001Okay, the time is now 5:30 p.m. Good evening and welcome to the November 10th, 2025 academic achievement committee meeting. I'm Jonathan Briggs, District 2 representative and chair of the Academic Achievement Committee. It is a pleasure to welcome you to our meeting this evening. I hope everyone had a great weekend and that you're ready to get started tonight. Um, we are pleased to have with us this evening Dr. Judith White, Chief Academic Officer. Um, Dr. Dr. Deianne Collins, chief of staff, Dr. Reese Jr., Associate Superintendent for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation, um, and Dr. Ingred Williams Horton, Director of the Office of Community Schools, who will be leading tonight's presentation. For those unable to join us live, a recording will be available on the PGPS YouTube channel and on the Diligent website. Um, so we'll now proceed
002to the roll call. Miss Johnson, please call the role. >> Mr. Griggs >> present. >> Miss Boozer Strer >> present. >> Mrs. Olivo >> present. >> Miss Boyce MC >> present. >> Mr. Jakay >> present. >> All right. Thank you so much, Miss Johnson. A quorum is present. We're going to move to item 3.1, adoption of the November 10th, 2025 meeting agenda. If there are no objections, the committee will adopt the November 10th, 2025 meeting agenda. If there being no objections, the meeting agenda is adopted. Uh we're now going to move on to approval of the October 13th, 2025 meeting minutes. If there are no corrections, the committee shall approve the October 13th, 2000 2025 meeting minutes as distributed. Okay. There being no corrections, the meeting minutes are approved. Um there are no registered uh
003public commenters uh for this evening, but always want to say that we want to hear from you. Um you help us to shape really strong um academic instruction outcomes. We know that um the the majority clientele that we serve are our students and this is really the bread and butter of the work that we do um as a school district. And so as much as we can hear from you about your experience, we do. But we don't have any uh public comment or speakers this evening. So, we are going to move to discussion item 6.0, community schools, the theory behind the practice. Uh, so I'll now yield the floor to Dr. Judith White, chief academic officer, to introduce agenda item 6.1, community schools, the theory behind the practice. >> Good evening everyone. Thank you so
004so much um, Chair Briggs. So, this evening we're talking about a topic that's not new to us. However, it is under new leadership. So the biggest takeaway is this work has maintained and has continued. But what you'll hear tonight is them sharing their vision of how they would like to move forward with community schools. So Chair Briggs and I as well as vice chair uh Boozer Strer thought that it was um important to bring this topic back because sometimes people don't understand the why behind community schools, the what behind community schools, the opportunities with community schools. So, I'm excited about the new leadership under Dr. Ree um and Dr. Williams Horton and what they will share this evening. So, remember tonight is about their theory, their vision, the passion that they have, what they want
005to see, and then when we come back in March, they'll have an opportunity to bring the voice from the field of what actually happened. So, with that, I turn it over to these two individuals to walk us through their presentation. >> Absolutely. Thank you so much, Dr. White. And I'm thrilled to be joined here with my colleague, uh director, Dr. Dr. Ingger Williams Horton who has been leading the work of community schools of Prince George's over county over the last four to five years. Many of you might know me from being the former director of equity, diversity, and belonging. And I am now the associate superintendent for teaching, learning, and innovation at PGCPS. And as you think about everything that you heard about me previously about equity, it's important to really to state that the
006work of the community schools is very much tied to the work of equity, diversity, belonging, and inclusion in PGCPS at its absolute core. So, we're going to move through a presentation that was prepared, but we know that this is a really robust topic, and we expect that our board members will have a lot of questions that might attach directly to the presentation, but might expand slightly outside of the scope of what's presented and kind of attach to community schools more generally. So, we welcome all of the questions and input that you will all bring this evening. And without further ado, um if we could share the slides for the presentation, we'll go ahead and get started. All right. So, our title is the community schools initiatives, the theory behind the practice as Dr. White kind
007of laid out. And then when we come back to you all later in March, you'll hear more about how people in the field who are doing the work at schools are actually leveraging the community schools grant funds in order to make magic happen for our students and families in PGCPS. And we can move to the next slide where I will quickly walk through the outcomes for the evening. And so we want to make sure that everyone listening is able to attain a comprehensive understanding of the purpose and the goals of community schools in PGCPS. We want to examine the structure of community schools with in relation to the guidelines established by the Maryland State Department of Education. It's really important to note that the Maryland State Department of Education is responsible for providing grant funds
008that our state legislature makes possible through through legislation for schools across the state. And Prince George's County is one of the local education agencies that has a large number of community schools. and we'll talk more about that and and how we're able to kind of leverage about this year $100 million of grant funds coming directly from the state which is significant. We'll review the primary challenges that are currently faced by community schools in PGCPS along with some of the strategies that we're using to address uh those challenges. And last, we want to make sure that we get insights and feedback on our proposed plan as we advance solutions and strengthen the initiative moving forward. We are currently in a space where we want to make sure that we are re-educating the PGCPS community about the
009what of community schools, the why of community schools. And as a part of that re-education, we want to make sure that we're clarifying misconceptions that people have about the community schools grant because it's very different from other grant funds that we receive from the federal government like title one and then other grant funds that schools are able to kind of use to kind of um make a comprehensive education program possible for students. And we can move to the next slide. Dr. Williams Horton, I know that you have a lot of passion for the specific work around community schools. So, in a moment, I want to invite you to talk about the wraparound services. But, as I as I set you up for this, it's important to know that there are 13 different categories of wraparound
010services that our schools and our system are able to use grant funds for in order to make sure that we're reaching the entire child and the family. to make sure that we're removing barriers to students being able to access rigorous academic content and be their best possible person. So, Dr. Williams Horton, would you mind speaking to some of the wraparound services that you see here and kind of share how they're important for our PGCPS community? >> Sure. Thank you, Dr. Ree. Um, so as we speak about wraparound services for our students in PGCPS, um, we've been afforded the opportunity to provide those services through um, smiles. So that's where our dental services have been utilized for our students and families across Prince George's County Public Schools. Um we've been also able to um talk to
011some of our vision uh partners or vendors, prospective vendors that are coming on board um hopefully before the end of the school year to help our students get vision screenings as well as prospective opportunities for them to receive glasses. Um as we're talking about um providing health and wellness as well as food for in school and out of school time, we know that our students if they're not able to access um good nutrition or have good nutritional um food or nutrients nutritional food um nutrient food um then they won't be able to access the academics that we need them to have. So we also want them to be able to share what they learn about good food and food habits with their families. So, we've been afforded the opportunity to work with vendors, for example,
012Brighter Bites, who not only provides um healthy options for our students, but also teach the students how to um how to eat wisely and share those opportunities with their families. We also have the opportunity to work with um vendors such as Nema's garden and what they do is um they teach the students how to grow their own vegetables and they teach the families how to grow their own vegetables. So no, not not only are we working on providing um food for the students and the families to decrease the barriers of food insecurity, but also talking about how do we sustain um eating healthy and eating nutritious foods throughout a lifetime. Um when we talk about improving student attendance, we really focus on um our students and their chronic absenteeism. So we want to get to
013the foot or to the ground of how or why students are chronically absent. And that leads to our mental health uh providers. So we utilize our mental health providers to help support those students that may be having difficulty um at home or at school and they need someone to talk to at no charge to them to their families. So we provide that to all of our 147 schools. >> That's great. And before we move to the next slide, I want to just pause here for a moment to say this has been a big day for community schools in the state of Maryland. PGCPS was very proud to host the Maryland Senate Committee for Education, Energy, and the Environment Committee. It's called triple E. That's kind of the the short name for it. And we had
014about seven legislators and people from their offices come from Annapolis today to join us at two of our schools. First, they were at Cherokee Lane Elementary School, which is a school that is a part of the very first cohort of community schools in PGCPS and that school became a community school with grant funds from the state about six years ago. And then we moved slightly north to Laurel High School which is a school that's a part of our newest cohort. So this triple E committee was able to hear directly from our students, from family members, from staff members, and from the partners that you heard Dr. Ingred Williams Horton speaking about around the impact of the wraparound services and what they've meant for students feeling like school is a place where they're excited to come
015to, where they belong, and where they can achieve, and where their real needs are met. Um, visav all 13 of these wraparound services. for a really powerful day for PGCPS as we got to really help the state um as we're going to advocate really strongly for continued funding for this very important initiative. And I want to state that Maryland is different from a lot of other places because in the state of Maryland, our state legislature appropriates funds for community schools and in other states the money doesn't come from the state. people have to find external resources and have relationships with partners to kind of fund the initiative. So, we're pretty well situated here in Maryland to continue to make impact. So, we just want to give thanks to to the folks who are able to
016help make it happen. We can move to the next slide. So, in PGCPS, we have a total this year of 147 community schools. And when we first began, Dr. Williams, how many schools did we have? 40 in our initial cohort. >> About 45 in cohort one. about 45 in cohort one. So as we move forward to talk about our problem in practice, I want you all to remember we went from 45 schools in cohort one to 147 schools today. And that is a difference of 102 schools. So when you think about scale, I want you all to know that the central office portion of community schools did not scale as fast as the number of community schools we have. And so as I've gotten to work more closely with the community school specialists and the
01711 members now who are part of that team and we just added a few to kind of expand it. They've been working really really hard to make sure that they're providing our community school coordinators and you hear more about them with the skills and tools that they need to really bring the vision of what it means to be a community school to fruition in Prince George's County. And by that I mean the school should be a hub and a place where students and families can come to have all of their needs met so that the entire child is considered and the entire family is considered so that they can access rigorous academic content and we want to remove as many barriers as possible. So truly this is an equity initiative. So when we speak about
018the challenges later, I want you to know that we should expect some of these challenges to come about because of how quickly we've scaled and we want to make sure that we're working with the board of education and with the community to make sure that we are retooling in a smart way to maximize our impact. And we can move to the next slide. So here's our theory of action and I really like it. So I'm going to read it to you very carefully. If the office of community schools strengthens the capacity of the community school coordinators and there are 147 of them through quality onboarding, professional learning and data-driven practices. If the office fosters strong family school partnerships and if the office monitors the impact of each of those wraparound services and there are many
019many many many partners who we have providing services to our students but we have to monitor the effectiveness and the impact of those. If we do that really well then PGCPS will be empowered to eliminate barriers to learning that help every student thrive. And the reason why I want to pause on this theory of action for a moment is because this role of the community school coordinator who is a person who's hired by the principal is a relatively new position in PGCPS. And when you have something that's new and a principal who's bringing that person on board, it takes a lot of communication, a lot of organization, and a lot of vision setting to make sure that that new community school coordinator is able to move on the vision of community schools and not be
020as I want to be careful with my language here, not be as pulled into the normal ways of operating in a school. So, as we're looking at the community school coordinator role across 147 schools, it's important for you all to know that some of them come from mental health backgrounds, some of them come from backgrounds where they've been community advocates, some have been teachers, they have a wide array of skills and talents that they bring to the positions. And that is something that's novel for us in PGCPS. Whereas if you're a teacher, generally there's a pathway that you kind of come through. But the community school coordinators bring a large diversity of ways of kind of working. And our office is doing pretty good job of trying to make sure that we make sure everybody
021understands what the position can be and allow them to bring their artistry to it. But it's a challenge. And we can move to the next slide. Dr. Williams, at any point in time, if you want to jump in, just give me a nod and I'll pause for you. Okay. I see your smile. >> All right. I'll pause for you now so you can actually talk about the laws and policies a bit. >> Okay. Thank you, Dr. Ree. So, um, the office of community school in Prince George's County public schools, we're one, and I'm proud to say, of one of the few school districts that actually has an administrative procedure for our community schools, and we're very proud of that, which defines the roles and responsibilities of the staff as well as it helps to formulate
022and um, guide our Prince George's County Public Schools District Steering Committee because we want to also make sure that if we're asking our schools to have a steering committee and ensure that all stakeholders have a voice at the table. We want to make sure we're doing that at the district level. So, we want to ensure that we have faith-based organizations there. We have the unions there. Um we make sure that we have you um community partners there. So, we want to make sure that our parents are on our steering committee. And when we have conversations, we have conversations that are centered around the needs assessments. So, what do the needs assessments say from a district perspective that the students and families need in PGCPS? And when we look at it, what does that look like
023compared to um what's happening in each individual school and how can we make an impact in our school system? Um so I'm glad to say and I'm proud to say that in PGCPS we do have an administrative um procedure that guides our work. And then as we move further, we talk about the Maryland blueprint pillar 4. And so when we think about community schools and pillar four, what are the resources that we have in our school system and our we call it not just the resources but we call it our ecosystems of support. So what are our ecosystems of support that are exter external and internal. We want our community schools to know that we have internal um ecosystems of support that are in our offices like um academics. So we can lean on academics,
024we can lean on student services, we can lean on title one monitor and accountability because we have to also ensure that they understand that we need to have sustainability without funding. So how are we leaning on those um eos ecosystems of support and internally as we speak about external ecosystems of support? who are we leaning on in our community to help support um what our students and families need in order to thrive in their communities. So, for example, our faith-based organizations, are we leaning into them not just when we need food or we need clothing, clothing or uniforms, but are we leaning into them to help support tutoring? How are they supporting the academics? And are they aware of what we need as far as academic tutoring? and how are they focusing and making an
025impact on our students and our families. So, how are we leaning into, for example, um our college and career um readiness program? So, how are we supporting those students and families um as far as the Carpenter Association? So, we do have a partnership with them, not only for our students, but they also help our families. So, if there's a family out there that's looking for workforce development, they can support us that way. Then, we move to Senate Bill 161. And with Senate Bill 161, it's asking the community schools in the in the state as well as trickling it down to PGCPS. What is happening? What is the expenditures? How are the expenditures aligned to the wraparound services? What what evidence do we have of the expenditures lining up to it? And so that is our
026job to support that with evidence. Um, we just uh completed a a report for MSDE that aligned the personnel and per pupil funds to that report. Next slide. Dr. Reese, you want to take that? >> Sure, I can. So, want to talk a little bit about the funding source. I kind of alluded to it earlier. Thank you, Dr. Williams Horton. And the state of ME the state of Maryland. I'm sorry. I said the state of education. The state of Maryland has um concentration of poverty grant. So in Maryland, a community school is any school that receive what's called a concentration of poverty grant. On the next slide, I'll give you a little bit more information around how that's broken down into two parts. But the grants are formulabased and awarded to schools on an annual
027basis. So let's just say this year the formula might say that David Reese Elementary School gets $100. next year based off of who attends my school that could shift to $150. I'm really using really simple language just that you understand that the budgets that people get that schools get shifts every single year. Um there's there tends to be some continuity, but there there's no rule that it has to be the exact same amount as it was the year before. So that has implications for how school leadership teams with a community school coordinator are kind of determining how they're going to support students with the visa v the needs assessment. And then eligibility is determined based on the 4-year average of the percentage of the school students living in poverty as determined by the compensatory education
028enrollment. So, it's very important for students to fill out the different forms and documentation that lets us know something about their financial status because there are dollars awarded to the school to be able to support the wraparound services that students in poverty might need to have access to. And so, it's really really critical that we as an office continue to work across the system to make sure that we're communicating about the importance of of that documentation so that our students get what they need. And then next, the next slide kind of makes sure that the public is aware. I'm sorry, Dr. Williams. >> Yes, I can take that, Dr. Go for it. It's all yours. We >> Thank you. So, there are two types of poverty grants that our community schools receive. They receive a
029personnel grant which we use the personnel grant for purchasing or paying the salary of our community school coordinator, ensuring that we have a registered nurse in all of our schools. And it also helps to pay to uh for our mental health coordinators in all of our community schools. And then with the remaining funds, the schools can utilize that to um provide wraparound services for the students in the communities. And then um we talk about the per pupil grant. The per pupil grant is a calculated base number um based on the students living in poverty and attending that school. So you heard Dr. Reese speak about equity. So the per pupil grant is really based on equity because it's based on the the calculated number of the students. So with the personnel grant, everyone gets the
030same amount of money for the wraparound services. But the per pupil grant the allocation for that can be varied based on the school and the number of students in that that um that school at the time. Next slide please. >> Okay. So as I said earlier we have scaled from but across to 147 schools from a much smaller number earlier some years back. And when you're scaling there are number of things in the system that are implicated when you scale. So, let me just pause for a moment and just try to help everybody understand that I could be a school that has become a community school and over a five-year period, I am now entering into new relationships and partnerships with a multitude of vendors. So, I could have been in a space where I
031might have had a relationship with 10 vendors, but now that I'm a community school, that number could expand to about 50 different vendors depending on the size of the school. And when you think about 147 schools having different relationships and different contractual agreements, that has an implication on our procurement system and our procurement process. So all of our offices in PGCPS have not necessarily scaled to meet the new demands of all of the procurement needs that are that are necessary. And so this has been a big pull on our system. So, we've kind of had to figure out how to retool to make sure that we're managing the procurement and vendor process in a way that's allowing everyone to have access to be able to partner with us in PGCPS. And at the same time,
032we have to be clear about tracking the impact of the services that those vendors are providing in various different schools and be able to look at that data to determine how strong the relationship is. So that's definitely an area of growth for us as a system as we are moving and scaling big from having a few million dollars in the first year to now close to about $100 million that we're receiving through the concentration of poverty grants. So I just want to make sure that everybody understands that there's a lot of complexity here. Additionally, we have staffing shifts over time that require the re-education of a lot of people to understand what does it mean to be a community school. So because the community school concept is still relatively new in PGCPS, you might be
033someone who was in the principal pipeline, for example, who never really received professional learning or training around what it meant to be a school leader who's managing a community school, which is very different from managing a school building. And so as the community school coordinators are coming on board with leadership that's having to learn, that's a lot of new learning for the system. And the office of community schools has worked really hard to try to put systems in place to make sure that we're continuing to set expectations for what this relationship needs to look like between the school leader and the community school coordinator. And that is something that we're working really hard on. So it's a part of our polymer of practice. So hopefully as our board members are listening to that, you'll ask
034us some questions to probe our thinking and maybe you have some suggestions around how we might be able to help make things go better. And last, our growth has required us to leverage a brand new platform and a relationship with an organization called CitySpan that has the tools and the technical know-how to help us categorize and manage all the different relationships so that we can be very evidence-based around where services are being provided and what the impact on children and families are. So that's the focus for our problem and practice. And I will kick it to Dr. Williams to bring us home for the final the second to last final slide. So as we think about the office of community schools, the wondering is who is in the office of community schools. So as we
035look at our organizational chart, um we have Dr. Reese as our associate superintendent. And then we have Dr. Cara Libby who's the fiscal director as well as she has her administrative assistant, Camila Samuels. And then we have myself as the director of community schools. And I am h happy and fortunate enough to say that I have a coordinating supervisor, Mr. Kevin Thompson. We have an administrative assistant, Miss Yates. Then we have six community school specialists. The community school specialists are responsible for being boots on the ground, supporting the principal as well as the community school coordinator with the imple um the monitoring, the the evaluation. They help them with the implementation of the community school strategy. They're like the thought partners to the schools. So, I'm your thought partner to help you reinvent and become
036innovative um with the community school strategy to ensure that we are providing our students and families with what they need, but also when we're providing them with with what they need that is showing up in the academics. We also um have a program coordinator which we've got this year as well as another financial analyst um Miss Hawkins, Dr. KRO as well as um Jamal Jones, our other financial analyst. So, we are able to grow. We have grown this year, but for the number of schools, this is our little office that does great things in PGCPS and we do them big. >> Awesome. And it's really important to point out on this slide that the two folks on the on the right hand side that I'm looking at, the program coordinator and financial analyst started this
037school year and then Dr. Kyra Libby and Camila Samuels just joined the team within the last week. So, we are in our new administration under interim superintendent Dr. Joseph's leadership, we're definitely able to kind of expand and reinvision how we're going to manage all that's required to make sure that community schools are successful. And so now on the next slide, we want to make sure that we are closing by looking at what you will see next time when we come together. So when we return in March, it's very important that you hear directly from the people who are closest to the work, as I said earlier, who make the magic happen in our community schools. So we're going to allow for you to inter interact with two or three of our community school coordinators and
038different parts of PGCPS. They can talk about the specificity of their work, the impact that they're seeing, and how they're facing the challenges um that are confronting them in their in their daily work. and they're going to offer specific evidence about impact um because we want to hear directly from the people who are closest to the work. And for those of you who have access to the PowerPoint presentation on on board docs on the next slide, you will be able to take a look at some of the additional information and resources that we have. So, at your leisure, please make sure that you take advantage of the time of the opportunity. Take a look at some of the videos where we're talking about the specific work that's happened in in our community schools network in
039PGCPS. And you should definitely take a look at the Brighter Bites video which is really helping us to address uh food insecurity around PGCPS. I got to hear them at Cherokee Land today. It's a fabulous organization. And then you can see something about Stuff a Trunk and what's happening at Charles Carroll Middle School. So, we want to leave you with those resources. And as always, if you have any questions on the next live, feel free to contact me. My email address and information is there as is that of Dr. Ingred Williams Horton. And it's been a pleasure being with you all here this evening. And we stopped right at 6 o'clock. >> All right. Thank you so much, um, Dr. Ree, uh, Dr. Williams Horton, and of course, Dr. White. Um, board members, the floor
040is now open for discussion. So, there will be two rounds of discussion. Each is going to be two and a half minutes. Um and if there is a desire for a round a third round then we'll vote for that um if needed. So please raise your hand and I'll of course acknowledge you in the order of your raised hand. >> All right. Um so uh board member Goins McC. >> Thank you uh Chair Briggs. My first question was about the partnership that you all have. Can you talk a little bit more about what the organization and I just had the slide up and now I've lost it. The city span partnership. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what exactly city span does for this work? >> So thank you board member
041Goins McCann. So um city span is um a technology um organization and what we have learned about um working in the office of community schools is that we have many vendors in our system. We have many vendors working in our schools and we need to work on what is our return on investment and how do we triangulate the work that they're doing. How are we holding our vendors responsible for the work with our students and our families and what does that look like? So, City Span has been working for about 25 years um helping schools understand how to make that happen and they also most like most when I researched them they were working like in DC so they show us a lot of the work they've done in District of Columbia. Um, and what
042they do is when what we're currently working on is looking at all of our community schools and the community school coordinators are letting us know who do they have current contracts with in our system. So, we're building a platform to find out who the people are, who are the organizations, who are the vendors we have in the system. And when we put that in place, the vendors are responsible for telling us how many students they're working with. Do they have if they're doing academics, do they have a beginning, maybe a middle of the year as well as end of the year assessment? And then how much is it costing? So we can monitor all of that information with what we have in our system. Because the question for us sometimes is um you have a
043vendor and I'm just going to say you have ABC vendor working in 10 schools, but they only maybe and they're charging us $100,000 at each school, but they only have 10 students showing up every day. Are we being really true to the science of doing what's best for our children and are we being fiscally responsible? So in that way we can evaluate their work as well. And then when we look at the academics, if they're doing a great job, then we can triangulate that to our MCAP scores and our benchmark scores as well. So, we want to be able to work with an organization that can show us what does that look like on our return on investment and how we can move further and what we need to do for PGCPS. >> Thank you
044so much, Dr. Wings Horton. Uh, board member Boozer Stru. >> Yeah, thank you so much and thank you for the presentation. Um, a couple of things that that I'm thinking about is in the scaling is is some of the consistency of what, you know, when you come back around the um um, you know, showing the theory in action, the consistency of how the 147 and and potentially more um are aligned and that we can feel and see see what a community school is when we go into any building. I know that right now I could go into any school and it it's described quite differently by school leaders who might have a form in front of parents and there's disconnects between PTAs don't you know do the involvement with community schools and the overlap and
045a lot of this gets back to the shared leadership um pillar in the six pillars of the community schools as well as the uh board policy of the school-based management team and I know I've been pretty repetitive on these issues this year, but I just feel like the shared leadership issue has been been um a barrier in inside our schools and community schools will certainly can't advance and be as successful without it. Um so that's something that I would like to see more of when for the for when you return. And then also the the strategy behind I note um that our blueprint coordinator has been coordinating uh writing our blueprint implementation plans and co coordinating that for many years is now a financial analyst in and just pillar four here in community schools and
046I'm curious about that uh that uh strategic direction. Uh thank you. Those are my two two topics. >> So I'll definitely address the first part of it. So Dr. Collins and I have actually had some conversations around when have principles and leadership teams been brought together with community school coordinators for this shared learning around what the model should look like and how have we shown them examples of best practices of this shared leadership model. And so we she and I have actually spoken about leveraging the systemic principles meetings and some other structures that we have to actually make sure that this is at the top of the agenda specifically to address instances of shared leadership. I'm going to be short with my response to see if there's a little time to answer the second part.
047>> Yep. Go for it, Dr. Reese. >> Dr. Williams, did you have a response for the second part? >> No, I'm gonna let you go ahead and take it. You started well. >> Okay, then I'm actually not going to take it right now because Well, I what I would say what I what I would say is >> okay. Um, so the so your second qu question is boost. So um, in the community schools office, one of the things that we also recognize is there needs to be a need for some strong financial support to work alongside uh, Dr. Ingred Williams Horton and looking at the talent in the district and the work of blueprint. We had an opportunity to utilize um grant experience with the with one of our current staff members in that office
048because we were covered with the work of the blueprint because the the district has done a really strong job with blueprint. So the work of a blueprint coordinator will continue under Doug Strader's office and that collaboration across the district. Um, and this allows us to add some additional financial support to Dr. uh, Williams Foron and her team, which was desperately needed um, because Dr. Libby brings a wealth of uh, grant experience and financial monitoring um, to that to that office. And also to your point in how you engage with community and you look at the the alignment of budget with actual the resource and what's your ROI. Um, and that'll allow Dr. important to spend a lot more time on the school side as well. >> Thank you all. >> Thank you so much. Um,
049board member Olivo, >> thank you so much. Um, Chair Briggs, um, I just wanted to, um, really thank everyone for this presentation. Super helpful. I'm a huge fan of community schools and do really appreciate how the structure has grown um, over these years. Um, I wanted to reiterate um that my agreement with the points that board member Boozer Stru raised about the importance of parental engagement and our school-based management teams. Um, specifically though, I wanted to ask about the funding for the office of community schools. Um, for the the support team, which I agree is is absolutely crucial to working with these, you know, this exponential growth in our number of community schools. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about any potential budget cut concerns and um how potential community school budget
050cuts might affect our ability to really staff the office of community schools. I want to be a little optimistic about the work great with um with with the Senate committee that came and it is my belief that they're going to advocate as hard as they can to make sure that the state continues to do right by children across Maryland and specifically in PGCPS and other spaces like ours. So that's the first piece and there's a formula that allows us to determine how much of the funds can be used to be centrally managed for staff. So to provide mental health clinicians and the community school coordinators, Dr. Williams over the years has done an amazing job of making sure that schools get as much money as possible, which is why her office has been so small,
051which is why we have some of the challenges that we're having. So we're in this cyclical space and we're trying to get out of it by staffing appropriately but not overstaffing the central office um to to support the schools. >> Perfect. I will join you in that optimism. And then I just wanted to also indicate um I I I'm sorry now I'm forgetting the the city city schools um I think it's the consultant. Yeah, I just I I think that sounds um absolutely crucial. Um you know these are very large amounts of money that we're dealing with and I really it's so important to me that we're getting that return on investment from the various vendors and other nonprofits that our schools are working with. So, I really look forward to see seeing how they
052can help us with those um you know really understanding the results that we're seeing. Thank you. >> Absolutely. So, in the spirit of Lisa How who's our chief financial officer, she'd like to talk about optimizing resources and city spin is going to allow us to do that so we can be smarter around how we're leveraging contracts across the system. And I'm going to stop because I can go on forever and I'm going to allow for more questions. Oh, I have to say that our work with Dr. Sheila Jackson's team around Pam family engagement is central to the work. Today at Cherokee Lane, we actually had a PTO president who spoke about her work and how she's intrically involved with the work happening at the school. And so when we talk about modeling best practices, it's
053about showing the ideal so that other people believe that they can do it too. So there's a lot of strategy happening with how we're choosing um to showcase certain places. >> All right. Thank you so much. Um board member Aayak student member of the board. Sorry about that. >> Um hello everyone. Thank you so much for this wonderful presentation. My questions um my so my screen like froze out for a bit and I just wanted to ask what is the difference between a title one and a community school because throughout the presentation I couldn't like you know get past the fact that they kind of the lines kind of like blur together. I don't know. I feel like they're kind of the same thing or they're pretty close. And then also you mentioned that there's
054about 41 schools in the beginning cohort. So, what is the plan to like, you know, make sure that we have more community schools if that's like a long-term goal in the future? >> So, um, thank you for that question. So, one thing about Title One, Title One is a federally funded program. And so, when it comes down to our LEAs, um, the ELEAs determine what that formula will be for their concentration of poverty. for the community schools. Um, we get that specifically from Maryland State Department of Education. So, from the blueprint of Maryland, it tells us, for example, our concentration of poverty is 55% or above. And so, when we get that number, it goes to MSDE and MSDE determines based on our farms rate what who those schools can be. So, that's how we
055get that piece. So, that's the answer to your first question. Um, your second question was, can you repeat that again for me? Um, so you mentioned in the beginning that there's like 41 schools in the beginning cohort and I wanted to know like if if this is a goal for the future. Um, how do you plan on making more schools become like community schools or like adding them to that community school group? >> So the idea is any school can be a community school. It doesn't have to be based on funding. The idea of community schools is to support the students and families within any community. So they can feel like the school is the hub and they can come to that school and get whatever services they need. Um I can specifically speak of
056when even when I was a principal, the school was the hub. Whatever students and families needed at the time that I was the principal, we made it happen for them. So our idea is to make that the same possibility in all of our Prince George's County public schools. Whether you have funding or not, how are you utilizing your partnerships? How are you utilizing the people around you to ensure that that's happening in your community? So, we are the model for that with or without funding. >> And the short answer to the major difference between Title One and the community schools goes back to those 13 wraparound services. So, when you receive grant funds, the feds say you can use the Title One funds for certain things and community schools allows for you to do many,
057many, many more things that Title One is not ever going to allow you to be able to do. So, that's that's the short answer. All right. Thank you so much. Um board members, before we go to a second round, if there's any interest, I'll jump in here to be mindful of speaking during this time. Um so, Miss Johnson, if you can start the timer for myself. Uh would appreciate it. Okay. Thank you so much. Um, I just want to say, you know, the first time that I learned of the community school model was when I was working um on Capitol Hill and they had a briefing about the impact that this this really this framework has on students. And I think that this is so important for particularly our district because we know that we
058have such a unique diverse population of students and a lot of times we talk about when we look at the data how it's not an applesto apples comparison and I think you know community schools aren't a silver bullet to that but they are kind of a step in the direction of saying how do we offer more tailored you know supports targeted supports to students that are holistic and I think really gets to the whole child that I heard um Dr. Ree speak to earlier. I guess I'm thinking about, you know, longitudinally like when we're talking about data and the impact of these interventions and the uniqueness of the community school model, particularly its partnership with families. Um, and I love that there was a mention to the family engagement office. I'm just curious like what
059are we seeing so far around mitigating you know challenges with a unique population of students over the time that we've had the initial 45 schools to the now 147 schools. >> So um thank you for that board member Briggs. What I can tell you is that um even when we went to Cherokee Lane today, they said when they began um becoming a community school, they might have 20 parents come up to the school and participate in family engagement opportunities. They just had a family engagement opportunity I think last week and it's grown from 20 to 60 families. So it's growing from the you know word on the mouth word I mean word on the streets you know sending the messages through messenger class dojo. So, it's growing um as far as what is available. And
060then what they've also learned and I can speak to that as well is that we have utilized virtual opportunities for families. So, our community school coordinators realize that sometimes families aren't able to come to the school because they're working another job, they have young children, whatever the circumstances may be. So, sometimes we have to pivot to meet the needs of our community. So they're learning that, you know, I can offer you a personal, we can be face to face, but I can also offer you a virtual opportunity to participate. So sometimes we need to meet our families where they are. And we when we meet them where they are, then the likelihood of them being more engaged will occur. So that happen. And we also had a testimony of a student today too. I think
061my time is up. Board member Briggs. >> Thank you. So no, thank you so much. That was really thorough. I just had one last question. And I don't want to I I want to break the rules here, but I just was curious like how are we supporting families? Because one of the things that I was like learning when we were doing when I was learning about the community schools model was like, you know, you can offer those wraparound supports to families. And one of the big challenges that I often hear is families are like, I want to be able to help my my child academically, but maybe school wasn't a strong suit for them, right? When they think about when they were in school, they're like, I have anxiety. I have things there. Maybe some
062families want to go back and get further education and and resources. Are we doing do we know of any bright spots in the district where we're doing those things at all? >> Um specifically what schools I can get that information from you I mean for you but we do know that there are some schools that are offering for example we've heard some of our families say that they would like to participate in English as a um English as a second language classes and so the schools have turned that into something positive for the families. So they make that happen for them. So if they say they want that, then they make that happen um for them. So I can find out and get that information to you where that is happening to help provide that
063um experience. And if you want to go and take a test or be a part of that, we'll let you do that as well. >> And I could go on. I'm going to be very brief when I interject here because I know that Dr. White's team does a lot of work with academic supports for students and her academics team and our office have been collaborating together to really think about using more technology tools so that parents feel empowered to create the space and the opportunity to eng uh to be able to engage their students with their academic content. So there's a lot of promise happening there. >> And also board member Briggs, we're also looking at our little scholars as well. Um we're last year we worked with parent powered to work with I shouldn't
064say little scholars our young young children our young students um we utilize them to help our parents to prepare them for when they come to school as well as when they're in kindergarten kindergarten readiness and what parent powered would do is they would send them messages um and text messages and give them ideas or things to work on at home that were based on kindergarten or kindergarten standards And so what we learned from the families was that that they didn't know that they could do those things at home with their students to prepare them for school and help them get ready. And it was in English and Spanish and it was based on, you know, life skills. So they didn't know that the life life skills and the things they experience at home would be
065so valuable to them every day. >> That that's great. Thank you so much for sharing all those things. Um board members, are there any other questions for a second round? Uh board member Boozer Strruther. >> Yeah, thank you. Um so I mean one thing that the a lot has been made of is the launch of these um school dashboards. And you know I've been looking at them and you know if we applied everything we've been talking about tonight no parent would really understand what they're reading here. There's lots of initials. There's no explanation what proficiency means. There's no context for these schools at all. There's just MCAP, Access, Dibbles, um, you know, ML, SWD. So, another thing I'd like to ask is for everyone who's engaged in how a how parents read information, if you
066could apply the community schools thinking to these dashboards to give some context for this data because right now, if you pull this up for a community school with all the issues about why there's the was the current commission and the blueprint for Maryland's future you just see a school with data that doesn't look good and it's a setback for us in this in the work we've been trying to do. Um, so I'm I know these dashboards were put up quickly and there's lots of space to to contextualize them, but right now I I feel like that this is I just feel back to the beginning when I look at a dashboard for some of the schools, most of the schools in my district who are firstear community schools because without more context, this data it
067you you wouldn't even think that the all this work is happening. Um, so if all the programs of community schools for these individual schools could be a data dashboard, if City Span is helping you put them all into to databases, um, you know, like a school like Cherokee Lane, all those vendor, you know, nonprofit partner vendors, like what they're doing needs to be part of the dashboard. So that's that's something that that has been hitting me in the last, you know, day or so when the when these went live. Thank you. >> I appreciate the push around ensuring that um we're communicating in a way that allows parents to make sense of the data and we have to use our data literacy skills to make sure that we're that people from a lot of different
068educational backgrounds and national backgrounds can quickly understand what's happening. And then we have to make sure that our staff is able to communicate in f to families in ways that they can understand like what's behind the data and that also goes alongside the data of how you feel when you walk into the school building and if you feel like it's a place for you. So both those things have to be true. So thank you for the push. >> Yeah. Thank you so much for that. Board member Goins McC. My question is uh kind of a followup to our student board member um Miss Ajakay's question. How are we expecting because I know it's an average of four years and all of those things. How are we expecting our number of community schools to change based
069off of the information that we have so far? Like are we expecting more exponential growth? Are we expecting it to be a slow trickle? Are we expecting it to kind of level off? So, um, board member Goins McCann's, we're expecting it to really trickle off. Um, now that we're at the 55%, um, and we have 147, it's going to probably trickle off. It'll it won't be normally since we began this initiative, it was it we would exponentially grow by 19 to 20 schools every year. So now, as we're looking at the data and looking at some of the trends, I was just having a conversation with grants management. we're going to trickle down significantly if we stay at the 55%. But in the wake of what's going on in our country, I don't want to
070make a promise because things have changed so drastically in our famil family's lives. And it could it could be a different story. But the trickling may come become a waterfall, but we're prepared for whatever comes our way because at the center of the work are our students and our families. And we do whatever we have to do to make sure they get what they need. We so appreciate that and I heard a lot of references to collaborations between other departments within PGCPS and about a lot of the different organizations that we are coming in with grants and the partnerships and contracts. What is the relationship like between what we offer in community schools and what is offered through say the county? Like how are we partnering with the county as a whole with our community
071schools? So you mean as PG uh amongst one another you're talking about the county government can hand >> county government and all the services that county government offers offers. >> Yeah. So one of the partnerships we have is with the department of social services. Um we have school and community engagement advocates in our middle schools and about 20 middle schools. And so one of the ways that they have helped us and I will tell you it was remarkable. Um, we did have a a situation where we had a family living in a park and a principal called me at night and we put on our sweatpants and our hats and we met the family in the park. And when we met them in the park, we had to immediately figure out where they where were
072they going to go and all I had to do is call the DSS on my phone and we got them into housing that night with housing, food, as well as transitional housing from the hotel to the next phase. Whereas under normal circumstances, they would have had to call the 1-800 number. They might have had to stand by. We didn't have We don't have to do that. We have direct access to who we need for our students and families. Um, another situation just happened last week and I'm over my time. I'm sorry, Board Member Briggs. I'm just talking. >> No, keep going. >> Another situation this week. I just met with county council. Um, again, food insecurity is really big. It's heavy um in our situation with our students and families. and we were talking about
073food insecurity and we partnered with um the county council and they were partnering with a farm and a farm came to them and said we want to offer fresh produce to um some schools and so I told county council member um Dr. Porin. I'm not pronouncing his m name correctly, forgive me. But um I said to him, I said, "Well, let's put it out to the community school coordinators and see who bites first." And all of a sudden, the emails were going crazy. And the for he chose the schools. He said, "First come, first first serve." And so they have the opportunity to get fresh produce from a farm at no cost. So that's great. um Capital Area Food Bank. We have about 33 um food pantries as well as markets in some of our
074school and we talked about how can we expand that and it doesn't necessarily we want to get to the point that it has to be a community school because of what we're living in. So we have that partnership with Capitol Area Food Bank. I can go on and on. Board member Gance, let's have a meeting. We can talk about that later. But we're excited about the work um about what we do for students and families that we can make phone calls to get whatever we need. Um we can get food, clothing, shelter. I mean, whoever we call on the district steering committee, Kaiser Permanente, snap your fingers. We can get it from them. So, we can keep going. >> Yeah. And I think it's Thank you so much, uh Go MC and Dr. Williams Horton.
075And I think it's so important that like you know when families listen to this, there probably so many people who are going to be so grateful for you sharing these things because they just didn't know. You don't think that that's like a service that school districts offer. So I think you going on and on is actually a really good thing especially during this time right now. So thank you for that. Um board member Olivo, >> thank you so much. Um Dr. Williams, your your most recent comments um are so um just, you know, invigorating um to know that that these sorts of partnerships are happening. It it made me think about um you know as as we as board members or you know potentially even community members meet or talk with you know nonprofit organizations
076who are working in the county who are interested or have a service they would like to provide to our students through community schools. What is the best way to share that information? Um is that connecting them with you for example? Is there some sort of, you know, clearing house, if you will, um, that nonprofits would, um, would go to to say to raise their hands and say, you know, we're doing this great work. We'd like to be engaged. So, um, Borman Olivio, I'm I'm going to be honest and tell you, I'm selfish. So, >> I I love community schools. They're my heart. They're my soul. Our community school children and my families are mine. They're our offices. Nobody else can have them. We're not sharing. Um so anybody who comes to any board member, anybody
077who wants to know um how to contact or be tell anyone who wants to support what we do, they come to us personally. >> We do not share. [laughter] >> No, have them in all all honesty have them contact us and we help them work through and I'm going to use Dr. Collins's words. We'll work through the weeds with them to make anything happen according to policy. We do that personally because we don't want any loopholes um to happen. So we will walk them through anything that they need. We will do that in order to make things work. >> Thank you so much. >> All right. Thank you so much. Uh board members, any other questions? Um well this would be a third round board member Boozer Strruther but um if there are no others
078for the second round um and there are no objections to a third round for board member Ber we can proceed hear no objections board. >> Yeah it's just more of a testimonial to to say that um Dr. Williams Horton has onboarded I I mean personally from me I think at least 10 nonprofits and then I catch up with them and they'll tell me they have they're working with 20 schools like overnight like the the speed the the speed of the introductions and the matching has been um really incredible and I'm really grateful for that. So, I just wanted to give a shout out and a testimonial about how well that process goes from from a nonprofit to a provider uh through the community schools. So, thank you. >> Thank you, board member Boozer. Appreciate it.
079>> Let me just say this. I don't work alone. It's the team. It's the 11 of us. 11 soon to be 13. Well, 11 and 13 now. So, >> well, I I just want to say thank you again, Dr. Williams Horton. Um, I mean, I got I had the pleasure of working with you briefly for a year on the district steering committee, and I feel like your passion is always evident, but I think it was really clear tonight. And so, we always are just grateful for, you know, practitioners, educators, people who really care deeply about the work of our school district. Um, so, thank you to you, thank you to Dr. Reese, and of course, thank you to Dr. White. Um, with that being said, um, I want to thank everyone for an excellent presentation
080and engaging discussion. Our next meeting is scheduled for December 15th of this year. Um, so please come provide public comment um, and just hear all the great things that are happening, but also the ways that we're working to strengthen our school district so that it is really serving our students in the best way. Um, with that being said, I want to say thank you to everyone again. Um, there being no further business, the time is now 6:32 PM and the November 10th, 2025 academic achievement committee meeting is adjourned. Have a great evening. Thank