Meeting of the Baltimore County Board of Education - October 21, 2025

001Good afternoon. This is Chairwoman Jane Lar. I call to order the meeting of the board of education of Baltimore County for Tuesday, October 21st, 2025. This evening's board of education meeting is being broadcast through the BCPS online live meeting broadcast on BCPS TV, New Comcast Exfinity channel 1073 and Verizon FiOS channel 34. In order to officially conduct this meeting, all voting items this evening will be done by roll call vote. may 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 section 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

002more specific individuals and consult with counsel to obtain legal advice somebody. So move stles. Thank you. May I have second? Thank you. Second hand. Thank you. May I have a roll call vote, please? Dr. Seavoy. Present. Mr. McMillian. Yes. Miss Pumphrey. Yes. I'm No, wait. Pause. Sorry. She said present. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Okay, thank you. Keep Miss Cobber. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Franong. Miss Fong, you are on mute. Thank you. Yes. Thank you, Miss Harvey. Yes. Miss Abe. Yes. Mr. Dleski. Yes. Miss Lter. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. This is Chairwoman Jane Lter. I now call to order the meeting of the board of education of Baltimore County for Tuesday, October 21st, 2025. I invite you to recite the pledge of allegiance to the

003flag to be led by Miss Foresight Unambe. 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 broadcast through the BCPS online live meeting broadcast and on BCPS TV new Comcast 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 vote. The first item on the agenda is the consideration of the October 21st agenda. Dr. Rogers, are there any additions or changes to tonight's agenda? I am unaware of any changes to this evening's agenda.

004Thank you. Hearing none, the agenda stands as presented. Earlier this evening, the more 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 counsel to obtain legal advice. The closed 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 special order of business from the American Heart Association and for that I call on Miss Kate P, senior development director of school engagement. Good evening. Uh good evening, Chair Licter and Vice Chair Harvey.

005Uh members of the board. I am Kate P. I am I serve as the senior director of school engagement for the American Heart Association. And it is truly a privilege to be here tonight to express our heartfelt gratitude and recognize Baltimore County Public Schools for an extraordinary achievement. Last year, BCPS was ranked for a second time in a row as our number 10 district in the entire nation for supporting the American Heart Association's mission of building healthier lives free of cardiovascular disease and stroke. This remarkable accomplishment also reflects the deep commitment of your educators, your students, your families, and communities all across Baltimore County. Uh together, 33 BCPS schools raised an incredible $321,421 through our Kids Heart Challenge program. a program that not only teaches students the importance of heart health, kindness, and physical activity,

006but it also empowers them to make a difference in their communities. I'd like to highlight our top five schools in Baltimore County. Ryderwood Elementary was our number one school last year. Pretty Boy, Honeygo, Cromwell Valley, and New Town were all among our top five schools, making a tremendous impact for our mission. These schools exemplified leadership, enthusiasm, and compassion, and their incredible impact reaches far beyond the classroom. The funds raised help support life-saving research, advocacy for healthier school environments, and community programs that ensure equitable access to heart health education and care. Kids Heart Challenge educates our community members about CPR and safety and supports education that empowers families to make heart-healthy choices. The impact is not only measured in dollars, it's measured in lives touched and families strengthened and healthier futures for everyone in Baltimore County

007and beyond. Thanks to the support and encouragement of Dr. Rogers and the entire BCPS leadership team. I'm really thrilled to be able to share that this school year we are going from 34 schools to now 57 schools that we are working with. Last year we worked with only elementary schools and it's been a priority for me to open more doors in the middle school and high school space which I've done this summer. Um, that number truly continues to grow and I'm really honored to work with so many community school facilitators, PE and health teachers, school nurses, and administrators all across the county. Tonight is truly about recognition and gratitude. So, on behalf of the American Heart Association, thank you for your partnership. Thank you for your leadership and the unwavering commitment to health and well-being

008across the county. You are truly a heart of gold district. So I did want to take a moment to present our heart of gold district award for very very special school districts like BCPS. I also have our partnership banner that I wanted to proudly show to all of you um for an incredible year and I'm really truly honored to be gearing up for an even more tremendous year. I really think number 10's going to be wiped away with the schools that I'm working with now. So truly, thank you for your commitment and honor. I'd love to be able to give this to Okay, whomever that would be tonight. I will accept it on behalf of the school system. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. Thank you for being here and thank you for

009the work that you're doing with us. The next item on the agenda is personnel matters and for that I call on Mr. McCall. All right. Good evening, Chair Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. Like the board's consent for the following personnel matters. Tonight we have terminations, retirements, resignations, ethics review panel member appointment and educator lensure appointments. Okay. Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the personnel matters as presented in exhibit E1? So move young. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second boy. Thank you. Any discussion on E1? May I have a roll call vote, please? Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Fmpong, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Stilleski, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank

010you. Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the personnel matters as presented in exhibits E2 through E5? So move young. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second, Seavoy. Thank you. Any discussion on E2 through E5? May I have a roll call vote, please? Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumphrey? Yes. Mr. Young? Yes. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Hen? Yes. Miss Rampong? Yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Mumbi, yes. Mr. Dowski, yes. Miss Licter, yes. Thank you. The next item on the Thank you, Mr. McCall. The next item on the agenda is administrative appointments, and for that I call on Dr. Rogers. Good evening, Madam Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, and members of the board. I'm bringing forward the following administrative appointment for your approval. Manager, Accounting, Office of the Controller. Thank you. Do

011I have a motion to approve the personnel matters as presented in exhibit F1? So move Stleski. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Seavoy. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Dr. Seavoy. Yes. Mr. McMillian. Yes. Miss Pumphrey. Yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Fmpong, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Mr. Ambbe, yes. Miss Dleski, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank you, Miss um Dr. Rogers. Yes. Thank you. Our appointment this evening is Jenny Howard. Please stand to be recognized. Jenny Howard is attending this evening with her husband Joel and sons Elliot and Gabe. Jenny is being appointed as the manager of accounting in the office of the controller. With 17 years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools, Jenny's prior experiences include accountant and fiscal supervisor

012in the office of accounting. Prior to that, Jenny served as a staff accountant, senior staff accountant, and supervisor at Agelon Consulting and banking network credit analyst for branch banking and trust. Congratulations. 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 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 on the boardroom and available in board docs and on the board's participation by the public website. While we encourage public input on policy, programs, and practices within the purview of this board and this school system,

013this is not the proper forum to address specific student 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 are out of order and 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 the time or prior to that time at the discretion of the board chair. We're going to start with our school system affiliated groups to speak and our

014first presenter or speaker is Marina Colton PCEL. Sorry. Good evening all the board president, vice chair, superintendent Rogers, and all on the deas. My name is for the record Marlina Colin Purcell, the Southwest Area Education Advisory Council. Tonight, I'm spending my time to appeal to our parents, our caregivers, our stakeholders, our business owners, and all who live or work in or around the west zone of Baltimore County. This is your time to provide requests for the fiscal year 2027 operating budget. Not to water this down, but this is your opportunity to provide your wish list for books, technology, staff, etc. This is also your time to provide your request for the fiscal year 2028 capital budget. And that would include like building needs, repairs, equipment purchases, and things of that. Of course, you can email

015your board members. I am here to represent you in any capacity that I can, but why not come virtually to put that extra exclamation mark on your request? So, I invite you to join us this Thursday, October uh 23rd, 6 p.m. via Zoom. Use this platform to amplify your feedback in the Southwest and Northwest area. I will be remiss not to mention there is a survey that Baltimore County has um submitted to all of our stakeholders. Please complete it. I'm a parent. It took less than 5 minutes, but they need our opinions. That survey is provided online and is due by October 31st. And while I have one minute left, I want to also put out a plea to join the voluntary. It's a voluntary position. It's free. Doesn't cost you anything. Um, so parents,

016stakeholders, all that are listening, join us. And it is the second Monday of every month. Southwest AACbcps.org org is the email that you can email any request and or come to the meetings. And um as I turn this microphone time back over, uh thank you for your time tonight, board members, that you have given throughout the month. I know it's been busy and I'm surely thankful and grateful for you listening to the community. Amen. Thank you. Our next category are unions and we have Miss Kelly Olds from Topco. Hello. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good evening, Chair Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I appreciate the attention being given to the concerns surrounding pay. There has been a great

017deal of work put into correcting pay issues and I am seeing fewer emails regarding these concerns. However, many of the questions and concerns with Oracle implementation persist. Tabco would like to engage with BCPS and the board to ensure it is understood how to prevent these issues in the future. I also want to talk to you um about this past weekend and some of the things that were talked about at our convention. So this weekend I had the opportunity to serve as a delegate for the MSEA convention. It was as always a great experience to interact with colleagues across the state to discuss what we are each experiencing and how we can grow and improve for educators and our students. We had the opportunity to hear from Governor Governor Moore during our time this weekend. While

018the govern Governor spoke about many things regarding education, he focused a large portion of his address on how there are and need to be various paths for students to succeed after high school. He discussed the importance of career and technical education and experiences in high school. These opportunities and experiences are so meaningful to students in helping them to determine the path that is right for them. I was especially excited to hear him talk about an opportunity he had to visit Western Tech where he was able to meet students in some of BCPS's CTE programs and how impressive the students and the opportunities they shared were. I knew that he was referring to the fall of 2023 when he visited for a roundt with amazing students from Lanstown High and Western Tech to learn more about

019our CTE and apprenticeship Maryland program. I knew this because I was there with the students from Lanstown. I spent the fir the beginning of my career in social studies, but the last six years were in CTE as a workbased learning coordinator and then career navigator. To say the students were impressive is an understatement, but if I say too much more, I will get emotional and I don't want to cry. Our students left such an impression on the governor that he is still talking about it while addressing a statewide body two years later. We are really doing impressive things for and with our students. We should continue to provide opportunities to push students to explore the options available to them. It is important that we work to grow, protect, and value various opportunities and paths and

020many of these are available through our CTE programs for students. As we move into planning for the budget next year, keeping these pro programs at the forefront is imperative for student growth and success to ensure that they are prepared for their futures. Thank you. Our next category are nonprofit community groups and our first speaker is Marietta English from Baltimore County NAACP. Good evening. Evening. Pardon me. I am um suffering from a back issue today and so my remarks will be short. Um good evening, Chair Lectar, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Rogers, and the board members. I am Maretta English, and I chair the AXO committee and the education committee for the Baltimore County NAACP. I just want to let you know that we value the partnership that we have with Baltimore County and that our Axel

021program is well on its way. We will be kicking off our season on November 16th at Union Bethl AM Church from 2 to 4. I invite you all to come and see these amazing students that we are inviting to come. I thank Dr. Rogers for her support in asking principles to um send us coordinators to work with our students. This is a valuable um experience. We are looking for mentors to mentor these students as we prepare for nationals and I'm sure this year we are going to be successful in winning gold medals. an education side of I'd like to report that we have a uh high school chapter at Parkville and we will be doing a peace circle on October the 28th where we will talk about um issues that the students are concerned about

022now and that will happen on um at Parkville High School on October the 28th. and we are also chartering a um new high school chapter at New Town High School. So, we are on the move and looking forward to uh continuing working with Baltimore County and the partnership and moving Baltimore County forward with all the great things that are happening and we want to continue to have star students, star high schools, star schools in Baltimore County. We appreciate the partnership. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Dr. Laura Dorsy from the LLD Scholars. Good evening. Superintendent Rogers, Chair Leter, Vice Chair Harvey, and distinguished board members. I am Dr. Laura L. Dorsy, and I'm the founder and president of LLD Scholars. It is indeed an honor to be here tonight to

023share the great work and powerful partnership we have established with Superintendent Rogers, this school board, your dedicated staff, and most importantly, your students. I would like to give a special shout out to Dr. Rogers for your continued support and leadership. Tonight I report on the impact of our collaborative effort, the LLD scholars scholarship and career fair held on October 15th at set the captives free outreach center preceded by our essential preparatory youth summit. The success of this fair is a direct testament to the value of this public private partnership. We set out to close the critical college and career readiness deficit, and the results speak for themselves. In just one day, the fair served approximately 464 Baltimore County students, providing a focused environment where ambition translated into immediate opportunity. The fair resulted in 375 applications

024taken and 282 confirmed on-site admissions. That means 282 of your students walked out of that building with a guaranteed pathway to higher education. But the true measure of our partnership is the financial relief we secured for Baltimore County families. When our institutions, Livingstone College, Defiance College, and Trinity Washington University, among others, made those admissions offers, they backed them up with a collective $4.5 million in confirmed scholarship dollars awarded instantly. Let me repeat that. 4,54,880 in confirmed scholarship funding was granted to your students in a single afternoon. This is an investment in the future of Baltimore County that would not have been possible without your partnership. Furthermore, we intentionally focused on providing high wage, high demand options beyond the four-year degree, aligning with the district's commitment to varied readiness. We had several others there, too. Superintendent

025Rogers and board members, $282 admissions and $4 million in secured scholarships demonstrate an impense power of direction. We're incredible grateful for your trust and leadership and we look forward to continuing this vital partnership to empower the next generation of leaders and professionals in Baltimore County. Thank you. Those are wonderful numbers. Thank you for your help with our students. The next category is individual citizens or students. And our first speaker is Sharon Sirhoff. Good evening. This is disability awareness month and I want you to hold that thought in your mind while you listen to my public comment. Recently, I had a conversation with an executive director because I was having difficulty resolving concerns about grades and IEP services at the school level. I wanted the school to address my client's needs before he failed the quarter.

026I made suggestions such as providing a resource period, teacher check-ins, alternative ways of demonstrating mastery. In response, I got my client needs to go to coach class. That was happening. He's still failing. And by the way, uh we don't do resource periods. Um teachers don't have time to do resource periods even though that may be what the student needs. I often hear the response, I need to stay in my lane. General educators don't speak to special educators. That's was a thing when I was teaching, still is. It's the same with administrators and central office personnel. We're not talking to each other. We cannot bring special education concerns into the conversation when discussing general education grades. Check your policy. They must be kept separate. Why? They impact each other. I have a student who supposedly is

027operating on grade level even though his assessments don't demonstrate that fact. But in order to address his needs appropriately, I have to shift the conversation away from the academics and focus on the behavior. Even if the academics are causing the behavior, disabilities do not operate in a vacuum. I don't know. I have a bunch. They impact every facet of your life. We have to stop staying in our lane and start being willing to collaborate with each other if we want to move forward and move away from the onesize mits misses excuse me fits all mentality. students learn differently and we have to start recognizing that and let special ed general ed work together and change policy. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Bash Ferrron. Good evening. Thank you. Uh, thank you all. I

028I will keep it brief. Um I like to put a plug a little bit for miss uh beyond the onala in communication for the newsletter. It's something I read always and it's really good and have have I promoted that I would like to give a little bit of critique. So this is the first page of the last one. I know you can't see it from where you are. uh it was on the 13 and the point of it right in the first page we have the word English and it talks about the accomplishments of BCPS uh in recent uh uh English uh assessment uh in the 2024 2025 English language proficiency in Baltimore County public schools was 1.4% while the statewide improvement was 0.8%. So the message of the school system is that we did

029better than everybody else in Maryland by 0.6%. Um, of course it talks about some other numbers down there. 3 minutes would not really be um justice for talking about them. 4.6% is nothing significant. You know, and I know that nationwide most Americans are not really happy with public education, the performance of public education. And um I think that's misleading. I think the school system should not use um these numbers to give impression that we're doing well. You never know in December you are going to have a vote and I really wish I really wish you choose someone that has no political agenda, no vendetta and of course have respect for the first amendment. Uh I know this is your right your duty. I just based on my observations uh we need a better change. We

030need not go back backward. The system is already not really performing well. Thank you. Thank you. You can you can stay there Dr. Fon. Um the next item are public comments on board policy. board policy 3210 purchasing guidelines and our speaker is Dr. Fr. I I need just a minute. Uh Madame President, uh the first policy is 3210, right? Yes. Okay. So this policy 3210 the first paragraph of it I know I send you in email so I'll try to be brief the first paragraph which is line seven to line 13 I personally think it's a a nice write up but it really doesn't mean anything at least for me it's vague Next line that I like you consider and think about is under C line 35 through 39 and it talks about purchasing uh

031contracts purching purchasing uh services small and minority business enterprise participation in all contracts will be encouraged. All right. Um when I came 51 years ago, nobody helped me. Nobody gave me anything. I know there is injustice in this country. I've seen it. I experienced it. But at a certain point you need to think about this and consider that it really discriminate against companies or contractors, business people who are accomplished because you are shifting away due to that built-in bias. shifting away the contract to minorities, you know, depending on sexual orientation, gender, color, you know, whichever ism there is. I think this is unfair. you want for the school system when you sign up for a contract that the best company is the one that is chosen, not the company that uh advocate certain sexual desires

032or gender or politics or any of those. It's it's immaterial. cleaning supplies asking for green products I think that's really great but in practice you know sometime you have to use not really green products and I worry that in this way of language that you may choose green things inappropriately hopefully not I think it should be phrased in a different I don't think I have um oh uh line number 22 second page the board reserve the rights to approve deny etc. Of course the board reserved the right I don't know why it's there. Thank you. The next policy is 8130 and our speaker is Dr. Fon 8130 is policy formation formulation organization. So the first paragraph line 7 to line 13 is a nice one but it is elastic in three minutes. I can't really

033explain that to you but to me as a public uh advocate it's meaningless because it's elastic. Line 16. The board will do best of its ability review its policies within seven years. The board will do best. I think this is very elastic term. All right. It's not really specific. So in a sense it can be misused, abused etc. In seven years personally I have been listening to all of you and trading etc for good 25 years. I think every seven years is too long. My recommendation is to consider half that every 3 years or 3 and a half years just break it in the middle. Uh line 21 to 24 talks about suggestions for school policies and it does say parents etc etc but it really doesn't say taxpayers. So to me I am paying

034the money for the school system. All the residents of the county are paying money for the school system, you know, and our name is not really mentioned there. I think it is it makes a big difference if you specify right right there taxpayers, parents, government officials, superintendent, etc. Each year the board chair shall designate board members to serve for the committee. Now the PRC is probably the most important committee in this system and there are some people who have political agendas. Naturally, if you don't really specify anything about the qualification of members of the chair, we will be the same as the past 25 years. People come in, they want this, they want that because they believe in this political matters, this social matter. You know, our job in the school system is education. And

035the more we divert our attention to social problems that is beyond us. It's not our job. We basically wind up just like what we know. We have poor grades. We have poor raised. Thank you. The next policy is 8132 policy manual availability. Dr. friend. This is about the website. Um, there's something really interesting about this policy is that, you know, the first paragraph is a nice one, but it's really vague and in 3 minutes I really cannot explain to you, but when I read it, it doesn't really mean anything to me. This policy is really brief. On one section we say that this is a tool which is true. This is a tool of engagement of the school system with the public which is true. However, the brevity of this policy tells me otherwise and

036the practice is and I'm really not bad with internet at all. You know I think I'm better than my age group. the the website is dull, is difficult to navigate in. It takes quite a while um to get used to and find things. And in particular, I want to say to you that when I use the search engine built in in the website, I get all kind of things that has nothing to do with what I'm looking for. You know, I want something about curriculum. We have a new director for instance uh not really specifically but if I put specific person employee subject often time I just get really all kind of things that is not really pertinent to us. So the website is basically a sign and if it is dull it's not really

037engagement. you need really a good company quality company that would design it in a such effective way. Um uh I do kind of my other readings like if you go for Boeing uh website you will see all kind of whistles and bells and easy things and they answer us. Whoever really puts a message on the website of any of these companies we get an answer. we in the public we really don't get answer from most of you and certainly not from the superintendent and I I think that's a big mistake um that the website is basically ignored for so many years I remember a previous superintendent uh told us that he did some improvement to it a couple of years ago and honestly I didn't notice anything so it's a dull website. It's really not

038not an engagement tool. Thank you. And our last board policy 8222, the superintendent, executive officer, secretary and treasurer, Dr. Fr. This is a lengthy policy. Three minutes doesn't really do it justice. Um it talks about the superintendent being treasurer being secretary and being superintendent which means CEO. So we are a big company $3 billion budget a year give or take and 111,000 students etc etc. It's not really a small company by any chance. You have one person has three most important tasks. You might tell me Comar says it that way. Well, I say if Comrar is um if Comrar is saying it that way, you the board need to look at that and advocate to Annapolis to change the laws because when you have all three major responsibilities in one person, you are only asking

039for trouble. All right? I know the United States is different in size but it's similar system. Just imagine the president controls the white house, the congress, treasury department, the courts all in the same time. I think that's completely unwise. It's really not appropriate. And the experience that we all especially us in the public experienced with Dr. dance probably in part related to such mixup of powers. It took a lengthy period of time to know the troubles. Special thanks to past board member Anne Miller for exposing that in the past um in a very courageous way. So this policy I I really don't support. I ask you to look at it and as I stated in my previous criticism of it maybe five years ago or so. It is not really a reflection of the current

040superintendent. It is basically being thoughtful and thinking about what if this happened that happened in the future. Too much power in one person, no matter how good that person is, is asking for trouble. Again, thank you for indulgence. Thank you. Our next speaker for policy 8222 is Sharon SHO. Okay. Okay. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is action taken in close session. And for that, I call on Mr. Burns. Good evening, Madame Chair, Vice Chair, Dr. Rogers, members of the board. In closed session, the board considered and took action on hearing examiners case number HA26003. And this would be an appropriate time for the board to affirm the action that it took on this appeal. Thank you, Mr. Burns. May I have a motion to approve the action taken in close session on

041hearing examiner's case HA26-3 and authorize Miss Gover to sign for those board members not physically present. So move Young. Thank you. May I have a second? Second, Stleski. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Dr. Seavoy. Yes. Mr. Mr. McMillian. Yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Fong, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Mr. Ambbe, yes. Mr. Dusky, yes. Miss Lter, yes. 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 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

042board policies. Board policy 3210, purchasing guidelines. Board policy 8130, policy formulation. Board policy 8132, policy manual availability. And board policy 8222, superintendent, executive officer, secretary, and treasurer. These policies are presented to you on tonight's agenda as exhibit exhibits I1 through I4. Thank you, Miss Pumphrey. May I have a motion to accept the recommendation of the board's policy review committee for board policies 3210, 8130, 8132, and 8222. So moved, Harvey. Thank you. No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. Is there any discussion? Okay, let me just check our teams. Miss Fong, thank you. Good evening. Um, I had something I guess in regards to policy 8130. Um, and it was actually a suggested amendment so that it is in alignment with our actual rule 8130 as far as analysis. So, um I

043guess is it appropriate to separate that one or should I put the suggested amendment in the chat? Um so you want to you want to separate 80 which one? 8130 right? Yes. 8130. Okay. Um so should I move forward? Are there any does anybody else have their hands up or should we vote on the other three? So, we're going to separate 8130. Miss Alleski, did you want to separate it another one? Um, sure. Or I just had a question, but it would be 81, sorry. Um, 3210. Okay. Do you have a question or did you want that separated? Um, I just thought, um, uh, given the feedback that was given for the term green product, should that be clarified in terms of the meaning? Okay. I think I'm I need some assistance. Which one should

044we vote on them separately since we're having questions? Okay. Does anybody have any questions on any of the other ones? So, Miski's question on 3210 and Miss Fang, yours was 8130, correct? Yes, that's correct. Okay. Yes. So, I'm going to restate the motion. May I have a motion to accept the recommendation of the board's policy review committee for board policies and 8222. So, move Stleski. Thank you. No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. Is there any discussion on those two policies? May have a roll call vote, please. Dr. Seavoy. Yes. Yes. Mr. McMillian. Yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Remp, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Ambbe, yes. Miss Dleski, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank you. Okay, so let's go back to Miss Reang

045had her hand up first. 8130. Miss Rampang, your comments, please. Thank you. So for rule 8130 it was actually updated recently to um with section 2F which is a section on guidelines and so in the policy analysis it actually addresses the equity lens considerations. So this is something that is already ongoing and in PRC when uh policies are brought to the committee the analysis does consider an equity lens consideration and so for the policy itself we don't have anything specifically or any language relating to that. So for section 4 A.1 um where it does talk about the different pol policy analysis and the different things that it should contain. I would like to add item J which would be a new item and that so now that the analysis also includes the equity lens consideration.

046So the policy and the rule will actually now match. Okay. I think Miss Howie is coming to the mic to provide some clarification. Good evening board members. Um, this was this issue was discussed at PRC because the superintendence rule includes an equity lens analysis and the policy did not. What we have done to amend the policy, what staff is recommending is that the equity lens considerations be added. And I would direct your attention to line 26 on page two. Okay. Thank you, Miss Fong. I'll give you a chance to get to You said line 26, page two. Yes, ma'am. Line 26, page two. Miss Pumprey, you have your hand up. Is this about the same topic? Yes, but um I'll wait for Miss Fong because I think what she's looking for is there already. Okay.

047So, maybe I'm missing something because I'm on page two. Can I get a section because I'm not seeing the number the line number? So, is it like section four? Yeah, it's p it's page I mean, excuse me, it's section 2 A D as 2 A1 D. Wait a second. Miss How's got a different Oh, sorry. Four. Excuse me. 4 A1D 4 A1D of the policy analysis document. No, that's on the actual policy where the change is at on the actual policy. Okay. I don't know if I'm looking at the wrong thing then because so my 4A1D reads legal requirements such as federal, state or local laws or regulations that mandate the policy or require certain standards contained in the policy. Am I looking at the incorrect version of this document? I think so. Pol section

04840 here is policy development and approval procedure. Yes. So that's where I am. Okay. I apologize. I think I've pulled the wrong policy. Okay. Um version. So, let me um give me a moment, please. If you would like to move to Mr. Dusky and then come back. I think I Okay. Okay. Thank you, Miss Fong. All right. We will move to 3210. Mr. Dusky, you had a comment about that one. Thank you. Yes. Um so, where it says um and this is uh line 32B. Um Oh, wait. I'm sorry. Um, line 37C in its solicitations and contracts, the office of purchasing will encourage letter two, I mean number two, the use of green product cleaning supplies. And I just think a maybe a definition of of what that would mean would be sufficient. I can

049give you a sample if you think that would be helpful. So So you're um requesting that a definition be added to the policy for green, right? Okay. Um, like cleaning products and practices that are environmentally friendly, minimizing negative effect on the natural environment, you know, any just just green just seems a little bit vague. Thank you. So to get a definition added, I'm sorry, Trac from purchasing that would be someone would be Miss Webster. Thank you, Miss Webster. Good evening. In the annotated code of Maryland in section 5-112, which is where we take our procurement direction from, green cleaning supplies is very detailed. So we are bound to um follow that law and it does contain some specific direction about what is considered green, what is not considered green. It does take into account the

050environmentally friendly aspect that you were just discussing. Great. That's wonderful. I just wonder if in the policy maybe we should refer to the um annotated code of Maryland providing structure or guidelines for what would be defined as a green product. We can um I would also refer to you to line 16 on the same page where it does state that we will follow all of the procurement procedures out as outlined in section 5-112. I I see that. Thank you. Okay. Are you still asking for something to be added, Miss Deleski, or um I mean I just I see where she's pointing out that it complies. I'm just thinking about for the sake of the public. I'm not sure that green, you know, that they would make that connection. Okay. Other dis. So, you're asking for

051the policy to be amended to include a definition of green or a reference to what Miss Webster is code that's followed. Annotated code. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Miss Harvey. I I just want a clarification. The policy currently says that we will follow the annotated code. With regard to that, my concern is that as technology changes, the definition of what is considered green may change. And I think the reference to the annotated code covers all of that uh information. If we're saying that we're bound to to follow what the code defines as green, do we need to highlight that more? I'm not sure if listing what's in the code right now would not be redundant. Any other comments, Mrs. Ber? Okay. Any other comments? Okay. So, procedurally, do we um does Miss Stleski make a motion

052to Okay. Can you make an official motion for what you would like done? Or I sorry. And thank you, Miss Webster, for your clarification. Um, I just would make a motion to amend green products to clarify that um, the annotated code of Maryland provides the guidelines for what um, would meet the definition of a green product. Okay. Is there a second? Second, McMillion. Okay. Any further discussion, Mr. Young? Just to be clear, you're looking not for the specifics of what green products are to be defined in our policy. You're just looking to have um that green products are defined by the annotated code. Correct. Just that way the public understands what that there is a guideline to what a green product would be. Thought that was already in there. That's not what you had said,

053Miss Webster. That that's not already in there. I'm sorry. Should have stayed. That's okay. It's no You're not far away. I found you. Um 5-112 does go into detail about green cleaning supplies. It defines what is considered green. It talks about environmentally friendly products. It also identifies I believe two different certifications that are used um universally to define what is green because green can be so many different things. Um so it does go into that level of detail. It's a very long section. Okay. But that's in a different policy or is that this that no this Okay. I thought you said another number. Okay. Mr. Leki, do you have a make comment? Um, okay. So, maybe I missed that. I'm just making sure that the public can understand that green product is not this just

054umbrella term. For example, you could go to the grocery store and a green product might not be truly environmentally friendly. So, as long as the policy provides information to the public, which it sounds like you're describing, which maybe I missed it, and if I did, I'm sorry. Just so that the public can understand that green product is defined and it's not just this loose, okay, gray area kind of term. Can you restate the motion that you was that you're trying to make? Do you want to You're adding um It was a little Did not type it, but it was um to amend green products to um provide to um I'm sorry and replace it with Are you trying to replace it with the annotated to include that the annotated code of Maryland provides guidelines for

055what is considered a green product? Okay, Miss Pumprey, I see your hands up. I'm just a little bit confused by the motion. I think I don't I don't know if procedurally if it needs to be be more specific with the language as far as remove and add type of language unless I'm misunderstanding. It's difficult for me to understand what um what what the motion is saying we need to add as far as language. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Young. If it is okay with Mr. Stleski, I think what you're trying to have in the policy is the use of green product cleaning supplies as defined in the um annotated code um section 5-112. That would be fine, Miss Deonoski. That's actually what all I was going to say. It is referenced in legal references as far

056as the code of Maryland, but it's not as in part of the policy, which is what uh Miss Silleski was trying to ask. Okay. And then Miss Hen just typed, I think, uh a motion. Is that true, Miss Hen? Um thank you, Madam Chair. I did. I suggested wording for Mr. Stlesky's motion to amend the policy by um inserting in parentheses as defined by the annotated code of Maryland. Oh, where the green where it states green product after the use of green product cleaning supplies. Point of order, Madam Chair. Yes, Mr. Burns. Since it's not been an amendment to amend the primary motion, if there's going to be a replacement motion, it would be cleaner if Mileski withdrew her original motion and restated a new motion. New primary motion, Mleski, that's what I was about

057to do. Okay, do it. Okay, so I'm going to withdraw my motion. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'm going to withdraw my motion. Yes. Well, it was seconded, which I didn't realize. Okay. So, we need to vote on her original amendment unless someone makes a motion to amend to amend the amendment. Technically no. Okay. So, can we have a a roll a roll call vote on the amend the original amendment made by Miss Tleski? Is that correct? Okay. Yes, Miss Gover. We're Yeah, just do the roll call because I think we're just procedurally getting this off the table if I understand correctly. Miss Dr. Seavoy, sorry. M recuse. Mr. McMillian. Yes. Miss Pumphrey, no. Mr. Young, no. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, no. Miss Faul, can we please restate the motion that we're voting on at

058this point? Well, that was the issue is the motion was not specific. So, I think that's why and I'll speak for you, Miss Luskkey, but I think that's why she was withdraw trying to withdraw it. We already had to we already put it in play, so we're trying to get it out of play right now. So, I'm not sure we can repeat it. Okay. No. Thank you, Miss Harvey. No. Miss Aumbbe? No. Miss Dleski? No. Miss Lar? No. Okay. Who's making the the motion, the new motion? Do you have another motion, Miss Dlesky, or you want um or Miss Hen's the one that she Right. Or or Mr. Young, either. Go ahead, Mr. Young. Okay. So, Miss Hen's motion is to add I think I'm Would you like me to restate my motion, Madam Chair?

059Yeah. Can you use the word add where or sure? I move to amend policy 3210 by replacing the use of green product cleaning supplies with the use of green product cleaning supplies open parenthesis as defined by the annotated code of Maryland. close parents. I think you're I think it would you mean insert as defined by the annotated insert? Yeah. Okay. Are you okay with insert as defined by the annotated code of Maryland following green product cleaning supplies? Okay. Are we good? No. You two are talking over there. Are you okay? For the sake of the grammar of it, I think the parentheses are unnecessary and I think it's simply I think if the motion maker could clarify whether those are necessary for the motion. I don't think they could confuse. Miss Hen, are you okay

060if we take out the the punctuation? Sure. Um I can restate it so it's if you like. Yes. Or I will I move. Go ahead. Okay. I was going to say I move to amend policy 3210 by inserting as defined by the annotated code of Maryland after section 3 C number two the use of green product cleaning supplies. Okay. May we have a roll call vote on um need a second. I'm sorry I got ahead of myself. Somebody's second sty. Okay. Yes, Miss Harvey. Discussion. When we say annotated code, we mean subsection 5-112 of the education article. And in the policy statement 1B, it says the board will comply with all contract, solicitation, and procurement procedures as out all contract, solicitation, and procurement procedures as outlined in subsection 5- 112 of the education article. So

061we're just for green products only emphasizing what we've stated in 1B of our policy as I understand it unless I've misunderstood. Someone correct me. That's correct. According to Miss Webster's head nods. Thank you. Okay. Are we any further discussion before we do a roll call vote? Miss Hannah, are Yes. I was just going to add that the um specific section of the code I left out of my motion in case it were to change that way the the policy can be updated in the citations and not the actual um reference to the code. Okay. I'm sorry. Were you just asking for clarification or did you want it changed? I was just asking for clarification. Okay. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay, we are roll call vote, please. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumprey,

062yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dinowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Framp, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Aome, yes. Miss Dleski, yes. Miss Leicter. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Miss Fang, it um withdrew her her motion for policy I'm all mixed up in my number. 3210 81 8130. So, may I have a roll call vote for what? Which to restate that? So, may I have a motion to accept the recommendation of the board's policy review committee for board policy 8130? So, move Young. It's not amended. We're not. She withdrew. Okay. I'm sorry. Thank you, Mr. Young. Then we No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. May I have a roll call vote, please? Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumprey? Yes. Mr. Young. Yes. Miss Donowski. Yes. Miss Hen. Yes. Miss FPA.

063Yes. Miss Harvey. Yes. Mr. Ambbe. Yes. Miss Dleski. Yes. Miss Licter. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Don't get nervous, Mr. Dr. Graham. But your turn's next. After that, the next item on the agenda is the report on school start times. And for that, I call on Dr. Grim and Mr. Rams. Yeah. Do I have a motion to approve policy number 3210 as amended? So move young. Thank you. Do we need a second for that one? No. Yes. So, may I have a second? Second. Thank you. May I have a roll call vote, please? Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumprey? Yes. Mr. Young? Yes. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Hen? Yes. Miss Framp? Yes. Miss Harvey? Yes. Mr. Ambbe? Yes. Mr. Dleski? Yes. Miss Leicter? Yes. Thank you. Okay, school start times start. Good evening, Chair

064Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. I'm here this evening to report on school start times and to introduce you to Mr. David Ramsey, consultant with the Department of Transportation. Um, I was about to say next slide, but I wait till the presentation's up. Oh, there we go. U, so Mr. Ramsey is the former director of transportation with the Howard County Public School System where he proudly retired just a few years ago and has has served as a consultant with our department of transportation since then. And he's also consulted with other uh transportation departments in the state. Um Mr. Ramsey actually started his career many years ago here in in Baltimore County before making that transition. And so this slide shows that in February of 2019, the board heard a

065report called the school day task force recommendations. And at that time, their primary recommendation was to extend the school day by 15 minutes, but they also had the objective of examining issues associated with high school start times. And so you'll see here on this slide just a snippet from um from that presentation in the upper left corner. at the at the um at that time the task force delayed the recommendation on school start times until after the implementation of the extended school. So their primary focus at that time was was to add 15 minutes to the school day. So BCPS extended the school day by 15 minutes in 202122 school year at a cost of $34 million. And so this slide also shows what some of the benefits and challenges are um with changing start

066times. And so research does indicate that a later school start time for secondary students does correlate with more sleep uh better academic performance, mental, physical health benefits for students who have experienced um later sleep and um wake up times based on um their body chemistry. Challenges to changing school start times include capital, human resources and operational cost, logistics, and family community scheduling. And so what we wanted to do was share with you um some of the results of our neighbors who have changed their start times within the past 10 years. So on this slide we have uh Anundo County, Howard County, and Montgomery County. Uh, Anorono adjusted their start times in the 22 23 school year to move elementary schools earliest, then their high school start, then their middle middle school start last. Howard County

067made changes to their start times among other changes for the 23 24 school year. Their high schools begin first along with some middle schools, then all of their middle schools, then their elementary schools start last. and Montgomery County Public Schools changed their bell times beginning in the 2015 2016 school year by shifting their high schools 15 minutes later. Their schools start on a more traditional schedule with high schools first, middle school second, and elementary schools the last to start their day. It's also important to note that Annaundle uses hybrid bus services. So they are mostly uh contracted in their transportation services, but their students with disabilities are transported uh by the district. Howard County is a fully contracted uh school bus transportation district and Montgomery uh operates their own school buses and this will become

068evident in its importance later on in the presentation. We also wanted to point out just in terms of of infrastructure and our research that all three of these districts have uh full lighted stadiums for all of their high schools. So they have a certain level of infrastructure that's also in place um geared toward or related to their start times. So at this time I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Ramsey. Okay. Thank you Dr. Grim and good evening distinguished board members and Dr. Rogers. Changing school start times can sign Can you all let me move. Changing school times can significantly impact school bus transportation systems by introducing a complex web of logistical, financial, operational, and social variables that must be carefully managed. One of the most immediate and influential variables is route scheduling and

069optimization. School districts often operate tiered transportation systems where the same fleet of buses services multiple schools with staggered start times. To provide a highlevel overview, Baltimore County Department of Transportation has a multiple tiered system as depicted on the slide. The first trips are assigned to high schools, regional schools such as Battle Monument, Maiden Choice, Ridge, Ruxton, and White Oak, and also the non-public schools. The second, third, and fourth tiers are assigned to middle, early, and late elementary school assignments. Each pairing of these trips creates bus routes. Currently, the school system has 708 routes and ranks third largest in the state of Maryland. The transportation department is also responsible for supporting displaced students in temporary housing which has significantly increased in size and complexity in scheduling. The school start times for Baltimore County range from 7:25

070to 9:30 and the percentage of trips is provided within each of the time slots. Next slide, please. A shift in start times can disrupt this delicate balance requiring a complex overhaul of route planning. For instance, if high schools start later and elementary or middle school start earlier, buses may no longer be able to complete multiple runs with the same efficiency, potentially necessitating more buses or drivers to maintain service levels. Moreover, decoupling the combined high school and middle school trips would necessitate the need for additional buses and drivers. Further, Baltimore County's magnet transportation services add complexity as the boundaries crisscross the system. Another uh critical consideration is the overall start and end time window. If the amount of time is compressed, buses may not be able to serve multiple schools. As shared earlier, the current bell

071time window for Baltimore County is 7:25 to 9:30 or 2 hours and 5 minutes. If a if a time constraint was introduced, such as no school could start earlier than 7:45 and no later than 9:30, the duration of the window now would be reduced to 1 hour and 45 minutes, which represents a 20-minute reduction of time or 16%. This leads directly to another major variable, fleet and driver availability. School districts already face a nationwide shortage of qualified bus drivers. And any change that increases the number of routes or alter shift times can exasperate recruitment and retention challenges. Drivers may be unwilling or unable to adjust to new schedules, especially if they conflict with other jobs or personal responsibilities. Additionally, changes in start times can affect driver compensation and labor agreements. Another important variable is student

072ridership patterns. When start times are adjusted, so too can the number of students who rely on bus transportation. For example, later start times for high school students may reduce ridership if more students opt to drive themselves or carpool, while earlier elementary start times might increase demand among younger students whose parents are unable to adjust their work schedules. These changes can alter the efficiency and cost effectiveness of routes, requiring districts to reassess which routes are viable and which may need to be consolidated or expanded. Lastly, traffic patterns and road congestion also play a significant role. A later start time might place school buses on the road during peak commuter hours, increasing travel times and reducing reliability. Conversely, earlier start times might allow buses to avoid heavy traffic, but could raise safety concerns due to darker morning

073conditions, especially in the winter months. These factors must be weighed carefully to ensure that transportation remains both safe and timely. In conclusion, careful planning and extensive preparation is required for a successful shift in school times. And at this time, I'd like to turn it back over to Dr. Grim. So, as Mr. Ramsey indicated um in the divi within the division of operations which in includes all of our departments and um and our offices. We took a careful look at some of the variables for consideration of of a change as this would impact um not only transportation which in part drives our bell times but also how it would impact uh building services, how it would um impact us in terms of budget and fiscally um how it might in in impact some other students uh

074services that we provide to our students. And so if you look at the variables uh for consideration of change on this page and Mr. Ramsey went through some of them. Um not only is it transportation but it's uh staffing in the community, the availability of uh our facilities for community use. Um it would be thinking about the cost in terms of any capital improvements, operational costs that we would incur by shifting any uh any start times um partnerships. So when we think about um students who work, parents who work, other family members who work, uh college courses, athletics, and that can not only be our athletics, but community athletics through through recreation and park parks, as well as our partnership with county government, um the start and end time of our uh school resource officer

075shifts, for example, all play into um these variables. Um that's not to mention child care, family schedules, and other uh specific extracurricular activities. And so, uh some conclusions that we came to in in looking at these variables and and start times, um we looked at a few different models and without getting too far in the details, um we estimate the cost at at least, uh $10 million to make a shift like this. And so, um, part of part of that cost implication is not only around, um, uh, transportation cost with, as Mr. Ramsey said adding potentially more uh buses on the road and shifting how service is compressed, but it would also be infrastructure improvements that would be necessary uh particularly if we shifted elementary times um and our high school our high school times.

076Um, it's also important and and even back in 2019 when this was looked at by the committee, there were concerns about moving uh elementary students earlier um because with the way that some of our special schools, our magnet transportation works, it would shift some of our our youngest learners um in the dark first thing in the morning when service begins. and it could potentially um shift our other our other students, our older students um in the dark coming home um which is also an issue. So uh really there was a 25inut change in Howard County, a 20 minute change in Montgomery County and Anna Rundle shifted to an 8:30 start time. Um we believe as I said there would be some infrastructure needs, safety assessments, athletic amenities and buses among other investments and the cost

077and support schedule shift to accommodate um some of this taring. So we'd have to look again at at our at our different supports at each school level and how they're uh funded and what that would cost us. The community impact and Mr. Ramsey did allude to this traffic patterns um by shifting uh when our buses would be on the road, when parents would be transporting their students to school. Um depending on what the changes would look like, uh changes in family schedules, access to child care, um and commuter patterns. Um these would be confounded by uh car pooling. Um we have efforts, we know throughout the county of our families that that carpool together. Um so that could be an an is a possible issue if there was any shift. Uh business employment which we

078talked about and again access uh to schools for community groups. Um recreation and parks for example uses um most of our facilities as you know um shifting times would impact some of the the programmatic availability that they would have. So it would just need to be a consideration. Um the staffing impact was also interesting as we did our research and one of the thing that we found is that this would certainly change teacher uh workday hours. Um it could it could shift anywhere from 15 20 minutes to 25 minutes to 30 to really an hour and a half if uh elementary schedules were shifted to to the earliest. Um, and that's something that we'd have to really consider the the impact on our staff. Um, shifting the start times would also add additional stressors uh

079and variabilities of schedules. And as Mr. Ramsey pointed out, some of our harder to fill jobs like bus drivers um would would be further stressed because we know we would need more if we compressed that window as he described. Um, right now our drivers and attendants also function um on what is what is essentially called a 40hour guarantee or a full-time guarantee because of the way our service is tiered. If we compress the schedule, we would no longer be able to offer um them a full set of work hours in that way and would need to change what that would look like. And it would also mean we would need to hire more staff because we would be concentrating the staff within a shorter window of of service time. Um, finally, the um student impact.

080We know that this would change how some of our um our youngest learners are are monitored by their siblings um you know, one one way or another in the morning or the afternoon. um it could impact participation in employment and and other afterchool and extracurricular activities as well as some of their access possibly to uh to college courses and to other opportunities outside of school. Um we also believe that by shifting any times um again as Mr. Ramsey pointed out there might be some inconsistency in school transportation services and we've seen this with with our neighbors who have adjusted their times. um it has led to some inconsistencies there that a few of them are still trying to work through a few years later. Um we do also know however that um that the impact

081on students could be that it does align um with the research that later start times for as adolescence does have a positive uh impact. So finally, and these are just our recommendations from the research with within the division, um it would be to pause to shift to any later start times for high school students. Um we would also recommend monitoring this success in in um our neighboring LEAs. We we don't know, it's been too early, particularly in Howard and Anundo counties, to determine whether this is truly having an impact. And again, this the short shift in time between uh Montgomery County and in Howard County, um we're again trying to monitor has has that really had the impact that they're hoping for. We would also monitor the alignment of start times um with with the

082blueprint because again, we know that that funding is scarce. And of course, that last bullet is to monitor monitor funding availability because we know it would certainly have an impact um to make this shift. And thank you. That's our presentation. Um, thank you for that presentation. Um, are there questions or comments from the board members? Mr. Young, thank you for the presentation. On slide seven, you had uh a cost impact of 10 plus million. Um, is that looking at, you know, people and equipment, you know, other buses that may have to be purchased? Yes, it's a it's a look um in in that estimate we we had estimates as high as I believe $20 million. Um in that particular model of about 10, we would be adding somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 school buses.

083And does that take into account um space to put that the buses at the bus lot or will we need a new bus lot that we have to go out and find and purchase? That's an excellent question, Mr. Young, and we had not gotten that far in the process, but we will add that to the list for consideration because that that could be possible depending on um where exactly those those buses are servicing students. Okay. And my last question for you is um do you know roughly what our um current bus driver staffing is? Are we 90% 100% fully staffed or are we still a little short there? So, I don't I don't have an exact percentage for you. Um I believe the last the last number that I saw was that we were about

08450 drivers short of being whole. Um right now we cover that that staffing through um additional support via contractors um through doubling up of of trips um and other and other means to make sure we get students safely transported to and from every day. Um but yes, we do we do have a we do have a short deficit that is um consistent with many of our neighbors. Thank you. You're welcome. Other questions, Miss Dleski? Thank you. Thank you for this thorough presentation. Um, a quick question. Do you know how many of the high schools are lighted? Uh, I please don't stadiums. Please don't quote me on this. I think we have I think we have five or six that would that would require lights. Um, we do we do have a facility Western Tech, as

085you know, does not have any uh does not have any fields on site. Um but I believe it's five or six misski but I could check on that number for sure. Okay. I just was curious. And then one more question for um Anna Rundle Howard and Montgomery. Do you know if they did some kind of pilot first with like a feeder pattern of schools elementary, middle, and high? And then has there been been any consideration of possibly doing some kind of pilot to look into this? Thank you. So and that's that's an excellent question. To my knowledge, none of the none of the districts did a pilot. Um unfortunately doing a pilot like that would be um extremely difficult for us to do because um as Mr. Ramsey indicated uh our between our magnet um

086transportation that really does crisscross throughout the county. um our students that are um our disabled students that receive special transportation services and the other variability that we have. It it would be extremely difficult because we we have very few what we're going to call pure feeder patterns to be able to do that. Even if we tried to do it by a geographic area, um there's so much variability across the the district and and and um so much service that that shifts between the two. It would be difficult to pilot it in just one space. So, I'm not saying it's not possible. It would be it it would still have an impact on service elsewhere. Thank you. You're welcome, Miss Pumphrey. Thank you. Um I have a couple questions. So uh at the beginning of the

087presentation and I think also at the end of the presentation you you mentioned that there's data that shows an increase in academ academic performance which of course is one of our biggest priorities. So um where where is that data coming from? You said that we don't have data yet for the neighboring eleas because it's too soon. Correct. Yes ma'am. That is that is correct. Um where where our data came from is just the research in general on school start times. Um there have been uh studies there are some states that have mandated a shift in start times for their students. Uh I believe California is is one of them and what was the other state? Florida. Started in Florida. So there there is some um data. I don't know how hard of data it really

088it really is, but we do know it's still too early with with our neighbors um who have shifted. Okay. And do we have any data as far as um the change in lateness or absenteeism for students when especially high school students if their starts times are shifted to later in the day? I I do not have any of that data, Miss Pumprey. Okay. And as far as some of the challenges and variables that you mentioned on some of the on one of the slides, I can't remember which side. Um do we know how others other neighboring eleas handled those challenges because I'm sure some of them also had similar challenges to what we would experience. Yeah. And so I I think some of them um some of them are still working through those challenges quite

089frankly. Um I will say part of the reason why Mr. Ramsey and I uh highlighted that uh Howard County and Ana Rundle County are largely uh contracted and while this isn't all about transportation um they can concentrate their their service within a smaller window because of that um because of the type of service that they have that is not uh countyowned and managed. And so what we mean by that is um they they pay for for that service. They pay for that condensed window and their systems are set up in a way um that their that their contractors are responsible for providing the school buses and the school uh school service. Whereas right now we provide almost all of our own. Um in Montgomery County where the shift was was much smaller. it was only

090um you know a matter of of minutes. They uh have their own transportation department as we do. So the shift was was far less dramatic in that district. Okay. And so our tiered times that you that we talked about on on the fourth slide, is that different from the other LEAs as well? Um it is. And Mr. Ramsey, you can speak a little bit more to that. Sure. No, it's um pretty much all of the ELEAs in Maryland use a tiered approach when designing their bus routes. Um in Howard County, what they um found was buses that were assigned to four schools. When they compressed their schedule, they weren't able to fulfill four schools. And so many of those trips or bus routes turned into two-trip bus routes or three trip. And hence what it

091did through that compression, they had to add more vehicles to their fleet. Similarly, that occurred in Anaonda County. Um, and I can't really stress the importance of that. Um, the more time you have, the more bus runs you can assign to a particular bus route. The less time, the less number of trips that you can assigned. And it's just truly an optimization problem. Okay. Okay. And I guess that's where my confusion comes in because I'm seeing this more as a flip of times between, you know, elementary, high school, for example. But that's not exactly what it always is because it's also a compression. Is that what I'm hearing? Well, it depends what the ultimate variables are set forth. Um, you can certainly keep the uh 2hour and five minute time window, but I would u

092be concerned of who are you going to put in the front end of that because there are considerations especially with civil twilight and it starts getting darker during months. And then similarly, you also have to consider that the high school trips typically are longer than the middle or elementary school trips. And the reason for that is the large geographical areas. So the buses have further distance to travel and more students to service. When you insert those longer trips in the middle of the tier, then once again it presents some logistical um optimization issues that you just have to work through. Um so once again there are a lot of variables to consider but the main first thing is designing the parameters and once those parameters are designed then you would work with a company to

093go run through optimization models and look at what the final outcome would and I I think one other just to add on to what um Mr. Ramsey said Miss Pumprey um in thinking about some of our our service we um I'll give you an example um with Mr. Mr. Ramsey and I talk about uh Carver Center all the time. We have students that attend Carver that live in Dundock. And so in first thing in the morning when when the students are transported from Dundock to Carver, from Dundock to Talson, um the traffic is not is not too bad and we're able to utilize that bus once it gets to the to the Talson area. In the afternoon, we have a far greater problem because getting from Talson to Dundock at 2:45 in the afternoon on

094a school bus is is much more difficult. And so, um, what David was saying is that that that gives us less opportunity to optimize that piece of equipment um, and put it in service for other uh, school trips. Okay. Okay. I think it just I'm don't know if I still have time. Do I still have time? I don't know. Does she still have time, Mr. Burns? Yes. Yes. Go ahead, Miss Pumprey. Um, 40 seconds. Okay. If I can find it. All right. I lost it. Sorry. You can move on. Sorry. Okay, Miss Deonowski. Um, that actually was what I was going to bring up. The large um area land mass of Baltimore County is um we're third largest in Maryland. And um I don't know if that's something that we can look into as far

095as the way we transport our magnet students. Um policy wise I don't know if we're allowed to not but I when I went to La Raven I I didn't realize that we picked up students from all over to take them to these magnet schools that the students apply to. It's not their home school. So, how is that really like how many buses are used just for magnet schools and how full are they? Have we looked into that and trying to because I know some some of the kids are on the bus for anywhere for an hour, an hour and a half in u middle school and high school because of the where they have to go and who they have to pick up. That's why this earlier start the later start time is, you know,

096would be much bene more more beneficial for those kids because not only are they starting earlier, they have to get on the bus for an hour and a half before that. And it is a lot darker. I mean, it's dark right now when my kids get on the bus and it's not even um daylight savings yet. So, it's going to be dark in in the evening, it's going to be dark in the morning. We got to weigh our options somewhere. Have we looked into a better way of transporting our magnet students and our co like our high school middle school students because I feel like something there could give. So thank you for that Miss Dominowski and first of all thank you for recognizing the diver geography of um of Baltimore County. Um we we

097truly are an urban, suburban, rural school school district and um the service that we provide throughout the county really does take that into account. Um because as as as Mr. Ramsey said, we do have um we do have some some high schools and middle schools that that we work together um to help transport students. But more importantly, um it it really depends to answer the second part of your question, it really depends on what the what the makeup of the program is. Um and we we provide the service for it. So, while sometimes the Department of of Transportation is um while sometimes the Department of Transportation can have feedback or or input on these things, um when we look at the school system, um it's it's important for us to support whatever policy and rule

098that we have. Um so, we do optimize our service. Um but we're always looking for ways to make it better. And then just lastly, if when was the last time you looked into how full these bus trips are? Because there could be a difference of I've seen five kids on a a you know, regular large size, but what A or B or C, whatever the normal bus sizes that you see every day, and I've seen kids that it could be anywhere from 60 to 75 on another bus. So, how are we weighing this out? So, we we we do look we do look at ridership um very consistently. We look at it in in different ways. Um it it begins with routing. How uh a bus a bus is routed, how trips are designed. Um

099and then there's the actual rider ridership piece. It's really important to note that that at all three levels, ridership uh changes throughout a school year. And that can be dependent on anything from um sports to a to a play over a two or three week uh period that um certain school certain students ride here there um because of the the the the the time and effort to develop those consistent routes to make them most efficient. We need to make sure that we are routing for all eligible riders who have not opted out at any particular time. So, while ridership may look um small today, um in uh just a few weeks from now when fall sports end, for example, we might see a spike in ridership on the same bus. Um we adj we adjust

100when we know a bus is too full um based on the numbers that we have or the reports that that we get. when a bus is too empty, we often look for opportunities to combine it with something else or to potentially move stops. So there is a there's um you know it happens I'll say at the beginning but there is an ongoing process to constantly assess that but it is a bit like a rubber band where we need to make sure we have enough elasticity so that if students choose to ride today but they don't ride tomorrow that they're able to ride again on Thursday if they choose to do so. And I guess there's no way to be like to send something out that is mandatory for our our uh parents or students to

101say, "Hey, I'm definitely going to be on the bus or I'm definitely not going to be on the bus. That way we could get a better count and be more efficient at this." Just we we do have some parents that that opt out that that opt out um that that have said we, you know, we will not be utilizing school bus transportation service. Um quite honestly it's it's very few that make that commitment. Um and we have had situations where they make that commitment and then a life event happens and midy year we need to find a way to provide service for them. Um which they're entitled to. So we we tend to make that commitment as well. Lastly I'm done. Just back to the magnet. Um is there any way we could work with

102public transportation or or something else to get that off our a little bit less off of our plate? You know what I mean? a little bit more off of our plate as far. It just seems like that is a nightmare to try to move all those kids around from I I mean I I work in Owings Mills. I live in Baldwin and that commute like I'm I'm never on the highway if I can at all avoid it. I'm always taking the back roads. So, I'm just I'm trying to figure out a better way of how how you guys can do that. And we we appreciate that and and it is a challenge that we work through every year. Yep. Miss Harvey. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, I think we're all invested in anything that we

103know will address the health and well-being and the academic success of our students. Um, we also know that we have an extremely tight budget and that we don't anticipate getting loads of extra funding uh, in the coming years. Have you all come across any innovative funding models for getting this done that are outside of what an allocation from um the the government entities would provide? Uh we we have not but in full transparency we have not been been seeking any of those funding sources to my knowledge but no we have we have not. Miss Frmpang, thank you. So, um, in looking at this and we know the typical is high school starts first, middle school and then elementary school. What is it that actually determines that order? Um, we saw that elementary, high, and middle.

104So, it sounds like the order itself is not fixed. So what is it that determines the order of which type of school is going to begin first, second, and third? Uh so so traditionally um the the I'll say the superintendent staff has determined um what the taring would look like and uh working with the department of transportation and the schools belt times are designed as Mr. Ramsey said so that they can be tiered um in part to provide the best service and that make the most sense to get students to school on time for their complete day depending on which students are being served at that facility. Okay, thank you. And then um we bought you know with calendars and things we hear about half days and uh in particular again at that elementary school

105level that we don't even always have students who um may show up for a half day or it causes some issues for for parents um with daycare etc. And so that's a a factor in whether or not they're sending their child to school. If we move the um start times earlier for our elementary school students, um I guess is that something else still to consider because then for half days those elementary those elementary school students would be getting out I guess even earlier. So is that also something I guess that we take into account as we look at this tiering and the impact of of moving start times? Yes, ma'am. That would certainly be another variable to consider. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. McMillian. Gentlemen, thanks. Last uh fall, I attended the start school later thing

106in uh Lyola University. It was a nationwide convention that was held in our backyard. So, I figured why not? I was a skeptic. I was a high school athletic director. I taught 35 years in Baltimore County, Mr. Ramsey. uh 25 years in high school. So my thoughts were I went into that thinking that if you tell a teenager you're we're going to start school an hour later or whatever that teenager in my mind's going to stay up an hour later. So what benefits have you really drawn? What won me over was the research and I'm not a scientist. I don't pretend to be a scientist but the amount of research that these people presented on the benefits and and that's what I think it comes down to. You got you we're going to weigh the

107cost versus the benefit and that's what it's going to come down to. And I just want to real quickly have some schools I want to read the back of this real quick. Hundreds of schools across the nation have adopted later school start times with positive results including more and better time sleep, improved grades, decreased auto crashes, less teen depression and substance misuse, better attendance and graduation rates, and fewer suspensions. These schools include large and small districts as well as rural, suburban, and urban ones. Why haven't more schools changed? Lack of awareness of the science of teen sleep is the biggest barrier to change. Communities also often assume that running schools at safe, healthy hours would increase transportation costs or reduce extracurricular opportunities. But real life examples prove these speculations are unfounded and often many feasible

108find a physically responsible ways to have safe and healthy schedules are available. Now, I'm just presenting a different view. And I and I think if if we're going to look at this this we need to hear hear the science piece because if if if behaviors change, if grades go up, if more kids are graduating, more kids are attending schools and and and if the behavior is better, that that's important to me. And Mr. Ramsey, I'm curious and and I'm not sometimes I'm interpreted as being rude and and I'm not being rude. I'm just trying to I'm going to ask you a question and in your consulting experiences, have you consulted with a school system that has actually implemented this the early start? No, I retired before Howard County executed their school start time uh changes.

109Okay. I was just curious if you were involved in that that whole transportation piece. So I encourage us to look at, you know, bringing in some some science to, you know, let's hear let's let us hear that piece of it. I think Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Dr. Go ahead, Misski. Thank you. So just in a followup to what Mr. Mcmillian said, "I wonder if um there are some schools nationwide perhaps a similar uh geographic combination that we have in terms of urban, rural, and suburban um throughout the nation has already implemented this and then we could start to look at some of the effects and results." And thank you Mr. McMillian for your passion and evidence comment. Okay, Christine, Miss Pumphrey, thank you. Just just a quick comment because I know I don't have

110a lot of time or a um a request that in with the recommendation for monitoring success in neighboring eleas if we could please monitor not only academic achievement but data regarding lateness and absenteeism and also um behavioral issues as Mr. McMillian mentioned um and additional funding sources to assist with the financial impact as u Miss Harvey recommend as Miss Miss Harvey stated. Thank you. Thank you. Um, Dr. Rogers. Yes, thank you. Um, so first thing I want to say is we agree with uh what the pediatric association has said in terms of what's healthy for students. That is not a question with Baltimore County Public Schools. Um, as you know, we are committed to increasing academic achievement for our students. We will continue to explore this. We will um you know our health um director

111of health services has provided some feedback on uh what the science says in terms of students. We will uh ask Miss Logan whether or not she can explore some grants. Uh that was to your question earlier Miss Harvey um whether or not there are opportunities to fund this. Uh we just wanted to make sure that the team provided you with the research that they've done uh to this point. And I do appreciate the recognition that um Baltimore County Public Schools, like all other school systems in the state of Maryland, are in a tough time fiscally. Um that does not mean that we have closed the door on early start times for our high schools. Challenges um don't mean that we don't move forward and pursue things. Uh I would be remiss if I don't remind

112everybody of our Baltimore County public school story of transportation. It was just a few years ago uh when we were when we had those 80,000 students to transport across the system and outside of the system that we were receiving regular complaints about the level of service that we're providing. And so if we move forward to make a change that is in the best interest of students, it is also our responsibility to do it in a thoughtful intentional way that does not break the systems that we have put in place so that students are actually getting to school on time. It's certainly not perfect, but it's really good on time accessing those free meals and accessing instruction. And so our commitment is to continue to study to bring data um forward to this group that some

113of the data that you've asked for Miss Pumprey. I don't know if the uh neighboring school systems will give us access to that, but I think there are some things that the state will report on that we can use um as we share updates with the board moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the report on highly effective staff certification pathways. And for that I call on Mr. McCall and Miss Simmons. Good evening, Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. Tonight we'll be presenting on the educator lensure pathways. And tonight I have with me Miss Carla Simons, the magnificent manager of educator lensure here with BCPS. Great. Before we get really get into the presentation itself, I

114just want to give you a little bit of data, some of the context around why we're here today and why we've gotten to this place. When we look nationally across the country, we've seen the number of teacher of enrolles and teacher preparation programs have declined considerably from 2012 to 2022 2023. almost over 300,000 uh less potential teachers. Now, keep in mind that this is from across the country, meaning that not only Baltimore Countyy's going after these teachers, but other systems across the country, California, Texas, New York, etc. So, we have close to almost 300,000 decrease in the number of of enrolles in these programs. Now, when you look at completers, I'm glad you asked that question. We're talking about enrollies, right? So, what about those who actually finish the programs, right? So, that number, oops,

115get ahead of myself. Uh, that number is even more bleak. We're looking at a decrease in those numbers as well, right? From 20 213,000 uh in 2012 to 160,000 in the 2223 school year. Now there's a little bit of hope here when we look at that sort of increase in the number uh from the two 151,000 to the 160,000. That's due to the number of alternative preparation programs that have been instituted across the country. Now in the state of Maryland, we mimic that what we see across the country. We've gone from almost 8,000 in 2012 to just around 6,000 in 2022 2023. So in terms of our numbers across the state, it mimics that what we see across the country. Um and therefore of course that has led us to also look at a number

116of different alternative pathways for teachers to enter into education. At this time, I'd like to turn it over to Carla Simons to talk a little bit about the regulations where we were old regulations to where we are now. Carla, thank you. Uh so this is a very high-level uh overview of the new educator lensure regulations uh which is comar 13A.12 uh effective April 1st 2024 MSDE revised the regulations um some specific highlights about the old versus new. Under the old regulation, uh MSDE issued certificates. Um it is now called historic certificates. Uh so my apologies to anyone who may still hold this historic certificate. Um but um the the term certificate was changed to license because national board certification um they wanted to distinguish between the national board certification and licenses. Uh under the old

117regulation, uh educators are were excuse me were required to complete renewal credits, six college level credits or continuing professional development credits um every five years. Uh now educators are required to complete professional development points or PDPs. Uh these points are hours of continuing education. Uh these hours are tracked on a professional development plan. Uh under the old regulation, educators were required to complete literacy courses. Uh under the new, it is now science or reading. Teachers under the areas of early childhood, elementary, uh special ed, and Esau must demonstrate proficiency in teaching reading. uh there are very specific ways which they can meet this requirement. Uh under the old regulation, educators were required to complete a master's or equivalency. Um under the new um regulation, educators have options. Um every educator can determine his or her

118path with maintaining the lensure or advancing to the next level. So every educator in the state, excuse me, in Baltimore County, their pathway looks a little different. Okay. So this is uh highlights the pathways an educator can receive initial lensure. So you have instate uh programs ranging from the traditional program option uh through alternative programs uh experience in a non-public school and there's an in district training option which is new under the new regulations. Uh we would spend a whole another hour if I went into the details of each of those options. Um uh uh additionally we have professional technical teachers, our trade teachers, our cosmetologists, our construction um teachers. Uh there's an option for them in order to earn lensure as well. Uh per the instate pathway, educators are required to complete content and

119performancebased assessments. Uh, of course, uh, as you know, we do recruit from out of state and we do accept out of state teacher preparation programs as well as licenses. Um, however, when you enter Maryland that the educators must present present performance-based assessments. Uh, our occupational uh, experience or our professional technical teachers, again, there's an option if they're coming from out of state. Um these either instate or outstate they do not require tests. Uh last national board certification if you uh come to Maryland with a valid certificate uh and a bachelor's degree you can earn a Maryland license. So as our educators complete coursework in these in their program um they can apply it towards their salary lane advancement. Um the coursework uh or excuse me the lane advancement must be requested through the office of

120educator lensure. Um the coursework must be document documented on electronic transcript um or uh appropriate documentation to the office of educator lensure not to MSDE. Um a as we review those transcripts the uh growth chart is updated and the salary lane is updated appropriately. Uh this entire process could take approximately eight weeks. Okay. When we look at uh data here in uh Baltimore County as opposed to as compared to that across the state, we see we're transitioning now to conditional lensure. We've seen a decrease in about 6% in the number of conditional teachers uh across the state from 2023 to 2024. And what you see just to the left is a decrease here in Baltimore County from 2024 to 2025 and uh 2023 to 2024 to that of 2425 we've seen a slight in decrease

121of closer around 3%. So of course the percentage of uh conditional licensed teachers here across the state is mimic that here with what we have here is representative that which we have in Baltimore County. and I'll turn it back over to Carla to take us through through some uh pathways here for conditional licensed teachers that we have here in BCPS. Thank you. So earlier I outlined the options of instate, outstate um and national board certification. Um however we have some uh applicants who come to us who might be uh career changers uh experts in in the in a subject area your biologists chemists etc. Uh members of the community who fall under that expert area par educators or even long-term substitutes who've been in our schools in which the teaching profession uh here with Baltimore

122County. So uh the representatives in the office of educator lensure reviews all the credentials and and determines uh if they're eligible for professional lensure or if they qualify for conditional license. If they are under the conditional lensure pathway um they would receive either a condition conditional special education license which is valid for three years uh or a conditional license which is valid for 5 years and that's for all other subject areas. These two licenses are not renewable. Once they receive it, it's one time. They have either three or five years in which to meet the requirements. Uh prior to the regulation change that I shared earlier, uh we have we had a pathway called transcript analysis or some might have heard it called course by course. Uh some of our educators uh were working towards

123their lensure through this pathway. So MSDE has allowed them through March 31st, 2027 to complete this pathway. Uh anyone new to the district as of 2024 must select a teacher pathway uh a teacher program. Uh the pathways as you saw or um there's many options and each educator will choose the pathway best for them. Uh I often get teachers contact uh my office and say, "Well, my neighbor next door is in a program and we start at the same time." But uh my journey and Homer's journey is uh very different or will be very different. Um we're selecting our own pathway. Again, Maryland's assessments are required for anyone on a conditional lensure with the exception of our PTE teachers. You might be wondering, well, how do you get this information out to these teachers? Well,

124we've done this uh sharing information in various ways. Uh we've held uh information sessions across uh the county in various schools. We've held one-on-one meetings, actually held, we still hold these one-on-one meetings with our um educators to talk about their particular requirements in their pathway. Uh we train our support teachers, meaning our staff development teachers and our consulting teachers. Um these are the teachers directly in the school where if a conditionally licensed educator has a question, they're going right to them in the schoolhouse. Well, we're giving our uh staff development teachers and consulting teachers basic information in which to support uh the teachers in their school. Uh additionally, we have partnered with various colleges and universities to offer programs to support our teachers with completing uh their requirements. Uh and of course, we offer tuition

125reimbursement. Um, it's up to 12 credits per fiscal year. You'll see some pictures. Uh, the top one, we were at General John Stricker. Um, that room was pretty packed. It was full of professionally licensed and conditionally licensed teachers and we were able to get to all of them. Uh, you'll see me standing up there. Uh, pleasantly surprised I got a standing ovation. Uh it's weird for lensure but we got a standing ovation and the bottom picture uh we held an information session for Morland University. Uh we have a partnership with them to uh offer a program for our elementary teachers to complete lensure requirements. Uh very important slide. Uh, MSDE requires that all educators use the educator application and certification hub, teach, you'll hear me call it teach. So quite a a mouthful to say

126all of that title. Uh, the system is required for every educator across the system, not just BCPS teachers. Um, as a teacher is hired with the county, um, they are required to respond within TEACH to some very specific questions regarding criminal history, uh, discip any disciplinary actions that might have been taken outside of the state on their credentials. Um, and respond to any terminations due to misconduct. Of course, we do our standard criminal background check here, but TEACH is connected to the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, NASDAQ. Um, this is a clearing house that's connected to teach. So, when educators complete the application and answer these questions, it flags us if there are any questionable activity. Um outside of that, uh educators can log onto their dashboard at any time,

127see the status of their certificate or license, uh track their uh application status right on their dashboard, upload documentation to support their renewal or their lensure. Uh they can send transcripts directly to MSD if they wish. Uh they can update their personal information. the uh staff in the office of educator lensure can see all of this information that's provided by the educator. Uh last they can pay their $10 license fee right on the dashboard. And before we say thank you, we want to at least uh acknowledge that uh Carla, there was one piece that we were talking about earlier that when she gave the example about General John Stricker. Um the sessions that she's held with her staff has actually been across the county and it's not just located in specific zones, but it is

128uh we do have conditional teachers across the county. So we go to them and make sure that they have the support services that they need. So with that, I'd like to say thank you and thank you both for the presentation, questions, comments from board members. Miss Harvey. Uh thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you all for this information. I um Comar 14, not 14, Comar 13 A 12104C lists the lensures as you included in the presentation. I'm wondering if there is data on how uh what the numbers look like for those who have conditional lensures that transition to a standard license because the conditional is nonrenewable. And then uh listed within the types of licenses are temporary professional licenses and adjunct teacher licenses. I wonder if there's data on what our staff look like in

129terms of those licenses, what those numbers might be. We will actually uh that's that's information we don't have at this present time, but we glad to uh to research that. Thank you. Other questions or comments? I did have a question on um when you talked about the science when you had the old and the new um and you talked about the science of reading proficiency like what are some examples of how are those courses or is there other examples of how you can gain that proficiency? Um it's a either a an assessment that's approved by the state department. So uh it's practis or there's an assessment through Pearson that's an option. Um if a educator wishes to take coursework they can um there's a training called letters that is an acceptable um option also through

130the AIM institute uh there's a course offered there uh anyone who may satisfy national board certification that automatically satisfies the requirement. So when like you said letters training, is it incumbent on the teacher to be getting that on her own or is that something that we provide? Um I know we've done letters training for lots of our staff, but if you have a sort of somebody who wants could look a little bit of both ways. We we have offered it and there educators out in BCPS who find the opportunities on their own. Okay. So it's like a menu of things that they can That's correct. Again, that key term of options. um not requiring you you know a specific way but options. Yes, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. Other questions? Mr. McMillian, I I'm just curious

131about a career changer. Yes. That gets the conditional license for the three years for special education or five years. So they have that time frame to get the coursework that they need to become duly certified or not certified but officially certified. Correct. Correct. What kind of supports are are we building in to help them in the classroom once they get there? So they're a career changer, they make the decision they want to get in the classroom and maybe they want to be a special education teacher. What are we doing for those people once they get in there? Now, so much of my background, it was, you know, I had an educational background in college. So, when I started teaching, I used that background to help me get started. And a lot of it was on

132the job training, too. I admit that. But, so, how are we helping these people be successful in the classroom? So, Mr. McMillian, I'll take that one. All right. Um, so a few years ago we made a commitment to revamp how we were supporting new teachers. So part of that support looks like a staff development teacher that's in that building for job embod embedded coaching for anyone who's a new educator. Last summer was the first time that we moved to mandatory new educator orientation. If they are in a subject that is not special education, they receive one week before pre-ervice of training. Part of that training is content. Part of that training is actual teaching. This summer, for the first time, we provided an extra level for uh special educators. Uh during that time, our new

133educator orientation program is year round in terms of the support that we provide. You have a consulting teacher that works with you one-on-one um for your subject. And then you have the school administrators. That's part of why we trained everyone in research or better teaching using the skillful leader. And then throughout the year, there are systemwide trainings as well as school-based training where we ensure when we talk about clarity, for example, or when we talk about high expectations that all of us have the same uh meaning behind that. Everyone can speak to uh what are the specific classroom moves that you need to engage in on a regular basis. um so that you can provision for your students. Um how can you anticipate their points of confusion and misconception or for a new teacher in

134particular uh classroom management we provide those supports on classroom management. So those are the things that we're doing uh that are different that have occurred over the last two years in addition to changing the mentoring program that over co had moved to a lot of it on schooly and technology based that we moved it back based on the feedback from new teachers to face real people coming into your classroom someone that you can ask without evaluation um to give you some feedback or to help you model something or talk through a lesson plan with you. So, those are some of the things that we do in addition to the formal uh coursework that someone's going to have access to to get certified. Thank you, Miss Demanowski. Yes. So, with some of the the special education

135instruction, it we have to deliver it with a certified special education teacher. Correct. Some of the that instructional time needs to come from a special education teacher. depends on. So to be a teacher, you have to hold a license. Uh these teachers are licensed. They hold a conditional or a professional license. Right? But I'm talking about the special education teachers. There there's certain teachers there's certain instruction with our special education students that they need to receive from a special education teacher who is licensed certified. Right. Correct. that they have to have a certain number of instructional hours or I believe that's beyond uh the licensing piece. Uh we do ensure that they are licensed but the number of hours or any specific instructional time. I I'm unable to provide you that information. What I guess

136what I'm trying to say is um with these C the conditional certifications that a special education teacher has they have for three years and they have three years to complete the certification. Are they teaching special education students under this certified? Yes. Under this conditional certification? Yes, they are. And so technically they could not complete it within that 3 years or not you know not finish it and they've taught. Do we have any data on that the effects that that would have I'm just concerned about you know proper instruction especially with our most vulnerable students. Um I think this is a great way to get more teachers certified but I'm also concerned about what do we have guardrails do we have put in that we're making sure that we're protecting our students and that they're getting

137the best instructors. So, if I could uh respond, our goal is to make sure that all of our students have a high quality educator in front of them. Um, I believe it was Mr. McCall who shared the slide uh sharing uh both what's happening nationally in terms of how many teachers uh or how many students are cho choosing to go into teachers. A much smaller number are actually graduating from the programs. When we look at the state of Maryland and the 24 districts, uh just last year there were 16% of teachers that were uh provisionally certified. Well, that's the old language. Um provisionally licensed compared to uh this year there was a reduction, I believe, of 6% in Baltimore County. We have fewer than 10% of our teachers who uh are conditionally licensed. Um the

138state of Maryland uh recognizes that conditional license. Uh the conditional license for special education, there's a shorter time period in Maryland than any other subject. Um but it is an approved license um for uh a teacher to be an educator to be in the classroom. And so all of those uh supports that I uh provided in my response to Mr. McMillion still apply. There is still a responsibility for the assistant principal, principles, the central office uh staff members who come in to ensure that there's fidelity of implementation of coursework. Uh special educators that come from um central office to monitor what's happening in the classroom. Uh but again just want to share that everyone is licensed by the state of Maryland and there is a much shorter pathway to become fully licensed uh for special

139education versus uh other subjects. Other questions? Let me check teams for a second. Okay, I think we're good. Thank you very much for your presentation. Thank you. And our next item on the agenda is a report on the operating budget, funding types, and object class groupings. And that for that I call on Mr. Tanliff. Good evening. Uh, Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, Dr. Rogers, and board members. Uh tonight I have a short uh budget presentation that addresses a couple questions that come up every year during uh budget season. So we thought it'd be apppropo to uh present that today. Um the first thing I'm going talk about is different expense funds. Uh the one we talk about the most here it usually is the general fund. Um it's the largest part of our budget. You

140can see it's the the primary part of the pie chart followed by the capital projects fund. And I think everyone here knows the budget per year uh goes up and down pretty significantly due to uh the county just issuing bonds for construction of schools every other year, but the actual spending is pretty steady by year. But this is a bond issuance year. So, we have a pretty large capital projects budget in uh FY26. Special revenue refers to our grants. Um it's about $191 million and I have a little page uh page to follow up on that little more details on that. Uh enterprise fund just refers to our food service uh expenditures and that is a self- sustaining fund. That's why it's called an enterprise fund. A debt service fund of $96 million reflects the

141bond issuance from the county that's dedicated to school in construction. We don't participate in that issuance. We just uh are required by law to reflect that in our budget, but we really have no management of that other than to report it. And the last thing is our internal service fund, which is $7.8 8 million and reflects our workers compensation fund claims. It pay claims out of that uh page here on grants. So special revenue as I mentioned almost $191 million. This has obviously come down significantly from the COVID years when we got all those esser dollars. Those are all gone now. None. We have none of those in the FY26 budget. Our largest grant only by a teeny margin now in terms of dollars is Title One. That of course supports uh achievement in high

142poverty schools. It's followed uh by the IDA special ed pass through grant. Most of our special ed funding comes from the general fund, but we do get a significant amount of money through the PAT what we call the pass through grant idea. And of course, the concentration of poverty grant, which supports wraparound services in community schools, has been rapidly expanding and we have 110 uh community schools in FY 2026 and that's um state funded. Historically, almost all of our special revenue has come from the feds, but as COP's uh grown, it's become a more significant part of our special revenue program. Uh the second part of my presentation uh is to speak about object classes and this is really just in the budget book and a lot of the presentations you see, it's just how

143we uh group the different expenditures. So you'll see that throughout the budget book when you look at offices, if you look at the general fund, if you look at special fund, throughout the budget book, um you'll see object class groupings. And within the object class groupings, there's lots of details and lots of specific objects, dozens of them within each of these groupings, but that's uh too granular when we're, you know, discussing at a high level, putting things together for things like the budget book. Salaries and wages of course is the predominant uh part of the pie here at $1.23 billion. The second uh category which gets confusing sometimes is called other charges. Other charges is where we hold all of our uh fringe benefits and a lot of related things like uh uh utilities and

144insuranceances. So that's $485 million. Pretty significant. And I have a follow-up page that'll uh will kind of map out the salaries and uh benefits together. Uh contracted services, um external uh vendor services, maintenance, security, uh special education, support, uh valued at $171 million. And that again is not the value of the contracts that get approved here. that that is the budgeted amount of dollars that are spent within the year and you know we always have that difference what's the contractual authority versus how much is in the budget this year. A contract can go over five years but when we are looking at the budget we only talking about how much money we have in the current year for that um ex type of expenditure. uh equipment is or supplies and materials 43.9 million uh includes

145instructional materials, fuel, so a wide variety of things. Uh equipment refers to expenditures that are over $5,000. Um things could be furniture, equipment, um $17.8 million. And I'm going to go into a little more detail on each of these um groupings uh throughout the presentation. and transfer payments talks about money that we uh pay to other Maryland entities. So salaries and wages uh fairly self-explanatory but when we talk about salaries and wages besides what we uh pay people in their annual compensation uh it also talks about things like uh subs when we have directly employed subs um professional development if someone goes on sbatical which is not a huge amount overtime stipens uh you know it's any compensation that goes to are employees or contractual employees. Um, other charges as I mentioned is primarily fringe

146benefits. So that's $415 million of the $486 million. Uh, utilities are pretty significant at 62 million, just what they sound like, electricity, sewage, etc. Um, insurance is about $11 million. And then we have a smaller amount of uh additional operational costs, licenses, dues, um travel, etc. Uh Dr. Rogers talks about the number a lot when we're uh referring to the budget. We're primarily a people organization. 81.3% of the FY26 budget is salaries and benefits. And uh you know when you think about that if you're trying to save money, if you're trying to do different things, most of those things impact people because it's such a huge percent of our budget. This has actually dropped a couple of percentage points over the last couple of years primarily because of the number of uh FTEEs that we've

147reduced in the budget. So it's become a smaller percent of the total budget. So that was about 83% uh 3 years ago. Um so when you add up the 415 million in benefits plus salaries, it's $1.65 million billion dollars. It's pretty darn significant. 81.3% of the FY26 budget. And I'll just mention in this section, we're only talking about the general fund. So we're not including food service, capital, etc. um because it's just a good way to think about it. Uh contracted services. Um I think these will be pretty familiar to most of the group here. Uh $44 million covers equipment repairs and maintenance. Um building services support uh contracted buses. Uh security printing rent is pretty significant. Um there's a lot of technology. We have devices, software licenses. Um special ed has a lot of

148dedicated technology to the uh children that they're supporting. And then we have some legal services, financial auditing, banking fees. They're they're fairly small in the big scheme of things. But you can see even in aggregate $44 million is a very small percent. It's only about 2% of the total uh general fund budget. So, it is not a big bucket. Supplies and materials only two a little over 2% of the budget. It's not that much. Um, a lot of the things are obvious. Some may not be as much, but office supplies, instructional materials, textbooks, library books, paper, uh, you know, just breadandbut things that we need to keep the schools running. It's also maintenance and consumables, um, custodial supplies. It includes fuels, parts for our uh buses and white fleet. Um, and you know, it's really

149a lot of these things just ensure the schools are equipped to support all of our daily operations and instruction. Oops. Uh equipment, as I mentioned, is just expenditures over $5,000 fall into the equipment category. Uh a very small percent of the budget, a little under $18 million. It's high-cost items. Uh some of the bigger ones are like relocatable classrooms, uh replacement buses and trucks, uh maintenance equipment that we use for repairs, lifts, that sort of thing. Uh and a lot of the technology infrastructure. So not a device but the infrastructure that supports the device, audio, visual equipment, uh wireless support, servers, etc., network switches, um transfers, uh it's a term you may not be as familiar with, but most of this money is for non-public placements. So these again are expenditures that we pay to

150other government entities in Maryland. So non-pub is is the predominant part of this 72 out of the 76 million. We also spend about $2 and a half million dollars for out of county living expenses. So those are uh children that are tied to the county but attending school out of the county. So they could be in a public school in Anaundle County and we would pay tuition to Annaundle. Um and many of the counties in Maryland we pay at least some tuition to and they pay tuition to us. Uh likewise uh and also this would include about 1.3 million that we pay to CCBC for uh tuition for dual enrollment. And that wrap wraps that wraps up what I wanted to uh share with you today. Be happy to take any questions. Thank you for

151that. Questions, Mr. Young. Good evening. Thank you. So my question is you mentioned like the enterprise fund is our uh cafeterias and it's supposed to be self- sustaining. Um the that of course excludes the people the equipment that's mainly the food aspect of it. Uh they do they do pay for most of their own equipment also. Okay. So currently we have we don't charge students. It's correct. It's free. So and I thought most of that was grant related. Uh most of our budget is uh supported by the federal government. A small percent of it is funded by the state and there are some small sales we do of extra things now that are outside of the base meal. But we get reimbursed for every meal even though they're free depending on the percent poverty in

152that school. Uh there's obviously a higher reimbursement depending on the uh higher percent of free and reduced children. If it's a uh student that's not qualified for free and reduced, the reimbursement is less. But we do receive reimbursement for uh every child in the system that is getting a meal for free. Okay. I just wanted to because you mentioned the special revenue fund is basically grants. So I was trying to really align that you know if the enterprise completely separate. Okay. Yeah. In this case a grant uh special revenue is just what you think of as a grant. Title one uh special ed grants all the COVID related grants that we had at the time. every uh source of revenue that supports food service is contained within the enterprise fund. Whether we sell something, whether

153we get reimbured for the feds, get reimbured from the state, it all stays within the enterprise fund, and they can keep their excess balance to help pay for shortfalls in years where revenue uh isn't uh greater than expense. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Harvey. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for this very understandable explanation of some components of our budget. I appreciate the information. I just have a question um on the outofcount living expenses on slide 11. These are funds that we pay uh for county students that may be attending school outside of Baltimore County. Is there an offset for students from other counties that are attending school in Baltimore County? Uh there are. So, uh we get reimbursed the same way that we pay for our students. So, uh if a student

154that's doiciled in Baltimore City is attending school in Baltimore County, it might be because they're in a foster situation. and it might be because they're living with relatives, but they're considered a resident of Baltimore City. Then we would build Baltimore City for that child's education. And do we have a number associated with the out of county living expenses that are reimbursed to BCPS? Uh, I could get it for you really quick. Off the top of my head, I'm going to say it's about a million dollars. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. My question was um kind of the same thing of just trying to figure out why we would be paying students BCPS students to be going to other LEAs. I mean, is it for It wouldn't be because we choose to. It's just because of

155their legal and family situation that they're considered a Baltimore County resident, but they're displaced for that year. So, they're living with relatives in Anna Rundle, but they're still considered by the state to be a Baltimore County resident. who makes a determination that we need to do that. Uh the state does, but I don't know off the top of my head the exact mechanism for that. But that's not the special ed nonpub and that's not um homeless. It's a whole different category. What was the first one you said? The non-public placements for our special education students. That's a different category. Nonpublic separate. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Separate billing. Dr. And the state does does facilitate all those billings. So they're the ones I guess determining who's eligible. Okay. Dr. Seavoy specific question about um the Department

156of Juvenile Services. So if these children are incarcerated, we're still responsible for them. Um we do get uh invoiced for Baltimore County kids that are incarcerated. Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Steinowski. Yes, thank you. Um, I'm glad they went over the other charges. I know I asked a lot of questions about that, but being that it's the like the second largest piece of our pie and it's includes our employee payrolls, benefits, have we ever shopped that portion of our budget outside or have we always aligned with what Baltimore County government is doing? Uh well, we get our medical benefits in conjunction with Baltimore County and they do RFPs periodically just like we do for um any contracts, but by joining forces with them, they're getting more buying power. There's more people,

157but we are uh we are self-funded for medical benefit, but uh we use obviously outside providers to facilitate all those benefits. the card you have in your wallet. Well, you know, the cards we have in our wallet. You may not because you're not a full-time employee, but Right. But we've never really looked at into getting our own broker doing it ourselves. We we just count on whatever Baltimore County government does as far as medical and whatever they whatever deals they broker. We've never weighed our options to see if we would do better on our own being that it's just such a large portion of our budget. um not that I'm familiar with, but uh again, they're sophisticated in terms of purchasing and they're getting more purchasing power by having us in the pool with them.

158So, they've just always been the lead in terms of uh medical, but we wouldn't really know that we couldn't do better because we've never done it. So, I'm I'm not saying that you're you're right or wrong. I'm just saying we don't know because we've never actually done it ourselves. I I can't answer. Okay. You chest. Thank you, Mr. Young. So, when you talk about the outofcount living expenses, you said we of course pay other counties and they will pay us. Is it a the same set amount or is it based upon, you know, because I know we each LEA has different amount of per pupil spending. um uh the amount uh per child is a little different uh for each entity and the I the state has a formula that determines what that reimbursement rate

159is per student. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. McMillion. Mr. Tatliff, when you mentioned purchasing power by going together with the county, like we have 20,000 plus employees, including teachers, correct? Uh well that includes temporary employees. Our full-time employees are probably more in about 16,000. Okay. And any idea what the county when we combined with the county how many employees they have? Uh they have less than us. I don't I don't know the the total number. I believe it's under 10,000. I was thinking we were a larger employer. We are. I I don't know the exact number they have though. Thank you. Anyone else? Let me just double check. Teams. Dr. Dr. Rogers, did you have something you wanted to add? Uh, the only note that I will add is there's a lot of historical context

160to Baltimore County government um serving as the lead for medical um insurance providers. It's something that we can ask a team to give us that historical context and uh to what point you know we have an obligation to move forward in that way. Thank you very much for that information. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is information which includes the quarter 1 audit report and then we will do board committee updates and agenda settings. So we'll start with board committee updates. U Miss Harvey with the audit committee. Okay. U Mr. Young with building and contracts. The next building and contracts committee is Monday, November 3rd at 5:00 pm. Okay. Thank you, Miss Stallowski. Curriculum committee. Yes. Please join us for um our curriculum meeting tomorrow, Wednesday, October 22nd at 4:00. Um topics of

161discussion will be uh an online digital content library for K through 12. And we will be receiving a multilingual curriculum update. And for those of you that want to join us for a science update, um that is being planned for our Wednesday, November 19th meeting. Please join us. Thank you. Thank you. I'm not sure. I know Miss Fong isn't on any longer. We'll move Mr. Young. Go ahead. The next equity committee meeting will be Thursday, November 13th at 4 p.m. The next equity committee meeting with the equity council will be Thursday, November 20th at 5:30 p.m. Thank you for that. Um, for legislative and governmental relations committee, that is me. Our first meeting is on November 5th at 4:30. Um, and we are actually planning that meeting tomorrow. And then the last committee is the

162quote not last yet policy review committee Miss Pumphrey. Yes. Thank you. On at our October 13th meeting we discussed policy 1600 um which is public charter schools policy 4102 um and policy 8320 operations final action and policy 1260 which is about um school which is school volunteers. For the first three policies, we had very minor amendments that um were added to be brought forward to the full board and were added with consensus of the committee. For policy 1260, um we did I just wanted to mention for that one that we did have a robust discussion um regarding an amen amendment that was made, but the amendment did not pass. But I did want board members to be aware that we had a very robust discussion about that in case you wanted to go back and

163view the meeting. Our next meeting is scheduled for November 10th at 4:30. Thank you. Thank you for that. And audit committee, Miss Harvey. Uh, thank you, Madam Chair. The next audit committee meeting is November 11th at 4:30 p.m. virtually. We invite the public to attend. I would also remind the public that the reports uh based on the Office of Internal Audit uh audits is available online at the BCPS website and and would encourage you to please uh review them. Thank you. Thank you for that. And then if anyone has any agenda items, you can raise your hand to let me know or you can email them to me. Okay. Oops. Let me just check teams. Okay. Not seeing anybody there. Um, okay. The last item on the agenda is announcements. The board's next meeting will

164be held on Tuesday, November 4th, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. Thank you for joining us tonight. And the meeting is now adjourned.