afford not tapping into our resources. Thank you, and thank you for your service. Alexandria… Alexandria, excuse me, T. My name is Dr. Tukaevin and this is my daughter Rosa. She is a Chinese immersion student at Paint Branch Elementary. I have a written testimony that I could send you, but today I just want to provide my feedback on the option B that was presented for the immersion programs earlier today. And I think it's not an adequate replacement for the existing immersion programs, and here's why.

156First, um… it's… there's no immersion in middle school anymore for Chinese, and no immersion for high school, um, and the notion that world languages instruction in middle school and then an AP class in high school will allow students. to pass their biliteracy seal test is just not supported by the data. Second, Dr. White has publicly stated before that the Chinese immersion program is not run the way it should be run, but the number that was presented today, 493,000 for three teachers and an academic dean. Is the same inefficient model just scaled down? We reviewed the budget of Pitt Branch Elementary, and we did indeed see that it was inefficiently run and overstaffed. The same program outcomes could be achieved with. Twice fewer teachers, right? Currently, there are two teachers for each classroom, a Chinese teacher

157and an English teacher, and it could be just two teachers per two classrooms, with AM and PM shifts. So, the entire Chinese immersion program can be funded with just student-based budget allocation. Basically, the cost of the immersion program is teacher salaries, and Dr. Joseph promised not to fire any teachers. We only identified $13,000 per year in additional immersion program costs in the form of supplies, and like with DORC and other programs, it doesn't cost any extra to run those programs because. The teacher, who's an immersion teacher, is also in the classroom teaching all these hours. You don't need any other teacher in the classroom. My third point is the 25%, 25 student immersion option offered to us does not reflect the data on how many parents would like to opt out from this program. Uh,

158we just ran an official school-wide survey. Ms. Liu posted it with the permission of, uh, Mr. Hendershot, the, um, Prince School's principal, and it indicated that only 8% of the families would like to opt out. So we need at least two-thirds of the students, at least 50 students in the school. to have the chance to continue with their immersion, at least for the students who are already in the program. Otherwise, it's not equitable to people who are already in the program. Um, and again, I repeatedly have been told by the board members that we need to fight for a bigger pie, for more money for funding of educational programs for all the students in the county, and I'm with you, I'm already fighting. I just returned from Annapolis, from the Free State PTA Legislative Advocacy.

159Um, they just don't remove our programs from the budget. We are so passionate about them. This is our reason for fighting. We're with you. We will be with you in the trenches. Please return, fully funded language immersion programs and IV programs to the budget proposal, and we are your troops, like Dion just said. We will fight with you, just tell us what to do, what to advocate for. Thank you so much. Thank you. Allison Mendoza. Waters. Opposition to the funding cuts to immersion programs. Yes, good evening. My name is Allison Mendoza Walters, a proud parent of a Cesar Chavez immersion student and a preschooler in a preschool daycare, and I would like to advocate along with many other parents, for continuation of funding of language immersion programs all the way to the high school level.

160I do appreciate the reconsidering. Um, with the option B's, and I heard earlier on the… in the meeting that, uh, they… that, um, there's openness to continue dialogue, so I urge that continued dialogue, and especially in today's society. of divisiveness and hate, and even violence. Bilingualism and multiculturalism is more important than ever. I would also like to speak on a second topic that has been less mentioned, and that is on AI surveillance. So I am opp… I am opposed to the investment in AI surveillance, PGCPS does not have the technical, legal, and oversight capacity to manage the volume and sensitivity of data generated by facial recognition cameras, AI weapon detection systems, and license plate readers. in a climate of expanding federal surveillance and politicized enforcement, increasing the pool of searchable student data creates additional risk

161that sensitive student information could be used in harmful ways for our students and our families, a risk that PGCPS is not equipped to mitigate. These tools would significantly expand the amount of student information collected, stored, and processed by outside vendors. including federal enforcement agencies. So I'll keep my comments brief once again in support of language emergent programs and in opposition of AI surveillance. Thank you. Chanel Balagoon. Hello. Hi. As was mentioned, my name is Chanel Belogan. This is actually my first time hearing about all the Chinese immersion program details, but I'm actually here. with my son in the background, excuse me, actually interrupted me, but Leo, I'm gonna meet and give me a second. Um, so, my son is actually in the first grade and attends Princeton Elementary School over here at Camp Spring, um,

162in Camp Springs. Um, so I was actually talking to, um, excuse me, I wanted to speak about. The allocation of funds, um, going towards teachers aides and assistants. Um, the main issue at his school right now is, um… the hiring freeze, I believe. Um, a lot of… Leo, why you wait till my turn to start talking? Can you wait one moment? Okay, I see, I see. Before you get kicked off. I'm sorry, you guys, but yes. Okay, so, um… Yeah, so the allocation of funds towards teacher assistance and also creating more PTA chapters in different schools. I've come to this school and there's no such thing as a PTA, no such thing as group meetings where we can get together and discuss personal issues within the school. Um, my issue was more of, uh, motivating

163the schools, uh, excuse me, motivating the students to actually come to school. Um, I heard you speaking about an issue with chronic absent absenteeism, excuse me, absenteeism, excuse me. Um, and I believe little things like keeping up the morale within the school, um, having, uh, uh, student-led, more teams and clubs be the forefront of the school to have more pep rallies, more pep within a school. Um, I was thinking about having more motivational speakers just to have, uh, come quarterly. Um, just to give the kids some encouragement, um, a reason to get up and, you know, actually, uh, have a reason to join these programs. I really want to work on, um, capturing the core of the issue, um, versus just remedying, um, just the little problems that come here and there, and medicating the

164symptoms. Um, so I believe the core is the motivation within the children. Um, and like, uh, who was it, Miss Pamela Boser, uh, Strother was saying earlier, um, only what we mentioned will be considered for the budget. Um, so we are talking about things that are already allocated in the budget, but I'm thinking more of. Um, starting… starting from the ground up with this, because I feel like this is, like, the core of the issue with school right now, is really the students aren't motivated to go to school. And I was seeing earlier that $4 million is already allocated towards student support. I wasn't seeing anything specifically in the budget, um, going towards student morale pep rallies or anything like that. And to me, that's a basic necessity for any school. Um, so, yeah, so

165based on how I was raised and. Um, where I went to school, I went to a magnet school, so this is, like, really maybe my first time dealing with. public school. But yeah, so I was just thinking about that, um, coming up maybe with a buddy program. Yeah, to have student aides help with the teachers since they're so overwhelmed. Okay? And that's it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Lisa Wilson, please. Yes, greetings, Chairman. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Yeah, they will show you to watch. Oh, greetings, Chairman. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Sounds like the other caller is still on my time. If I can please have a reset of my time. Yes. Yeah, no, no one's there. Thank you. My name is Lisa Wilson. I'm

166the parent of a disabled child. I'm an unpaid and volunteer special education advocate. I consider myself to be a global special education ambassador. I present comments today, yet while I continue to grapple with special education retaliation, I. I will not shrink in this moment of adversity. Even people who engage in, um… Administrative and legal processes in advocacy of their disabled children deserve an opportunity to speak to their elected representatives. Today, I am asking for bifurcation. I'm asking for the associate superintendent of special education to be abolished for economic reasons. and the aforementioned budgetary constraints that have been discussed throughout this meeting and during the Superintendent's presentation. I am further asking for the Special Education Compliance Office to be severed from the special education department. This will diminish the negative perceptions of the special education office

167policing itself. The data reveals an explosion of special education complaints, many of which have been substantiated. This often results in a breach of trust. The ongoing failures in special education are often buried and hidden away from public view. to promote academic achievements for disabled students. What's happening is that the implementation… the key to this… solving this problem, which is costly and educationally harmful, is simply the implementation of the IEPs and accountability. Yet, children who are legally entitled to in a least restrictive environment are silently disappeared into the non-public placement system. In my case, my son… is now attending Baltimore Lab, which is a nearly 2 hours away from our home. I ask for non-public placement as a remedy. After receiving a 22-page letter of finding from MSDE. I simply could not allow, in good conscience,

168for my son to fall 4 grade levels below grade level. circling back, the current director of special education position is qualified and capable of managing the strategic direction of the special education program and supervisory supervising programs and services related. The candidate should possess a JD in special education or civil rights. Okay, thank you. or a related degree. This will restore trust and confidence in the PG County Special Education Program. It is essential that the candidate understand the delicate intersectionality of idea, Title II, and Section 504. Thank you. Stephanie Zelensky. Delinski, excuse me. Good stuff. Thank you for having me. I'm a graduate of Suitland High School class of 2004. I currently live in PG County. Y'all are threatening to take away the IB program, and it's going to affect every school. My child is going

169to go to my son is in right here. Got another daughter. She's sleep. Yours are trying to take it away from Melwood, Madison, and Douglas. That's three schools that are feeding into each other that will no longer have a specialty program. You're disproportionately impacting the entire Upper Marlboro area by taking away this program funding. I went to Suitland over 20 years ago, and I know for a fact that I'd be I'm sorry, did I lose your attention? Yeah, chunky eyes on you. Ib is a very good program. It's very rigorous. I've seen kids graduate from it. Sorry, are you? This is pointless. I see you're not even listening to people to talk. All right. Thanks. Thanks for listening. I hope you have a great day. Done. Thank you. Rachel Monthurch. Wilford. Yes, hello. Can you

170hear me? Thank you so much for having this public session to hear out. Yes. Uh, the public on this issue, I will try to be brief. Um, I'm speaking like many of the parents have today in support of restoring some of the funding back to the immersion programs. and also in opposition to the intended investments in AI surveillance and AI literacy tools. I'll start with that, that AI surveillance is highly problematic in terms of over policing and privacy. Uh, I also believe from my own years of teaching at, um, summer programs and teaching teenagers at summer programs, that the developmental stage that teenagers are in. In those years where they are risk takers, and they need to risk and fail, and they need to be curious, they need to have freedom for growth, that that

171would be impaired by being surveilled and knowing that they are always under observation. That would stunt curiosity, self-reliance, and other, um… kind of soft skills that are necessary in the adolescent and teenager years for their proper development into adulthood. And if the purpose of education is to launch into adulthood, then it's a lot more than just about those tangible, testable skills like math and science. It is about those soft skills, and I believe that surveilling. children it would impede their educational growth. Um, I think an environment where surveillance becomes the norm is an environment where education has become secondary. I think it is too soon to be investing millions of dollars in AI surveillance when it is a new technology, it's untested, unproven. In fact, that what information we do have about how these systems

172work, often they have a lot of failure. But, of course, those who are selling the systems, um, don't mind that because AI learns, and they would be teaching their own AI intelligence on our children. I don't think that our tax dollars should pay for that experiment, and I don't think that the potential harms to the mental health and behavioral. development, the natural social and emotional development of our children. Um, I don't believe it's worth that sacrifice. I also am not a fan of AI literacy tools, because, as Mr. Rogers said, and as my mother, who's a children's librarian said, and as everyone who I have ever learned about the love of learning from, know that children learn to read by being read to. And by experiencing reading, they're not going to learn to read better

173from a computer that lacks the human element. Um, I think a lot has been said about the impacts and the positive impacts of the immersion program, so I'm just going to say, I'm going to kind of second a lot of that, um. Thank you. A lot of the wonderful things that have been said. And this is my future kindergartner, hopefully at the school where my daughter goes, my eight year old goes to Cesar Chavez dual Spanish immersion, and I feel like we are very lucky to be members of that community. And I just wish that everyone had that opportunity. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Gwendolyn Suhanu. Thank you so much. Bye. Thank you. Aha, yes, my name is Gwendolyn Sahunu. I'm actually, I work for Pgcps as a substitute teacher, as well

174as my daughter attends Cesar Chavez. She's a 1st grader. Um, I think that the students pretty much beautifully articulated their case, so I won't say much about the need for funding language immersion programs. But I will say that I was disappointed to hear about the. the cuts being done to the students with disabilities. I also happen to be a wheelchair user, and I'm already frustrated that there's at the structurally ineptness of a lot of the buildings. Like, I can't even sub in some of the buildings because there's no elevators. or there's manual elevators, which is, like, ridiculous. Um, so just briefly, I wanted to say that it's very important for students with disabilities, whether physical or intellectual, to have the support that they need. The staff that takes care of them, they're already understaffed. So

175I'm just seriously worried about what this budget is going to do in regards to children with disabilities. Thank you. Thank you, Francis Carter Johnson. Good afternoon. I'm Frances Carter Johnson. I live in. I'm sorry. I live in Oxon Hill. We have to. There we go. I live in Oxon Hill. We have 3 children that attend overlook full Spanish immersion and Colin Powell Academy, and we are concerned with the recently announced plans to decrease. funds for special needs and disability student program funding, and to discontinue the new incoming students into the Spanish Immersion Program at Largo High School. Uh, we're concerned, but from tonight's meeting, we appreciate the additional information that students could continue their language learning via dual enrollment. However, we didn't hear information about disability student program funding. We hope that programs will continue.

176That programs will continue the growth we saw in staff and resources in the 25-26 school year for the autism program, for example, at Colin Powell. In terms of the immersion programs, after looking at the dual enrollment universities that are available, I do believe that emerging students will have appropriate curriculum. However, I'm still concerned about the support that will be provided to students and families pursuing this program, as well as the cultural experiences students and families are able to have from emerging programs. We also do not welcome and do not hope to have changes to immersion programs in. For the academic years. Not only are our children learning and excelling in Spanish. But they are making our home multilingual for their parents, their grandparents, their brother, who is in the autism program at Colin Powell, while

177the Immersion program is not the best place for his needs right now, he hears and speaks Spanish at home too and participates in activities at Colin Powell and Overlook. Overlook's success is evident in the school moving to a blue ribbon school this academic year. And this is exciting to us because it's evident that the work that we've put in as a family into the immersion program has paid off. As recently displaced federal workers, my husband and I completely understand the funding landscape has resulted in changes that no one saw coming. However, we ask that PGCPS, as you've done, and the leadership and the board, continue to offer alternative solutions to cutting immersion programs. Please consider other options. And continue to talk to us and continue to hear from parents, um, to think about these alternatives

178that you have done. We appreciate it, we thank you for your time, and thank you for having us this evening. Honored, thank you. Barnard Johnson. Governor Johnson. Moving on, uh, to… Are you there, Garner Johnson? Yes. Hello, hello, hello. Vola. So, Garner Johnson. Estoy en cuato grado en la escuela overlooked in mercion total en espanol. E participado en el programa de emotion de este kinder, hecho amicos en creables con el subientes y prefesores. The Panama, Puerto Rico, Mexico, El Salvador, y muchos, other spices, Hispano hablantes. Last year, I scored level 4 on my English MCAT, the highest of all 3rd graders in my class at Overlook, and 42 points above the Maryland state average. Learning in Spanish is helping me to excel in English as well, given the academic achievements of students in the submersion

179programs. I think PGCPS should be planning to learn how to expand bilingual experiences. for all PGCPS students, instead of considering closing any of them. I attended as pre… I attended pre-K as a typical student with my twin brother, Grayson at James Rider Randall before I start before starting the immersion program pre-K four. I enjoy learning Spanish and I have enjoyed doing projects on dance and swimming. And traveling all in Spanish. I have participated in Spanish almost every year in the program. And read and write above grade level and English and Spanish. Please don't close our school or other immersion programs in PGCPS. Thank you. Apologies. Um… Or Marinet, uh… Ramie? Forgive me for the pronunciation. Marini Rami? Raimi? Individual IB program. M-A-R-I-N-I. Okay, moving on to Stephanie Jenkins. Yes, yes, yes, I'm sorry. Yes, yes,

180I'm here. I'm sorry. I couldn't unmute there. Okay, no problem. Yes, it's actually my son that's going to speak. This is my first time, so I didn't know. But let me get him on. Taj. Yeah. Okay. I don't even know how to turn my camera on. I've been having tech issues. Oh, he might have to keep the camera off, but he's gonna talk. Okay. evening. My name is Tasha, I'm a 5th grader, Angelo French Munjabi World School. I am here because the IB program has changed the way I learn and the way I understand the world. And Abby, we'll just read from a book. We do hands-on projects that help us explore problems and come up with our own ideas. These projects make learning fun, and they are my favorite part of school besides PE.

181They help me think hard. They called welcome my classmates to understand how different subjects connect. Abby teaches me how to ask questions that sometimes annoys about solve problems and look at things from a different angle. I hope we reconsider cutting I believe. Thank you for this time. Thank you for your time this evening. Thank you so much. Stephanie Jenkins. Good evening. My name is Stephanie Jenkins and I have my daughter with me, Serenity. I'm going to have her introduce herself and speak first. Hi, my name is Sarah Lindy. And I am a student at Overlook fully Spanish Emergency School. I enjoy learning. And want to speak many languages. My teacher is from Puerto Rico, and I love her very much. Hola me amoserenity just righte de la. Este Puerto Rico is a. Caramel mocha. Thank

182you. I just wanted to reiterate what was expressed earlier to the board members and interim superintendents Joseph. So again, my name is Stephanie Jenkins. I live in the Board of Education District 9. Um, as you heard from Serenity, she attends Overlook Full Spanish Immersion School and is enrolled in the Spanish Immersion Program. We know that immersion programs are working, and students in language immersion consistently perform at or above their peers academically. Including when MCAP assessments, and these programs have earned recognition beyond our local system because of the quality of instruction and student outcomes. Cutting the high school immersion pathway does not support students who have already invested years in this program. It ends the pathway just as students are reaching the stage where biliteracy and academic benefits are fully realized. And to be clear, traditional

183world language courses are not an equivalent replacement for immersion. As a parent, I want my children to at least have the option. to continue with the immersion program into high school, your proposal does not afford them the opportunity. Also, I'm not understanding the concept of fiscal opportunity when it comes to language for our students. How our students supposed to be competitive when you are taking away services? I'm thinking of my children's future and of the future of the immersion program as a whole, taking away programming, will that not lead to further decreases in enrollment? Your vision includes being a culturally responsive district. How is that demonstrated? in the reduction of the immersion program. I respectfully ask the board and administration to pause any further cuts to language immersion in IB programs and to demonstrate fiscal

184responsibility by starting with central cuts and not student opportunities. Our children deserve stability, follow-through, and decisions that put learning first. Thank you so much, and I thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Renee Kendall Cole. I don't know. Are you going guys going together? Renee, Kendall, Cole and… R-I-E-L, Ryle Kendall Cole? Rayo, yes, Raina and Rayel. It's okay. Excuse me, sorry about that. Good evening, members of the board, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm here to ask you to reconsider the decision to eliminate the dual language program and instead consider at least a phase out process that allows current students to complete the program they began. My brother attends the Capital Heights Dual Language Program, and this year he has done exceptionally well. I've seen firsthand how much he

185has grown, not only academically, but personally. He has gained confidence in both English and Spanish skills, and that confidence shows in the way he participates in class, communicates with others, and believes in himself as a learner. The dual language program has provided him and many other students with opportunities to go beyond traditional instructions. These students are developing strong language skills, cultural awareness, and the ability to think globally. These are skills that are essential in today's world and help prepare students to become. True global citizens. Eliminating the program immediately would be detrimental to my brother's learning, and to the learning of many of the students who have invested years into this educational path. These students have worked hard and deserve the chance to finish what they started in a program that has clearly supported their growth

186and success. I respectfully ask the board to consider at least a phase-out process rather than complete elimination, allowing current students to complete the program. would honor their hard work, their family's commitment, and the values to this program. that has brought… that has been brought to our community. Thank you for your time, your consideration, and for always keeping students' best interests at the center of your decisions. Hello. I mean, good afternoon board. For the tenders, I'd like to thank you for allowing me to speak today. And thank you. I… Beg of you not to get rid of Capital Heights Elementary School, because in the other school I went to, I was not on grade level. And but now I'm on grade level, so I hope you can keep this year. Thank you. And. I'm done. Thank

187you so much. Appreciate all of the comments tonight. And that concludes our public speakers for tonight. There are 62 written comments, all in which are on diligent for public viewing. Now, there is one pre-recorded video. And thank you all for your participation on tonight's comments. But before we move to the proposed budget amendment, I do want to, uh… Pause for a minute and let Dr. Joseph speak for a point of clarification about our special education funding. Thank you. Thank you, Chair Brent Jackson. First, I'll say, you know, I really do appreciate hearing everyone's comments tonight. You know, I think it's powerful when people have the opportunity to come out and express themselves. So, you know, I know the board. is committed to partnership with families, as well as the administration. And your advocacy is important.

188And I think. You know, one of the challenges as as board member Boozer Struthers has mentioned is we've got to advocate. We've got a resource dilemma here that we do need to address. You know. Now, and moving, you know, towards the future. As it relates to special education, we just wanted to clarify, because it's really important that we have made no reductions to any special education programs. In fact, that we've… we're requesting additional funding for special education. In our proposed budget. I think it's also important to note that with the IB programs, we're not eliminating any of the high school programs. The diploma-bound program, so students and the programs that are at the elementary and middle. They're not prerequisites to be, you know, in the program. I think that's important, you know, for the public.

189But these are tough decisions that need to be made, and we really do thank you for your input. Thank you, Chair Jackson. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thanks for the point of clarity. Also, one more point of clarity before we move to the budget amendments, because. You know, we're talking about money, so I think we should just make sure we clarify some things with Director Cindy Adeline. She did talk about percentages, the increases, and I know numbers very deceiving with there. Um, you know, depending on how their position, 50% and 58% sounds huge if you make it, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I just want you to give the actual numerical value of the increase of the board salary for the board members and the chair. Yes, of course. Actual

190English. So, according to the health. Please. Actually, just to increase, just to increase the number that's mandated by the State law. Yes, so according to, um, House Bill 1079, beginning December 7, 2026, the chair's annual salary will increase by $11,000. and all elected board members will be increased by $9,000. Do you want to give the total figure that will put the members at? Thank you so much. Okay. No, I'm just, uh, one of you to speak to the increase in the percentage, because you you said the percentage. I just wanted to give the actual dollar amount. I think that was just for a point of clarity. That's all I was asking. Thank you so much. Moving on to the proposed budget amendment. The committee chair recognizes Dr. Joseph to present the proposed budget amendments. I'm

191sorry, Chair Jackson. What did you ask of me? I'm sorry. Uh, yes, sorry, um… The proposed budget amendments, the committee chair recognizes Dr. Joseph to present the proposed budget amendments. I guess, so the amendment, uh, to increase. So there was a budget amendment that was put forward. Um, that was in the tracker, um, that asks to increase the additional reports to the county executive from 50 million to 95 million. So thank you, and uh… So, right now, so with that budget amendment to the increase from an additional. $50 million to 95 million dollars. So now each board member will cross for discussion and each board member will have 2.5 min to ask their questions and receive an answer. Any unanswered questions within the live time will be captured in the follow up. Board members, do

192you have any questions? I think this was a board member Boozer's amendment, if I'm not mistaken. Did you want to speak to this for me, Mr. Charters? Sure. Chair Jackson. Thank you. You know, just going back to my earlier comments of, um. you know, the you know that the… Without us going… fully public on what we need as what PGCPS needs for the budget as it goes to the County Executive for the full county budget to then be discussed and voted on by the County Council, then. the public doesn't have a chance to… have their voice to their… the funders of Prince George's County. And so if the school system is not. honest in the need, then there's no chance to have that open. open discussion with the full public of Prince George's County. Our

193process right now, the Board of Education has not voted on anything. Um… The superintendent… provides a recommendation. We have an opportunity to make changes before that recommendation goes to the county executive, and at that point the public has an opportunity to share their views with the county executive and County Council. their priorities for funding of public services in the budget. And so if we do not ask. For more on this between the 50 to the 150 gap, then the public does not have a chance to convey. their thoughts on that to the ultimate funders, the county executive in consultation with the county council. So that is why I am asking Dr. Joseph to make that change in the budget that is submitted to the county executive. Thank you, board member colleagues, do you have any?

194Is there anyone who has a question? about this proposal amendment budget. It's a lot of people online right now, so I'm trying to scroll and make sure I can see all the hands, but… If I don't see you, speak up, please. So I want to say thank you to Dr. Joseon and the finance team. There seems to be no more conversation around the budget amendment for board member struggles. So thank you all for watching and joining us for tonight's final virtual budget work session and public hearing. Please check the Prince George's County Board of Education website and diligent for meeting information and updates. There being no further discussion, the time is now 8:48 p.m. In February 19, 2026, Prince George's County. for education, budget work session, public hearing for 2027. Superintendent defaults, operating budget is

195yearned. Thank you. Good night.