Meeting of the Baltimore County Board of Education - February 2, 2026

001for Baltimore County for Monday, February 2nd, 2026. This evening's board of education meeting is being broadcast through the BCPS online live meeting broadcast and on BCPS TV Exfinity channel 1073 and Verizon Fios channel 34. In order to efficiently conduct this meeting, all voting items this evening will be done by roll call. May I have a motion to go into close session as permitted by the open meetings act as found in the annotated code of Maryland general provisions article sections 3-305 B1 and B7 to discuss the appointment employment assignment promotion discipline demotion compensation removal resignation or performance evaluation of appointees employees or officials over whom it has jurisdiction or any other personnel matter that affects one or more specific individuals and consult with councel to obtain legal advice. So move Pumprey. Second. Hen. Thank you. May

002I have a roll call vote, please? Miss Harvey. Yes. Miss Aomebe. Miss Dleski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumprey? Yes. Mr. Young? Yes. Miss Dominowski? Miss Hen? Yes. Miss Fong. Yes. Miss Lictor. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Chairwoman Jane Lter, I now call to order the meeting of the board of education of Baltimore County for Monday, February 2nd, 2026. I invite you to recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag to be led by Miss Foresight Uname. We will then have a moment of silence in recognition of those who have served education in Baltimore County. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Tonight's board of education meeting is being

003broadcast through the BCPS online live meeting broadcast and on BCPS TV Comcast Exfinity channel 1073, Verizon Fios channel 34. In order to officially conduct this meeting, all voting items this evening will be done by roll call vote. The first item on the agenda is consideration of the February 2nd agenda. Dr. Rogers, are there any additions or changes to tonight's agenda? May I have a mot uh may I have a motion to add agenda item L, update on the virtual and climate weather plan, and change agenda items, information from L to M, board committee updates from M to N, and announcements from N to O. Can you just repeat that one? Oh, okay. May I have a motion to add agenda item L, update on the virtual and clement weather plan and change agenda items information

004from L to M, board committee updates from M to N, and announcements from N to O. Is there a second? Second, hen. Okay. Any discussion? Do you want to speak to your motion, Miss Dowski? Yes. Uh there were some questions asked at the November 18th meeting about the inclimate weather plan and how we were, you know, facilitating that for all making it um equitable for all of our students K through 12 with the new ratios of um uh devices. And um I just was kind of like hoping we could get some more answers, especially since we just, you know, are coming off of having to go through it. Any further discussion? Miss Stellleski? Thank you. Sure. I just would like to add, you know, just given um the variety of feedback um that we have

005received, I just think this is a great opportunity to be transparent about um whether closing the process and then the plans that have been put in place for virtual learning. Thank you, Miss Hen. Thank you. Um, I too would like to understand how we're supporting our schools, how we're supporting our families. Um, I understand several schools were scrambling to um, prepare for this recent storm and um, given any lessons learned we had in responding to this storm. It's the first week of February, we have a long ways to go unfortunately how we plan to um, improve our support to schools and families for any future weather incidents. Thank you. Any other comments? Is um, Pumprey? Just a comment. Um I agree with needing the information information. Um I do think that um some of the

006information is readily available. Some staff may not have been prepared to present. So with an understanding that if questions cannot be answered tonight, we'll get an update in the future, Miss Delki. Yes, I think that's actually a great point because certainly this is a fluid uh experience. Thank you. Anyone else, Miss Hen? Um, yes. And alternatively, if we um wish not to support this as a full agenda item, if Dr. Rogers prefers, and I'd like to get her thoughts on this in addressing it in her update, I would be um open to that as a suggestion as well. But I'd like to hear Dr. Rogers thoughts on this motion. Just for clarification, do you mean at our we have another meeting next Tuesday, so you mean um tonight? I I support this and I seconded

007this motion. Um however, I'd like to get Dr. Rogers thoughts on it. And if this is a motion that the board um I'd like the my colleagues to support it. However, an alternative would be for Dr. Rogers to provide an update in her superintendent's report. Okay, Dr. Rogers. Yes. Thank you for the question. Um we have not had an opportunity to debrief. Um as you all know, we're still in the midst of this winter storm. So I would be happy to provide a future update as requested. Okay. May I have a roll call vote, please? Miss Harvey, are we voting on Miss Dominowski's motion? What Miss Hen said is not part of that motion? Correct. I just want to get clarification, Miss Harvey. Yeah, I just wanted a clarification as well. Uh if if the

008update, as Miss Pumphrey and Miss Dleski said, the information that would be provided would be the information that we have on hand. And if there is no there's information that the team needs an opportunity to compile and assess, we would not be expecting to have that tonight. And we don't have any specifics on on what particular items we're seeking to update or or are there specifics? There were actually questions that I brought up at the November 18th meeting as far as what our plan was for um you know ruling out the virtual um a virtual learning for all of our students and how we were going to you know communicate with our schools and make sure our teachers were prepared and our students were prepared and they had the devices they needed or the packets

009they needed for the virtual day to be a replacement for a full day of instru of of of um in classroom instruction. Miss um yes and I would just like to clarify with my colleague Miss Dominowski that um a formal presentation is not the expectation that would require um advanced preparation but rather for her for this to be an initial discussion and an opportunity to ask questions. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. I'm sorry, Miss Gover. Now roll call vote, please. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Abe, yes. Miss Dleski, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. Mr. McMillian. Yes. Miss Pumprey. Yes. Mr. Young. Yes. Miss Dominowski. Yes. Miss Hen. Yes. Miss Fong. Miss Leicter. Yes. Thank you. And then um Yes. I apologize, Miss Cover. That's okay. So, um, Miss Gver, you'll let me know when to

010refresh my screen. Okay. Thank you. In the meantime, where were we? Okay. Dr. Rogers, is there any other additions or changes to tonight's agenda that you would Okay. Okay. Hearing. Okay. So, the revised agenda is approved and now the agenda stands as presented. Earlier this evening, the board met in close session pursuant to the open meetings act for the following reasons. To discuss the appointment, employment, assignment, promotion, discipline, demotion, compensation, removal, resignation, or performance evaluation of appointees, employees, or officials over whom it has jurisdiction, or any other personnel matter that affects one or more specific individuals, and consult with the council to obtain legal advice. The close session summary and the open session information summary can be found on board docs under this board meeting agenda date. The next item on the agenda is a

011special order of the special order of business recognition of student artwork in the FY2025 annual comprehensive financial report. And for that I call on Dr. Grim and Mr. Tantliff. Good evening, Chair Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. Um, as you stated, uh, we'd like to recognize our students who had artwork displayed in this year's ACER. Emma Whitlock, grade seven, Cockisville Middle School. Daniela Corona Marita, sixth grade, Cockisville Middle School. GY 7th grade middle school virtual learning program. Gia Forno 8th grade Perry Hall Middle School and Kendall Nie 8th grade Perry Hall Middle School. Thank you. And I will be honest when we read through that long report it did get give us a little bit of pleasure when you would hit those um those art those pictures from our

012budding artists. They were really incredible. So thank you for doing that and thank you to our artists who um submitted those selections. Okay, Miss can always clap for our kids. The next item on the agenda is personnel matters and for that I call Mr. McCall. Good evening, Chair Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers. All right. Go ahead. And members of the board, I'd like the board's consent for the follow. Okay. For the following personnel matters tonight, we have terminations, retirement, resignations, leaves, and educator lensure appointments. Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the personnel matters as presented in exhibits E1 through E5? So moved, Nominowski. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second, Hen. Thank you. Any discussion? May have a roll call vote, please. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Obey, yes. Miss

013Dowleski, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Fong, yes. Miss, yes. Thank you. The next item on Thank you, Mr. MC. The next item on the agenda is administrative appointments. And for that I call on Dr. Rogers. Thank you, Madam Chair, Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, and members of the board. I am bringing forward the following administrative appointments for your approval. Director Facilities Support Services, Department of Facilities Management and Strategic Planning, and Specialist Science PreK through 12, Office of Science. Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the administrative appointments as presented in exhibit F1? So moved. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Pumphrey. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Miss Harvey? Yes. Miss

014Agome? Yes. Miss Stleski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumprey? Yes. Mr. Young? Yes. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Hen? Yes. Miss Framp. Yes. Miss Lictor. Yes. Thank you, Dr. Rogers. Yes. Thank you. Our first appointment is Crystal Rammenowski. Please stand. Crystal is attending this evening and is being appointed as specialist in science preK through 12 in the office of science. with 15 years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools. Her prior experiences include science teacher at Chesapeake High School, resource teacher in the office of title one, virtual learning pro program staffing development teacher with the office of virtual learning programs and resource teacher in the office of science. Congratulations. Our second appointment is Scott Welsh. Scott, please stand. Scott is attending this evening with his wife Cara and a young Welsh member back

015there. Uh Scott is being appointed as the director of facility support services in the department of facilities management and strategic planning with eight years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools. Scott's BCPS experience includes maintenance manager in the office of facility support services. Congratulations to both of you. Our next item is public comment. This is one of the opportunities the board provides to hear the views and receive the advice of community members. If not selected to address the board, members of the public may submit their comments to the board members via email at boebcps.org. The Baltimore County Police Department's Homeland Security Unit and Office of School Safety has recommended safety and security protocols, which are posted in the boardroom and available in board docs and on the board's participation by the public website. While we

016encourage public input on policy, programs, and practices within the purview of this board and this school system, this is not the proper form to address specific students or employee matters or to comment on matters that do not relate to public education in Baltimore County. Inappropriate personal remarks or other behavior such as language that promotes violence against a BCPS employee or that disrupts or interferes with the conduct of this meeting or out of order will not be tolerated. Persons who otherwise disrupt or disturb this meeting will not be allowed to continue their remarks and will be escorted from the meeting. Please observe the 3minut clock which will let you know when your time is up. The microphone will be turned off at the end of your time or prior to that time at the discretion of

017the board chair. First, we'll start with our school system affiliated groups and we have Miss Kelly Olds from Tapcco. Oh, what? I'm sorry. My fault. But next we we don't have any Don't move. We don't have any school system affiliated, but we next category is unions. And we have Miss Kelly Holds from Tabco. Sorry about that. Good evening. Thank you, Chair Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, Dr. Rogers, and members of the board for the opportunity to speak tonight. We are here to educate the children of Baltimore County. They are the students in our schools. Teaching is at its core value, a vulnerable event. To learn something new, you must feel safe. Our role as educators and as a school system is to ensure that children feel safe so they are ready to learn. It is not

018to enforce civil immigration law any more than it is to enforce criminal laws. This leads me to Tabco's advoc advocacy for new policy. A policy that clearly removes schools from immigration enforcement and also ensures that all staff know what to do and what not to do should immigration enforcement agents come to our schools. Immigration is a complex topic, though our opinions on it in this setting in and around schools can be simple. Tabco's representative assembly, a group of dozens of educators, voted to direct Tabco, including me as Tabco president, to work for this policy. BCAPS guidelines on immigration enforcement, largely and appropriately taken from MSD, overall are good. More critically, these guidelines are not regularly shared with or instructed to staff throughout the system. The presence of enforcement agents in a community can be a

019source of stress and fear in a space that should feel safe, especially if the adults in those spaces know exactly what to do. But if they don't, it can impact that negatively. uh they learn what to do through trainings and reminders. This is not theoretical. CBP and ICE were active in Parkville on Friday, January 23rd, which caused a disturbance throughout the neighborhood with various impacts on at least five schools in the vicinity. While I recognize that this issue is polarizing, it should not be in the school setting. Keeping our schools a safe space for students means making sure the adults in the building know what the protocol is and is not when people from outside of the school community threaten the feeling of safety inside the school. Further, we do not believe that it is

020controversial to say that schools have a job to do and that job is to educate our students, not immigration enforcement. Please consider Tabco's proposed policy in this light. We seek to codify largely good guidelines while also making sure the substance of the policy is shared thoroughly and repeatedly with school staff. A policy like this ensures that we can all work together to keep educating our students, the children of our county. Thank you. Thank you. Our next category is individual citizens or students and our first speaker is Miss Sharon Sirhoff. Good evening. I'm going to briefly touch on what I've been touching on for the last couple of meetings. As far as the school budget is concerned, we should not be work eliminating secondary reading specialists, especially since the state is focusing on secondary literacy. And

021we also should not be repurposing or getting rid of library media specialists for that same reason. I'm going to focus today a little bit about safety and give an update from the perspective of a parent and an advocate who's living the situation in my community. A plow never came down my street. However, on a normal school day, three buses come down my street twice a day. They didn't come down today because they couldn't get down. There was just no way they could get down. There were no sidewalks. And I live around the corner from Timber Grove Elementary School. There are no sidewalks that are clear. There are some sidewalks that are clear on my street but and some on Hammershshire, but overall it was very unsafe for the majority of Timber Grove Elementary School to

022get their kids into the building. I have been around on streets and I can tell you how difficult it is to drive safely, how difficult it is to walk safely. If anybody noticed, I have a cane with me today. The only reason I have it is because I don't want to fall. As far as communication was concerned about virtual learning, I was in an IEP meeting at one of the elementary schools when the principal came on the loudspeaker to instruct the teachers as to what to do. This was the Friday before the Sunday storm. And he was instructing the teachers to make sure that they copied down all the the numbers on the back of the computers and make sure that they gave the computers and that they were charged at 2:00 so that 4:00

023when the kids went home, they had the computers available. How long have we known the storm was coming? We knew about it on Wednesday. We should have been preparing on Wednesday. Yet, we prepared at the last minute. And today, we're sending our students back two hours late. Tomorrow, we're sending our students back two hours late. That's not Thank you. Our next speaker is Bash Ferrron. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity for me to speak to you and um talk to you about education issues. First of all, I really thank you Dr. Rogers for uh implementing the online uh education on Thursday and Friday. Um of course my small business I worked on Monday online. I worked on Tuesday in my clinic. my staff work and I watched um MTA buses going around u limited

024service but nonetheless going around uh without a problem and I wondered why the school system cannot really do the same. Now I understand the rationale safety for children. Uh one child injured is one too many etc. And there are legal issues etc. But the way I see it from my end is that this extra extra carefulness is a symptom of a system that does not really have adequate funding, adequate planning to meet the challenges whether they were COVID 5 years ago uh or whether they are the heavy snow. Um I was unhappy that the um teachers all of a sudden have to do the online education and they have not really trained on it before. So, as you know, in my past history as a surgeon, you know, I would never really do something right

025there in the operating room without training on it somehow before, whether it's a model or um uh other type of training. Uh but nonetheless, uh again, it was a positive thing that we see the administration is moving in that money. you don't have I think this is an example where the board needs to explore areas where the school system can be generating funds instead of just sucking taxes uh some sort of hybrid u uh system where you would have McDonald, you would have Panera Bread, uh you would have some other uh uh shops that will generate funds for you that can address the issue that uh you need money for adequate snow plowing, raising salaries, uh buying a better computers and so forth. And I know this is radical, but I have been for so

026long something has to be done. Thank you. We have no speakers on the wait list. So we'll now move on to comments on our board policies. And the first board policy is policy 1110, publications, radio, television, and digital media. And our first speaker is Sharon Shoff. Considering how hard it is to get the uh information that I'm speaking on, I am just going to say concerning policies with the the media, media finds it very difficult to get information from this school system, particularly when we want to talk about various policies, when we want to talk about what's going on with the budget, We want to talk about um special education. The media seems to have a problem and I'm constantly hearing we can't get a hold of anybody. Well, guess what? I can't get a

027hold of anybody either in the school system. So, you're they're not alone. But I just want to say that as far as communicating to the media, we need to do a better job and we need to have a plan. And I don't think we really have one. Thank you. Our next speaker on board policy 1110 is Dr. Ferrron. I think this policy is really good. Uh from my perspective, I noticed the first paragraph that it does not uh specify verbal communication with the public. Uh I think that's a mission and I wish that you would consider including it. I was extremely happy to see the wordings uh about communication effectively, efficiently and reliably. uh in the first paragraph. Uh as you know, I have been communicating with the board for a long time and I

028really rarely receive uh a response. Uh for instance, I spend quite a bit of time on Sunday to look at these policies. Um, and I'm happy to do that um without pay. Um, so these big words that in the policy makes me wonder when and whether the system will truly implement in them. So I am doing my best as a citizen to communicate with the board the entity the big entity the board and you know I don't get any communication back and sometimes some members make themselves busy with their papers while I speak with their laptop tops and I think that's uh a bit rude. Um if I spend my precious time to present to you in three minutes and you get paid well at least pay attention. So uh if this policy passes the

029way it is, I hope that you would implemented if someone like myself or Sharon or others send you an email or make that special time to come in and address something with you that you would respond back whether it's email or person or passenger. It's really not much to ask and I pay quite a bit of taxes and I'm happy to do so. At least I get a response back. Dr. F, you can stay there for the next one. It's our next policy is 5470 wellness. is about services to students. Um so this is about nutrition and about exercise, physical activities. So I want to let you know that in my practice over the past almost 35 years plus I have been board certified in surgery critical care medicine even until now and I used

030to be also board certified in nutrition support and practicing it until about 2020. So if I was critical here in anything it does not really mean I am being not supportive of exercise or nutrition. So in line number 14 uh talks about access to healthy food, physical activity etc etc and has positive academic outcome including lower absenteeism, improved test scores and enhanced student achievements. So here here is my really honest humble question to you. Okay. Um, when I read something like that, it really reminds me with the advertisement on TV a while back, where is the beef? I ask you, where is the proof that if we concentrate on appropriate nutrition and exercise that it leads to improvement in achievement? Where is the proof of that? Um I don't see it when I search. I

031don't I didn't see it when you know there are people who are overweight and they sit behind computers and they are smart and productive. Um, so I I like to see some sort of references in the bottom of this policy and every policy that relates to this statement to where it came from objectively and I don't really see that in multiple areas of this policy. Again, I'm not really um against nutrition and exercise. Uh there is another one talks about helping the student develop skills, knowledge and attitude necessary to adopt, maintain healthy lifestyle. Um attitude I mean that's really a stretch. Uh I don't think school system should do that. I think you should stick to the fact. Thank Thank you. Um for 5470 um Miss Sharon Serhoff, you're gonna pass. Okay. Thank you. Then

032Dr. Fon, you can stay there for board policy 6200 school libraries. So kindly don't really hate me for whatever I'm going to say. This policy is about instructional services. It's about libraries, about librarians being licensed, about the librarians serving as teachers. And other similar things and I know it is in comar and you are obliged to obey comar. However, um when I go to any school to visit and I really look at the school library, my impression, my judgment about that school and the school system that it is really a backward system, a system behind the time. And I know there are some on the board and outside people who love conventional teaching and criticize screen time computers. But this is an era of artificial intelligence. This is an era of software and we cannot

033really have librarians and libraries in an oldfashioned way. Every teacher should be a librarian. The students needs to be adept and they are already adept despite us the adults the parents they are adept with internet. They are adept in searching things. Uh my kids basically talk about ch GBT far more than um I do. And my granddaughter is the same. She's more educated in that than even myself. So what I'm trying to say is what I see that this policy although it's complying with Comar etc. It really tells me that the school system is not focused on advancing into high technology. You know, if the United States Navy, Air Force would use the same technique that the board use, old-fashioned, less high-tech, they would not accomplish whatever they are accomplishing. We We really need to

034think high-tech. It is the time. Thank you. Our next speaker on policy 6200 is Santina Janati. Good evening. Hi everyone. Hello. Good evening. Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, uh Superintendent Dr. Rogers, members of the board. My name is Santina Janati and I'm a BCPS parent uh and a library media specialist. I'm here tonight to urge you to approve revisions to policy 6200, school libraries, and to highlight how these updates align Baltimore County public schools with state law, professional standards, and policies already adopted by other Maryland school systems. As outlined in the policy analysis, the revised policy 6200 reflects a statewide shift toward treating school libraries as instructional programs governed by Komar, the Maryland school library media standards, the ALA bill of rights, and the Maryland Freedom to Read Act. Many Maryland districts, including Montgomery, Prince

035George's, Frederick, Howard County, and Baltimore City, have adopted policies that explicitly affirm intellectual freedom, prohibit censorship, and protect library personnel when performing their duties. consistent with professional standards and state law. The revised policy reflects approaches used in other Maryland districts such as Montgomery and Prince George's County by affirming that library collections are selected and reviewed through clear established procedures aligned with state requirements and implemented by trained professionals. This alignment strengthens consistency across Maryland and reduces legal and procedural risk. The revisions also align with peer districts by recognizing the need to maintain and upgrade library facilities. Effective library programs depend not only on appropriate collections and staffing, but also on functional spaces that support instruction, collaboration, and access to print and digital resources. by including language about maintaining and upgrading library spaces. Policy 6200 reflects a

036comprehensive modern approach to school library programs. Importantly, many comparable districts district policies recognize the essential role of licensed media specialists. Districts such as Charles, Wakcomo, and Frederick County explicitly identify media specialists as responsible for instruction, collection development, and program oversight. The revised policy 6200 similarly recognizes media specialists as teachers, co-teers, instructional leaders, and program administrators, roles that require full-time licensed staffing. By aligning with policies already in place across Maryland, the revised policy 6200 positions Baltimore public schools as a leader committed to instructional excellence, equity, and compliance with state law. And for these reasons, I strongly support adoption of the revised policy 6200. And I urge the board to ensure its implementation includes staffing school libraries with licensed full-time media specialists so that the policy's alignment with state law and peer districts is fully realized. Thank

037you for your time and commitment to BCPS students. Thank you. And our last speaker is Miss Naven. Okay. I like to throw you guys for a loop with our names. That's okay. I I using my phonics. Uh good evening, Chair Licar, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Ro, Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. My name is Marie Naven, and I'm a BCPS parent and a library media specialist. I'm here tonight to share my strong support of the proposed revisions to policy 6200 school libraries and to affirm their alignment with Komar requirements, the Maryland school library media standards, the American Library Association's Bill of Rights, the Maryland Freedom to Read Act, and the Blueprint for Maryland's future. The revised policy correctly recognizes that school library media programs are instructional programs governed by state law and professional standards.

038Komar establishes clear expectations for public school library programs, while Maryland library media standards emphasize inquiry based learning, information and media literacy, ethical use of information, and equitable access to diverse resources. These skills are also central to the blueprint for Maryland's future, which calls for rigorous standards aligned instruction that builds students literacy, critical thinking, inquiry, and research skills across all content areas. It emphasizes college and career ready competencies, including the ability to evaluate sources, use information ethically, and engage in inquiry based learning. These competencies are explicitly taught and supported by licensed library media specialists as teachers, co-teers, instructional leaders, and information specialists. Media specialists provide direct instruction and collaborate with classroom teachers to integrate literacy and research skills into the curriculum. These responsibilities cannot be met through part-time or inconsistent staffing. Full-time media specialists are necessary

039to ensure consistent implementation of COMAR state standards and blue blueprint aligned instruction across all schools. The Maryland Freedom to Read Act and the ALA Bill of Rights further underscore the need for trained licensed library media specialists in school. These frameworks require school systems to uphold intellectual freedom, again provide access to diverse viewpoints, and follow established procedures when materials are challenged. Consistent, lawful implementation depends on professional judgment and ongoing oversight by full-time library media specialists. Equity is central to these revisions. When libraries are not fully staffed with a licensed full-time library media specialist, disparities between schools increase, undermining students access to instruction, information, and the protections guaranteed by state law. For these reasons, I urge the board to adopt the revised policy 6200 and to ensure its implementation includes staffing every school library with a licensed

040full-time library media specialist. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is action taken in close session. And for that I call on Mr. Burns. Good evening, Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, Dr. Rogers, members of the board. uh this evening in close session you all you uh considered appeal HA26-018 and voted on action for it. Now would be appropriate time to affirm your consideration. Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the actions taken in close session on hearing examiner case HA26-018 and authorize Miss Gover to sign for those board members not physically present. So move Pumprey. Thank you. May I have a second? Second Harvey. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Abe, abstain. Miss Dleski, yes. Dr. Seavoy,

041yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, abstain. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Framp, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is new business report on board policies. This is the first reader for these policies and for that I call on Miss Christina Pumphrey, chair of the policy review committee. Thank you. Members of the board, the policy review committee asks that the board accept this report of the committee's recommendation of the proposed changes to the following board policies. Board policy 1110, publications, radio, television, and digital media. Board policy 5470, wellness. and board policy 6200, school libraries. These policies are presented to you on tonight's agenda as exhibits I1 through I3. Thank you, Miss Palmrey. Board members, are there any separation? May I have a motion

042to accept the recommendation of board policy review of the board's policy review committee for board policies 1110, 5470, and 6200. So move 10. Thank you. No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. Is there any discussion? Check. Are you teams? Okay. May I have a roll call vote, please? Miss Harvey? Yes. Miss Abe? Yes. Miss Dleski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumprey? Yes. Mr. Young? Yes. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Hen? Yes. Miss FPMP? Yes. Miss Leicter? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the report on the FY2025 annual comprehensive financial report. And for that I they're here. Then I call Mr. Tantlip and Dr. Grim and uh Miss Ashenfelder. Thank you. Uh good evening board chair uh Lter, Dr. Rogers, board members. Um tonight

043we're going to present the annual comprehensive financial report or aer with me besides Dr. Grim is Miss Ashenfelder who's our director of finance and accounting or our controller. Um Sher Amos who's a principal at our external auditor Clifton Larson Associates or CLA made a detailed presentation to the January 14th audit committee and answered committee member questions. Miss Amos had a prior commitment and was unable to attend the rescheduled board meeting tonight. A summary of her presentation is as follows. BCPS received an unmodified audit opinion, which is a clean, good audit opinion. CLA did experience a delay in receiving required information. Financial statements are due to the Maryland State Department of Education, MSD, on September 30th. BCPS did not complete its act until December 29th, which is about 3 months late. If it had been any

044later, it might have uh caused Baltimore County government to delay the completion of their aer. Uh but we did get it in time that it did not cause them any delays. BCPS's unmodified audit opinion is the highest level of assurance that CLA can provide a school system that financial statements are not materially misstated and was consistent with opinions of the past few years. Miss Amos noted that financial statements are the responsibility of management. In terms of comparison to the prior year, there was one change in accounting policy related to compensated absences. This was a result of new government accounting standards board statements that was issued and applicable for this year FY2025. BCPS did not have any significant or unusual transactions noted. CLA had no disagreement with management over the course of the audit. CLA did

045not find any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in in internal control. And as noted in my opening, BCPS received an unmodified audit opinion, which is a clean, good audit opinion, the best case that we could hope for. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from board members? Miss Nmanowski? Yes. Um I noticed that this governance um letter was just added today to to board docs from Clifton Lawson explaining some of the the corrected statements disagreements. Was that just when did we receive that? Uh that was received uh at the same time as our ACT for was finalized in late December. And this is the first time we're seeing it when it was uploaded today around like four o'clock. Uh yes, I believe so. Okay. Um there was one case that it it

046said about um management estimated a minimum payout related to current legal case totaling $543,000 for capital P uh capital projects fund. Can you explain that to me? Uh yes, that was just a settlement that was um defined, but we were going to receive uh insurance payout to uh offset that exactly. So they were noting it. It was not a finding uh but it was something that we didn't feel needed to be included in the act. So in their management working papers, they just noted that. So why was it labeled as a legal fee if it for capital is was it not part of capital outlay? Can you explain that better? It it was it was an updated uh legal settlement that came in when um so the auditors asked for an updated letter from our

047law office. We worked with CLA to determine that we didn't need to book that liability because if we would have booked the liability, we would have had to book the revenue. So at the end of the day, there was no net effect to the dollars. The revenue and the expenses would have balanced out to zero. I just don't understand why would it be called a legal case it it was part of a legal settlement as part of the under capital under capital can it not be disclosed what it was for or I don't sorry the legal letters have a lot of information so I may need to go back and double check and get you the specifics of it because we have many that are No at that time Okay. And then the the 22.5

048million um that was that was like the first one. Um the starting funds I guess weren't aligned. Where is it? Um uncorrected misstatements audit the government activities where could just it's uh page 11. Can you just explain that one to me? Sure. Uh yeah. Um uh there was a new accounting standards rule this year where we needed to account on our balance sheet for our sick leave liability. Now the reality is we don't have any sick leave liability from a cash standpoint. It's simply a balance uh sheet transaction that we note it but that we're required to identify it this year. We don't pay out sick pay when employees leave and there's no cash impact during the year because uh if an employee is getting sick leave it's just in in lie of their normal

049pay and so we budgeted for that. So it was simply an accounting rule that came into effect this year where we needed to identify it not on the balance sheet but there's no uh cash impact to that at all. So is that a fund that we had and didn't use or or that we rolled over to to be I just expl I it's not it's not a cash impact. You can think of it as as we're just noting it as a balance sheet account. So there's not actually any money set aside. It was just an accounting rule that we needed to do that. um why you know I can't uh explain the logic why they came up with that rule but there it's just a notation how much in theory our sick pay liability would

050be at the end of the year if we had to pay it all out but we don't have to we would never pay it all out we don't pay it when people leave some districts might nationally maybe that was the genesis of the rule but um we don't do that and like I said when someone takes sick leave it's just in lie of regular Okay. But does that get incorporated into our total budget when we're doing budget planning? It's not a cash impact. It's really So it's just stated on our balance sheet. It's not in our operating budget at all. It's not in the operating budget. No, it's not. Thank you. Sure. Other questions, Miss Hen. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Tanov. Um so p other pending um legal settlements settlements would be recorded as

051liabilities on the balance sheet even though there's no cash impact because those would be paid out of our insurance pool. Uh yes, I believe that's a good summary of it. Sorry, did you want to add something? Feel free. it it's based off of um the LA ALA and what our our law office determines as the status of that case, but generally those are recorded on the balance sheet as liabilities. Generally, we don't have to because they are covered by insurance. So, it it depends on the situation. It it depends on which one you're you're speaking of. So, if we're talking about um like special ed, like the special ed cases, those are booked liabilities because we budget for them. Okay. And this was a a capital um it's disclosed. It's a capital projects fund that

052can you explain why this was not or why generally these would not be? I'm trying to determine what was unique about this particular case where there was a disagreement or why we didn't record it as a liability, but the auditors felt that it needed to be. Is it is this standard practice and have we changed anything about how we would record this type of no thing in the future? There wasn't a disagreement. They agreed with us that we didn't. That's just a management note saying that it was a discussion that we had and we came to an agreement. They they're not against it. that they weren't saying that we needed to. They're in agreement with us deciding not to book it because if we would have booked the liability on the reverse side, we would

053have then had to book the expense. So at the end of the day, it would have been the same amount and the net effect would have been zero. Okay. So since we this would generally not be a cash expense, can you explain why we um why we do not record some as liabilities on the balance sheet? You mentioned we record some and not others. Is that something you can speak to? From my own understanding, I'd like to know why, if I may. Um, so I believe uh one of the responses was that the office of law makes this determination. Is that accurate? Yes. All right. So, as a followup, I think it would be most appropriate that we would refer this question to the office of law for a thorough response and I'll provide it

054in that update. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions from board members? Let me just check teams for a sec. Um, okay. I think we're good. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is just making sure I got the with the changes. Okay. The next item on the agenda is work session number one. Um our work session number two will be on next Tuesday. So work session number one on the superintendent's proposed FY2027 operating budget. And for that I call in Dr. Rogers, Dr. Grim, and Mr. Tantliff and the other chiefs. Everybody come on up. Thank you, board chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, and members of the board. Um, as you noted, this is work session number one. all questions that were received by Friday, January 23rd, uh those responses

055have been posted on budget 101 uh for the public and uh incorporated in this presentation and the team is prepared to respond uh to those. If we could pull up the slides, please. Next slide, please. Thank you. I am joined by the team. We want to walk uh the board of education members and our community through um some slides to provide some critical context and information uh regarding some inquiries that we have received. As a reminder, uh this slide depicts the amount of money that Baltimore County Public Schools spends on its budget. Um 82% of every um 82% of our budget or 82 cents of every dollar is spent on employee salaries and wages. Uh that amount is the darker green uh section in the um graphic for you and the remainder of the 18

056cents identify the specific categories uh where funding is allocated. We also want to call to everyone's attention. Um while we had to make some uh tough decisions in the proposed uh budget for the board's deliberation, uh the prior prioritization was based on stakeholder feedback and input that was very clear. Uh the proposed budget prioritizes recruitment and retention by honoring both year two and year three of the compensation package for all members of team BCPS. And it also honors the target of the 2% above last year's uh spending that was provided to us by the county executive. As a reminder to everyone, this slide depicts our compensation costs to add the second half of year two with the full year three. That is a total of $93 million on this slide. um every union and non-represented

057staff members uh their share is included. We have been sharing that um Baltimore County Public Schools, like other school systems in Maryland, is planning for additional revenue this upcoming year. Um the additional revenue that we're planning for from both the state and federal government is approximately $46 million. Uh what this graph depicts is with declining enrollment and increased costs of wages and benefits. uh when you compare the cost of compensation to the additional revenue um the increases simply do not keep up with the rate of increased compensation thereby creating the gap this gap simply depicts um compensation only. We want to be very clear uh to our community that Baltimore County Public Schools agrees um that uh reducing positions in our budget must be a last resort. It is not our desire to um increase

058class size and uh in actuality we have spent the last uh three years doing everything not to increase uh class sizes. uh $169 million worth of reductions have been made with 69 uh specific central office supervisory position reductions. There were additional positions um as you know but 69 at the supervisory level the first year when we dealt with the esser funding cliff um and we needed to add uh extremely necessary infrastructure to move BCPS forward. We first started by eliminating the vacant funded positions that were a part of the operating budget for previous years. I made a significant uh salary turnover adjustment as a result of that. We right-sized responsibility factors in our secondary schools. We made the first step in central office reductions and started zerobased budgeting. Year two, we were faced with another

059uh challenging year. We made more uh significant reductions in central office. We reduced our baseline spending. We uh sent positions offset to our grants. As a reminder, nearly 8% of our budget is in federal grants. Um we have well over,00 positions that are grant funded. Um members of the community that would like to know what those positions are, that information is posted on budget 101. The benefit of um moving positions over to grants is federal funding is provided to us one year in advance. And so as long as the money that is appropriated to schools is dispersed, uh we do have some lead time in planning, we remain in very close communication with the state department of education uh to make sure that we are all watching closely and we have contingency plans uh based

060on changes with federal grants. Uh we also aligned allocations to formulas last year. We did not increase any class sizes again for a second year in the row. Implemented zerobased budgeting and a non-school-based position hiring freeze. And for year three, uh what we have in front of us are uh additional central office reductions, 36 positions. Central office is not growing. An increased use of fund balance uh much at the urging of our county council members during last budget season. a 73 and a half percent reduction of new spending requests. Uh we have evaluated contracts and our staffing levels uh as compared with uh similarly situated districts. Um zerobased budgeting again and we continue to be in a non-school-based position hiring freeze. Want to uh shed some light on staffing allocations. Um uh you will recall

061that last January we debuted a new tool. Um we moved from using Excel spreadsheets to monitor staffing allocations to an actual tool for all of our schools and our entire system that allocated based on our formulas. um we shared at that time uh what that staffing allocation tool looks like and what's highlighted for you in yellow are the different categories of staffing that is provided in the staffing allocation spreadsheet and so when we talk about a reduction in the classroom teacher allocations uh we are not including other positions in the classroom teacher allocations. You will see on the slide highlighted for you in yellow that positions are delineated in terms of how they are assigned to school by grade band uh by title one. Special education is separate. Uh multilingual learners are separate and um

062you have uh electives that are separate. Um all of these positions are separate line items. So there is no co-mingling of staffing allocations when we are talking about uh class sizes in that formula line item. We also want to be clear um Dr. Jones in a few moments uh will step us through an example about factors that impact class sizes in secondary schools. Staffing allocations, those numbers are used to create a master schedule for students. Um, in elementary school there's very little variability, but in secondary schools class sizes are based on student enrollment in specific courses. Uh, near the end of the calendar year, students have the opportunity with their families to select courses that they want to enroll in for the upcoming year. School administration then must consider the impact of running some classes

063and identify priorities in collaboration with their instructional leadership team. Um what has an impact on class sizes are small classes that are run in the master schedule. Additional release periods that are provided to staff members. When I say release periods, I mean uh free periods. If a staff member's job description does not include free periods, they are uh slated to teach six out of eight periods and a decision is made at the local level to provide them with one or more additional release periods so that they can engage in other activities related to um students that causes an impact on the master schedule and class sizes. And lastly, external pressures. Many of our principles are faced with external pressures when they try to make difficult decisions based on enrollment and interest in courses. People want

064in the community for them to continue to move forward with special classes, special programs, favorite classes. Sometimes they're faced with letterw writing campaigns and pressure from external um sources asking them to uh continue to run the class despite the impact that it might have on other sections in the schedule. We asked the data warehouse to pull um our data from the master schedules where our students right now in all of our schools are sitting to provide actual information um for our community members. Uh the first slide is or the first uh table is in reference to elementary school. Uh what you'll note that's highlighted in yellow is the percent of classrooms for grade 1 through five that have 25 or fewer students in them today. Um you will note a vast majority of classes have

065uh those numbers in them today. When we look at middle school, uh we will see by um specific area those uh courses that have what the average class size is as the first column. Then the percent of courses in that area that have uh fewer than 20 students enrolled in a section. Now the percent of courses with 20 to 25 and the percent of courses um with above 25 students. You also see in between that uh the percent of courses 25 and below has been added um for all of our different course areas. Um what you'll note is uh for specific areas namely business and marketing communication and audiovisisual um English language and literature and uh public protective and government services courses. That is where we have the smallest courses in our schools. Um typically

066in middle school we have an average class size of 26 in engineering and technology. Um information technology that average class size is 27 excuse me 25 with 51% of those classes above uh 25 students. um life and physical sciences. While the average is 23 students, you have approximately half 51% of those classes with more than 25 students. um physical education, social studies and arts, excuse me, physical education, social studies and um arts and world languages are the areas in middle school uh with percentages above 25 students uh that we have highlighted for you. Um physical education and uh world languages having the highest at 71% and 64% respectively. currently sitting in our high schools. These are the numbers of students sitting in our courses. Uh the table is set up in the same way for

067middle school. Um you will note that we have extremely small classes that are running in our high schools in the programs highlighted in green. architecture and construction, communication and audiovisisual technology, uh, healthc care sciences, hospitality, excuse me, human hospitality and is that hospitality and tourism or hospitality and tourism, military science, uh, public protective and government services, and lastly, transportation distribution and logistics. Uh for the larger areas uh while the average class size is 22, business and marketing average class size 24, engineering and technology uh you have in information technology uh for with 22. Physical education um 52% of those classes are above 25 uh students. And you also have social studies where 42% of those classrooms have above uh 25 students. Um we talked about uh class positions that are full-time positions where they do

068not include release periods and decisions are made at the local school level to provide additional release periods. uh report was run and currently in our schedules you'll see the breakout for elementary, middle, and high. The number of uh positions that are slated to have a full load and currently in the master schedule, they do not have a full load. wanted to make sure that our community has this information as to where the variability comes from and what are those factors that impact class sizes directly. Turning it over to Miss Charlie Green. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Rogers, and good evening, members of the board. Um, I wanted to start by grounding us in some fiscal realities. Regrettably, over the last three years, uh, we've learned and heard about the fiscal cliff created by the drying

069up of ESSER funds. Those funds when they were bountiful allowed us to fund a number of things in our schools that were missionritical. Uh safety assistance for example being one. The sudden ceasing of those funds created a fiscal reality that we had to meet and many of those things were offloaded onto the operating budget to continue their use. We also know that the Maryland blueprint uh the blueprint for Maryland's future, the funding that was promised didn't quite come in at the rate that we thought it would. And at the same time, we faced a number of pressures depicted on this headline on these headlines related to shortages around the nation. This fiscal reality created for us the need to make some very difficult decisions around how we were going to continue to fund missionritical um

070supports for our schools. I share this with you just to take you back and to ground you in the reality that we faced for the last three years. As Dr. Rogers walked us through some of those different changes. We started initially with looking at vacant positions. We moved then to zerobased budgeting, making sure that we were using a scalpel approach to making sure that we were funding all of the needs of the school system rather than going through and slashing programs, trying to make sure that we're making the best use of the funding that we have. to the next slide. The other thing that I'd like to ground you in in addition to uh the fiscal realities that we faced, I also want to remind everyone of another reality and that is the negotiated agreements.

071These are the board's agreements with our various associations. And these agreements ever since 1996 had language in them that said that we had no furloss nor do we have any layoffs. That protects all of the members of team BCPS from drastic cuts to programs and to offices. We essentially owe the folks who are protected by these agreements a position. And so when you look at the chart that is depicted on this slide, you can see cuts that have been made in various positions in central office over the last three years. If you take a look at the chiefs, we've seen a 22% reduction in the number of chiefs. Uh you also see a 22% reduction in the number of executive directors and a 42% reduction in the number of directors. That's important information because many

072of these folks, most of those folks are not covered by master agreements. They are nonrepresented employees. However, it's also important to know that any of those employees who might be certificated employees, we do have a responsibility to continue. We owe them a position essentially to continue honoring their certification and their expertise. And so I share that information with you because it might be for members of the public and for board members who look at the um the budget crunch that we are in. It might be very easy to identify positions or things that are not necessarily perhaps in the mind of the public close to schools and identify those as places for cuts. Um a number of reasons why that is not possible. For one, climate and morale. you know, we want to make sure

073that we are looking very carefully and very closely position by position and making sure that we are making cuts that support um the work that we need to do in our schools but also honor the expertise in our building. In addition to that, the negotiated agreements don't allow us to do that. Essentially, if you are cutting positions, nine times out of 10, if you look at the folks who are represented, they are owed a position somewhere else in the organization. And so I share that because I think that's a reality that we need to grapple with as we move forward with thinking about where is there opportunity to realize savings in this budget. We owe positions to individuals who are represented. That is part of the promise and the agreement that we've made. We want

074to align that work that we owe those positions that we owe them with their areas of expertise. And so in some cases there are folks who are working in an area of expertise and the position that they are in may be the very best position for the organization. I share that as we have our conversation tonight. We wanted to make sure that we were grounded in not only the fiscal reality but the reality created by our negotiated agreement and then also the realization that even if an individual is non-represented if they are certificated they do have certain rights and expectations that we have to meet. you can move to the next slide. And so with that framework, that critical context, um I'd like to walk you through and begin walking you through and the team

075will will continue uh the various offices so that you can see uh some of the adjustments that have already been made just to highlight and elevate a few. So I pull up the superintendent's office and if you look at that office, you'll see that there are no changes in staffing. And just very quickly, if you take a quick look at it, uh the superintendent's office, just for the uh the benefit of the viewing public, includes the office of law. And so those are the individuals who were depicted there. As you can see, there are no changes in staffing and nom nominal changes in terms of the amount of funding. Most of those tied to wages and benefits. Chief of staff, that is my office. As you take a look, you can see that there have

076been reductions in staffing. Just to walk you through very uh very quickly, you can see that we have gone in the last couple of years from 47 FTEES to 35. You'll also notice that there are increases in contracted services and other services. Those services are uh really the result of a redirect, a redirect of information, uh redirect of services that came over from IT to the chief of staff's office. So, taking a look here, you'll see that there have been reductions in staffing, redirects, and then any other additional charges really relate to the increased cost of paper and to be perfectly honest, the increased cost of translation services. As you know, in BCPS, we serve myriad families who uh who speak multiple languages at home. One of the things that we've been doing in the

077communications office is ensuring that those individuals were able to communicate with the system in their uh language of origin. And so those transl uh those translation costs have been rising. And so I will turn it over to uh Dr. Jones to walk us through the chief of schools office. Good evening. Good evening members of the board and Dr. Rogers. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the division of schools and this particular slide which involves appendix E chief of schools. Um, as noted on the slide, there are no reductions um to PPWs, no increases in health services, and no reductions in secondary media specialists. And I'll talk a little bit more about the um allocations for media specialists um shortly. The new spending involves, as Dr. Rogers presented in her um in her budget

078presentation, involve the um the two charter schools um which involves 30 FTEEs at a cost of $3.46 million. Next slide, please. Public information regarding staffing can be found in our uh budget book and also on our website. I'll start with the first snapshot that is before you which is um appendix A schools. This is um in the budget book on page 119 and it speaks of school allocation ratios. The um to summarize this information classroom teachers are allocated based on enrollment using grade level teacher to student ratios. In FY27, kindergarten is a 1-22 ratio and 1st through 12th grade is 1 to 25. Administrative and clerical counseling and pareducators staffing increase with enrollment. Um, department chairs assigned per middle and high school, a principal, media specialist, and a nurse is assigned to each school and

079then of course based on enrollment other positions come into play. The next screenshot has um information and important information regarding enrollment. School enrollment in our county and um across the state. Uh the projections are considered in multiple ways. Demographic, housing, and programmatic uh factors come into play. the um enrollment forecast for Baltimore County Public Schools where you see the um green and the light blue bars actually speak to the actual enrollment for FY 24, 25, and 26. And then the light blue bars are um our enrollment forecasted for FY27 and then of course three sub subsequent years through FY30. The last um screenshot is a school profile. It's actually um our butus elementary school. But if you go on our website and you um click on our school profiles, you'll be able to see some

080important information regarding um our student achievement data um school um staff school counts, I'm sorry, and then also the um the staffing ratios there. It's also important as Dr. Rogers said to keep in mind that in FY26 BCPS, we did not um increase class sizes in schools. Next slide, please. the this slide is the example that Dr. Roger spoke to earlier and it is very important that we process this together as a community and then also um the work that I do with um our our principles in this particular scenario 125 students um are let's say enrolled in a school. So if you have 125 students there are five teachers that are allocated based on the sta the staffing ratio. If a school decides to take that 125 and allocate the teachers evenly, then you

081have class sizes, five sections of 25 students. If a another decision is made based on the unique context of the school or some of the things that um was shared earlier, you have 125 students and in this case you have 22 students that um were pulled out and then you divide the remaining number 103 divided by the remaining classes which creates a variance. Um you'd have two class sizes of 11, a class size some class two class sizes of 34 and then another class size of 35. Again, very important to understand and we've shared this um with our principles, the importance of thinking about the staffing allocations and then the scheduling decisions that are made and some that actually um make sense and actually speak to the needs of the school community. But we wanted

082to show you what that would look like if um different things came into play based on the needs of the school community. And next I will turn it over to Dr. Grim. Good evening. The uh slide that you see displayed before you is our changes for the division of operations as proposed in the FY27 budget. You can see there's a reduction in our professional staff, but there is uh increases in our support staff and those increases are represented by additional square footage at schools that we are excited to open next year, including the addition at Dundock Solers, the new Deer Park Elementary and the new Landsdown High School. our allocations in uh building services for example and in grounds is based on the square footage or the size of those facilities. Um other increased um

083requests that we have are due to some changes. For example, for the last several years we've been buying uh filters through ESSER funds. Those funds are no longer available to us. So we have to uh pivot. um we still need those filters for our HVAC and so you'll see that cost increase there. Um the other funds represent some contracted services that we're requesting in lie of uh FTEEs that have been eliminated from the division. And with that I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Mullenex. Good evening and thank you. This slide represents the division of curriculum and instruction. We have had a reduction in staffing of professional staff um from the general budget. What I do want to note is that we have had an increase of 14 professional FTEES at the middle school

084level. These represent our middle school career coaches. They are funded through the blueprint for workforce development. Um, and this is what this is the only way that this funds can be used is for these individuals who are currently in our middle schools. We also have a new spending request for special education. It's 20 FTEES and $1.7 million. This is to cover SLP case loads and reduce them to ensure that they are meeting the standards that have been set. It also covers um the expansion of our SCS, our CLS programs to ensure that we're providing continuum of services for our students. I believe I'm turning it over to Mr. Call. Good evening, Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, and uh Dr. Rogers, members of the boards. um human resources was not exempt from actually uh making tough

085decisions around creating greater efficiencies and eliminating redundancies uh as a means of of uh creating a cost savings. As such, we proposed an FY27 uh to eliminate three professional positions as well as two support positions. In addition, we have decreased our spending uh on contractual services support salaries by roughly $300,000 and realigning the work within the division. So, at this time, I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Tentliff. Uh thank you. Uh so, there's a few uh points in the budget where we received a lot of questions and Dr. Rogers wanted to uh give you give uh the board some explanations. Um so, the first thing is fixed charges. Fixed charges is a reporting category that is defined by MSD. It's charges of recurring nature which are not readily allocatable to other expenditure categories.

086And it's basically all of our fringe benefits. That's the simplest way uh to define it. The county government's been increasing things like our other postemployment benefits or OPB. Um, the state's been increasing our local share of state retirement over the past decade and social security and Medicare are about 7 and a half% of the total salaries in the budget. Next slide. Um, if you go to the very last page of the budget book, you can see all of the fixed charges in one place. This is a snapshot of it and the highlights are are simply um items that are uh going up just uh in the normal course of things. You can see OPEB uh the fortunately they're only going up 4 million this year but that's following 14 million last year and those are

087actuarily determined. Health insurance has a significant increase just uh similar to others across the country. Uh dental's the same way. Uh social security and Medicare that really is just going up with the compensation changes since our headcount's going down. It's more than offset by uh the dollar value of all our salary increases that Dr. Rogers showed you earlier in the presentation. Next page. Um our actual fixed charges for FY25 are at the program and school level is required by blueprint, but our budgeted charges in FY26 and 27 are centrally budgeted but will be budgeted at the program and school level following Oracle implementation. So historically in the general fund all fringe benefits were budgeted centrally and the actuals hit C central centrally but as part of blueprint where the dollars are following the children and

088all uh there's minimum school funding all of those expenses have to follow the child and all the expenses should go to the school. We're in the process of on-ramping to that. So, we're able to move our expenses at year end, but right now we're not able to budget everything at the school level. So, we know where those expenses are, but it doesn't roll up if you want to think about it that way in the budget book. But for the budget module, we're developing in Oracle, we've taken that into account. So when that goes live, which will be for the FY28 season since we're in 27 now, so it'll be live uh for next year in the 28 budget, we should have everything tying. So you won't see where you have a huge budget, but the

089actuals are spread out. So the totals are in line, but you'd see them spread out. Um, next page, please. Um, there's also a question we get sometimes. What's between fixed charges and other charges? Other charges is simply a grouping of objects as defined by MSDE. All fixed charges are within other charges but other charges are not just fixed charges. So essentially um fixed is a subset of other charges. Uh so other al besides fixed include utilities, insurance, travel, professional dues, reimbursements and interdep departmental transfers. Next slide. There there's also um if you just look at any office you might take the FTEES divided by the salaries and you see uh wildly varying salaries salaries that don't make sense. That is because when we say salaries and wages it is not just FTE salaries. So you

090might have an FTE but you might have a lot of other things in the salary budget and you can see them all uh listed here. stipens, subs, additional assistance, home and hospital tutors, many many things. And in this simple example we gave is the uh budget for the board. There's only one FTE, but all of the board stipens that you're paid are in salaries. So it looks like a disproportionate salary relative to the number of FTEs. And and this occurs throughout the budget. Uh so you can't take the salaries and divide it by the FTES without knowing all the details behind it and come up with uh an answer that makes any sense. Next slide. Uh fund balance uh always a fun topic of discussion but in the end fund balance is the amount of

091revenue that exceeds expenses in the prior year. It accumulates in our fund balance. Think of it as uh whatever we have left over at the end of the year goes into the bank and it can be reused the next year. It includes salary and non-s salary net under spending. Um fund balance can only be accessed with the approval of this board and the Baltimore County Council. If something goes into fund balance, we cannot access it in any other way other than running a supplemental appropriation, which we have done the past couple of years. So the board uh has seen that and they'll see another one later this year. appropriate fund balance. Appropriated fund balance is a material part of the budget each year. Uh we had and I'll show you on a later slide. Um

092we had a significant balance as a result of COVID under spending when we remote when we remote when we were able to put a lot of expenses into ESSER, but we're uh um drawing down that balance now. So we have to really level out how much we're spending. And we have a couple of examples just to give you a feel for that because sometimes there might be uh the thought especi from the public hey you have this much money in fund balance let's use it all this year and then we can do lots of great things but the unfortunate thing is that would put us at a major deficit the following year. Um so care must be sten taken to use a sustainable amount. That's the key thing and that's what Dr. Rogers and we

093are always focused on is making sure it's sustainable. Next slide. uh salary turnover. Uh some questions about that. So we have $45.3 million in salary turnover in the budget this year. That's about 3 and 12% of our total salary base. We spread it throughout uh the budget. And one thing to really and you can see the simple calculation there how we come up with 3 and a half%. But one thing to really keep in mind is because we've really abolished a lot of vacancies over the last couple years, our uh variance in salaries is likely to get tighter and tighter as the year goes on because we're going to have less and less vacancies because we've removed those positions. Next slide. Uh here you can see a fund balance on the left side is our

094nonsustainable example and we have a sustainable example which ties to this year's budget on the right side. So you can actually see our starting balance. So through FY26 it's the same on both sides. So you can see our starting balance of fund balance how much we used. There was one year where the county had us move money to support the capital budget. Um and then you can see our variance. So that's our net under spending for the year. As well as if we have old incumbrances for prior years and they're not needed anymore, we're allowed to liquidate them. You can't use those in the current year, but that does fall into fund bound. So in other words, um you had a purchase order, you had $100,000, only $20,000 was received. You decide you don't need

095the rest of it or they're unable to deliver. Then that $80,000 falls into fund balance. The offices can't reuse that money. It's not in the current year's budget. It just drops into fund balance when we close the books for the year. So you can see in No. Yeah, just stay there for a second. Uh and the next two slides are just these two on their own page. Um so you can see in 206 or 27, you can see we're using 50 million. So we did boost up versus what we've used uh the prior year. And we know we're going to have to start uh drawing that down um in the coming years. So if uh and actually let me go to the next slide. I'll show you. It's a little easier to look at. So

096here's our not sustainable example. So this this is just saying, hey, we're using 50 million this year. Let's keep using 50 million. And that's different than okay, let's increase it to 60 or 70 because then we'll be out of business really quick. You can see by 2030 we don't have 50 million to even use anymore. And any amount you use less than the prior year is a gap in the budget that can only be closed through either extra revenue or cutting expense. It's a very similar phenomena to the ongoing expenses we had in uh the ESSER budget from COVID which we talked just a smidge about earlier. But when that went away, we the board and superintendent determined there were some things we had to keep doing. They're critical and that was a gap. to

097continue those things, we needed to have a combination of more revenue and lower expense. So, uh we want fund balance to be sustainable and if you don't, it causes a revenue gap as I uh mentioned. And in this example, we're about almost $30 million short in 2030. And this is a very simple example. Granted, it's hard to know every year what our variance is going to be. A lot of different variables in there. It's just to kind of demonstrate the idea of use of fund balance. Um, next and last slide. This is our sustainable plan. So, here you can see we're planning to slowly draw down our use of fund balance to get to about a $30 million run rate. And precoid that is about what we used every year, 30 to 32 million for

098a number of years, not every year. And that's really a sustainable amount. It's about what we'll generate in positive variance each year between liquidated incumbrances and the difference between uh expense and revenue. We think we'll be able to do that even with our lower vacancies as we move forward. Um, so that's really it in a nutshell. I know there's a lot of questions and fund balance. It can be a confusing topic, but uh that wraps up what we were going to talk about in the presentation. Thank you. So, first, thank you very much for that presentation and trying to make some of the more complex pieces a little bit more understandable. So, we appreciate that. Before I get started or before we start with questions, I'm sorry, Dr. Rogers, did you want to say anything

099at the end? No. Okay. Um, m Miss Tleski, you had a motion to make. Sure. Yes. Thank you. I just wanted to make a motion to extend board member comment time to three minutes. Thank you. Is there a second to second hand? Thank you. Any discussion? I have a roll call vote, please. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Abe, yes. Misski, yes. Dr. Seavoy, Dr. Mr. Seavoy. Mr. McMillian. Yes. Miss Pumphrey. Yes. Mr. Young. Yes. Miss Dominowski. Yes. Miss Hen. Yes. Miss Fong. Miss Lectar. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Um questions. Who would like to get us started? Miss Harvey. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a a couple of questions and if you could um could you answer them as if I am I walked up to you in the coffee shop and asked

100you this question. I'm not a board member. I'm not a education professional, nor am I an accountant. That leaves me. So, uh, my first question is, um, the redirects. Could you explain in plain language when you say that positions or funds were redirected because they were moved from one office to another? Does that mean that the the line item was taken from the old office and the funds moved? It wasn't left there. Is that the correct understanding of that? Yes, that's exactly right. It's budget neutral movement from point A to point B. Okay, great. Uh my second question is um on page 17 where you gave the examples of how class sizes can be affected by 17. Oh, I'm sorry. Slide 17, not budget page 17. Slide 17. I'm sorry. I apologize. Um you gave

101the example of the instances um the the classroom sizes where it would be five 125 students, five teachers. If it's all even, everybody gets 25 students, but decisions can be made to pull out um students for some reason or another which would impact some class well it would impact all the class sizes. So, can you give some specific examples of what would be instances where there would be these these pull outs? Yes, I'll go ahead and get you started and Dr. Jones, you can jump right in after. Um, we see a lot of these pull outs for special programs. Um, for example, we have robust relationships with CCBC for higher level courses. Um I did a random sampling and we have many AP uh calculus AB and BC calculus courses uh which largely have um

10210 to 15 students in those courses. Um majority of students who are taking those classes are college and career ready which means the tuition is free for those students to access to CCBC and there's a variety of ways to access the courses. Uh but when there is that request at the schoolhouse for the uh principal to have uh the courses and it's not combined different levels in one section, you then might see conversely a lower level mathematics class inflate. Um you also see those in uh many of the special programs that we have. Um uh some of our principles have been speaking to us about uh magnet uh programs that we have brought forward to um uh sunset based on the number of students. For example, uh some of our schools you might have uh

103seven students across the entire school that are signing up for a magnet. Uh and if you have one uh section of that course, the chances of so we call that a singleton. when you're building a master schedule, the chances of all of those students being able to feed into that section, you end up with a section of three or four students. Um, but we have to take time to sunset those programs. Those are many of the places, those favorite classes, those special classes. Most of the times they are higher level. I want to underscore uh when we're talking about our students receiving special education services as was presented that allocation is separate. Self-contained allocation is separate. Multilingual learners allocation is separate. Even our inclusion students that allocation is a separate line item identified as continuum

104of services. So this is purely around interest where we have a lot of these smaller classes. If you have other examples that you'd like to highlight, Dr. Jones, please do. So, I think you honestly I think Dr. Rogers just covered it unless you have any additional No, just so so just so I'm clear, the when we talk about pull outs that may take uh the average classroom size may lower some classroom sizes and increase others that those are considered specials uh that are based on interest but don't include special education in those types of service classes. Okay, great. Thank you. Uh on slide 25 um Mr. Tantlith made a statement um that you can't take the salaries and divide it by the FTEES and come up with a number that is a viable actual number.

105Can you just explain because you know when we all sit down and do basic math we that's what we do and so for the public's knowledge uh and edification can you just explain what that means again? Uh sure it's simply because the the salaries uh line item includes not just FTE salary. So if there was a breakout and it just had three FTEEs and exactly what they were paid, then of course it would work. We could have that throughout the book, but the book would just become voluminous and it's pretty large as you know now. So all of salaries which are defined uh in the category defined by MSTE, it includes a lot of other items, stipens, substitutes, additional assistance. So temporary employees, anyone who's not an FTE, but it's compensation that goes to the

106employees. There's many other things included in that bucket. So you have your base salaries the FTEs are making, but then you're getting other salary items that are there. There's some um departments there might not be anything else and it might act be a perfect calculation because there's nothing extra in there. There's others where there's a lot of different stipens and that sort of thing. So just just as presented, you'd need to peel back the onion to have the details you'd need. So just so I'm clear, when we talk about a departmental budget allocation for salaries, if it in includes FTEES, which is full-time equivalents, just so we use a lot of jargon and I want the public to know that's our full-time uh staff. Sure. If the department includes people who are on stipens, people

107who uh have are substitutes, that is included in the overall calculation. And that's why you can't do we have 10 teachers, $10,000, everybody gets $1,000. Yes, that's correct. Okay. Okay. And then my last question, may I have a time check, please? 40 seconds. Thank you. My last question is uh fund balance. Can you explain again why using all of the fund balance would put BCPS in a deficit next fiscal year? Sure. Um so if we used everything we had this year, which is uh about $100 million, there would be the only thing that would be left next year would be our positive variance for this year. So, our difference between revenue and expense, let's just say that came in at $30 million. We'd have a hundred million in the budget this year and that same

108revenue source would only have 30 million next year. So, we would have an immediate gap of $70 million in our budget. So just to have equal spending to this year, not talking about any changes in compensation, any increases in fringe benefits, any other inflation, we would have to find $70 million between more revenue and lower expense just to be flat to this year before we started talking about anything new, whether it's an initiative, compensation increases, etc. So it's a source of revenue. think of it as a precious thing and we want to make sure it's um repeatable and sustainable. And like any other precious resource, if you use it all up and it's gone, well then you're out of luck. So if we use it this year, then we're unable to maintain any programming that

109those funds covered next year or any budget allocations. Not without a large cut. Okay. So yeah, so something would have to be cut. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Miss Harvey. Somebody else would like to ask some questions. Miss Hen. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, first, who is our subject matter expert in zerobased budgeting? Uh, I guess I could stand up for that. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Tantliff. Can you take us through the process um soup to nuts from a decision flow perspective using a department, for instance, operations as an example? Um, well, what we ask the chiefs to do is go through all of their expenses and justify all of them. So, they go through line by line. They have what they spent last year, they have their budget last year, and they

110determine with their staff how do they want to spend the money the following year. They go through and justify every single line item in excruciate excruciatingly granular detail. Uh, the chiefs take all that information on board. uh they're thinking about being in align with the superintendent's priorities, with the board's priorities, and then they will um after having back and forth, they'll present that to the superintendent. The superintendent will scrutinize all of those justifications, have a lot of back and forth, a lot of push back. Some things will be accepted, some things won't. um we'll have a target obviously with our preliminary revenue uh that we get from the county and what we think we're going to get from the state. We determine if there's a gap or not. Uh might have to go back to

111the drawing board if there's still things that need to be cut further. Looking at all of those line items, uh the justifications for them, a lot of push back. So I I would uh describe it as kind of a virtuous cycle. It goes back and forth. There's justification, there's defense. Um, but it's it's just much much more granular than we used to do before the budgets got so difficult. Um, your baseline budget kind of went through without much push back and now every single line item is getting scrutiny through the process. And are the numbers that we're seeing based on actuals from the year prior? Uh the budget book shows all the actuals and the actuals form the basis of what you need in the budget for the next year. So the numbers that we're

112seeing are we don't have the 26 actuals but are these based on 25 actuals or 26 projections? Uh well the budget remember is first put together in September October. So at that point you have FY25 actuals as a reference and you have your FY26 budget as a reference. Um, at the chief level, they're not really able to project every single expense. They're getting with staff. They're looking at that contract. How much are you going to spend for this? And there's lots of back and forth based on what well, what they're projecting to expend for each uh of those items. Do they need more? Do they need less? So, those are reference points they use to uh put together the best budget they can to present to the superintendent. Sure. So when possible, zerobased budgeting looks

113at the principle of using actuals versus projections when the data is available. So my question is um what was our actual turnover rate in 25 assuming that was the most recent data available and how does that compare to our projection projected turnover rate of 3.6%. Um I don't have that off the top of my head. It was I believe a little higher than that. I didn't uh look at salaries right before that. Uh maybe Kelly, you could check uh our budget director could check that. We get back to you in in a bit, but it's a little higher than three and a half. And remember, we we want to plan conservatively. We want to make sure we hit our numbers. And again, any underspending falls to fund balance at the end of the year, but

114we don't want to overspend because obviously that's not ever a good position to be in. And then we'd have to come to the board and do an appropriation for those unexpected expenses. So we try to plan fair but conservatively to make sure we don't overspend. The most recent number I have was from 24 which is a couple years ago but was a turnover rate of 8.8%. The county auditors estimated it at 5.5%. So, I was curious as to how we arrived at 3.5% and what the difference would be should we um generate the budget at a um closer to actual rate of 5.5% and whether that figure would allow us to plan for um more conservative cuts in staffing. I believe back of the napkin math would end us with with maybe 30 around 30

115million, but again that's a rough ballpark. Have you looked at other vacancy rates in in the projections and what that would look like in terms of impact on um again we've gotten rid of a lot of vacancy. Our vacancy rate is dropping. I'd have to look where that uh almost 9% rate that you talked about came from. I'd have to uh compare that. But uh like I said, I believe we were somewhat higher than that last year. Um we've gotten rid of lots of vacancies over the last couple years. So we expect that rate to keep dropping. Um so I think it's a pretty fair and balanced budget the way it is set up. So at a 5.5% that's not the 9% rate that we saw in um 24 which was the actual vacancy rate.

116Closer to a 5.5% is a significant drop in just three years. Um do you happen to know what that figure would be? the 9% resulted in a $76 million fund balance. Um, again, I' I'd have to look at those figures. I don't have them off the top of my head. What's your specific question, Miss Hen? My question is, have we looked at a um closer vacancy rate to actuals um when when going through zerobased budgeting? One of the principles is using actuals rather than um projections. And since our last actual was an 8.8% 8% vacancy rate. My question is how we arrived at using a 3 and 12% vacancy rate. Um again I don't have uh 8.8% seems high to me. I fiscal year 24 and it was based on our numbers based on what

117is provided to Baltimore counties. What was your source for the office of the county office of the county auditors legislative audit analysis? I I'd have to take a look at that. But but I'm still not clear on what you're asking the difference between what and I mean we're we I'm asking about our projected budget. I'm asking about our project our um vacancy rate projection of 3 and a half% versus our last known actual um on public record which was 8.8%. Mr. Tantliff, if I may, um you and Miss uh Newion can get the information and we can provide that update. I will also uh bring to everyone's attention for the FY25 budget. I believe the amount of salary turnover reduction um and I looked at this recently was uh $25 million. So there was a

118significant decrease. So if there was a 8.8% um prior to our tenure um right after for FY25, we should see a percentage that is uh much lower than that. and we will get that number from the uh team to share what the actuals were that we have most updated. Thank you. You're welcome. And may I get a time check? I may have other questions if I have time remaining. Thank you. Um, somebody else, Miss M. Still, thank you all for your discussion. And, um, I know that we've been in a non-school-based hiring freeze. Um, but there are many or several professional positions and other positions in the budget that are not directly related to instruction, non-teer positions. So, um, can that um discrepancy be explained if if we're in this like non-school-based hiring freeze? Thank

119you. I'm not sure they are clear on the question. Is it referring to one of the slides or page? Oh, okay. So like for ex so if we're in this non-school-based position hiring freeze for example in page 212 there was an increase of one social studies professional position um which I believe is a some kind of specialist but that's a non-school-based position and and there were several of them throughout the book. So, uh, before the team responds, I will share, um, as I have been sharing for the last three years, while we're in a non-school-based, um, hiring freeze, there is an exceptions process where people will apply for approval to post a position, the hiring freeze means that we no longer automatically post a position if there's a retirement, uh, promotion or a resignation. um

120a social studies specialist. Uh that is a person that spends um somewhere more than 70% of their time directly inside of schools working in social studies classrooms shoulder-to-shoulder with teachers, making sure that they have the curricular resources that they need, making sure that we're implementing in the classrooms with fidelity, providing uh feedback on uh that work. I I will call your attention to uh Mr. muster first team and the specialists that work for him and the dashboard that we have where we detail what what is their work that they actually do in the schools with the teachers with the leadership teams and so a position like that while it may be allocated to the central office their daily work is in schools and they're um assigned to a specific set of schools okay thank you

121um I I'll try one other question and then I'll yield my time. And then um I know that there are fewer than 100 nonUN paid employees and I know that we have received requests for payraises from a variety of employee categories such as uh kindergarten assistants, paid helpers, additional adult assistance, and early intervention assistance. So, where do they fit into the the picture or puzzle? Thank you. So, you're referring to contractual um employees. I believe Mr. Tantliff uh we provided and kept that going since F esser an increase for our contractual all of our contractual employees. Please speak to any additional Yes. Uh that's correct. We increased them by $4 an hour at the time. So, a very significant raise to make them competitive, but we have not changed that rate in the past couple

122of years. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. McMillian. Did you have your hand up? On slide nine, it shows I guess that's physical education, health, and safety education. There's 71% of those classes are above 25. Am I reading that correctly, Dr. Rogers. Yes. And then on the slide below 10, it shows physical education, health, and safety education. 52% of the classes above 25. What scares me about when you say 25, you know, we've seen, you know, 25 becomes 27 becomes 29, 32, 35. In physical education in my career, I've seen 35, 38, 40, 42. At what point? Now, if the principles are controlling that, at what point do they have a a ceiling that they they're told don't go above this. So, I will share with you historically, um, BCPS has not had class caps.

123When I was a principal, I had caps in my building. We could run a report now and tell you what the largest physical education class is. Um we are sending out the staffing memo uh this month um after we have some final resolution to um uh you know communications that we're having with our county executive to our schools. Uh, one of the things that we're looking to do is to put some caps um inside of that memo just so that it's clear in black and white and if uh there needs to be an exception that we create an exceptions process where a school will have to go through an executive director to request above that um you know it it might be appropriate for the marching band for example to be above you know 35

12437 um whereas it's not appropriate for the piano class. And so, uh, that's what we're looking to do to address that. Uh, to your point, but Baltimore County Public Schools has not, um, historically had class caps, um, in writing for all schools. And another example would be weight training. Yes. Because, you know, we're limited in the size of the weight rooms. Absolutely. So, if you know, we're dumping kids into that before you know it, you know, the square footage of kid per square foot is real low. Yeah. that cap class uh size. Um and I'm sure uh because that is a safety issue and we can pull the report that the class size in our weightlifting classes are much smaller than our general physical education one classes. So in that memo you talked about it's

125going to go out in black and white to the principles and assistant principles that you don't go above a certain point. Yes. Okay. And then my second question, what's going to happen to the librarians? I mean that, you know, I I think they're scared about, you know, what happened to those guidance counselors and then that, you know, the some of them are teaching two classes or whatever and they're worried about that. What What's going on with them? Are they going to be cut? No, we have no cuts in our proposed budget FY27 for media specialists. I think what's important for us to put on the record here is we have 174 media specialists. 110 of them are elementary. Our elementary media specialists for decades um have been on the schedule and they teach students throughout

126the day. Uh they are available in the libraries during lunch so that students can access and do lunch bunch and all of those kinds of things. Last year when we knew we were in year two of the fiscal um challenging times, we had to maximize the number of certified employees um that were face-toface with students teaching and keeping class sizes down. You know, last year we had some significant stresses um and pressures to um make cuts in our budget based on what we proposed versus what we received and we resisted. One of those ways was to maximize everyone that was a certified um teacher teaching students. And so at that time uh librarians or excuse me media specialists at the secondary level um were permitted to teach up to two courses in their area of

127certification. Some um were former English teachers, some were former social studies teachers, etc. So the expectation is that they are teaching aligned with their area of certification. For our secondary schools, we have eight periods every other day. Um, and so that is six periods that they are available in the library as normal. Um, we also need to uh remember that our teachers they are there is the expectation that they go to the media center with their students. um if they are working on a research project, if it is an included class, everyone who is assigned to that class is there along with the media specialist. And so we are not um denying or reducing access for students that they can use the media center, but we have to really um do everything that we can

128to maximize the resources that we have in the buildings uh to make sure that students have access to as the smaller classes as possible. So the FY27 budget does not have any changes from FY26. We're expecting up to two classes. We are going to put in the staffing memo that those classes should not be held during lunch so that the media specialists are available during lunch which is a big influx of students time that they want to check out materials um to make sure that we're responding uh to that need. But it it based on the media specialists and I've heard from some of them directly some of them like to have their two classes every other day and then some of them like to have one class per day. But I think the school

129can work with them in the same way that they work with athletic directors. Are all of them going to be scheduled for two secondary media specialists? Are they all going to be required to teach two or is that up to the individual principles to do that? So in the sta um in the staffing uh guidelines there's going to be an expectation that they teach too so that there is uniformity and we can account for those additional seats for students. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, M. Um, okay, Miss Liski. Okay, go ahead. Um, two follow-up questions with that. Um, the first one is for the two periods that the um library media specialist are away teaching, is there staff that will be in the media center so that students who flow in can check out

130books, ask quick questions, and so forth? like will there be some level of opening in the library? I believe so. We can confirm with our principles. Typically, there are media assistants that are in the um library with the media specialist, but that's something that uh we can make sure that we're very explicit about in our guidelines. Great. Thank you. And then the other question is how does it work for those two teaching periods in terms of their planning for those lessons? Thank you. So in terms of their planning, I think um the percent of time would be uh the same as we have in the Tabco agreement. So it would almost be like a any other point for a teacher, the amount of planning time that is available to them. Um but we would point

131to Miss Bilski to make sure that she details that language. Great. Thank you very much, Miss Pumphrey. Oh, first referring back to um the question regarding class caps and you talked about a memo going out. Is that something I would just clarify is that something that's definitely happening or is this something that is in discussion? So I think um we have been in discussion for some time um and looking at this most recent data where we have been uh the staffing memos have been pretty um explicit about uh when to combine classes looking at oversized and undersized classes and decisions to make uh with few exceptions um that we still see that there's room that release periods the additional release periods that was shared with you I believe um on one of the slides maybe

132slides 10 or 11 um I think the data calls us to make sure that we're explicit in writing and so it will be placed in writing okay and also again related to class sizes when is it determined that a teacher needs to be added for example if you have two second grades of 36 students and adding a third teacher would only would make it 24 students per class but that's under the 25 formula that's being proposed so would that mean a third teacher isn't added or is there some flexibility 26 or 36. So based on our formula, if we had two classes of second graders of 36 students, if we brought that down to 25, that would only that would bring us to three classes of 24 students, which isn't the 1 to25 ratio. So

133we don't only allocate in a full point. Um, so that allocation would likely be more than a 2.5 FTE where where you probably would pair um, you know, some points to bring together a full-time person. Okay, thank you. That answers my question. Um, and then regarding assistant principles, the staffing standard for that was not changed. It's just being applied and reeval re-evaluated across schools. Correct. That is correct. Um in uh the past we had the standards posted um and as we made changes to schools whether it's we built schools we changed boundaries etc. we didn't move the resources to follow the student. So we have two things converging upon us at one time. You have um the fiscal realities that we face but you also have the requirements from the blueprint for minimum school funding

134where the funding has to follow the students um as Mr. Tantlas spoke to moving from a centralized budget and uh accounting model to a schoolbased model that's in powers school at the state level now and um from school to actual student to student and so we have to make sure that all of our funding is in alignment with the requirements uh for the state. Okay. So sometimes when we have schools that have um additional behavioral, social, emotional needs as far as other staffing, there's grant funding to add a position based on those needs. Is there anything available for schools for that need assistance, additional assistant principles based upon their behavioral, social, emotional needs? Yes, I think uh Dr. Jones can speak to the process, but one of the things that we did is uh we

135created a uh pool to address that. There are places that we've had additional resources and we've seen the difference that it's made in the climate and the ability of students to access academics and the team was very diligent about uh making sure that that support continues. Dr. Jones, to add on what to do, to add on to what Dr. Rogers said, that's absolutely correct, Miss Pumprey. there are some schools with some needs just based on the data and instead of just you know comparing the amount of students versus the AP allocation um Dr. Rogers worked with myself and the team to really look at the needs of the schools and then kind of base that on how many APS would actually have to be reallocated or um a part of the cost savings. And so

136there is um as was stated an opportunity for some schools to have those needs met um in various in various ways and based on different funding sources but most importantly based on need. Thank you. And one more question um I think it's on slide 30 when we're talking about the goal to reduce our usage of fund balance. So I the goal is very clear. Um how do we reach this goal of not ha needing to use fund balance the way we have in the past two years? Um well I think the plan is to slowly draw down our usage over the next uh few years. Uh one thing that was really challenging this year is we needed to catch up on year three of the contract. So we essentially funded a full year and a

137half of salaries in this year's budget which was very challenging. Uh of course there's not a year four negotiated. So whatever we have in FY28 will be need to fresh be freshly negotiated within the parameters of how much we can afford. But in any case it'll only be one year of compensation that'll need to be funded. So, um, hopefully and if our enrollment stabilizes, we'll be in decent shape to absorb that small drop in fund balance over each of the next couple years. But that's why we're stepping it down so we don't have to do it all at once. Thank you, Miss Deonowski. Yes, thank you. Um, Dr. Rogers on um slide six where we have the 168.9 million reductions and salaries and or central office supervisor positions of 69 is that um since 2025

138to now. Yeah, those numbers, pardon me, uh those numbers include both FY25 and FY26. Do they include the reduction of 31 pupil personnel service workers FTEES positions and the 49 special education positions from 25 I would have to have someone research that. Uh if you could look at page uh 12 209 and 210 there were 49 more um special education positions in 2025 than we have now. And there were 31 on page uh 155 156 pubal personnel service. There were 31 more FTEEs in 25 than there are now. So again a member of the team is going to have to research that because as you know for the last two years we offsetting positions onto grants specifically pupil personnel workers counselors um and special education positions have been offset to grants. And so they would

139have to actually go line item and confirm for you whether or not those positions were moved over to grants, but they so they wouldn't be included in the 69 reductions that you're saying that were reduced from central office then. So these are reductions to the operating budget. And so if we offset a position to a grant, which is special revenue, and off of operating, it will count as a reduction on operating budget. But a reduction in operating budget is does not necessarily mean that you are eliminating the position. So the 16 pupil personnel workers that we've moved over to grant funding, they all retain their positions. However, the savings from those 16 positions is actualized in the operating fund. So then the 69 reductions in and central office supervisors might it would just be a

140savings in the general fund operating budget. It might be moved to somewhere else is what you're saying. Not for supervisors. No, those positions were eliminated. And I would call your attention to I believe it was December 8th. There is a detailed slide of the 69 uh central office position reductions. On that slide, uh Miss Charlie Green showed an excerpt of it. You have all of the positions listed. Um the starting number, the reductions that were made, any additions that were made over the last two fiscal years, and then the net change. So, no, that would not agree. It just I remember that side. It just didn't tell us which departments. It just said what their um their administrative title was, whether it was an executive director, administrator, it didn't say what departments. Okay. Um moving

141on. Sorry. Um so, when you say that we had to um move the funds, uh you know, the minimum the the state blueprint minimum school funding law requiring that we move all the funds to follow the students in the school. Um is that accurate? So all the the money from the state blueprint has to follow the kid the our students to the school. Correct. Uh with there's certain parameters 75% of the different funding streams uh it's 100% of some 75% of others. So when we now that we're moving um the like our fixed costs as far as our employee benefits and we're we're including those as part of the state blueprint required minimum funding for students. Correct. Because the the teacher the cost of the teacher is not just their salary, it's all also the

142salary and benefits. So their their their benefits, the social security uh risk like all all of that is included as part of the minimum funding to file a student. Well, the minimum funding uh you know really quickly and I and I did a presentation this a couple months ago, but you know the the minimum funding is based on the revenue we're getting and then you're now allocating all of your expenses primarily teachers in a school. That's our biggest expense, teachers, APS, principles, our staff. So we're allocating those expenses to the school to meet those goals. So, our special ed teachers will go towards the special ed requirement. Our ESOL teachers will go towards the ML requirement, uh, etc. I I understand that part. I just we had over 300 between 300 and 400 million in

143fixed costs that would follow our teachers to the to now their school, which we're saying is following the students. So, I'm just trying to make that make sense, I guess, because it's still right now in centrally located, but when we transfer it or through the bat through the year and actualization, we're having it follow the student. How can it follow the student if the it's not the correct teacher is with that student? Sure. I'm only going to I'm going to try to answer your question only because I worked in a school system that did the exact same thing. Okay. So there's a there's um centralized budgeting where the costs now are, you know, centralized in terms of um employee benefits, salary, and benefits. And then there's also um school-based budgeting where um each school has

144a budget, and if I were working in that school, whatever the cost for my salary, my benefits, or whatever would be allocated for that school. And so although I'm still being compensated by Baltimore County public schools, what Blueprint is offering is what some other um progressive school systems across the country have done is basically say if Raquel Jones is working at school a her whatever the cost is or the average cost for her salary and benefits would then just be allocated and um you know accounted for based on the school budget. And I believe that's what the slide around um Oracle was stating that that's where we would actually see it as it relates to budgeting. So it's really about centralized budget budgeting and then school-based budgeting and then the funds following the student just

145make sure that it is very equitable across the various schools within a large school. That is my as Miss Harvey said just kind of you know um um simple simplistic way of kind of putting it but that's something that a lot of school systems are moving towards. Is that what we're moving to? I mean, I understand what you're saying and it does make sense. I just Is that what we're moving towards? I just I think we're moving towards implementing blueprint and there are some pieces of blueprint that require um some of some of those conversations and some of those moves. It is a requirement for all school systems in the state of Maryland to move from central allocation of resources to school-based. um in that minimum school funding. Um it also adds the multiplier which

146increases the complexities. Um one of the things that we've been advocating to the state board leadership as well as AIB leadership is the amount of time and toll that it takes on the accounting department. And so instead of having conversations around um academics and how do we fast forward a school system, uh there are conversations about how do you take a grounds contract and assign it to the right schools, the right students so that you are in compliance with the law. Um, as recently as last week, I was at the state on behalf of all 24 school systems advocating to the Ways and Means Commun uh committee and appropriations to make changes for the upcoming year. Um, as that uh definitely provides a level of granularity um but it is um kind of takes a

147step away from what we should be focusing on. So, uh, I think there's a lot a body of work around, uh, moving from centralized to the school level, but when you're moving that the funding follows the student, which is what the state of Maryland law says, down to the actual student is a goal. Um, that is a level uh that that is going to move beyond uh what is most important uh for the student and could have some unanticipated consequences. And so we're working with AIB and um state board leadership on that very topic at it as it is very complex, very timeconuming and I think Mr. Tantliff can speak to the number of lines as when we went to uh have our uh progress conversation with AIB just a few months ago. And then

148just one last followup on that. Uh is there a specific reason why we don't separate fixed charges from other charges when we are generating the um the operating budget to make it more concise I guess so we under like why do we lump them in there when it's such when the fixed charges seems to be a pretty big lump and then it would be easier to understand. Um, we're following state guidance. That's how MSD directs that we group expenses and activities. Okay. Um, I think also just what I mentioned before, the the book is very voluminous now. The more detail you provide, it it'll just get bigger and bigger and bigger. I know Montgomery County has an Excel spreadsheet of their budget which makes it very concise and easy to follow. Have we ever thought

149about doing that? Um I have not viewed their spreadsheet. I I'll send you a copy. Okay. Um the chief of staff, there's um there was a nine FTE reduction. Does that include the four that were moved over to operations for um from equity and cultural proficiency. Those positions were moved last year. So it does not include that this year. That does not include that this year. It does not. That was last year. Okay. Um and then oh my last question, the um 37 FTEES for career and technical uh education, are these um teacher positions or what what positions are these that were added this year? Um sorry, get to the page. Page 207 and 208. Yeah, those um the positions that we're getting um excuse me, we're adding 14 positions. Well, actually, we currently have

15014 positions. Right now, they are funded by well, they are funded by blueprint for workforce development. Right now, um the Department of Employee Workforce Development with Baltimore County currently has that. They're transferring over to Baltimore County so that we now will have those positions in Baltimore County public school. There are people sitting in those positions currently. Um excuse me. So they're um the career coaches that are in our middle schools. We have a there there's grant funding for that program though, correct? Yes, they're p they're they're completely funded through grants. I know. Why were they moved to the general fund then? The positions moved to general fund. Um so for the workforce development fund, uh when this started a couple years ago, it was unclear how the split would be between the county um and

151BCPS. This is true across the state. So, we had to carve out some of our budget to support workforce development. It's pretty significant. Um the budget when we started, the county um wanted a lot more money, but it turned out they could not manage those funds, so they turned them back over to us. So, it's the same bucket, but we can negotiate and we work with them. We have an MOU on how to best spend those funds in accordance with the guidance over uh workforce development under blueprint. So these are positions that have already been created, but they're just going to be in the budget in FY27. That's so they actually got created during the FY2 in the beginning of FY26, but it just wasn't in the budget. Um, but the money was there and

152they're just uh registering in FY27 because they weren't it wasn't done in time for the adopted budget last year. Thank you, Miss Unome. Thank you. This is a question for Dr. Rogers and thank you guys for the information in the presentation. Um, just about class sizes again on the opposite end of what Mr. McMillian asked. So, I know a lot of elective classes, it's kind of based on enrollment and how many students are interested in taking that. And I'm just wondering if there's a minimum amount of how many students have to enroll in a course for that course to be ran that year or if that's at the discretion of the principal. And if there isn't a minimum amount, are we planning on including that in the memo with the um caps on class sizes?

153So last year in the memo we had included um 15 as the minimum amount to run not 15 students being interested 15 students where it would fit into their schedules with very few exceptions. Those exceptions were made for students in their senior years in specific programs. We wanted them to be able to finish with the final um credits. uh we are going to uh likely say a minimum of um 17 this upcoming year. Okay. Yes. Perfect. Thank you. And then just one more question. Um where it says school administration, this is on slide eight where it says school administration must consider the impact of running some classes. Um just when it says release periods, what does that mean by release periods? So some people call them um free periods. I didn't want to um uh

154call them free periods, but essentially it's if I am not uh we have certain job descriptions that come with release periods. Um for example, an IEP facilitator has release periods for them to run special education meetings or a reading specialist is only expected to teach a certain number of classes. If someone is hired for a full-time teaching position and the expectation if they're at the secondary level is to teach six out of eight classes and they're teaching fewer than six out of eight classes, anything fewer is a period that administration has released them from their duties. Um, you know what for, you know, they do many things. Sometimes they're working in small groups, sometimes they're running programs, etc. But what is important for the uh community to understand is those decisions increase the class sizes

155in another area because that's a section of where you could have 25 students participate in class that is no longer available for them. Okay. Thank you. That's You're welcome. Mr. Young, thank you. Um Mr. recall. Can you speak to the increase in other charges from um FY25 actual? I'm going to turn over to Mr. T. Mr. Young, they're working on your answer. Okay. Well, while they work on my an answer, um Dr. Rogers, you spoke about um dual enrollment um yes, dual enrollment payments are dual enrollment payments. Well, stepping back, do we still pay for um like uh AP exams for our students? We do. We do. That's part of the blueprint. Okay. Okay. So we pay for AP exams or any certification. So that those funds would are they paid out of or booked

156against the same um division as the dual enrollment? Uh yes. All of those uh dual enrollment um AP exams um certain credentials CTE credentials those are a part of the requirement of blueprint. blueprint provides us with a portion of that funding and then the operating budget has to pick up the remainder of that expense. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Um and on the other charges, uh most fringe benefits are budgeted centrally in human resources. So other than a few items that's including OPED, it's including medical benefits, etc. So that's what's causing the inflation between years. Thank you, Miss Hen. Did you have additional questions? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um the salary and wages table um shows a $60 million year-over-year increase. Um however, we know compensation is increasing. Budget book says 86 million. I

157know our presentation says 93 million. Is there another place in the budget book where we can find the difference in compensation? Um I believe in Dr. Rogers presentation they uh include uh fringe benefits so you can see the full impact but in the budget book salaries are shown separately from fringe benefits. Okay. I'm referring specifically to salary and wages on page 66 which as I understand it from your excellent explanation tonight u Mr. Tantliff would not include fringe benefits which would be under fixed um charges. That's correct. Salaries do not include fringes specific. Okay. So, the 86 million um referenced on page L4 compensation increases that includes fringe benefits, 26 million um for the second half of year two increases and 60 million for year three. The number my numbers are a little different but

158those are the ones in the budget book. Uh the budget book generally uh is just talking salary. Some of the presentations include fringe benefits also in the compensation. Okay. So I want to make sure I'm comparing apples to apples then. So the book refers to 86 million in compensation increases. The salary and wages line item shows 60 million in year-over-year increase. So I'm looking for the the additional 26. and where to find that? Um, yes, ma'am. Yes, Dr. Rogers. Mr. Tantliff, I think uh the discrepance might the discrepancy might be in the second half of year two separated out from the full uh year three cost. Um, in my slides four and five, they include the benefits with the asterisks, but um, without the benefits seems to be aligned with the numbers that Miss Hen

159is quoting. If you or Miss Wen could um, confirm that Dr. Roger's presentation includes fringes when the numbers are in the budget book. If it just says salaries, it's just salaries. Okay. So, if we could focus just on the budget book then um the salary and wages show 60 million and it it refers to 86 million in compensation. So, that refers to the narrative refers to compensation that would include benefits. Then if you look at the best place to look is in the back of the executive summary, you can see it all detailed very clearly starting on page 14. Okay. Is this something we could get a breakdown of the year two and year three? Um just so it's clear if that would be possible, Dr. Rogers. Yes, we'll provide a side by side uh

160to compare on four. We'll take out the fringes. We'll just make additional uh columns. Great. And share that. Yes. Thank you. One other thing I'll add is uh total compensation isn't just the negotiated contracts. And if you recall after the adopted budget last year, we had to uh work to fund the January 1st increases. that's now indic that's identified in the budget because it wasn't in last year's budget. So that looks like an additional increase. So there's a number of different things in here when you just look at the total compensation. Dr. Rogers is breaking out the contract in her presentation and not including some of the other um increases that were required. So that was my my question if I'm looking in the right place for the additional the second half of last year's

161increase in the correct line item under salaries and wages um in the budget if it's grouped with um salaries and wages or if it's categorized separately. Does that make sense? It be salaries and wages. It should be in salaries and wages in the 60 million. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Miss. Do I have time remaining? Your time. You use the last four seconds, but you can certainly submit your question because we're going to do this again on next Tuesday. Okay. Or phone a friend that hasn't used their time. Um, Mr. McMillian. Okay. I want to piggyback on what Miss Pumprey talked about with the assistant principles, but it's not a question. It's it's a statement. Chespake High School opened up in 1977. I arrived in 93. From n 1993 to 2018, they had three

162assistant principles. I'm trying to find somebody that opened up in 77. From 77 to 93, I'm thinking they had three assistant principles. So that's 49-year period with three assistant principles. And my 25 years there, the enrollment went from because I was the athletic director, I I followed that enrollment. The lowest was 920 and the highest was 1,080. So there are 300 or so low lower than that standard. And my point is if they lose that an AP the the people they're going to lose out are those at risk kids because some of these principles assistant principles were outstanding and Mr. Dr. can testify to this. We're outstanding at developing relationships with those at risk kids and if they don't have that contact with and they need the contact with authority figures outside those classrooms in

163the offices and if they don't have it who knows what the ramifications of that are going to be. So of course I'm lobbying to keep that one that additional AP at Chesapeake. Mr. McMillian thank you for that advocacy. I will share that is why um we have an amount where the team was looking at the actual impact of the administrators to make those strategic decisions. And I will also share that this is the difficulty of um tough uh fiscal challenges because I think um if we all had our dreers we would keep everyone that we have. Um and so the these are tough decisions. appreciate that and that is the work of the team to look at the impact on students directly. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm going to jump in with a question.

164A lot of mine have been answered by my colleagues and their thoroughess but um and it's for Dr. Jones. We have a lot of the budget book had the enrollments and we have a lot of very small elementary schools and this is kind of piggyback on what Miss Pumprey was saying. So we have a very small elementary school and we only have and we have 60 kids. If I divide by 60 by two I get 30. That's too big. But if I 60 by three, it's 20. It's too small. So, how do we provide guidance to those small schools that that are teetering like that? Um, we actually we actually do that a lot and I did some of that work with you previously, Miss Licter. um that then when we have when we have

165the numbers kind of break down like that where there's a 20 20 the the school is going to be um reviewed their staffing is going to be reviewed because we don't want um we want don't want 30 and 30 what we then have to take stock of is um you know kind of what what are some other things that are happening in the school and what Dr. Roger said it is a comprehensive review. So we look at the schedule and then we try to we work with the schools to problem solve around um how is the current allocation being utilized. And once we find out that schools have really maxed out then we have a HR collaborative review where we look at any schools that may be underenrolled and of course this kind of happens

166during the summer time. any schools that have been underenrolled, any schools that may need um may not need this the staffing that they were uh provided with because of many reasons, you know, um low enrollment or just things that happened that weren't anticipated. And then we whenever possible allocate additional staffing so that that school can have 2020 20 versus the 30 and the 30. But we exhaust all all resources because as was stated in these fiscally challenging times there's not a lot of hold over that was in place when we did that work together. And I kind of knew the answer but I just think the public needs to be aware. We've talked a lot about the high school and programmatic decisions that are made that then have because we're all getting emails that say

16725 sounds great but this class has 30 and so there's more to it. So the programmatic decisions in high school and some middle school, but then we also have the issues that that arise in elementary school when we have these great little community schools, but yet it's hard to divide by two and divide by three is different. So I think we just and our principles need to be able to message that to their communities about why they've made the decisions that they have. But the small school one sometimes gets overlooked as far as something that's really affecting class sizes um as much as it does. Absolutely. Thank you. Anyone else for questions that has that have more time? Let's Nope. Okay. So, first of all, thank you everyone for being able to answer those questions

168and the thoroughess of it. Um, I know there's several questions that we were not that you were not able to answer that Dr. Rogers will follow up with staff on. We are going to do this again um on next Tuesday. I'm trying to remember what day it is. So, board members, if you had more questions and your time ran out, please submit those questions as soon as possible to allow staff and and um Dr. Rogers to be able to put together the presentation for next week. So, um when would you like um board members to submit those questions by? If you could submit them by Wednesday so they can prepare. Miss Pumprey, I just have a procedural question. If a question were to be submitted and for some reason was unable to be answered, I

169don't know if it would be considered operational, any reason, could we have those questions still posted with an explanation underneath as to why so that the public sometimes those questions come from the public just so the public is aware of the reason why that information might not be put out there. Yes. Yes. All the questions um will always be posted with some kind of note. Yes. Thank you. Um and so for people who are viewing um the board members um submitted many many many questions since um the budget was s um presented to us. So and all those questions and those answers are on budget 101. Correct. There um so please take a look at those um and again some of them will say as Miss Pumprey just referred to that there wasn't an answer

170but they're all there and the new ones will be added once we get those. M you mean right now like it's on B bcps.org if you go on bcps.org and then you can just search budget 101 and it will come up and you'll have everything you wanted on there plus more. Um were you going to say something? And there's a search feature. So if you can't find it, you just search BCPS budget 101. It will pop right up and and everything is there where you need it. Okay. Again, thank you all and thank you Dr. Rogers for that. Okay, let me see where are we. Um, we are Okay, got it. So, next item on our agenda which was added at the beginning of tonight's meeting is an update on the virtual and clement weather

171plan. Um, and again, we did discuss it or staff will try to answer questions tonight, but if not, we will follow up with with the responses. So, Mr. Manowski, if you want, I'll let you get started with the questions that you might have since you brought up this agenda item. Oh, first, Dr. Rogers would like to provide an overview. I'm sorry about that. All right. So, I'll provide an overview of virtual learning. Um, I believe uh everyone is aware since 20 uh 212022 school year, Maryland State Department of Education has given school systems the ability to transition to virtual instruction um during inclement weather days. BCPS has put out annual surveys. We've reported on those results in the community. Um and our community has always been very strong on their uh desire to not extend

172the school year and uh if necessary move to virtual learning. Um since uh this has been in place uh last Thursday and Friday in are days two and three of implementation in BCPS. Um, in terms of the 2526 school year, after we had our vote, um, and prior to that, since November, the BCPS Office of Communications has been sending out communications, uh, to family and posting, uh, reminders about inclement weather specifically for this uh, storm. Um, there are a few things that I want to address. Uh number one, when it comes to devices, um as you know, the decision was made uh last fiscal year to make adjustments to our technology. Um we also have our um Chromebooks staying in school at the middle school level unless they are signed out. Our high school students

173are the only students who transport their Chromes books daily back and forth. Um, every Chromebook that appeared at a school appeared with a charger. Some of those chargers were placed in carts. Some of those chargers were placed in other spaces. But the expectation, the directions for technology liaison is if there is a problem with a device or a uh charger that that is communicated in real time to the department of information technology so that they can make replacements. And so whether or not we have a storm, it is our expectation that um schoolh houses are keeping up with the technology that they have available um for students on a regular basis. Um it is also and uh making sure that they communicate that um we had also put in place that our plan would be

174a 2-hour delay schedule uh to provide teachers with time to for planning as is a part of the uh plan. the department, division of curriculum and instruction took an extra step and they actually put materials together um that schools could use uh particularly our youngest learners so that teachers if they wanted to have a resource that they could point to quickly that they could um do that. The reminders um started going out uh as I said uh last week and the week prior regarding the snowstorm. Um there was a robust message sent I believe it was uh Thursday in English and in Spanish to our families. Um what was probably he heard in a building was a principal reminding staff of the impending snowstorm and that the devices needed to go out with students. Um

175we have uh in schooly posted best practices um both the technology directions as well as instructional directions and modules uh that people can uh follow and practice principles receive from um Dr. Jones team. Um, uh, reminders. Uh, we from last year had feedback around additional security measures, worked with the Department of Technology to make sure that those were in place um, for this storm. Um, and I think uh, that was also it. um reminder that we had talking points available um for all of our families that translates in real time um for communication with schools. Um I had an opportunity to speak to the state um uh superintendent uh regarding our plan for our youngest learners. Um all school systems were on a call uh regarding a state um waiver. received a lot of feedback

176from families expressing both praise and some families expressing concerns about uh their experience. It is likely that we're going to be sending out a survey directly to our families to get additional feedback from them um for additional planning with the chargers. uh principal put together uh communication about additional chargers that could be used if a student forgot a charger or didn't have one for one reason or another. That communication was then sent out to all schools um so they could use that in their communication with families as well. central office. Uh spent the day in virtual classrooms as well as um um uh other staff members uh you know principles and supervisory staff in the class members uh classrooms and they were sending uh reports based on what they were seeing and um direct feedback

177from what was occurring in the classes. So there's always an opportunity to continue to improve practices. uh but uh these were the steps that were taken across the system and in individual schools to help uh their teachers prepare. I will also add that the law stipulates that after all of the traditional days are used then a school system transitions over to um virtual days. It does not have a cap on the number of virtual days as um uh I believe no one is in a position to predict um how many days mother nature will bring our way. So uh wanted to provide that overview and then open it up for any questions that I may answer and questions that we'll take back. Okay, questions now. Mr. I I understand um there were best practices, but

178what was the um actual like directive plan that was given to schools or administrators to help them prepare for a virtual day once they like if we knew we were going to be enacting this after 3 days. I just wanted to know was there any like direct plan given to them and ahead of time so that they didn't have to wait until you know Thursday before the storm that they could have been preparing for it before that. Yes. So we've been preparing the division of schools has provided communication directly to schools and a set of resources to the schools about what to do um not only uh best practices but also um content if you're a brand new teacher and you've never had an opportunity to teach what it looks like what the expectations are.

179Um so that was uh that's provided annually um to our teachers. So, no one had to plan and it is part of the school responsibility. Um, in the same way that you plan for emergency substitute lesson plans that you would plan for the eventuality of a uh virtual inclement weather day. I I just um the main thing I'm hearing is that because we don't have the devices for the K through two and we're giving them, you know, packets or instruction, they're not getting that teacher instructional time. How are we calling that a full day for them? So, the expectation from the state is that there's access to 4 hours of um teacher instruction. That was part of my conversation with the state. um uh the um MSDE uh superintendent on Friday specifically about our youngest

180learners. Um we are able to leverage uh talking points and we are able to leverage uh the materials that curriculum and instruction has put forward. Uh my conversation was uh around a waiver as many of the school systems are requesting uh waiverss and so my conversation was around a waiver for our youngest learners. Um and so uh would that be in the best interest of students to have a waiver that they don't have to have the four hours of instruction time? No. A waiver is if there's a snowstorm like we had, um all the other school systems that don't have a virtual option have to request a waiver or they have to extend the school year. So the the waiver is not um uh suggesting that we shouldn't provide any instruction. There is a plan

181in place with materials provided by curriculum instruction. talking points allows for teachers to be available and communicate with families directly, but we don't have a 1:1 ratio in prek to um second grade. And so my inquiry was around whether or not uh we should move forward uh with a ratio. But as you know, as I stated, I want to hear directly from uh families and based on that feedback, we will make adjustments to what our uh plans are in terms of um you know, how did we plan um that everybody knew there was a storm. No one um could predict um how many days school was going to be out. If it was our preference, we would have been back in school last Thursday uh in face toface school. Uh but that is not the

182situation that we find ourselves with. weather and the snow and ice um is likely based on forecast to uh be outside for a while with us with these temperatures. I guess my my last question is how are we compliant with IEPs during that virtual time? So there are uh accommodations that can be delivered uh virtually. uh I will take back to the special education team on how they delivered accommodations and if they were unable to deliver accommodations during the emergency what their plan next steps are compensatory okay thank you miss hen thank you madam chair Dr. Rogers, could you or perhaps staff speak specifically to our operational readiness for virtual learning? Could you with regards to the devices and our schools um support in preparing students to make the transition to virtual learning in terms

183of readiness? Okay. Hi, Dr. Graham. Do you have a specific question or do you want to know just how we went about preparing schools? Sure. Some concerns I've I've heard have to do with um our schools not being operational operationally ready and some of the demands placed on them at in the 9th hour when when the storm was approaching in terms of readying the devices, inventorying the devices, um chargers, things of that sort. If you speak to that. Absolutely. So this summer um where the where the biggest change was was at the middle school level where we were no longer uh sending devices home with our students. Excuse me. So each middle school was required, each principal was required to develop an individualized technology plan for their school that was approved by their executive director

184regarding not only what they would do daytoday with their devices, but what they would do in terms of inclement weather. Um some of our our schools um have a system where they they very robustly sign out their devices and kids do take them home periodically. Others maintain their devices in the building uh the vast majority of the time. U some of the schools were able to as as Dr. Roger said um leverage uh their inventory uh communicate back with central office what their needs were because they use their devices on a very regular basis. Others are not using theirs on a daily basis um in the same way that they were previously. So um I think that that there were some challenges that they had when they were starting to think about inclement weather and

185what they might need to do to mobilize that plan. Um, for example, we have some, again, this is at the middle school level. We have some schools that where the kids sign get them every day. Um, they get them first period or they go to a home room period, an advisory period. They get the devices at the beginning of the day, they bring them back at the end of the day. They're in a charging cart all day long. Others, um, the the teachers are signing out device carts and they're just utilizing them in specific classrooms as needed. Um so again these plans were developed at the specific school level by the principles. Um when this change happened not only at the middle school level but at the elementary uh level this summer um we enacted

186a plan in do ensure that each of the schools had an additional inventory on hand and how they could request devices. Um we've also dramatically reduced um the the the amount of downtime and the amount of down devices they've had by changing our allocation. So from an operational readiness standpoint, um much of this was was driven by what the technology plan was at the individual school. As Dr. Rogers said, u chargers were provided with all the devices. In fact, we didn't collect back chargers um when we made this shift of of allocations. We actually provided some additional ones. Um many of those were tied up in the carts that um that that the schools have. Um however, that was that was part of the planning and part of the communication that we had provided again

187back in the summertime. Um Dr. Rogers had also mentioned um our uh Chromebooks charge on a USBC. Um, this was a very interesting week because, uh, even if the devices were charged on Thursday or Friday, had a full charge when they went home, um, students weren't using them for instructional purposes for almost a week later. So, so if they were to use them for any non-instructional purposes, um, at any time during that week, they may find themselves in in an emergency where they needed some kind of a charge. But again, if they had any access to a USBC um device at home, they could charge the devices in an emergency, although that is not recommended as a long-term use. Thank you. Were there any requirements that we placed on schools before students could take prior

188to the storm that they may not have been following or in compliance with our requirements um in terms of their technology? I'm not sure I understand your question. I'm sorry. in in terms of direction or guidance that we provided, were there any requirements that we said before you release these devices to to students um for virtual learning, were there um any requirements that schools had to comply with? We we recommended we recommended that the devices were fully were fully charged. Um and again we we sent uh uh extensive communication through the liaison on on how that could be accomplished to make sure because again we knew that um schools were deploying them in in various ways. So we wanted to make sure that reminder was there particularly looking in advance um in this particular storm

189of of how long the charge would need to last in the cro in the Chromebook. Um so so I would say that's really the the only directive we gave and again um it did not evaluate the the technology plan so to speak at the school level. Um that was something that that we uh determined if it was technically feasible their plan. Um but it was passed through and uh each principal work with their executive director to make that happen. And if I could uh underscore one uh point here, um if some of the feedback that you have heard was around schools having to inventory the devices before they were deployed, um that was not a new requirement that was made last week. That was something that should have taken place over the summer. Um our

190expectation is that all of our building leaders are making uh good decisions so that they are not having to scramble at the last moment. So perhaps if that was not a task that was tended to over the summer or early in the fall and it's real that the snow is coming then there was this mad scramble to add that on top of what they needed to do. So that that might uh speak to some of the feedback. Thank you. Miss Fmpong, Miss Prem, Miss Fong. Yes. Can you hear me? Okay. A little louder if possible. A little louder. Sure. Okay. Thank you. So, I I was just going to mention it sounds like from what Dr. Grim was saying that the plans were in place. My question would be and that was at the school

191among school leadership and school staff but my question was was this information shared with parents so that they would have a better understanding or even if they have children um in different for example if they have twins but maybe they're at different middle schools the plans might be different from school to school. So I think it helps when there's some communication and so was that information relate to parents about like this is what we are going to do um should we have this inclement weather or even a reminder provided since we we were knowing that this winter storm was coming. So central office sent um messages to parents and several reminders starting in November. Um, and I would also say uh just a quick search uh because I did one uh as we added this

192topic uh on our website. It pulled up many schools that also created their school specific information was um posted for their parents. Thank you. And so I heard you say November and so was there something closer to like January or February just as a reminder for parents? Yes, we started the communications in November and sent several up until including uh the week of the storm before students, you know, went um home for the storm. Yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Pumprey. I have a question um for the benefit of the public because I because I believe I know the answer. Um the communication that went out as far as parents choosing to keep students home if they felt it was unsafe for them to walk to school that indicated if they sent came

193in with a note from a guardian um that their absence would be considered excused. Um does that mean that their makeup work etc follows the same standard procedures for any excused absence and the time frame that they have to make up the work? Absolutely. Um, code seven is a weather related uh, absence and that is from the state of Maryland. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Manowski. Do you have another question? Yeah, I just had a quick followup. If um I know no one wants to extend the school year into the summer, but if we could add an option to the survey about um maybe replacing non-mandated, you know, one-day holidays instead or the half days into full days or we have a 7-day spring break. if we could, you know, instead of doing the especially in

194this circumstance where right now we have six more weeks of winter and we've already on day we've already done two days of virtual. I think that if those options could be considered for the our stakeholders to consider it, it doesn't just have to be uh later into the school into the summer. It could be done in the middle of the year. Thank you. Any further questions, Miss Tleski? Yes. I just was wondering um I've heard from different teachers. Some of them were required to provide direct instruction. Others were told that as long as the students completed the work assigned, all they had to do was be I don't know what to call it, maybe on standby or available. So, um there was definitely at least based on what I've heard a large discrepancy on the

195delivered instruction on those days. So I think that's important to share and then any followup that you have on that. Thank you. What I would share is the expectation was um for uh grades two and above uh 4 hours of synchronous instruction. Um that was clearly communicated to our community members as well as all of our leaders. Um, I would ask you if you have information that you're willing to share offline, that would be helpful. So that can be provided directly to Dr. Jones and the executive director for followup as was stated in addition to the um survey option. Uh we do still have a long winter ahead of us and if we have to implement the days again, we want to make sure that we are implementing with fidelity. So thank you. Okay. Okay.

196Thank you for that all those answers. Oh, go ahead, Mr. One. And just for later on, can we add an update to how we um prepared for this operationally wise, like getting the school ready, what we were what we're doing, and maybe what we learned from this as far as getting our schools ready quicker. Sorry. Not No, I'm not asking you to give me an update right now. Like, can can we get an update? You mean facilities wise, like snow approval and all that? Not Not You're not talking about virtual now. You're talking No, no, no. Now I'm talking about Yes. Okay. Yes. You know, um I I have to as much as normally I would be happy to um add this on another agenda item. Uh because of the inordinate amount of work that

197was done by our team members, I would ask that Dr. Grim uh provide the board at this time and our community um with at least some brief highlights about our readiness, um what goes into these decisions and what we've done over the last week. Uh so thank you Dr. Rogers. Um so first of all, our preparation began well in advance of of our storm. Um in terms of looking at at what we might be dealing with, the biggest challenge that we've had with this particular storm was not only the amount of snow, but it was really the amount of ice and the temperatures that we've had. Um, not only have we been contending with the snow and ice, um, we've had issues uh due to the the the very low temperatures um with uh coils,

198pipes, all kinds of things bursting um over the last week. Um, it really started on Saturday uh of last week before the storm started on Sunday. If you recall, we were our temperatures were down in the single digits. Um, we had brought staff in both Saturday morning and Sunday morning to check our buildings to make sure that they were not only safe, but that we didn't have any breaking pipes or anything else um that would cause an additional problem when we were operational or that we couldn't get to. So, it really started there. Um, at that point in time on Sunday, uh, we do have staff that works with, uh, county and and state highways. They were mobilized. uh when they are mobilized by the county and the state, we lose them for any uh

199type of work at our school facilities until they are released. Um those staff, I believe it was Wednesday morning when they were finally released to us. So, we were down a few dozen staff members um that work on our our grounds and our other crews uh in order to clear our schools. Uh it wasn't until I believe Wednesday morning that they could come back to us and and fully work with us. Um our our crews actually started on on Sunday. Our grounds uh crews reported at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday. Um they started they were able to hit every one of our schools on Sunday. I had a report by Sunday afternoon that they were able to do a preliminary um run of all of our loops um in order to ensure that any emergency vehicles

200could use them for anything during the course of the storm. Um as anybody who's been out there in this knows um it wasn't it was very soon after they had cleared that more layers of snow and ice accumulated back on top of them. Um they were at it again. Uh they kicked off around uh dark around dusk on Sunday because that's when it started to become very icy and dangerous. They were back at it again on Monday. Um some of the snow and ice was so severe on Monday that they could not use uh traditional methods to clear them. Um meaning some of the plows with rubber edges on the bottom just simply scraped across the top of the ice. They had to then bring in um not only heavy loaders but other equipment um

201to pretty painstakingly move um each each part of the ice um that they had. Uh at the same time simultaneously uh we had staff in our in our maintenance team because again the temperatures were very low. They were checking out schools. Building operations was was in um we had about half of our staff that could not get into the buildings. um some of our uh building operations supervisors and other staff on Monday. Um we had staff mobilized to pick up as many staff members as they could safely to get them into the buildings. Um by Tuesday and Wednesday, our attendance rate was much higher. We were able to check the buildings. Um interestingly on Sunday into Monday, the snow formed really a a layer of insulation. We saw fewer broken pipes and other issues Sunday

202night into Monday because the buildings were undisturbed than we began to see again on Tuesday and Wednesday. Um so the team has been feverishly working um since then. Again uh simultaneously our staff in transportation um worked they started clearing the um roofs of our buses on uh Sunday and Monday. They clear our bus uh our bus lots. Uh by Tuesday night, almost all of our buses um the roofs of them were were clear of snow and ice um through a process that they have um so that they were able to start moving them around on Wednesday. Um again, as the as the week progressed, the team continued to chip away. The last thing that they left were our um our sidewalks and and some of the walkways. uh grounds was continuing to work on them

203up through Saturday. Um the only day that they did not mobilize this week was was this past Sunday was yesterday. Dr. Groom, could you just repeat one part because I don't I wasn't aware of it until very till this snowstorm when I was in contact with Dr. Rogers, but part of our staff is sent to work with the county people before they can work on their school. So, we are giving part of our staff over to help first. Yes, ma'am. So, we have we have staff and they and they are they are volunteers. So, they um they they say yes, we we pan, but they're volunteers to the county. We work with the we work Yes, they they volunteer for this additional duty because it is an additional it would be an additional responsibility. Um

204so they while they are our employees, they know how to operate all the equipment. Um the county enlists them, the county brings them in, the state brings them in at a specific time. Um they drive the plows for those folks. They operate the the equipment for those folks. Um sometimes we loan equipment, sometimes it's the county equipment. Um and they do uh county roads and state roads until such time as they are released. Okay. Thank you. I just found that very interesting that everybody thinks we're starting right away to clear the schools and we're also helping to clear the roads, which would make sense because you can't get to the schools until we we clear the roads. But I'm not sure everybody realizes that that relationship that we have and that it does delay some

205of the work on our schools. So on behalf of the board, I do want to thank you and your entire staff for what they're doing. We've all been taking care of our own houses and complaining. So, I can't even imagine what it is to take care of all of the schools that we have. So, you know, on behalf, please thank them and thank you. Thank you. I will share that. Thank you. Yeah, Dr. Grim, I also want to publicly thank all of our hardworking members of ASME for their hard work. Um, it is truly appreciated what they do on behalf of the school system on a regular basis. Um, it is because of them that we were able to operate schools today. um they are the ones that are always out in all of the

206harshest of conditions and so we are um truly appreciative uh to all of them and so uh thank you for this opportunity to publicly recognize them and what they've done with um not just the number of schools and facilities but we have the third oldest set of buildings that they've kept open today with the exception of one um school site. So, I do think you are correct that they do deserve a round of applause. If you could just make it not snow anymore during the winter, Dr. Grim, we would also be internally grateful. I wish I had that ability to do so. Okay. All right. Next on our agenda is board committee up. Whoops. I skipped something, didn't I? All right. I can hear Miss Gover over there. Um, wait a second. Sorry. Didn't mean

207to jump ahead. Okay, the next item on the agenda is information which includes revised superintendent rules 1260 and 3210. There we go. The next item on the agenda is board committee updates and agenda setting. And we'll start with Ms. Harvey for the audit committee. Uh thank you, Madam Chair. The next audit committee meeting is Wednesday, February 11th at 4:30 virtually. I would invite the public to go on the BCPS website and search the office of internal audits. They are guided by policy 8400. You can see the quarter 1 and quarter 2 reports. You can also see the audit committee's work plan for this fiscal year. Uh so we invite you to uh get informed about the audit committee and all the work that or the office of internal audits and the work that they do

208and to join us virtually on February 11. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Harvey, Mr. Young for building and contracts. Thank you. The next building and contracts meeting is Monday, February 9th at 5:00 pm. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Young. Curriculum committee, Miss Dleski. Yes. Good evening. The next curriculum meeting will be on Wednesday, February 25th at 4 p.m. Thank you. Thanks, Miss Fang. Equity committee. Thank you. The equity committee met on January 22nd and um we also met with the uh equity council on January 29th. from the uh January 22nd meeting. Um we did bring a motion um forward at the um committee meeting and that um motion it was to uh restore the BCPS equity metrics data overview annual report. Um it provides a comprehensive compilation of equity based issues within BCPS. So the annual

209report would be similar in content, depth and disagregation as previous reports from 2020 to 2023. Um and so that motion came from the committee. I did want to bring it to the um entire board um for a motion. Thank you, Miss Fang. Um legislative and governmental relations. Um that's me. Our next meeting is on February 18th at 4. I encourage everyone to watch. Um Mr. Basmore does a wonderful job of keeping us up to date on um things that are happening in Annapolis affecting education. So it is a um really good overview um of what's going on. So that again is on February 18th at 4:00. And then Miss Pumprey um policy review committee. Thank you. Earlier this afternoon, the policy re excuse me, review committee discussed policy 2361, distribution of school materials, and policy

2103710, safety and security equipment. Both of those policies move forward um uh with um with the minor amendments recommended by staff for policy 6102, teaching of controversial issues. We had a robust discussion about that policy. it was returned to staff with some additional suggestions with consensus of the committee um to re be brought back to us um with those suggestions and we also discussed um 8311 which is rules for meetings. Um we were provided with an update from Miss Howy regarding some changes to Comar uh which may um change our may require a change to our policy 8311. Um more specifically if you not if you remember in the summer sometimes we change our meeting one of our meetings sometimes that are it's simp is only for administrative appointments to be virtual only. If this

211comar amendment were to pass we would not be able to do any of those meetings virtually. we'd have to be mostly in person um with a majority of us in person in order to conduct those meetings. And our next policy review committee meeting meeting is March 16th at 4:30. Thank you. I don't know if I made a mistake. Our um legislative meeting is at 4:00. That's when we start. So, if I said 4:30, I'm sorry. It is 4 o'clock. Um do any board members have any um agenda items they would like to bring to our attention at this point? I know it's late. You'll Miss Fong, is your hand up? It is up. Uh because I guess I wasn't clear and I apologize when I talked about with the equity committee because we um agreed

212on a motion and we did want to bring that forward to the entire board for a vote. You mean at this point right now or that's an agenda item for next time? Um, I guess whatever is going to be the best way up like logistically. Um, if we need to add it as a um, you mean a vote on the dashboard that you talked about or something else? So, it's a vote on the report bringing the report back. Okay. We'll add it to we will we'll add it to the agenda. Can you send me a message about what exactly it is? I can do that. Mhm. Um, are there any agenda items now or you'll think of them in the car home and then you can email or text me. I know it's getting late.

213Okay. All right. Thank you everybody. One second. Um, we're almost there. The last item on the agenda is announcements. Mr. Deles, are you what? Just was going to ask you to clarify how to find the operating budget. I know I heard all those bing bing bings. Um, what was happening? I didn't follow it. What was happening on with it? Is it not? Did I get the wrong instructions? If your instructions were correct, there's a recommendation to make it more prominent on the front page. We'll address that. Okay. Thank you. Um, the board's next meeting will be held on Tuesday, February 10th, 2026. Again, we will do a lot about with the budget on that meeting at 6:30 p.m. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight and have a great evening. The meeting is now adjourned.