Meeting of the Baltimore County Board of Education - July 8, 2025

001in LTORE. I call to I call to order the meeting of the board of education of Baltimore County for Tuesday, July 8th, 2025. This evening's board of education meeting is being broadcast through the BCPS online live meeting broadcast on BCPS TV, Exfinity channel 73, and Verizon channel 34. In order to efficiently conduct this meeting, all voting items this evening will be done by roll call vote. May I have a motion to go into close session as permitted by the open meetings act as found in the annotated code of Maryland general provisions article section 3-305 B1 B7 and B8 to discuss the appointment employment assignment promotion discipline demotion compensation removal resignation or performance evaluation of appointees employees or officials who has jurisdiction or any other personnel matter that affects one or more specific individuals. consult with

002counsel to obtain legal advice and consult with staff, consultants, or other individuals about pending or potential litigation. May I have a motion, please? So moved. Booker Dwire. So, thank you. Is there a second? Second. Harvey, thank you. May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Fong. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Abe, yes. Miss Dleski. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Board of Education of Baltimore County for Tuesday, July 8th, 2025. I invite you to recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag to be led by Miss Foresight Unamb. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation, indivisible, liberty and

003justice for all. We will then have a moment of silence in recognition of those who have served education in Baltimore County. Thank you. Tonight's board of education meeting is being broadcast through the BCPS online live meeting broadcast and on BCPS TV, Xfinity channel 73 and Verizon Fios channel 34. In order to officially conduct this meeting, all voting items this evening will be done by roll call vote. The first item on the agenda is the consideration of the July 8th agenda. Dr. Rogers, are there any addition to tonight's agenda? I am unaware of any changes to this evening's agenda. Madam Chair, Miss Pumprey, I would like to propose adding an agenda item to um propose a change to the budget specifically regarding the teachers contract. is say the motion again, please. Add an agenda item to

004propose a change to the budget specifically regarding the teachers contract. Is there a second? Second, hen. Miss Punry, would you like to speak to your motion? I don't want to I'll speak specifically about adding the agenda item. I don't want to discuss it now. I'd rather disc during the agenda, but I just feel like there's something I'd like to propose. So, I'd like to add that as an agenda item. Okay. May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Young, yes. Miss Tinowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, no. Miss Harvey, I don't feel like I have enough information to support such a motion. So my answer my response is no. Miss Agumbbe, no. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Miss Lictor, no. Favor is six. Motion does not pass. Earlier

005this Whoops. Madam Chair. Yes. I move to add an agenda item to reintroduce the creation of a budget the recreation of a budget committee. Is there a second to Miss Hen's motion? Second. Dominowski. Thank you. Would you like to talk to your motion or your agenda item briefly? I believe the need has never been more urgent that the board reestablish its own budget committee and we can discuss it further once this has been added to the agenda. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Young, no. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, no. Miss Harvey, no. Miss Aumbbe, no. Dr. Seavoy, no. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumprey, yes. Miss Licter, no. Favor is four. Thank you. Earlier this evening, the board met in closed session

006pursuant 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. Consult with council to obtain legal advice and consult with staff, consultants, or other individuals about pending or potential litigation. The close session summary and the open session information summary can be found on board docs under this board meeting agenda date. The next item on the agenda is personnel matters and for that I call on Mr. McCall. Good evening, Chair Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. I'd like the board's consent for the following personnel matters. Tonight we have retirements, resignations, and deceased recognition of

007service. Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the personnel matters as presented in exhibits D1 through D3? So moved. Booker Dwire. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Young. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dryer, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Aumpe, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumprey, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is administrative appointments. And for that, I call on Dr. Rogers. Thank you, Mr. McCall. Thank you, Madam Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, and members of the board. I'm bringing forward the following administrative appointments for your approval. Director, Office of Budget and Reporting. Director, Office of the Controller. Administrator of School Improvement, Department of Schools.

008Assistant Principal, Deep Creek Middle School. Specialist, Department of Research, Accountability, and Assessment. And Specialist, Special Education, School Support, and Improvement. Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the personnel matters as presented in exhibit E1? So moved. Booker Dwire. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Seo. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Agumbbe, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank you, Dr. Rogers. Thank you. Our first appointment this evening is Deanna Ashenfelter. Please stand. Deanna is attending this evening with her husband Chris [Music] and is being appointed as the director in the office of the controller with seven years of service with Baltimore

009County Public Schools. Her prior experiences include fiscal supervisor in the department of accounting accounting and manager in the department of accounting. Prior to that, she served as account and financing ma manager at industrial uh retail group and senior accountant at health pro. Congratulations. Our next appointment this evening is Lisa Bell. Please stand to be recognized. Lisa is attending this evening with her husband, Terry Bell, and is being appointed as the assistant principal at Deep Creek Middle School. With 15 years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools, Lisa's BCPS experience includes English teacher at Deep Creek Middle School. Prior to that, she served as an English teacher at Moravia PreK through 8. Congratulations, Our next appointment is Adele Cohorn. Please stand to be recognized. Adele is attending this evening with her son, Alex, and was appointed

010at the June 24th board of education meeting as the assistant principal at Deep Creek Middle School. With nine years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools, Adele's prior experiences include English teacher at Woodbridge Elementary and New Town Elementary Schools, assistant principal at Wellwood International School, and school support specialist at Deep Creek Middle School. Adele's prior experience include elementary teacher in Howard County Public Schools, math curriculum writer with Success for All Foundation, assistant principal in Montgomery County Public Schools, principal and district of Colombia, word generation coach with Harvard University, adjunct faculty member with Lyola and mathematics education associate at the historic Samuel Cridge Taylor Elementary School. Congratulations Our [Applause] next appointment is Stephanie Gwant. Please stand. Stephanie is attending this evening and is being appointed as the specialist in special education school improvement support in the

011department of schools with 17 years of service with Baltimore County. Her prior experience includes in elementary teacher at Deep Creek Elementary School, special education teacher at Deep Creek Elementary, Sandalwood Elementary, and Oakley Elementary Schools, and consulting teacher in the department of staff relations and performance management. Congratulations. [Applause] Next appointment is Lean Gooden. Lean is attending this evening with her children, Xavier and Jaylen and was appointed at the June 24th board of education meeting as the assistant principal at Lock Raven High School. With 20 years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools, LeShawn's prior experience includes English teacher at Deer Park Midd Magnet School and resource teacher at Caitensville Center for Alternative Studies. Prior to that, she served as an English teacher at Harlem Park Community School, special education and English teacher at Tallahassee Marine Institute,

012and director of education at Tallahassee Marine Institute. Congratulations. [Applause] Our next appointment is Tiffany Higgins. Tiffany is attending this evening with her mother, Dorothy Higgins. and is being appointed as specialist in the department of research, accountability, and assessment. With 15 years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools, Tiffany's prior experience includes world language teacher at Cockisville Middle School and staff development teacher at Winen Elementary School. Prior to that, Tiffany served as a world language teacher at Fston High and Patterson High Schools. Congratulations. Our next appointment is Shella Luckenfeld. Luckenfeld, please stand. [Applause] Shella is attending this evening with her mother, Lynn Dennison, and was appointed at the June 24th board of education, Hallebert Middle School. With 16 years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools, her prior experience includes mathematics and stats teacher at Southwest

013Academy and assistant principal at Pikesville Middle School. Congratulations. Our next appointment is Linda Mloud. Linda is attending this evening with her sons Pete and Will, both former BCPS students, one of them. Um, and is being appointed as the administrator for school support and improvement in the department of schools with 32 years of experience with Baltimore County Public Schools. Linda's prior experience include special education teacher at Deep Creek Elementary School, IST program facilitator in the office of student support services, specialist and coordinator in the department of research accountability and assessment, coordinator in the division of curriculum and instruction, director in the office of community superintendence, assistant principal at Pleasant Plains Elementary School, most recently principal at Lions Mill Elementary School. Congratulations [Applause] Next appointment is Erica Moore. [Applause] Erica is attending this evening with her mother

014and was appointed at the June 24th board of education meeting as the specialist kindergarten comprehensive coordinated early intervention services. That's long. With 18 years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools, Erica's prior experience include special education teacher and elementary teacher at Scots Branch Elementary School, elementary teacher, resource teacher, and instructional support teacher at Halstead Academy, resource teacher in the office of school climate and culture, facilitator teacher in the department of student support services. Congratulations. Our next appointment is Kelly Wyn. Kelly is attending this evening with her husband, Qua Wyn, and is being appointed as the director of budget and in the office of budget and reporting. With 21 years of service with Baltimore County Public Schools, Kelly's BCPS experience includes fiscal analyst and fiscal supervisor in the office of budget and reporting. Congratulations. [Applause] Next

015appointment is Thomas Rhodess. Thomas is attending this evening and was appointed at the June 24th board of education meeting as the assistant principal at Watershed Public Charter School. With 18 years of service, Thomas's experiences include English teacher, English language arts teacher at World Communications Charter and Bell Multicultural High, program assistant at SE St. Elizabeth School, special education teacher at the Crossroads School, and assistant principal at Westport Academy. Congratulations and welcome to BCPS. Our next appointment is Brittany Watkins. Britney is attending this evening with her husband, Ben Watkins and was appointed at the June 24th board of education meeting as the specialist comprehensive coordinated early intervention services with 17 years of experiences with Baltimore County Public Schools. Her prior experience includes school counselor at Lansdown Middle School, Caitensville High School, and Stoneley Elementary School. Congratulations. [Applause]

016Thank you, Dr. Rogers, and congratulations to everyone that's here tonight. Our next item is public comment. This is one of the opportunities the board provides to hear the views and receive the advice of community members. If not selected to address the board, members of the public may submit their comments to the board members via email at boebcps.org. The Baltimore County Public's Homeland Security Unit and Office of School Safety has recommended safety and security protocols, which are posted in the boardroom and available in board docs and on the board's participation by the public website. While we encourage public input on policy, programs, and practices within the purview of this board and this school system, this is not the proper forum to address specific student or employee matters or to comment on matters that do not relate

017to public education in Baltimore County. Inappropriate personnel 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 be to continue their remarks and will be escorted from the meeting. Please observe the 3minut clock which will let you know when your time is up. The microphone will be turned off at the end of your time or prior to that time at the discretion of the board chair. We are going to start with our unions and our first speaker is Charlotte Bank from Case. Good evening. Hi there. Good evening, Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Rogers, and board members. My

018name is Charlene Banky and I'm here speaking on behalf of the executive director of CASE, Billy Burke. I am honored to introduce myself to you as the newly hired director of the Council of Administrative and Supervisory Employees, CASE. I come to this position with 34 years of dedicated service to Baltimore County Public Schools. Over these years, I've had the privilege of serving in many roles, 15 of those years as a school principal and more recently four years supporting the office of staffing. These experiences have given me insight into the evolving needs of our schools and the vital contributions our administrators and supervisors make. It is from that perspective and with great pride that I step into this role. I do so with a strong belief in the collaboration and with full alignment to the spirit

019of our master agreement, a commitment to open communication, mutual respect, and a shared responsibility for achieving educational excellence for all our students. Alongside our executive director, Billy Burke, I look forward to continuing this important work of advocating for fair staffing and promotion practices, building a climate where school leaders can thrive, and fostering a culture of trust between case members and district leadership. We all know that recent budget cuts have caused some case members to question whether this board and our school system leadership truly value their work and desire to treat them with the respect that all employees deserve. Our priorities at Case remain the same. Support our members, protect their rights, and amplify their voices in a way that uplifts this entire school system. case believes as this board does that every child deserves a

020highquality education and we know that behind every great school are strong and supported leaders. We are committed to doing the hard work with you together to ensure that our leaders are heard, respected, and empowered to succeed. Thank you for the opportunity to work in partnership with you. I look forward to continuing the strong relationship between case and this board and to building a future that is defined by collaboration, progress, and a shared purpose. Thank you for letting me speak tonight. Thank you, Miss Banky. Our next category is nonprofit community groups. And our first speaker is Marian Baker from the Broadme Residents Association. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for having me here today. I'm very happy to address this board. I'm Marian Baker and I'm here this evening to represent a group of residents of

021the Broadmeat retirement community and to tell you of a wonderful partnership that exists between this broadme and two of the local schools in Baltimore County. Broadmeat is located in Cockisville and consists of about 500 senior citizens. I've lived there for two years. When I arrived, I noticed that there weren't many opportunities to interact with the community outside of Broadme. And I also knew that retired people typically enjoyed interacting with their community and volunteering. So I and two other residents, Sandra Angel and Cindy Sugat, looked for opportunities to volunteer at neighboring schools. We have a lot of retired teachers at all levels at at Broadne. As you can imagine, we were overjoyed when we discovered that Pedonia Elementary International Elementary School welcomed volunteers and needed our services. Our partnership with Pedonia has helped both Padonia and

022Broadmead. And here are the some of the things that we do. We elicit contributions from the residents at Broadmead of food and we distribute that food at both Pedonia and another neighboring school, Cockisville Middle School. We sort and distribute clothing donations that come to these schools and uh organize them so that parents can come in and find things that they need for their families. We collect and distribute uh donated school supplies and toiletries. We help out at school events like the health fair, the book fair, parents night, registration, graduation, math night. We also serve as teacher assistants in some cases when the teacher would uh allow us to. We also have ongoing project of knitting and crocheting hats, scarves, and even little dolls that we donate to the school. We have a art show of

023the um art students at Padonia. That was a wonderful um Miss Baker, thank you for all you're doing for Pedonia Elementary and Kakis Middle and for presenting to us tonight. Thank you. Our next speaker is Cararissa is Cararissa Serber representing Faith Communities of Baltimore with Pride. Good evening. Uh, thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening. I'm Cararissa Serber, pastor of Hunts Memorial United Methodist Church in Rexton Ryderwood, and I'm also a parent of a Baltimore County Public School student. Um, I'm here today to speak on behalf of Faith Communities of Baltimore with Pride, which is a coalition of 57 different faith communities of different religious traditions that has come together to affirm and celebrate the diversity and beauty of the LGBTQ plus community. Two weeks ago, the Supreme Court handed down a

024decision that ruled that parents can opt out of having their child hear literature that includes LGBTQ people on the basis of religion. And so I'm here today to encourage the Baltimore County uh board of education to continue to include those materials in the public schools. Uh like you, I am concerned that this ruling is going to require an additional administrative burden on teachers and on administrators, but I'm even more concerned that it will have the chilling effect of leading teachers and schools to omit such literature from the classroom altogether. As a product of the Maryland public school system, I know firsthand how public schools are one of the most important places for students to encounter people with a variety of life experiences. It was in public school that I first met people who celebrated Ramadan

025and who kept Yam Kapoor. And it was in public school that I first met people who were lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. And over time, those public school experiences. And the books and the curriculum that surrounded those experiences taught me how to be tolerant and then accepting and affirming of people from all walks of life. As a parent and as a clergy person in this community, I want to ensure that this board hears that there are many religious people who do not want our children to opt out of such learning. Some parents might wish to prevent their children from learning about LGBTQ people, but the 57 faith communities and our coalition celebrate these people and this learning. And so we want you to know that we believe in coexistence and cooperation and civil discourse and

026that all of that requires mutual understanding. We hope that you will continue your long-standing history of supporting teachers as they help their students to learn about people of different races and genders and orientations and socioeconomic statuses, language, immigrant status, abilities, all sorts of differences. We believe that this kind of exposure can foster the curiosity and empathy that we need today. In my faith tradition, we say that all people are created in the image of God. And we believe that that means all people. All people. And so, it's my sincere hope that this body will continue to affirm all people in this way. I have a handout that I'll uh make available for the board after I speak. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Our next speaker, I believe virtually is Marietta English. Good

027evening. I'm on the phone. Is that okay? Yep, we can hear you. You can hear me. Okay. Good evening, Chair Lecter, Vice Chair Harvey, Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. I am so sorry that I am not there with you tonight, but I am also excited because we are on our way. I am Maretta English. I chair the education and AXO committee for the Baltimore County NAACP and we are on our way to Charlotte. We are so happy and excited to be going to the national competition. I want to thank Dr. Rogers and this board for supporting us so that we can make this trip and come back with goal. And I also want to thank those teachers who work with all the students who participated because they are all winners. Everybody didn't win

028gold, but they are all winners because they participated in this activity. I want to thank especially Miss Pope from Pikesville who uh jumped in. This is her second year working with students and each year she's had a gold medal winner. So, we hope that she will bring home a gold medal winner this year as well. And of course, Miss Stephanie Pal from Carver. She's phenomenal. She brings to us at least 25 students and she always has gold medal winners. and we're excited about on our way to Charlotte and I know we will win. I appreciate all the support Dr. Rogers you have given us. It is phenomenal and we are on our way. Like I said, I'm sorry I'm not there in my AXO shirt tonight, but we're getting ready to take off tonight and

029hopefully we'll be coming back when I get back here and tell you how many gold medals we've won. So, thank you so much for the opportunity and I will see you in a couple weeks for at the next board meeting. Thank you and good good luck to all of you. Thank you. Our next speaker our next speaker is Dr. Barbara Desmond. Okay, I don't see her. So, we will move to individual citizens or students. And our first speaker is Miss Sharon Serhoff. Good evening everyone. I want to give you a little bit of information about summer school and how it's going. All students on the high school level, whether they have an IEP or not, have the following scenario. I go to class. I sit and look at videos or look at some kind of

030computerized item. And maybe a teacher helps me out if I have a need for assistance. There is no actual instruction going on. The onesizefits-all, but I have an IEP. So, how does that work for me? Let that sit there. We only have a certain amount of slots. So, if I don't get my grades until after all those slots are filled, I have a problem. I either have to go to virtual if there's room or go to night school in the fall or go to Saturday school in the fall or double up on classes because guess what doesn't happen and I'll give you a for instance that I'm dealing with right now that I've dealt with in the past. If I failed algebra, guess what I don't do? I don't repeat algebra. I go to geometry.

031If I fail geometry, guess what I don't do? I don't repeat that geometry. I go into algebra, too. How is that working? And remember, I'm a kid with an IEP. That's one thing going on on the high school level. On the middle school level, if I have failed and I need to go to middle to summer school, I need to make sure I have transportation. I need a car. I need access to public transportation because if I don't, the nearest bus stop may be four miles from my house because we're only picking up at the elementary schools. Again, how is that? Chew on that, please. Our next speaker is Dr. Bos Feron. Good evening. Good evening to all. We are here to make a generation of happy, patriotic and successful citizens. The question is, what

032did the board of education accomplish in the past one year? One, budget chaos. Two, reprimanding Demanowski on political grounds just because she's passionate. Three, supporting the illegal aliens. for providing Maryland politicians with an long long time electioneering time right here in the board of education. The result of that will be that you the board in my honest opinion as an observer once you leave this nice place you will not be remembered for anything significant. Actually, Lori Phelps article by uh Fox 45 is the only really positive good news about PCPS that I read for quite a while. You might disagree, little here, a little there, but a real progress is Lori Phelps presentation in Fox 45. So, what am I proposing to you? All right. I propose to you that you lobby an Anapapolis for

033you the public education to be autonomous system to have tax levy authority. So when you need to buy a computer or raise the salary of teachers, all what you have to do is to go to the public. We are the taxpayers. we authorize it or we say no that's it no politics I propose to you that you team up consider teaming up with other jurisdictions to my sense it makes no sense whatsoever that we have curriculum department as an example and there is another one in another system and same thing with contracts it's duplication Okay, learn from Walmart. That big volume in any function of the school system will save you money. And my time is running out. I ask you to consider what I talked to you. Remember, public school, this school cost students

034much more than private schools. That's unacceptable. Dr. F, you can stay um right there. Next is public Dr. Fon, you can stay right there. Next is public comment on board policies. As a reminder to speakers, comments should be related and limited to the policy. Our first speaker for policy board policy 1270 parent and family engagement is Dr. Feron. Policy 1270 said line page one line 1213. the board's vision increasing academic achievement and supporting parents etc. I say increasing achievement is a rubbery term. You know, you could move the needle a little bit. Uh you did the job. So what I recommend is that this sentence would be the board's vision accomplishing successful and happy school graduates. Kids needs to be happy when they leave and they need to be effective finish college or work. On

035line 16 and 17, the policy says providing a sustainable system of supporting academic and personal success of all students. So here the word success I believe needs to be defined. Okay. What does it mean success? You could basically stretch it or shrink it the way you want. And in you as a system if you do not have clear definition of what success you have then how can you improve? How can you measure? So I have been watching this system for a long time. 25 years easily. It's the same story every year. What's the success? My definition of success that the graduates of this school system to be happy number one to be patriotic number two to finish college or university or to gain a um a job profession. All right, those are the criteria. To

036my knowledge, the school system does not really measure anything close to what I just told you today. Thank you. You're welcome. Um, our next speaker for policy 1270 is Miss SH. Oh, I have another policy. I know, but she has that first policy. Oh, okay. You can stay. All right. have a problem with you being here. [Music] One of the things that concerns me about a policy of any kind is that we make assumptions. And one of the things that this policy assumes is that every parent in the Baltimore County school system knows what the parent and family engagement policy is that is required by the Every Student Succeeds Act. I can tell you that a lot of parents that I work with are still dealing with the no child left behind which is back

037in stone age by these standards. So we first need to not assume that every parent, every teacher who's reading this policy knows what's in the policy. I can tell you that I haven't memoriz I know I participated in statewide workshops when every child succeeds came out but I can't tell you what that policy says verbatim unless somebody puts something in front of me. So, let's fix that so that at least parents understand what it is they're required to follow, what it is they're hoping to, and this is not just parents. This is the community. This is the teachers. This is your administrators. Everybody needs to understand this policy before we finalize it. That's what I have to say. Thank you. Next is policy 5210, grading and reporting. And our first speaker is Dr. Feron. You

038want me to do you want me? Sure. You're next. Next policy 5210 uh page two line 8 and nine says grades shall be based on a body of evidence and aligned to content standards. I say grades shall be based on my proposal shall be based on recognized national evidence and be aligned with national standards. If you leave the phrase the way it is, anyone can interpret it whichever way you want. All right? So grades are really the most important thing for school system and for students um and teachers alike. And if we are using vague and robbery statements then we cannot really truly measure our work or success or failure. The word evidence here can be an evidence if objective. Okay. So what I'm trying to say is that an evidence can be almost anything.

039Okay? Anybody can say something and it's an evidence. So I like the word objective behind it because it really quantify what the evidence is and I think that would be important for this policy. Um I think I have something else. Page two, line four and five. Grades are an essential way to communicate student progress as such and then the line talks about feedback on student progress. What I would say is that the achievement the word achievement is better in this policy in my opinion than the word progress because once you finish one year in any students you want to achieve a milestone if you just accept the word progress little progress well it's acceptable and I I think the difference between the two differentiate a successful school system versus a school system that is not

040as successful. Thank you. And our next speaker for policy 5210 is Miss SHOV. Okay. I'm going to note that evidence-based content. Okay, I'm going to bring in a little bit of what I noted previously. The content should be the same across the board, across schools. And yes, it stays says that in here, but I can tell you that's not happening. We need a way to make sure that the content we are using in every classroom is evidencebased and is being utilized with fidel and taught with fidelity and that's not happening. We need to make sure that parents have access to what the curriculum is, have access to what the grading policy is for and for it to be consistent again across the board. And I can tell you again that not every parent has access.

041We tell them to go to focus or schooly or we not we don't give out report cards now that are paper report cards. We have to be consistent. We have to have a way of oversight and that needs to be built in to this policy because otherwise what we what we continue to do is have a repetition of supposedly evidence-based content and we're grading students on, oh, they have an A, that's a meaningless A when I'm in high school and my reading level is the second grade. Are we using evidence-based? I have a question about that. And again, it has to be across the board. Whether I'm in Deer Park Middle orerstown Elementary or Overly High School, doesn't matter. Your policy has to be consistent and there's got to be a way written down to

042make sure that it is done the way you want it to be done. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is the superintendent's report and for that I call on Dr. Rogers. Thank you. Good evening, Chair Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, and members of the board. I am pleased to provide a report in the form of a video. This is our annual um endofear video that the communications team has put together. So, Miss Gover, whenever you're ready, please. And with that, the 2024 2025 school year has come to an end. The 2024 2025 school year was an incredible year of collaboration, growth, and achievement for team BCPS. Working together with renewed focus, a shared vision, and an unwavering commitment to student success, we made great strides in our efforts to fast forward. We celebrated significant

043improvements in student achievement on key system and state markers of performance, led the state in the number of five-star rated schools, were recognized by the state for the greatest improvements in chronic absenteeism, and expanded students access to post-secary and career and technical education programs. Throughout the school year, across our 176 schools, programs, and centers, our students were actively engaged in learning and exploring new and stimulating subjects, programs, and activities. Many of our incredibly talented students and staff members earned local, statewide, regional, and national honors for their academic, civic, artistic, and athletic achievements. BPS has supported my success as a student from investing in me since kindergarten. They've given me wonderful teachers and staff that have helped me learn all the different topics I've learned to this day. When we work together, we can solve any

044problem, which is a common lesson taught through BCPS schools. As a student striving to learn in BCPS, it's many AP courses in math, English, history, and more have provided me knowledge that I can use through the rest of my life. What I love about being a BCPS student is just how supportive everyone is and how you can really go to anyone whenever you need help and people aren't afraid to offer you any kind of support. Like they will figure anything out just for you. BCPS has supported my success as a student by providing me opportunities that I never thought I would have such as programs that are directed just towards me as an Asian immigrant and also as a female. This spring, BCPS awarded diplomas to more than 7,000 students. graduates walked across the stage

045with a diploma in hand and an array of promising opportunities ahead. Never stop learning. Learning is for you and can never be taken away. As you venture out into the world, never stop being situationally aware. There is always something for all of us to learn each and every day if we're open to it. Once you have a plan of what you want to do and the kind of person you want to become, think about what you need to learn in order to succeed. Remember, nothing is possible without education. Planning for the upcoming school year is well underway. For the 2025 2026 school year, BCPS is targeting investments in areas aligned with system priorities to accelerate student learning and achievement and improve outcomes in key academic priority areas, including English language arts, mathematics, English language development,

046and special education. In our classrooms, we will continue to utilize high quality evidence-based standards aligned curriculum. Staff will engage in comprehensive professional development opportunities throughout the year to strengthen their skills, align practices, and improve outcomes for all across the system. Our implementation of the new ERP system will create efficient and effective systems that will support and positively impact student learning, staff productivity, and system safety for many years to come. to sustain anything that's going well, I think we need to be collaborative in nature, which BCPS is really excellent at doing. Um, you have to include all stakeholders, which again is a huge um, you know, marker in our success. And I think last of all is to make sure that we really uh, focus on datadriven instruction as well as when it comes to making

047changes to make sure that we're looking at the hard facts and then making the changes based on that data. I think this generation of teachers and principles and the staff and facility personnel has came a long ways and they really care for the children. They go out the extra extra mile to help out with everything that they need. They help out with the parents. If there is anything that's needed for the parents to help with the children, they also help with that also. They really go to extra mileality these days to help out with everything from the kids to the parents to my co-administrators to the teachers. Um it's it really feels like one big happy family. Um we have our challenges and we work through it and we come out the other side better.

048So um it's all about the people. It's about collaboration, communication, and um dedication to one another. It's been a long year. It's been a uh busy year, but we're excited at many of these uh accomplishments based on the hard work and the hard effort of all of our employees across team BCPS. We are encouraged by the data that we're seeing, but we know that for systemic and sustainable improvement, we have to continue to invest in the foundational aspects and we need to uh be consistent, which is why we're going to remain focused on the same priorities. We are looking ahead to the 2025 2026 school year with optimism and clear and comprehensive plans, believing that team BCPS will attain even higher levels of engagement and achievement. Our strategic work and steady focus on academic achievement,

049infrastructure, safety, and climate, and highly effective teachers, leaders, and staff will create the conditions necessary for success and ensure that BCPS provides the greatest public education to every student. [Music] Thank you to the communications team for this video. Appreciate your work. [Applause] Next is the chair's report. And while the 2024 2025 school year came to an end, summer 2025 is very much underway in BCPS. I'd like to thank all of our staff that are providing continued learning and enrichment for our students. Our four-week summer learning program started yesterday, focusing on literacy and mathematics for elementary and middle school students and offering a range of opportunities for our high schoolers to earn high school credits in all subject areas required for graduation. Additional offerings include programming for our multilingual learners and our students receiving special education

050services. Parents and caregivers of students attending our summer learning programs are encouraged to promote consistent attendance to address skill gaps and decrease summer learning loss. Also, thank you to staff that have provided our students with opportunities through our visual and performing arts camps, athletic programs, and sports clinics. Recognizing that schools often serve as vital sources of nutrition for students, BCPS maintains summer meal services through several initiatives, including our summer meals to go program, which provides 5 days worth of breakfast and lunches by providing over 300 county programs with daily breakfast and lunch and through our partnership with the Baltimore County Public Library where lunch is served daily in the libraries. Thank you to the Office of Food and Nutrition for all of their efforts with these programs. Additional information about each of these programs can

051be found on our BCPS website. And while I'm focusing on summer, um, August 25th, the first day of school will be here before we know it. Families new to BCPS or those who have recently relocated should visit their local school to complete the enrollment process. Also, if you have a three, four, or 5-year-old, please visit your your neighborhood school to learn more about our preschool 3, our pre kindergarten, and kindergarten programs. Details regarding the enrollment process and the required documentation are provided on our website, including how to begin the process online and all the documentation required. I'd also like to extend a warm welcome to our newest student member of the board, Miss Foresight Uname. Although new to her position as student member of the board, we have had the opportunity to hear her speak

052on several occasions regarding her very active work with the Baltimore County Student Counselor. Her voice on this board is essential. Our student member of the board offers a unique firsthand perspective that enhances the decision-making process, promotes a culture of engagement, and contributes to improved outcomes for all members of BCPS. The student member of the board serves as a crucial bridge between students and school leaderships. We look forward to working with you this year. And now it's your turn to present your first student member of the board report. Thank you. Good evening, board chair Miss Lter, Vice Chair Miss Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers, staff and community members, and the students of Baltimore County. Before anything else, I just want to start with the simple truth. As mentioned, students are not only the center of our school

053system, we are its roots. This is something I've said throughout my entire campaign. Like roots in a garden, students are the foundation of our school system. They're what keeps the system grounded, and they're where growth begins. But just like in a real garden, if the roots are ignored or un or undernourished, nothing else can truly thrive. That's why I believe in a system that starts with students by listening to them, learning from them, and letting their experiences guide the way forward. That belief is what brought me here today. My name is Foresight Ambbe, and I'm honored to serve as the newly elected 45th student member of the Baltimore County Board of Education. Over the past few months, I've been preparing for this role with intention and care because I understand the weight and responsibility that

054comes with representing over a 100,000 students. I've made a conscious effort to connect with students in many different spaces. Whether it's during lunch, in classrooms, and throughout their daily routines to truly understand the wide range of experiences they have. Whether students are thriving or facing some challenges, I've listened carefully to their stories to grasp the realities of what it means to be a student in Baltimore County today. This has helped me see the many different perspectives and needs that shape our schools. Behind the scenes, I've spent time studying board policy, attending meetings, and watching past board of education meetings and learning how decisions are made at this level. I've also had the privilege of learning from our previous SMO, Miss GKU, who has been an amazing example. Ug, your hard work and dedication has been

055truly inspiring, and I know I have very big shoes to fill. But just as importantly, I've been building relationships because I know that representation is not just about showing up. It's about being rooted in the experiences of others. And it's about leading with empathy, asking tough questions, and making sure the student voice doesn't doesn't just echo. It also shapes outcomes. So, I do not come to the I do not come to this table with all the answers, but I do come with curiosity, compassion, and a commitment to doing the work. I come as someone who sees students not just as a checkbox in policy but as powerful, informed and essential voices in the conversation. I want to be clear, this role is not just a title or an opportunity, it is a responsibility I take

056seriously. It's it is a promise to the students who wake up each morning facing challenges that many adults may not see. Whether that's navigating mental health struggles, confronting inequity, managing academic pressure, or simply just trying to find a safe space. I believe our schools must be places where every every student feels valued, seen, and supported. That means creating an environment where mental health resources are not just available, but accessible, where equity isn't just a goal, but a lived reality, and where students have meaningful opportunities to shape the policies that impact their lives. This year, I will work tirelessly to to be a bridge connecting the voices of students with the decisions of this board. I will bring transparency to this process and ensure students know they have a real role in shaping our schools. But

057I cannot do this alone. I invite every board member, every educator, every family and every and most importantly every student to join me in this work. Let us remember that like a garden, our schools flourish when every root is n is nurtured and when we come together with respect, understanding, and a shared commitment, we can grow a system that empowers all students to thrive. I'm excited to learn from you all, to collaborate with you all, and to serve as a voice for the students who entrust me with this responsibility. Together, we will work to ensure that the roots of this garden grow strong so every student can blossom. [Applause] Thank you. The next item on the agenda is unfinished business consideration of board policies. This it was do we know that person that's leaving now?

058Oh, you you couldn't stay away, could you? You couldn't just couldn't stay away. This is the second reader for those 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 the committee's recommendation of proposed changes to the following board policies. New board policy 50 5440, teleaalth and in-person services from external behavioral and physical health providers. Board policy 8270, board committees. These policies are presented to you on tonight's agenda as exhibits J1 and J2. Thank you, Miss Pumprey. May I have a motion to accept the recommendation of the board's policy review committee for board policies 5440 and 8270? So moved. Hen thank you. No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. Is there

059any discussion? Miss Booker Dwire. Um I do have one suggestion to add to policy um under specifically the committee procedures uh to ensure so you know as a board we hold the superintendent and the the and teachers and everyone accountable for implementing uh evidence-based practices research aligned practices to ensure that they're moving everything forward and as a board I believe we should hold ourselves to the same standard and so under the committee procedures um adding that the com that committees shall align with research informed practices and this would include but not limited to um aligning committee plans with the strategic goals of the board. Um providing reports on committee work and evidence of how it has advanced the board in achieving its strategic goals. providing an orientation for new committee members um to orient them

060to the board uh to the um to the committee and the work of the committee um to invest in training and development that would help to strengthen our knowledge in that committee topic. And so um I I believe that that would be in strong alignment in what the board believes um and we can put build that into the policy that we are aligning our committee work with research informed practices. Miss Hen, thank you. Um, I agree with Miss Booker Dwire's suggestions. I question whether that belongs in the policy or in the board handbook and would recommend that we include those procedures as they're operational in the board handbook. Thank you. Other comments? Okay. So, um may I have a roll call vote, please? Um Madam Chair, is there a motion? There was not a motion,

061so that's why So, I'll make a motion. Um, and so I move to um to add a line underneath committee procedures that states um committee shall align with researchinformed practices. Is there a second to Miss Booker Dwire's motion? Okay. Motion does not pass. May I have a roll call vote, please on polic board policies 5440 and 8270. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Fong, I'm sorry. Miss Booker Dwire, no. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Aumbbe, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank you. Okay, motion carries. Thank you. Okay, second. Let's get to the next part. The next item on the agenda is action taken in close session. And for that, I call Mr. Burns. Good evening, Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, members of the board,

062Dr. Rogers. uh in closed recent closed sessions including tonight the board took action on uh appeals HA2-025 SDA 25-00004 and HFA I'm sorry HA2-006 this would be an appropriate time to affirm the actions the board took okay thank you Mr. Burns board members, are there any separation of cases for vote? Okay, that's why I thought I was just Okay. May I have a motion to approve the action taken in close session on hearing examiner cases H? Okay, maybe you still have it as two unless maybe I need to refresh. Okay. on hearing examiner cases HA25-025 and SDA25-4 and authorize Miss Gover to sign for those board members not physically present. So move Pumprey. Thank you. May I have a second? Second. Young. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr.

063Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Obe, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumprey, yes. Miss Leicter, yes. Thanks. Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the action taken in close session on hearing hearing examiner's case HA25-6 and authorize Miss Gowart to sign for those board members not physically present. So move young. Thank you. May I have a second? Second. Seo. Okay. Thanks. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, abstain. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Abe. Um, just to confirm, just to confirm, this is the um the one that um abstain. Dr. Seavoy. Yes, Mr. McMillian. Yes, Miss Pumprey. Yes, Miss Lter. Yes. Thank you. Okay, thank you.

064The next item on the agenda is new business report on Thank you, Mr. Burns. Report on board policies. This is the first reader for this policy and for that I call Miss Christina Pumprey, chair of the policy review committee. Thank you. Members of the board, the policy re review committee asks that the board accept this report of the committee's recommendation of proposed changes to board policy 1270, parents and family engagement, and board policy 5210, grading and reporting. These policies are presented to you on tonight's agenda as exhibits N1 and N2. Thank you, Miss Pumprey. May I have a motion to accept the recommendation of the board's policy review committee for board policies 1270 and 5210? So move 10. Thank you. No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. Is there any discussion?

065Miss Booker Dwer, I do have one clarifying question. the board's vision. So in that highlighted section where it says um what line 11 line 12 to1 13 that vision um is not strongly aligned to what's the vision that we adopted in our board handbook on page five of the board handbook. Is there a a reason for that? Or is this vision meant to be a separate vision from what's in the board handbook? Or do we have two visions as a board? I'm trying to open the policy now. Sorry. So, it's policy uh the commun policy uh 1270. Miss, thank you. Um, this language was proposed by staff. Um, the committee originally discussed this policy. We discussed it in two meetings of the committee and staff proposed this language um based on the committee's recommendations um

066to incorporate one ABC one points 1 A B and C of the original language and this was language that we had agreed upon and I'll defer to Miss Pumprey for additional information. I'm just I just have a clarifying question. So you're talking about B, right, which is has been removed from the No, I'm talking about line 12, line uh 12, 13. So the what's in the highlighted section, not what's being removed in the brackets. So what Miss Hen said was accurate. I just wanted to clarify what what I was looking at here. And so is it the board's will to have two visions or is there a way to uh to align to strengthen the alignment between what the board has adopted in the handbook with what's in the policy? Miss Hen, thank you, Madam

067Chair. So this speaks specifically to this policy regarding parent and family engagement and it's the board's vision regarding parent and family engagement particularly. So the detail that's in the language here is specific to this policy. So what the committee discussed um under 1B which has been removed has been incorporated into the new policy statement which is not in lie of the the board's overall vision. It's the policy statement as it regards parent and family engagement. So staff um took our feedback and drafted this statement which we accepted with one minor change which is highlighted in green and it pertains specifically to this policy not the board's overall vision in so we have then a vision for all of our policies. Are we assess setting that precedent or or as a board do we operate under

068one vision and maybe that's something we could hash out at our retreat? What's staff like to since you since you um helped create this language, do you have anything that that you would like to add? I think Miss um Good evening. I think Miss Hen summarized it all, but I think what we were trying to do was um capture uh the vision more broadly, which is academic achievement and supporting family and student success and simplifying that language so that you know the policy would be much clearer. But you know, we are happy to receive your feedback. But I think that was the goal just to um kind of summarize that overarching uh goal of supporting student success both academically and and personally. Um go ahead. It may also be just using the word vision here

069in two different ways. So instead of saying the board's vision, I don't know another word that we could use because we're not talking about the board's vision as far as like the handbook vision and goals, we're just talking about the board's vision in general for this specific policy. So maybe there's another term we can use other than vision, which I can't come up with anything, but then anybody has any recommendations, I'd be happy to make that um motion to amend. What did you say? Change it to commitment to the board's commitment to increasing academic achievement and supporting parent and family engagement in BCPS. If that's not objectionable, Miss Hen, thank you. And and this doesn't contradict our vision. We we did um revisit that um no pun intended, but in in looking at our our

070overarching vision, our priority is increasing academic achievement. And that is um encapsulated in our vision statement and and thank you um for helping us with the language and and it's beautiful what what is written. The committee um supported this unanimously. We felt like you captured um our priorities beautifully in the language that you proposed and we felt it important to include academic achievement here. The original um version was succinct. However, we felt that our priorities weren't captured here. So while there is some redundancy if you will, we the committee felt that it was important to be redundant in that we emphasized the priorities which are reiterated in our vision of emphasis on academic achievement as the reason for why we want parents and and family members to be engaged. The that's our why and and

071I guess this is what answers the why for us in our policy statement. Why do we have a policy statement? Why do we care about parent and family engagement? What is the end goal for why this policy exists? So, no, not all of our policies have this, but I agree, Miss Booker. I think it's something that as policies come up for review, we should look at them and say, do we need to answer the why of this exists and I think that's, you know, something we should look at. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Manowski. You had your hand up. Yes. Thank you. Uh this is I I have a general and then a specific comment or question. So my general um comment has to do with what Miss Sarah said in her um

072public comment when it comes to policies and even with rules. I don't know the exact number of policies and rules BCPS has, but I know there's quite a few. And I think that um in our effort to be, you know, more transparent and more interacting with our community, if when we have these changes, I know we're doing this in open session and and families can come and and read this, but you know, we we don't always do that. If we could include like in an email announcement every time we have this policy review and when it's passed, the changes that are made because I I know myself, I've gotten several questions about different policies. I heard, you know, a parent will reach out to me and say, "I heard this policy change. Do you know

073what the change is?" If we could just send out a general release a statement. I think that would be a good idea of explaining the policies to our community members. And also, um, the other question I had was as opposed to policy 5210 um, what Dr. Ferrron said, I I happen to agree that just saying evidence-based and databased, we need I would like to see something more a little bit more concrete in that policy as far as, you know, going above the standard. Instead, our students should be, you know, at grade level proficient in at least our most basic subjects like ELA or English, math, science, social studies, history. If we could, we should be um advancing students that are proficient enough to advance. I don't know how we add that language in there, but

074if we could add something more concrete like that, I think that would be helpful. Miss Pumprey, I'm gonna um move to amend policy 1270 to remove um to hopefully I'm doing this correctly, remove the wording on line 12, page one, vision of increasing academic achievement and supporting and replace that with commitment to increase academic achievement and support. So, you just made a motion to make an amendment, correct? Is there a second to Miss Pumprey's? Second, Harvey. Thank you. Um, do you want to discuss your amendment, Miss Pumphrey, or Yes. Well, just back to what I said before. I'm trying to remove that vision language so it doesn't look like the board's vision um specific vision as stated in the handbook and we stick to um the specific policy and I think commitment may be a

075better word to use there. The other language changing is the semant semantics to make sure it reads correctly. Thank you. Any further discussion, Miss Hen? Um I'll be supporting this motion and I think commitment is a stronger verb there. So I appreciate Miss Pumprey's motion. So thank you Miss Pumprey. Further discussion. Okay. So, may we have a You want to read the motion? I know she's still typing. Typing. That's okay. Madam Chair. Yes. Um, while Miss Pumphrey is typing her motion, I did want to reference um, policy 0200 and um, something that the committee considered in this language for um, my fellow board members. And that is on page two, I believe, um, 2H. Um, the policy states, we believe that engaging parents, community members, and business in the educational process is essential and has

076a direct link on student success. So there is um precedent and a foundation or roots in existing policy that was referenced as grounding for this policy. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So we had a second to your motion. Correct. So the motion which is in the chat is to strike vision of increasing academic achievement and supporting and replace with commitment to increase academic achievement and support. May we have a roll call vote on that amended. Mr. Young? Yes. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Booker Dwire? Yes, Miss Harvey. Yes, Miss Sungve. Yes, Dr. Seavoy. Yes, Mr. McMillian. Yes, Miss Pumprey. Yes, Miss Lter. Yes. Thank you. So, the amended motion passes. No, no, no. Just the amendment passes. Okay. So, now we go back to the policy as amended, but it was two of them. So, and

077I do have a qu a comment on the second policy as well. Go ahead. So, with the grading policy, policy 5210, [Music] um, and so I I want us to consider perhaps adding some additional language. um that something to the effect that grades are administered in a timely manner, that there's a researchinformed process to modify a grade that is clearly communicated to staff, students, parents, guardians, and that there is training provided to those who administer grades so that there is consistency in the standard of what constitutes an A, a B, a C, etc. for each subject or course and that staff is held accountable for implementing um consistency in grading when awarding an A, B, or C. Um and so I just wanted to send that back to the committee to think about I I

078didn't make a motion to to change anything um but just so that we can strengthen that grading policy language. Miss Pumprey, I agree with the intent and definitely with the need to for everything that you said. However, I feel like it may be more um so specific that it should be in the rule and not in the policy. Miss Hen, that was my thought as well. She Okay, she further comments. Okay, I'm going to break them up. No, break them up. Yeah. Was the original motion prior to the amendment discussion on both policies? Yes. Can I break them now because of or do I still do it for efficiency or actually for clarity? Yes. Okay. For clarity. Okay. So, may I have a motion to accept the amended board policy 1270? So moved. As as

079amended. Somebody said something. Sure. So moved. Thank you. Is there a second? Second, Pumprey. Okay. May we have a roll call vote on the 1270 as amendment? Mr. Young. Yes. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Mr. Gungbe, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumprey, yes. Miss Lar, yes. Thank you. Okay. May I have a motion to accept the recommendation of board policy 5210? So move 10. Thank you. No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Mr. Aungde, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumprey, yes. Miss Lar, yes. Okay. Thank you. And thank you for that discussion. The

080next item on the agenda is contract awards. And for that, I call on Mr. Young, chair of the building and contracts committee. Thank you. Members of the board, the board's building and contracts committee met on Monday, July 7th, 2025. Items M1, M2, M4 through M8 and and M10 through M18 were forwarded to the full board for approval. Items M3, and M9 were forwarded to the full board without a recommendation from the committee. Thank you, Miss Young. Mr. Young, I'm sorry, Mr. Young. Board, I I know I'm never going to live that one down. Board members, will we we will separate items M3 and M9 for the vote? Are there any additional separations than M3 and M9? Okay. Do I have a motion to approve items M1, M2, M4 through M8, M10 through M18? So move

081Prey. Thank you. No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. Any discussion on those items? Okay. Roll call vote, please. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dryer, yes. Miss Harvey. Miss Harvey. Miss Aungbe. Yes. Dr. Seavoy. Yes. Mr. McMillian. Yes. Miss Pumphrey. Yes. Miss Lar. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Do I have a motion to Hello. This is This is Mrs. Harvey. I'd like to vote yes. Thank you, Miss Harvey. Do I have a motion to approve item M3? So moved. Booker Dwire. Is there a second? Second, Young. Okay. Um, so to start the discussion, I'd like to call on Dr. Rogers. Thank you. At this time, I would call for Dr. Donado, Dr. Craft, um, I believe Mr. Connelly to come forward. We have prepared a few

082slides. I want to thank the contract committee for your uh meaningful engagement yesterday afternoon as you reviewed contract number three. um as a direct result of the questions that were posed uh regarding contract number three and some of the discussion uh the SCA staff uh and I took some time um to respond to those inquiries and we'd like to begin by setting some context and hopefully answering all of the questions that were posed yesterday uh before opening it up for additional questions. So, the first thing we want to talk about is reading instruction overall. Um, as all members of the board and all members of our public know, we have a responsibility to all of our students to teach reading instruction. Um we also have a responsibility under Komar um for us to assess and

083uh diagnose um where students are in regards to their reading instruction and when we learn based on those assessments um that those uh that requirement that is in uh state uh regulations as well as in our own board policy. We have a responsibility not only morally but legally to respond with an intervention to meet the needs of students. And so we have over the last few years um shown this slide both for academics as well as behavior the response to intervention pyramid uh many times in the past when we've spoken about English language arts. We've spoken um specifically about this slide but just as a refresher to our public the first tier one is what's universal? what do we provide to every single student that walks through our walls? This is what every student receives

084on a regular basis. Um 80% of students uh nationally uh when they are provided with that high quality first instruction in a classroom um are able to master that content. That is the very bottom box. um when we are using researchbased practices in the case of ELA we're specifically speaking about implementing the science of reading and as we have stated many times fidelity of implementation um we're not just purchasing the curriculum but we're putting mechanisms in place both at the school level as well as central office to monitor on a regular basis that the instruction is happening as intended in the classroom. It's important to note in Baltimore County um we have just completed year two in elementary using HMH into reading that is rooted in the science of reading. So this is our we've

085just completed our second year of teaching the science of reading for elementary and this year we just completed our uh fullear pilot for secondary and with the gracious support of the board adopted SAVIS my perspectives for full implementation next year. So that is tier one for everyone. Um beyond that we have a group of students if 80% of the students um are successful we have a group of students who need a little more support uh regardless of what subject matter you're speaking to. So that targeted intervention nationally the statistics are about 15% of students need uh additional support beyond the first quality first um instruction that happens in the classroom. Uh so our targeted intervention for reading instruction uh we have both targeted intervention for comprehension uh which is really a student's level of understanding

086of what they're reading or decoding um their ability to uh read and engage in uh phmic awareness and phonics. um our uh vendors or models that we use read 180 or eyelet for comprehension and we use just words or HD words for decoding. Um in bold you see the box around comprehension because this contract speaks specifically uh to our needs around comprehension. Um you see 5,000 licenses out of uh 56,23 students. That is the total number of students in our secondary schools, meaning grades 6 through 12. Uh this represents roughly 9% of students. If you add that together with the number of licenses that we typically have for decoding, another uh 2,000 students, you'll see that typically in Baltimore County, um we're a little bit over uh 12% of students receiving that tier 2 intervention.

087And it's important to note that students don't receive tier 1 or tier 2. As a student moves up the pyramid, these are additional layers of support. So students who are in tier 2 receive tier one, which is daily instruction in the classroom. And they receive that tier 2 targeted small groupoup instruction. And then there are a group of students that require even more intensive intervention. Um we're not going to spend a lot of time on that today, but that also is evidence-based is grounded in the science of reading. We have for um tier three interventions for both comprehension and decoding as noted on this slide. And this is only uh used for students who are reading below grade level and uh the tier 2 interventions were not successful. So, we want to um just ground

088ourselves in a real practical um example of what we mean when we talk about response to intervention and particularly around uh tier 2 interventions and how many uh students that we're speaking about because some of the conversation that occurred yesterday uh in the committee was around uh the students, the needs for students, what is the uh change or return on investment and So uh we want to do first a numbers example using the um example that I provided about the tiers. If we have a hundred students in a class and we teach them um a topic or most of us can relate to having children either our own children or children that we know who are near and dear to us and we know that all babies at some point need to learn how to

089walk which the little young lady on the screen is representing for us. uh if we have uh 100 babies, we know that uh on average by 12 months uh many babies will just get up and start walking. Um that is your tier one universal instruction. So in a classroom, if we were teaching all of these babies, we would say 80 of those babies got up and started walking by 12 months. there are still 12 uh 20 students or 20 little ones who are not yet up and moving around as we would like to see. Um so that's beyond the 12 months in a classroom. That's 20 students that are left. Um those 20 students go to tier 2 intervention. If we're talking about babies learning to walk, um that's we're encouraging the baby. We're showing

090their favorite toy and trying to move the toy around. Um we're singing. We're cheering them on. Uh some parents even use hula hoops to get kids to grab and try to hobble on. Um so those 20 kids, 15 of them typically um will start walking based on those measures. You still have five more babies and they're getting a little older. They're no longer 12 months. They might be 15 16 months um that still need a little more support. And so that is the tier three support that we're talking about. That's the intensive for us. We have a a thriving birth through five office and uh many of the individuals in our birth through five office. They go into the homes of parents and they will work directly uh with those five babies out of a

091hundred that still yet are not walking. and they're actually helping them move their legs around, giving parents and families tips and things to do to help the students or help the little uh ones learn how to walk. Three uh two of those uh little babies will get up and walk and do it and you'll never think about that again. And uh you might perhaps have three students who need individualized plans, something different. Um we use this example in particular because it was relatable um but really underscores the difference between tier 1, tier 2 and tier three um intervention. This contract really speaks to tier 2 intervention. So after that first level instruction uh when our students when we have 20 students left in a classroom out of a hundred who are not able to master

092the reading uh comprehension, we have a responsibility to do something that is targeted for them. And so this contract um speaks to specifically what is done and what are the results that we see as a result of uh implementing targeted instruction. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to the uh team to walk us through read 180 and IT. Uh so uh thank you Dr. Rogers. Uh so the two programs through the 602 process that came out as the uh top two being reviewed by multiple stakeholders were read 180 and Ilet and in the past schools have really um decided which program they want to use based on uh what teachers have been trained in a variety of different factors. uh what we were able to do is really look at data

093and um decide which program would be best for which school. And so what we're looking at is uh really um reducing the number of read 180 schools based on the data that we looked at um for this school year. Um the both programs are compatible with an A day bday schedule. Um and so what we will be doing is taking the 15 schools that had shown um that they have all their the teachers trained um through multiple exposures, not just the initial training. They're showing consistent student growth and they are implementing with fidelity. Uh for our schools that have not had as much success with Reed 180, we're proposing to move those over to ISIL where we have seen a three-year uh historical trend of about an average of two years of growth each year.

094Um and so we will be implementing that um in those additional schools. Um and what you see on the screen are what those models look like for read 180 and eyelet. So yesterday during contract committee, one of the questions that were were asked were the difference between the contract that was brought in June versus the one that we're bringing now in July. Um we just wanted to highlight some of those key features. So what we've done is we reduced the contract terms. So the first contract that was brought in June was a six-year contract um for $3.9 million. We're now bringing a three-year contract uh for $1.6 million. Um the decision was really made that you know we will again implement the programs look at our continue to look at our data look at our

095progress see how students are moving forward also looking at changes within those schools that move from read 180 to eyelet to see if we are getting more student progress and momentum um so that we have abbreviated that so that we're reporting back more frequently providing more updates regarding what we're seeing with our students and the progress that we're made what we've also done is we provided in the new contract a really uh detailed structure for how professional development will be provided in the former contract that was presented in June. We just gave an overview of price, here's the cost versus what we present presented yesterday and what's in the contract exhibit tonight, which really lays out that there is onboarding training that first day, making sure that they every teacher delivering the program is fully

096trained and that there's ongoing followup for those teachers who are implementing the program. The difference in the number of days between the two um models is because we have so many fewer schools who will be implementing read 180 versus the schools that will be implementing eyelet. So we have additional professional development training days allocated to eyelet so that we will be able to provide the same level of support and coaching to all of those schools. Um so again needing more days for that. One of the other distinctions between the contract pricing is we had previously um provided a window of funding. Um we often have schools who purchase additional materials from vendors who have um intervention programs or just our core instructional program. So in our first June contract, we had um added $300,000 for

097school-based expenditures. That's not that curriculum and instruction is spending the additional money. it's whenever something is spent on this contract with this vendor, it goes against the spending authority. So, we reduce that to just $50,000. So, again, that we're really focusing on not the supplemental things and the extras that can be added in, but the full uh very clear, deliberate, intentional implementation of the program at the schools and then really working with schools to see what may be needed after they have mastered the the implementation of the program. But we really wanted to clarify the difference between um those two contracts so that moving forward um you could really see some of the differences that we wanted to highlight. And right before we uh turn it over to uh Mr. Connelly to talk us through

098the data uh an additional point on professional development. Um, I think part of the discussion was on year two and year three of the contract proposing the same number of professional development days every year um for curriculum and it's just a opportunity for us to talk about systemic and sustained improvement requires three main components. The first one being the curriculum uh that we're looking to invest in, but that professional learning is a required part of it. We need to in order to make sure that something's implemented with fidelity, we need to not only have central office staff in the building um seeing what's happening in the classroom, but we need um our vendors in the building uh coaching, providing additional distance uh support to our teachers. Uh we have spoken about uh in the past

099that just last year we have re uh invigorated those efforts to invest in professional learning because when we looked at our it had been more than a decade where we wholesale across the system um invested in uh professional learning around highquality instruction in team BCPS. I wanted to note that as that was a specific uh question and as was stated the day's differential is based on the number of schools differential. Mr. Connelly, thank you very much. Good evening. What we have to show you right here is very exciting. Um, just to give a little context, the group of students that's represented in this data set were students who last year, so the 24-25 school year were in a reading intervention tier 2, either read 180 or then what we did was we took those that

100group and we backmapped their assessments from previous years to see how they were performing. So, it's the same kids. Um, and what we're seeing here in this representation is what changed over time. So to give you a little bit more information about the context, um in the 23 24 school year, our school system to fast forward student achievement implemented a intervention reading intervention program in our middle schools and high schools across the entire system. By the time that we got training and schedules and everything else, we had about a half a year worth of instruction that was happening in that tier 2 model. What we saw was that the year prior to that and the year that um we implemented the program, those uh percentile scores that you see in blue were flat. They didn't

101change. So kids data were not changing prior to the implementation of the reading intervention. And what you can see is that by the end of the 24-25 school year, we had significant increases in the percentile rank, which is a norm referenced uh data measure of how many students are moving from low percentiles to uh increased percentiles of achievement. So what we're seeing here is that all of our students who participated on average in the read 180 and eyelet programs um demonstrated an increase in their percentile rank. What's really exciting is that if you look at eyelet from the implementation year of 2324 to last year, our students increased by 11 percentile points. That's a significant increase in student achievement in reading because of a tier 2 reading intervention. They were not demonstrating that same increase

102in achievement prior to that intervention. So this is what response intervention is all about. Um when we look at the read 180 program, students uh were performing at the 18th percentile prior to the intervention and finished at the 22nd percentile. And as referenced um for the 15 schools that will continue with read 180 because they're implementing with fidelity, those schools actually demonstrated an increase from the 16th percentile for their cluster of students to the 24th percentile. So what we're seeing is working. Um to Dr. Rogers point and to the point of Dr. Donado and Dr. craft. We have to see what's happening in those programs in order to make sure that the kids are getting what they need. Purchasing a program is one thing, but seeing the fidelity and implementation in action and providing on

103time professional development and support is critical for this to continue. Thank you. At this time, we turn it over and open it up for questions. And Okay. Um, Miss Pumprey, I'll let you start with questions. I have four questions if I can get them all in. Um, first on slide three, I love this example with the pyramid and it really explained helped to explain each tier. But my question is um, and this isn't necessarily related to the contract, but in general that's pyramid is what the percentages nationally, right? But we're not quite there in Baltimore County, correct? As far as 80, but we we are similar. So uh re specifically around tier 2 I gave the number of licenses. So that's what we can use to approximate it. Okay. Um I think it's a about

10412 to 13% where nationally it's around 15%. Um and then you have a much smaller percentage that's in uh tier three. That's why that's why I asked I wanted to make sure we had the right allocation for that. Um my other question is um regarding slide four um well part of it was on slide four. The question is if this isn't if this is an implementation issue as far as read 180 and the switch um what difference would be made in implementation with eyelet so that it's not yet again an imple implementation issue because if it's an implementation issue and not a product issue you know how is changing the program going to ensure that it changes the students progress. Yeah thank you for that question. So this is uh something that we have invested

105some significant time in uh you know making some determinations about what might work and so again we've had great success with eyelet um and we feel like with a reset and everybody getting trained uh we have also changed our we have an intervention agreement letter that goes out to each school um and this year we changed it so that it talks about teacher responsibility teacher leaders and administrators and what we're expecting in terms of attendance at data meetings, the professional learning, not just the initial but throughout the year, participation in coaching. Um, and we have also worked with both vendors to be able to run a report. Um, so then um twice a month we will be able to follow up with schools um that are not meeting the fidelity minimums as well as all

106the school visits. So 80% of our specialist times are spent in school. So the combination of actually looking at the data dashboard from the company as well as observing the instruction um is something that we have had a renewed focus on and we have been partnering very closely with the division of schools to make sure that we are in partnership with the executive directors as we look to do this work because our students deserve the best and deserve to have that program fidelity and we are committed to that. That implementation is for both programs or just for eyelet? No, it's for both. Okay. Um and you you had mentioned that um IT was both programs I believe were compatible with the AB schedule but it looked like on that slide one side I think it

107was read 180 said daily instruction and um IT said AB schedule. So, so, so they actually have two models. Um, and if a student needs more intense instruction. So, as we talked earlier about going up into tier three, a daily model would provide that more intense or a tier three model. Um, the model that uh we currently use in other districts um are is really that e every other day. So the daily model is 45 minutes a day, but because we have not quite 90 minutes, um, but maybe about 80, you know, two minutes a period, we're really just breaking it up. And so, uh, the way that it works is instead of going through all three rotations in one class, in uh, the first class, you're doing the whole group in one rotation, and

108then the next class, you're doing the next two rotations and the closure. And my last question, I think, do all schools have access to both programs? And I I'll tell you my reason and then maybe you can answer. Here's here's my reason for that. Um, we talked we we discussed last time about not allow not letting a student continue in an intervention if it's not working midyear. So, if a school only has one of those programs, what happens if it's not working midyear? Do they have access to another intervention? Um, so actually that's why we actually like having two different tier 2 comprehension interventions because what we know is that wholesale on paper both these programs work. Both of them have efficacy studies. Uh certainly we have our own, you know, data now from Baltimore

109County specifically, but every program doesn't work for every student. Every student is an individual. And so if one of the programs isn't working, then we would work with the school because they would be able even though they're not a Reed 180 school, um they would have access to that. And so that is something that we are really committed to is that we do not let an entire year go by where we're not seeing progress happening. Um and so we would work with the school to see what the best way to to program for students not making progress, but they absolutely would. So although right now on paper we say okay these 15 schools are read 180 but if a student needed eyelet because they were not making pro progress in read 180 they would have

110access if we had both programs. Okay thank you missowski. Yes. Thank you. Um who will be using these uh programs? Is it classroom teachers, special educators or reading specialists or all of the above? All of the above and also English language development teachers. And how many of these educators need to be um need to be trained in these programs to be efficient to the in order to be effective with this program. So uh before the beginning of the school year, our goal is to have 100% of teachers teaching an intervention train. We already have a cadre of teachers that have been trained. So then we are just looking at the teachers that are new to the school or new to the program to be trained. We already had um a June training. We will have

111another one in August and then we usually do another one in October for any late teacher hires. Okay. So what is the continued training plan for this? Because as we've said or we've heard you say the the read 180 especially for it to be effective, it needs to be um taught with fidelity. So, how are we ensuring that our teachers that are implementing this are teaching it with fidelity? I'm confused with the 12 days versus the 22 days and it's because of the number of schools in the each different programs like what is the actual total number of hours that each teacher needs to um you know have professional development in these programs to be efficient and teach these with fidelity. So each program has a full day of professional development as an initial training.

112There's then the follow-up training which is what the coaches could do in the classroom that's embedded. They could either model a lesson, they can provide coaching feedback to the teacher. So that's really differentiated based on what's going on with the teacher in the classroom. In addition to that, the specialists from the office of um ELA will be visiting schools providing that follow-up feedback coaching um with the teachers this past school year. We've spoken a couple times about the demonstration classrooms that we did. One of our specialists from the ELA office was doing a demonstration classroom. So, we had teachers come visit them on an ongoing basis as well as administrators to see um what instruction should look like and then be able to take that back to their schools to implement and then to also

113provide feedback to the staff within their school building. So each school will each teacher will have a full day of professional development as their kickstart um to implementing the reading intervention program and as well as follow-up professional development from the vendor as well as the staff from the curriculum instruction office and inclassroom coaching which could either be a model for them, it could be feedback, it could be some of both. And again that's really tiered based on on what's going on in that classroom. And does this inclassroom coaching does it include like an unannounced visit or like a a videotaped and and it doesn't have to be for critical reasoning or grading purposes for the teacher, but just so the teacher can see herself or himself teaching this curriculum and can critique themselves. That I

114think that's the best way for professional development to work is to actually view yourself teaching the curriculum. agreement, Miss Dominowski. Uh thank you for that question. Uh while the there is no uh requirement that across the board that there is unannounced videotaping, you do uh identify a practice that national board certification uses for teachers as they um uh continue to perfect their craft, which is videotaping. Um principles, assistant principles all have the ability to uh provide announced and unannounced observations. We currently have formal and informal observations with a uh standardized tools for for the classroom. And the last layer of professional development that we have uh are those professional development systemwide days. Some of them are school-based and some of them are centrally based. Uh so there is some videotaping that occurs. Currently there is

115not a requirement to um uh there is not a requirement or I would say there's not even a practice where unannounced videotaping uh occurs in uh classrooms but it but it is definitely part of the national board certification process. I'm sorry I don't think I I don't think I said that the right way. I don't mean unannounced videotaping but just more of an encouragement or support of a teacher videotaping their classroom so that they can you know critique themselves in a way. Certainly, that is certainly a uh best practice that is used and there's there's definitely opportunity as we kick off the school year to encourage even more videotaping for teachers to uh reflect themselves or engage in lesson studies as a group. And then lastly, what is the goal of tier 2 intervention? The

116goal of tier 2 intervention is mastery. Um specifically these two tier 2 intervention um uh products are mastery around reading comprehension. And so if you think back to that example of 100 students, 80% of uh the kids or 80 students are going to get it the very first time. So you have 20 students left that need additional support. So when you go to that tier 2 intervention, you're taking those 20 students, you're providing them with targeted support and the goal is to help those students to achieve grade level for them to understand and comprehend um whether it is the story or it is um you know a uh text that they're reading so that they can be um uh fluent in reading as that is the foundational skill that no matter what subject we're teaching,

117no matter what grade level, our students need to be able to demonstrate mastery to be successful. Lastly, super quickly because I know I'm running out of time. So, if that's the goal is to get out of the tier 2 and to be in tier one, how are we tracking that? So, everyone's in tier one. Tier one is school. Um, it is foundational first quality instruction every single day. So, no student is going to ever be out of tier 1, but some students are going to receive tier 2 on top of tier 1. And then a much smaller subset of students are going to receive tier three on top of uh you know, tier one and tier 2 if tier 2 is not successful for them. So, I guess what I meant is that they're not

118going to need tier 2 anymore. I I mean the the goal is it it all depends where a student uh starts. you know, the goal is and it is successful for some students um that they're able to be dismissed. If you're talking about a middle school student, what that might look like is they're in reading uh for the first half of the year. Uh they have made the necessary growth um as evidenced by the um uh different assessments and those students would move to second semester access a foreign language uh for example. uh you know that is the goal and and sometimes students just need additional uh practice along the way. But uh based on the number of licenses and our uh historical data, we're able to see that the vast majority of students tier

119one instruction works for them. Some students need a little bit uh more tier 2 and tier three. And uh you know why these programs work is that they're evidence-based and they tend to yield um success with our students and we uh Mr. Connelly pointed to the specific data around eyelet and read 180. Thank thank you very much for that. I know I'm out of time. I just kind of circling back to the original question is how we're tracking that we are they're moving away from needing that tier 2 and are just back to tier one. How are we tracking that? So we currently um in focus have a reading intervention tab of which it indicates that students are in a reading intervention the date that they were identified for it and what tier intervention they

120were identified for. So that stays on a student's record over time. So we can see that a student you know might have started in reading intervention at the fall of a school year and they may have exited two years later in the spring. Um and we can see that over time if there's you know other indicators two years along further into school that there might be a concern and they do a diagnostic and a student might become eligible again for reading intervention that's in there. So you can also see patterns from of students over time. Um so that is within our student information system which is focus. Thank you Miss Hen. Thank you. So, continuing on that line, um I'm curious as to what is the threshold then for students receiving an intervention because our

121MCAP data show us that 44% of third graders are proficient in ELA and that's a big difference between 80% getting it. Um so, of those 44 or um 56% who are not proficient in ELA, how many of those are receiving um an intervention? what what is the threshold and how are we ensuring that those students are getting the supports they need. And then my second question is again to follow up if we are tracking those that are receiving intervention what percentage then become proficient and at what po um periods if we're tracking it in focus we should be able to report out on what their outcomes are because while it's great to see the growth data that Mr. Connelly shared that's wonderful. I care about the eventual proficiency and mastery as Dr. Rogers said that's

122data we need to see. So I think Mr. Connelly spoke to it as we started the full whole scale implementation of reading intervention in BCPS consistently across all of our secondary schools was really last school year. So and the documentation within focus was started this school year. So our ability to track that we will have that data available. However, at this moment, I don't have the historic data for you because it wasn't something that was being consistently tracked in that way. Part of what we did when we talked way earlier in the school year, just even about elementary interventions, was our use of our data systems and tools to provide more robust systems so that we consistently were tracking it at a system level versus just what was happening at a school. So, as a

123school principal, I might have had data binders. My teachers are tracking data on pieces of paper about students and I had spreadsheets and met metrics at my school. That wasn't accessible for central office nor the executive directors of schools to routinely review unless you went to a school and looked at those documents specifically. The systems and structures that we've put in place now are allowing us to do that. So we can see the number of students who are scheduled in the master schedule for the reading intervention course. We can see now how many students were identified this fall, how many have continued uh through the spring to still be identified and then we can cross reference that to see are they actually scheduled in an intervention for the fall to make sure that we have

124those checks and balances. So we've had to put a lot of structures. Dr. Rogers has talked about infrastructure as one of our big goals as a system. We've had to build those infrastructures and that's taken a little bit of time but we've built it and trained along the way. So reading specialists are being trained on collecting this data and entering it into focus. Our school administrators are being trained on it so that we are building systems and structures that are going to allow us to very clearly answer those questions and be able to monitor the progress of our students. Um but that infrastructure has been critical a as we've been building this and training and beginning the implementation at the same time. Okay. So thank you for that and I know infrastructure is one of

125our key priorities. So I investment in the the efforts of everyone that's that are involved. That's a huge undertaking. My initial question was what are the thresholds then that we are using and it could be you know on a school by school basis although I hope there's some standardization um from an equity standpoint to determine which students then we are able to offer these interventions to because again our data show us that there's a need a very high need when over half of our student students are not testing proficient in ELA um what how are are we determining that and how are we determin you know determining that we are um providing adequate supports for those individuals because of course that means we need to provide the professional development and licenses and and everything we're

126being asked to approve in this contract authority uh so thank you for that question so Dr. craft. One minute, please. Oh, I'm just we're getting kind of off top with the off topic. Thank you, Madam Chair. I tied it back to the contract spending authority my question. So, okay. Can you ask the the spending authority question again? I must have missed that. I I asked how we determine the need for the services which we are being asked to approve the contract spending authority to support that need. So, um thank you for your question, Miss Hen. uh specifically around MCAP that is you know one data point that as we know that data um is is lagging data. Uh Komar speaks to the requirement of all school systems to administer um the diagnostic and I think

127we have prevent uh presented over uh we're about to go into the third year Dibbles and Amira specifically. So this ties to our um deliberate instruction in the science of reading the dibbles and um Amira data. I think uh Dr. craft uh can speak to specifically what those bands are and how a student moves from just the h into hm where we know 30 minutes of practice a week um you know shows us gains and we presented those gains to a tier 2 uh program around comprehension or decoding. So if you could do that for us. Yeah, absolutely. So we actually really uh like to triangulate data and so while MCAP will give us one data point uh we also have consistently given MAP and so we have a Lexile or a RIT score for

128the students um in addition to we look at CBAs. And so um those are three pieces of data that we start with. We also look at teacher recommendation. We look at grades. We look at writing samples. And so once we have looked at a total student profile, uh then we make a recommendation for a student. Um and we have a more detailed flowchart that talks about, you know, first this then you might need more information here. And so in terms of consistency, that flowchart is used uh throughout as we collect that data to make the recommendations for students in need of intervention and specifically to determine is it a decoding intervention that they need versus a comprehension. Thank you, Miss Harvey. Thank you, Madame Chair. Um just uh uh first a comment one uh you

129know I thank you for um reducing the contract term from 6 to 3 years indicating your willingness and your commitment to making sure that this intervention or these interventions are are beneficial to our students and that they have the appropriate level of efficacy. My question is simply, if we do not approve this contract, what tier 2 interventions will be available to our students who need them in the fall? So, our current eyelet contract um expires in February. So, we would immediately have to move all schools to eyelet. Um we would not be able to offer read 180 for those schools that are currently successful with it. um and train those teachers. However, that contract would expire in February. So, we'd be back at this table um before that time uh seeking approval. Um what it

130would create is disruption for students in schools who've been documenting great progress with read 180. So, it would be unfortunate for those schools um and we'd be, you know, having to make that quick change for all of our schools. Dr. Dr. You're welcome, Dr. Seavoy. Thank you. Yes, I've worked well helped to implement uh read 180 in a school and it has proven results. It works. Children with the lowest reading levels have actually achieved. Um it's a comprehensive curriculum that combines teacherled instruction, adaptive technology, highinterest reading materials uh to improve reading skills. It's one of the best things I've seen. If so, if you haven't worked with it, you may not know that, but it is a great program and I name behind it doesn't mean much, but anyway, but I suggest that we keep

131read 180. I don't know, but read 180 works. Thank you so much for your time and for your great presentation. Thank you, Mr. McMillion. Dr. Dr. Donado, on the last slide, you showed, I think, 12 days for read 180, a professional development, and 22 days for for the other program. Are you going to pull teachers out of their classes to do that or are you going to pay them extra on over the summer and different days? So, we are offering summer professional development, which is paid for teachers. Um, we also have systemwide and school-based professional development days. So, that's where the whole school system is doing training. So teachers who are teaching the either read 180 or eyelet would get additional professional development on those days. And part of those 22 days is also and

132the 12 days are the coaches going to the schools working with the teachers there. So they're observing the classroom. So the teacher will be teaching their regular lesson. they're observing and providing feedback or depending if we if staff from the LA office has visited and maybe a school administrator has visited and a teacher's really struggling with a part of a lesson, the teacher might teach part of the lesson, then the read 180 or eyelet coach would then step in and teach the next part of the lesson to be able to provide that live model. So the professional development is both out of the school building as well as in the building in their classes with their students. So, but it's not like six and a half hours a day when you say 12 days, six

133and a half hours a day. Correct. Correct. It's the first full day of training to make sure everyone is level set with the curriculum, the implementation of it. That is a full day. Right. So, if the vendor comes in, that's going to be for x number of minutes while Yes. those segments of time. Yes. Thank you very much. You're very welcome. Thank you. And last comment, Mr. Young. Just a quick question, Dr. Donado. Um, I wanted to confirm that you said our ILA, our current ILAC contract expires in February. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Miss Gover, roll call, vote, please, on contract number three. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, no. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Aumbbe, yes. Dr. Mr. Seavoy. Yes. Mr. McMillian. Yes. Miss Pumphrey. Yes. Miss Lter. Yes.

134Thank you. Okay. Now, we thank you very much for all that information. I know we kind of grilled you. Um, next contract is number nine, secondary academic intervention model school lease. So, do I have a motion to approve contract number nine? So moved. Booker Dwire. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Young. Thank you. Okay, Dr. Rogers will begin the discussion. Thank you. Um, again, thank you for the questions in committee yesterday. I invite Dr. Grim to come forward. We did provide just two slides to provide some uh context um for all members of the board before we open it up for any and all additional questions. So, just as a reminder, uh, in our own board policy, policy 5560, alternative education, um, we are able to transfer a student from the regular academic program,

135uh, by my direction or designate during a suspension or expulsion, um, to provide student with comparable educational services and appropriate behavioral support. um with the goal being that we are able to promote successful return to the students regular academic program as a school system. Um not only does our policy call for this, but this is in alignment with our uh requirements uh in Komar uh in the state in terms of where uh students are to be educated. specifically about Crossroads Center. Uh last year in May, a team uh came forward to the board of education and presented a report on alternative schools. Uh this was uh an update. It was as a result of the data that we had received as well as stakeholder feedback uh on what the needs were for our students. If

136you will recall, Crossroads Center was a different program when it started. Um you had 7th through 12th grade if I remember correctly. 7th through 10th grade 7th through 10th grade students there. Um and students uh came to crossroads for different reasons as a result of the data that we were seeing and the needs around school safety being one of our priorities. We knew that we needed more seats and more access um for our students across the system. And so the team came to work together, presented to the board that we ended up with two high school alternative programs and two middle school alternative programs. Crossroads specifically is one of the middle school alternative programs. It serves the east zone and half of central and it is the complement to Meadowwood who serves the west zone

137and the other half of central. Um students come for three reasons or in three ways to an alternative center. The primary way being disciplinary placement. So after there is a serious safety incident, the school conduct hearing officer will place a student at an alternative center um for the duration of the time. Typically an extended suspension is 44 days. And so you will see students enrolled for 44 days on end. and the goal is for them to um be able to move back to a comprehensive school. Um there are two exceptions to that. If a student is in alternative school as a safety placement, um it is likely that they will be in the alternative school for longer than uh the 44 days. Um or a program review. Program review can be because a parent in

138the family comes on behalf of the student. The student needs social emotional support or they need academic support and the larger comprehensive school is not working for them and so there's a voluntary enrollment. Uh students on program review tend to stay for a year at a time or a student that was on disciplinary placement is suddenly earning credits is doing well. uh behavioral accessing the mental health required supports that we have there in addition to academic and there's a program review where the family says to the school we want our student to stay. So the enrollment at September 30th speaks to students at the end of uh the school year, the previous school year who were involved in a disciplinary infraction and they have their 44day placement um or a portion thereof at the beginning

139of the year. Uh what's more representative of the number of students, you'll see on the slide here the December enrollment um and then the spring semester you see the May enrollment. So because we added virtual program and hybrid hybrid options, we were able to move from serving 176 students um at Crossroads specifically in 2324 to 291 students uh 2425 168 were full-time in person uh depending on whatever their uh whether it was 44 days or longer. Um and then 123 virtual students. They could have been hybrid uh some partial face-to-face as well as partial virtual and some students all virtual depending on the uh specific uh nature of their uh infraction or concern. Um important to note that we all of our uh schools have a community school designation which means there's increased access to

140uh resources and we have specialized staff to meet the needs of students. At this time I want to turn it over to Dr. Grim to speak specifically around this contract. What are some of the restraints or constraints uh that we have uh with this contract and then open it up for any and all additional questions. So, good afternoon or good evening everyone. Um, so this contract was initially approved by the board back in 2007. Uh, this is the first time it's been 18 years since it's been brought back to the board. The reason why this contract was brought to the building and contracts committee is as uh my staff in facilities was paying the bills, they had realized that they had extended past the spend the allowable spend authority. The reason why they were uh

141passed the allowable spend authority is because when the original contract was signed and the estimations were given, there were some key components that were left out, including um some of the escalating costs per year, uh the common area maintenance, which includes uh landscaping, um uh some of the the preventative maintenance, uh roof with roofing, siding, snow removal, anything that is again in common area of the business park. Um, as well as some of the other HBAC costs and some of the real estate taxes. So, when the team looked at that, looked at where we are, and looked at the two years left on the lease, um, we needed to come to the board for approval to continue to spend on on this particular contract. Thank you. Questions from the board? Mr. McMillian? Dr. Dr. Grim,

142have we made a decision what we're going to do with Golden Ring Middle? Um, we are we are still exploring some options regarding uh Golden Ring Middle and we hope to have some options to the board uh sometime this school year. So, the two years that are left on the Crossroads contract, if we stay at Crossroads, you're going to bring that back to us at some point. So, our our intention is not to continue after the lease expires with Crossroads in 2027. Um we are looking at options so that we would not have to renew uh this lease or have another leased facility. Um quite honestly when you look at the cost uh per square foot we're now when we signed the lease for Crossroads in 2007 uh roughly the cost per square foot was

143$19.25. Now it is is close to uh it's 31.82 82. And that doesn't even include um some of the other costs that that I that I mentioned that are year-to-year costs. Um we are looking at other ways we may able may be able to um to house this program. Thank you. You're welcome, Miss Hen. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um so in 2007 when the contract was first approved and Good evening, Dr. Graham. Good evening. Um it opened as far as I can tell with 408 students give or take. I believe the official September 30th count was slightly under that and it opened with even more um as an alternate center. So from from what I can tell according to the documentation its purpose was the same. The square footage was the same. Um it was

144designed to BCPS's specifications which is one reason for the cost or drove the costs and at that time it seemed reasonable. Um so my concerns were in the fact that we're serving even with the updated numbers that Dr. Rogers provided. We're serving far fewer students and still incurring um that same cost versus what was originally the intent when the board approved it in 2007. 408 is far different than opening at 32 versus even if we end up with 200 on-site and another 200 virtual. The virtual aren't using the facility. Um so that that cost is is irrelevant. So I'm curious as to what has changed versus the original intent of the facility versus the intent now. So thank you for your question, Miss Hen. I don't think Dr. uh Grim, myself or anyone in this

145uh room would be able to speak to what the original intent was and what has changed. Uh what I can tell you is practices and policies and laws have changed um over time. uh in the past uh way back in the day would as principles we were able to make uh decisions about how students moved to alternative schools. It was very typical that a students once they were expelled they were expelled for the year. Um and some instances they were expelled uh for all of their years and so you that increased uh the number of students that were allowed to go. the laws have changed significantly since then. And the only other point I would add is uh for those virtual students, while some of them have some um uh circumstances that don't allow them

146to step foot into the facility, we have a group of students that are on hybrid. Um and so those students come in whether it's uh a day only and bday is virtual or vice versa if we're keeping students separate. um and students come in to access uh the other wraparound uh supports in the building. But I I don't uh think it would be uh fair or prudent for anyone to speak to 2007 since you know we we don't have that specific information about what the intent was. But but certainly can tell you how rules have changed now and how we have uh made the commitment as a part of infrastructure and responding to the uh safety priority to increase our capacity in alternative schools including uh Crossroads Center. Thank you, Dr. Rogers. And certainly the

147legislative push to move from exclusionary discipline um practices um seems to be a significant driver in in those changes. However, as I speak to counselors, they they speak of um the difficulty with placements in centers such as Crossroads, and they speak so favorably or positively about the support, the wraparound services and supports that are available to students that they so desperately need. and that it is their recommendation that whether it be for 44 days or you know a shorter stay that they they feel strongly that that is the appropriate educational setting for these students and that they can't get those placements no matter how hard they they've described it as begging for these placements and when I see that we have the capacity we may not have the staffing but my concern is that we're

148not staffing to meet a genuine need and that these students would be better served in an environment with the appropriate um wraparound services and supports that they need. So that's my concern is that are we um making the best use of this facility again within the parameters of the law to make sure that these students are in the most appropriate educational setting. Again, these are the recommendations of their counselors. they are being made with the full support of their parents in most cases um because the counselors are working with the families and I I'm open to I'm all ears in terms of suggestions but as this contract comes to the board my my concern is that we are not leveraging the space and in a way that that meets an unmet need that I'm hearing

149of from our school staff. So thank you for that. I would um offer that our counselors are are not the uh primary staff members that place students in alternative programs. However, program review is one way in particular uh that counselors together uh you take the staff members uh representatives from both the alternative school as well as the comprehensive school to come together with the parent and guardian support. Um, I have not, my office has not received complaints about program reviews not being approved. So, I would encourage for anyone who's watching, anyone who reaches out to you if that happens to uh if they run into that situation for it to be immediately referred to the executive director of school or forwarded to my office for immediate followup because the program review um is a uh

150you know pretty simple process. you have to follow the process. But when you have that mutual agreement of trying to put a match a student to resources that we have available uh to address their social emotional needs as well as academic needs in a smaller setting which for some students is much better. Um uh there there shouldn't be a lot of uh conflict or um resistance around moving forward in that way. And so I would encourage anyone uh who has difficulty or if anyone uh contacts you again that they please reach out to the executive director supervising schools. We sent out a communication. It's posted on our website with all of the contact information for that or send an email directly to my office and we'll follow up. Thank you, Dr. Rogers. and and likewise

151if if the if our hands are tied by any laws if as we speak to and work with our legislators um and and I I recognize my time is is up Madam Chair but these if with off topic with school with with school recommendations and with family support I would ask that we we be advocates for our students and the learning environments that they need and if laws need to change then we should let our um legislators know that. Thank you. And I appreciate the comments, but we're trying to decide whether we're going to pay the bill for the for the rest of the two years on the contract and I'm trying to make a fiscally responsible decision knowing that we have unmet needs of our students that could be met on with this facility.

152Thank you. But Mr. Dr. Grim, can you just clarify? Do we have an option on this contract? Uh so so we will we will pay we will pay this contract one way or another. Um the penalties um the penalties for not paying on time are severe. Uh we do not enter into contracts like this anymore. Um there are uh C clauses in all current contracts that give the board the opportunity to say we don't have funding, we don't approve funding um for this year, which gives us the opportunity for an out. Um I am I am not a a legal expert, but our um our partners in the office of law and of purchasing have looked at this contract and we are obligated to it. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Young. Thank you, Mr. Lector. I

153think you've phrased it um properly. We're we're veering off course. This contract is about us as the board fulfilling our responsibility to allocate the funds to allow the system to pay um the last two years of this contract. Whether the building is fully utilized or not, whether it was overcrowded in 2007 when it opened, that's not what the point is of this contract. We're here to allocate the funds to pay our bills and not end up with severe penalties of money that we don't have. Thank you, Mr. Manowski. Yes, thank you. And part of my question was already answered that we are obligated for the next two years. And I guess I don't know if my answer the question the answer to my question can be answered tonight but um how do we you know

154make good on a bad situation in this case because clearly like we're trying to get out of it and we don't want to be in this. It wasn't a contract that we signed on for in 2007 but here we are. So, how do we do better and you know benefit our students and you know we have to pay this money. So, what what are the steps we're taking to utilize this property in the two years other than what we're doing right now? Is your question asking for how much how do we get more students into the building? How do we utilize the property? I mean we we have to pay it clearly like we don't want to you know we don't want to have to say no to the contract because then we'll have to

155pay the fine. So what are the steps that we're taking? What is the research that we're doing? I understand this is a contract and we have to and this I might be off topic but it's also pertinent to being fiscally responsible is that how are we fully utilizing it if we have to keep it in our budget in our payroll for the next two years. So, how are we fully utilizing it to the benefit of our students? Okay, Dr. Rogers. Yes, thank you for that question. So, one of the things that we're doing or we've already done is we don't enter into contracts like this anymore. Um, additionally, we have expanded the number of seats in alternative programs. Um, uh, board member Hen raised that, uh, you know, that there perhaps there were some counselors

156that felt, um, that they have more students that they would like to see in those classes or or in that program. Um, we are, uh, absolutely willing to, uh, address anyone who has difficulty with a program review. Um the one thing that we want to make sure that we understand and and we share for the public is that um with the new laws around exclusionary practices, students, all students have um uh the right to a least restrictive environment. Um and and so we have to make sure that uh we are aligned with uh those practices while we still prioritize uh safety of our students. um we have you know added additional resources there and I think where I hear the potential opportunity is for expanded enrollment is around program reviews when there are families uh

157that are in agreement uh with the schools that they want their students in a smaller environment and um all the parents watching tonight um can hear that you can initiate that at your school if you're running into any difficulty uh right on our website the executive director information is available for you if there are any difficulties uh beyond that that information can also be sent directly to my office for followup. So that is uh an opportunity for us to provide a service to our families um you know that need it and and feel that this is uh the right next step for their child. Thank you for that answer Dr. Rogers and and I guess my my question was more of like was there any forethought as this facility was a much larger facility that

158could you know capacitate more students and knowing that the best practices was to be inclusionary with our special needs students or you know wraparound services to get them back to their home school. Was there any forethought of using this facility for a different purpose than it was intended for knowing that we were stuck in this lease until for another 2 years? So things have changed a lot since 2007. There weren't these rules and um laws around exclusionary practices in 2007. Uh any you know comment I would make about the forethought in 2007 would simply be conjecture. I was not here uh in any uh specific role. So I can't speak to what the um you know thought was of uh leadership as well as uh the board of education when entering into uh this contract

159at this time. All I can say is that uh the rules around exclusionary practices have changed significantly since 2007 and they prohibit some practices that were allowable in the past. Yeah. And thank you for that response and I appreciate that you weren't here in in 2007 and the rules have changed since 2007. I I I guess I just was more thinking about recent history if we had looked at this contract in the more recent years and knowing that we were going to be up against two more years and we weren't utilizing it the way that it was initially intended. Okay, Miss Harvey. Uh thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to make sure that I am uh clear. Uh well, first let me just say that I think we all can appreciate the fact that

160you know almost two decades from the time that this contract was initiated that much has changed in the way we think about education in the way we think about learning differences and then in the way we think about social emotional challenges for all of our students. And I also um want to be clear for my clarity if we do not approve this contract which takes into consideration increased cost of maintenance and supplies this this spending authority is not a per pupil uh issue. It's about maintaining the building through the contract. If we do not approve this contract, we will not is it the case that we will not be able to meet our financial obligations? I just want to be clear on that. Thank you, Mr. Dr. Yes. So we we are we are obligated

161under the contract to to meet what's in the contract um in the in the cost per year, the escalations, uh the other um areas of the contract, the CAM, the real estate taxes, uh HBAC, so forth. So yes, we would we are obligated to that and and the contract actually reads that if we were to leave the premises or try to break the lease, we would still owe them the money. Thank you. May I have a roll call vote on contract item M9? Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Abe, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Grim and Dr. Rogers. The next item on the agenda is I don't know if you're going

162anywhere, Dr. Grim. The next item on the agenda is the report on student performance baseline data and school year 2025 to 2026 targets. And that and for that I call on Dr. Grim and Mr. Connelly. So good evening board chair Licker. Good evening, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers, and all the members of the board. Thank you. Here we go. So, uh, this evening we're talk about school year data as well as 2526 targets. And I will begin. Um this is a slide that we have been using most recently um as we've been engaging with our stakeholders uh that shows with no specific numbers uh the decline in academic success of our students. Uh and every dot represents a specific year. And the purpose of this slide is to show that in the same way

163where it took a significant number of years or several years uh to experience a trajectory of academic decline, it's going to take some times to rever some time to reverse that trajectory. But as you see uh we moved from going flat to starting to move up, moving in the right direction. And a reminder that school system improvement where we're not only looking for improvement in one or a few handful of schools is both a technical and social process. And so as we've spoken uh this evening in particular and throughout um our time, we've identified those specific priorities that we had to uh focus on, namely academic achievement. But we can't do that without having a quality infrastructure in place, tending to the safety and climate needs as well as uh ensuring that we have highly

164effective teachers, leaders and staff. It is a technical process in terms of things that we have to put in place making sure that we have access to highquality instructional material but it's also a social process where the people have to engage in the work where we have to hear from stakeholders on a regular basis and receive uh feedback and make adjustments as we move forward. The first uh data point and I will uh just do the next two slides and turn it over to Mr. Connelly is um about what is critical to our mission. In order to educate students, we need them in school. Um and so these first two slides speak to student attendance. You will recall last year when we established targets for BCPS um our target was to grow by a uh

165percent uh per year. Um, this slide shows you disagregated data by grade level in our 2-year trend. Um, as well as our target for 2526 that was identified last year. Um, you'll note that in the aggregate as well as by grade band um that there are increases uh for all of the identified student groups. Student attendance has increased by at least a half a percentage point and middle school attendance which is where we started the lowest in the uh beginning two years ago when we were speaking to attendance has increased by almost one percentage point so double the average across uh the school system and chronic absenteeism. Uh there is a focus not only uh in the state of Maryland but across the nation on reducing the percentage of students that are chronically absent meaning

166students that missed more than um 10% of the school year. Uh across the last uh two school years we have reduced chronic absenteeism by almost 9% 8.7% as the uh direct result of the work the coordinated work uh happening between central offices as as well as individual school efforts. uh in 2425 again for the second year in a row chronic absenteeism improved in all groups at all levels and uh Mr. Connelly and Dr. Grim will take us through all the details. Great. Thank you. I just uh wanted to highlight with that as well that um you know we've been recognized by MSDE for having the best improvement in reducing chronic absenteeism across all eleas in the state. So great job to team BCPS. So, this slide that we're looking at here is a is a

167deeper dive into chronic absenteeism where we're looking at it by a two-year trend over grade level. Uh what we're showing here is that we have a 25 26 target which our long-term target is to get under uh at or below 20% which is a state target. That was precoid that it was established. Um so we're incrementally you know adjusting our uh performance so that we can meet that state target over time. And what you'll see is that we have across all grade levels, you know, reduced chronic absenteeism. We do have a couple of grade levels that are actually below the state threshold, which is fantastic. Um, but we continue to show improvement again across our school system. Um, we have a target for 2526 of 23% and you can see over the last um, two

168years that we've gone from 28% as a system to 25.2%. So again making some significant uh decreases in chronic absenteeism. For our next slide, we're looking at a chronic absenteeism again, but this time across our school levels because what we see is more similarity within a level of schools versus comparing elementary to middle to high. Um but one thing in common is that they all have demonstrated reduced uh chronic absenteeism numbers. We can also take a look at our male and female students and see that same uh impact across our students. So once again, grade levels, school levels, gender, student groups, we're seeing improvements across the board in chronic absenteeism. And here we are with uh looking at a breakdown by um race, ethnicity, as well as special services for students who receive support through

169economically disadvantaged programs, English language learners, and special education. There was a decrease in chronic absenteeism across all student groups and special services. So, we got the theme right. We're doing a great job with this. Keep up the great work, team BCPS. Moving into our um early reading skills, we have highlighted for you some uh information from Dibbles and Amira. What we have on this chart is that that first half of the chart is the beginning of the year. Second half of the chart is the end of the year. And then where the coding comes in, red is called intensive support. That's what we would consider like tier three. Um yellow is our strategic support connected to like a tier two. and CS is core support which is our tier one our typical programs. What we

170saw um over the last year in kindergarten was that we had a decrease from 41% at the beginning of the year of kids that were in the highest level of need to 25% and an increase in kindergarten from 40% of students who were at or above what we consider that core support to 63%. So our programs at the kindergarten level are having a a a great impact in the amount of kids that are picking up the age appropriate, grade level appropriate reading skills for kindergarteners. That trend continues when we look into grade 1 as we see the changes from the beginning to the end of the year for students who needed intensive support dropped from 28% to 12% and students that were working within the core resources of their grade level increased from 48% to

17172%. Again, really great numbers for our early childhood, kindergarten, and grade 1 uh students. For grade two, what we really saw was a shift in where students are performing. We're moving students that had um intensive support services in the beginning of the year closer towards strategic support and closer towards core support. So, our kids are moving across. And we know that reading becomes more complex as kids get older. So, when we're looking at grades two and three, it's not only just basic reading skills, we're also adding into the mix more comprehension, vocabulary, and word study. Okay. This chart that we're looking at here is is high school graduation rate. Um the target for the graduation rate is to increase by 0.5% each year where we can see in the green bar the target is set

172for 86% for students who had just graduated. Previously uh we have 2022 2023 and 23 24 data represented in blue and orange respectively. And what we've seen is that we have increases in our overall graduation rates by race and ethnicity. And we do have, you know, areas where we have gaps and differences. And we're um working hard to make sure that all students have the same opportunities to not only graduate on time, but to become college and career ready as they uh move through high school. As an example of that college and career readiness, you can see that in 2023 we had 1,81 students who qualified as CCRMET or college and career ready based on um a variety of different metrics. Uh by 2024 we had increased that under the blueprint to 6378 students and

173last year we increased that to 6,570 students. Once again the criteria for CCR met has changed from the state. So, this will be the third change that we've had in three years. And that change for CCR standards will open up more opportunities for kids to have extended pathways that increase access to those college and career readiness um courses such as dual enrollment, CCBC, AP, IB, things such as that. Which gets us to our next slide. This slide we're looking at participation rates for um advanced academic courses. So, we have AP, honors, dual participation, and GT. And what we can see is that over a four-year trend, we have increased the number of students who are participating in AP courses, honors courses, dual enrollment courses, and GT participation. So, overall, we have many more students accessing

174advanced pathways, which goes along with our CCR um uh initiatives to move kids forward to higher levels of college and career readiness. Next, we have the career component of college and career readiness. So, what we're looking at here is our post-secary readiness based on completion of an apprenticeship, a CTE program, or a um industry certification or license. And what we're showing is that over the last two years, we've had between 28 and 29% of our students earning one of those components. And across our race ethnicity groups, we're seeing improvement in each of of those areas with the exception of our Asian which had a slight decrease. Um all other groups are accessing you know at an increased level the apprenticeship CT programs and industry certifications and lensures. Before we open it up for questions, I

175think um and thank you Mr. Connelly for reviewing those slides. I think it's also important to note um if we go back and just think in our minds about that first slide with the um dots that were going down even though we are moving right in the right direction we still have so much work to do. Uh we have a commitment to our students to all students. Um you know these uh data points are showing uh progress and they're moving in the right direction but we have to continue to move forward with that stepwise approach investing in those four priority areas so we can see that systemic and sustained improvement for all of our student groups. And so uh with that we turn it back over to you Chair Licter for questions. Okay. Thank you

176for that presentation. Um Mr. Young, thank you for the presentation. On slide 11 um for the dual participation rate, there's a drop in the 2425 year. Is that the result of um the changing of who could do the dual enrollment? Okay. Thank you, Dr. Yes, for those that could see. Yeah, you there there blueprint change. Yeah, there's that change piece as well as increased access to AP courses free of charge for exams for students who are CCRMAT. That also had an impact as well. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Other questions, Miss Booker Dwire? Well, first I want to thank Dr. Rogers and her team um for moving Baltimore County forward. It's been quite some time. Um, and I and I get that it's incremental, but we're moving in the right direction. And I know how

177hard it is to move a student just a half of a point. Um, and we're seeing some um some gains here. And I think that is just wonderful. And so I have a couple of questions um around the so when I look at the chronic absenteeism the slide five um specifically high school our 9th and 12th graders um or or then when we go to slide six and we can see the male students or two and more race or two or more races um they have their their numbers are a little higher um compared to other groups. So, what is the root cause of this chronic absenteeism with those groups of students? Um, and is it concentrated to a specific area or region in Baltimore County? Um, and then just what are some of the

178things we're doing to address specifically really this 9th and 12th grade um chronic absenteeism? So, it's not um uh re you know uh only one region. We did see uh specifically that for some of our east zone schools that uh we had while every area made improvement, we still had some additional work that we wanted to do. So we provided differentiated supports. Um the first thing that we did is the comprehensive campaign around um attendance matters using a lot of the attendance work national framework. Uh so as a school system we're all talking about attendance, the importance providing the attendance trackers to families. There's incentives. Students are able to go into their class by grade level in their school and see what their attendance looks like. Uh but there's also the attendance committee inside of

179every single school that is monitoring and they're doing old-fashioned things like calling home, like uh providing alarm clocks, um making sure when students come in, they understand how important it is to be in school. 9th and uh 12th grade, 9th grade is that critical year that we see in that uh research around the um transition for students and how important it is. there's a whole lot of freedom that students receive in ninth grade uh that is very different from uh middle school. So, we're really trying to bring in all of our stakeholders and community partners and uh empowering everyone. When you see young people out during the school day to say something, we have our lawmakers partnering with us to make announcements. We have pediatricians, other members of the community um who are getting involved

180in this message about how important school is. Um and we've moved to uh providing students with uh just in time supports. Uh it it becomes daunting when you move to ninth grade and when you fail a course um you fail for the entire year. So this year was the first year where we transition to half credit with the goal being that we put supports in place just in time. So, it's much easier to address a half a credit and you still see that you're making uh progress and that you're um you have an opportunity for a fresh start that didn't exist before. So, it's not one thing. It's a variety of things and there's consistent messaging as well as uh monitoring that we're trying to put in place. Um you know, it it's not going

181to all happen overnight. We have uh action meetings with principles uh next week as a matter of fact uh where we're going to come in and problem solve and speak specifically to uh these grade levels where they're differentiated by grade level about um you know some of the ongoing concerns and how can we problem solve and implement some best practices across the system. And and then just my uh follow-up question around chronic absenteeism. Um just with everything that's happening federally with ICE and um just everything that's happening, are we is is any of this, especially in that 9th and 12th grade, have you seen a connection to what's happening federally with some of our um immigrant students not showing up at school? Um especially as all of this started ramping up. Have you all looked

182at that at all? I believe when we looked at at some of those data in the spring, we did not see an appreciable difference at that time, but I do believe it's something we need to continually monitor. Um, and going back to your previous question in the 12th grade, it's making that 12th grade meaningful and you can see all the different pathways that that we have in terms of dual enrollment and AP participation and making sure that that students are on the right fit and in the right track in alignment with blueprint. So that engagement is is critical to improve attendance in the in the 12th grade. Um, but to your point around uh chronic absenteeism and federal legislation, that is something we are keeping a close eye on. And the only thing I would

183add to that uh Dr. Grim is we did see some attendance uh concerns more so in the um uh right in the winter. Uh one area that we're keeping our eyes on uh with concerns is around the dropout rate uh for some of our students in the high school. Um, so that so that is something that is different that we're monitoring and doing a lot of outreach with our PPW school administrators to try to find out what's happening with some of our older students. Other questions? Let me just check the the um we Okay, we have teams. Minowski. Yes, thank you. Um, going back to slide 10, are these uh are these years using comparable data? Meaning, are they um consistent with the blueprint standards as far as option one and option two? Are they

184all using the same guidelines? So, Miss Deonowski, thank you for the question. um the state has changed the criteria or the guidelines for what CCR met means uh three times in the last uh I believe 24 months. So no they are not um but we are going by what's in the blueprint and then what's being amended at the state level for changes to the blueprint through the AIB committee as well as MSDE state board of educ. Thank you. I'm sorry if I'm going in and out. I might have spotty reception, but do we know the total number of 11 to grade 11 12th grade students for these years? We're looking at roughly 16,000 students if you combine 11 and 12 together for each year. Yes. Combined. Correct. And with and with these students um with

185these standards, how many students do you estimate BCBS graduates who are not proficient in ELA 10 or algebra 1, if any? That is. So, with the current standards that were in place for the 2425 school year, there weren't options outside of course completion, grade levels, as well as proficiency levels on ELA 10 and um uh algebra 1. With the current criteria, which is listed here as alternative CCR options, you can see that there's many other ways that students have avenues to be CCR met rather than state test proficiency um or uh just uh course grade. Do we keep track of that like individually? We do actually. We um we we coordinate for schools a data dashboard that tracks every student in grades 9 through 12. Every one of these measures is tracked. schools have full

186access to it and it's updated in real time. Thank you. Uh going back to slide nine, can you explain to me exactly what a four-year adjusted graduation means? Yeah, so what happens is we graduate a group of students um in in June and then we may have more students that graduate over the summer during summer programs. We may have students that have transferred in or transferred out of our school system and as we update records with MSDE, those kinds of singletons is what they call them, but they're individual students that may or may not count towards our graduation rate. So while we do have a pretty confident understanding of the approximate graduation rate for our students when they exit, especially by September when we do our summer grads, there are still um hanging transfers and

187different reasons why students um may or may not count for us. So the state compiles all that data and usually by February or March, they've adjusted the actual calculation for graduation rate based on all these different movements that happen across the 24 different eleas. Thank you. And is there a different requirement when it comes to like the adjusted? So you have the the June graduates and then the ones that graduate in summer. Is there a different requirement for those students? No requirements are the same. Uh student graduates that year through the end summer of that school year. So the graduation is still the same year of graduation. The requirements are still the same for graduating. Thank you. You're welcome. Um and then going to slide eight. Do we have comparable data for um previous years

188for this like say 23 24 when it comes to um air and dibbles? We do. That's correct. This was the first year though where dibbles was used only in kindergarten. So it stands alone. Um previous years dibbles and air were used in conjunction with each other. So they weren't census data collections um for a mirror because we had some schools doing dibbles and some schools doing a mirror. So we have data but it's not necessarily oranges to oranges. And I would add that I believe we had 19 schools that did dibbles last year and the other schools did air. We presented that data at the beginning of the year. Um so that is available in uh board docs for uh comparison purposes. Could you would you be able to just briefly review that? Are we

189on the the trajectory going up? Yes. compared um in in one word yes we are on the trajectory going up. We also provided um a report where we looked at the same group of students um what their progress look like as they move grade levels and uh those those the students are uh showing gains in progress. Yes. And I I noticed that we we didn't have a slide for math. Is there any update on our baselines or what's going on with our math in elementary and secondary schools? So from a math standpoint, you we have different math data points that we can look at. I know Dr. Craft mentioned the triangulation of CBAs, MAP data as well as MCAP data. You know, which specifically are you are you referencing? I'm just wanted to make sure

190that we are, you know, moving forward or what what our plans are baseline wise. I I just I I like to see these numbers as far as when it goes to Amira. I'd like to see fourth and fifth grade ELA as well, but um I just didn't see anything regards to math. We Minowski, we can ask for um math slides to be added or presented at another meeting. Is there a reason why they were left out for this meeting? Not to I'm just curious. Sorry. So, um I believe the last if we're talking about MCAP data that was available has been presented to the board several times because it was based on the 23 24. Um, but moving forward, we anticipate that MCAP data will be released in October for public uh uh release and

191we will have Maryland report card data and star ratings in December. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions from board members? Okay. Thank you. Continuing with the Grim and Connelly show, our next presentation is 2025 climate survey system report. I'll give you a minute to switch gears there. Thank you. Oh, and Dr. Rogers going to enter. Yeah. All right. So, we were asked for a presentation on the 2025 climate survey. Um, I truly want to thank the uh Department of Research, Assessment, and Accountability for their hard work. Uh two years ago we talked about uh increasing our rate of response on the climate survey so we could really have the voices of stakeholders across team BCPS. This for us meant our staff in our buildings. It meant our parents and caregivers as well as

192community members. Really want to thank uh them for taking the lead and school building administrators uh for moving this forward. Uh in a few minutes uh Mr. Connelly will walk through those numbers and we know that sometimes we hear uh very limited uh feedback from uh uh very uh few uh members, but this gives us an uh actual um information of the experience that our stakeholders including our students uh who a wise young person uh once said um are the roots of the school system, what they are experiencing in our schools, what those climates look like. um and they speak to uh I believe well over uh 10,000 uh parents, well over a 100,000 respondents uh to give us some insight on climate. Uh this data is certainly encouraging especially after uh a challenging school

193year to hear that this is what um uh our different stakeholders are reporting as their experiences in Baltimore County Public Schools. Thank you. Enough. So good evening board chair liquor vice. Okay, we'll move past that. Thank you. Um, so as Dr. Rogers had mentioned, we had the highest level participation for our climate survey. We have a fiveweek window. We had over 105,000 responses, which is remarkable. Last year we we're at 83,900. So it's a 25% increase in one year. Um, so really we're very thankful that folks are sharing with us their comments and their feedback to help us have another data point to a qualitative data point to really look at our own practices and reflect on what we can do uh that's working and what we can do for improvement. Um, also we increased

194engagement this year by having the survey available in 20 different languages which resulted in 4,632 translated responses which is great. uh we want that number to increase but it's still a 61% increase from last year. So we are continuing to grow our engagement with our families. So the climate survey well it's really based on a school climate index. So what we look at are how do our students, our staff, our parents, our care providers and our community members um and central office staff as well as school admins look at that school climate index or their work climate index in order to determine the extent to which students perceive quality and characteristics of school life. And so for the student perception, we had 68,468 responses. And I know that we had shared that we're representing over

195100 thousand. So, let's get those numbers up. But they're great and they're moving in the right direction. Um, we also can see just based on looking across the school climate index that everything falls in the favorable range, which is great when we look at elementary, middle, and high school. There are differences within levels, just as we saw with some of our other data points like chronic absenteeism. But within um those levels we have some consistency in reporting across uh student groups for ethnicity and race as well as consistency with related services. Underneath that school climate index which is a composite um lives the learning environment domain for students and the school connection domain. So the learning environment domain is the extent to which students are engaged in the learning process and feel supported by adults

196in school. The school connection is how students feel um with their peers. Do they feel safe? Do they feel supported? And again, what we saw across all levels, elementary, middle, and high school with slight differences based on the level was favorable um perceptions by all students. And the perceptions are based on a liyker scale. So you have four options. And those four options are very unfavorable, unfavorable, favorable or very favorable. And when you can look at the bottom of the chart, you can see where those scale ratings are for those four areas. And you can see that uh all students across on average are uh sharing that they have favorable results for our school. When we look at the parent guardian perception, we had 11,730 responses which was an increase of 21% for uh parent

197or caregiver. We know that we have many many more parents and uh guardians and care providers out there. So please, you know, come join us in February for the stakeholders for the climate survey for next year. Um again you can see the ratings from that school climate index for parents which is which they perceive the quality and characteristics of school at the elementary, middle and high school level. While different all represent scores that are in the favorable range approaching very favorable at the elementary level. For staff perception, we had 9,293 staff responses. We know we have more than that, so let's get numbers up. But but it's been great. um looking at you know the increase in responses and also seeing how we're being rated. So 78% of school staff and administrators participated in the

198survey this year. The school staff, school administrators and central office staff responses again are broken down in the chart and showing that again uh favorable and approaching very favorable for school administrators as well. Okay, finally we have the BCPS community perception and this was a new measure added in 2024 2025. It really is an opportunity for parents, care providers and members of the BCPS community to share their perceptions of BCPS as a school community. Um it's about the quality and characteristics of our system and our system climate index was a 65.9 which again was in our favorable range. Uh we don't have comparison data because this was a new um measure but we will have that for next year. And with that we're open for questions. Thank you very much for that presentation. Are there

199questions from board members? Miss Hen. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you for the presentation Mr. Connelly. Absolutely. Um would you happen to have the breakdown of respondents by role in terms of who responded? We we do and we can provide that information for you. Um okay. Do you have a rough idea of um I don't I don't want to quote you numbers off top of my head um given the volume that we have, but we have a variety of different positions that report and we have it all broken down in our um year-end report versus employees versus community members versus students. Yeah, it's all it's all there. We'll provide it to you. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Other comments? Go ahead. Um I just wanted to provide a brief comment based on overall participation.

200I know you mentioned we had the highest on record so far. And I just wanted to say that this past year we were able to work or the the board of selected students which is a coalition of students from across all secondary schools in Baltimore County was able to work with Dr. Donado. Um she was able to come present something about the climate survey which I think really um helped with participation since students were able to dissolve that information back into their schools. So just wanted to point that out. Thank you. Thank you. And if I may just add to the question that you posed, we also have a public site available that has it all broken down for climate index. May not have the exact detail that you're asking for um but it the

201climate survey is broken down and we'll be uploading all that new survey information into uh the Tableau data dashboard on our public website. Thank you. I was just curious as to rough percentages in in terms of who our respondents are and getting a better idea. Yeah, the challenge becomes really like how do you judge the denominator of community members? How do you judge the denominator of parents and care providers? So that becomes a hard thing for comparison, but we have counts. Um, is that that and madam chair, may I ask a follow question? I believe one of the first questions asked the respondent to identify as one of those roles. So I believe that would be answer my question in terms of how did you identify and and seeing the data behind that that question.

202So understanding the counts of responses by that ident that identity would answer my question. Perfect. We have that. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you gentlemen for both of those reports. And our next item on the agenda is the budget report for the months ending April and May 2025. And for that I call on Dr. Grim maybe or not. Mr. Tantlip and Mr. I was going to say and Mr. Tanliff. All right. I'm here for the grand finale. Okay. Bring it home for us. Good evening, Chair Licar, Vice Chair Harvey, Dr. Rogers, and board members. I'm here to uh present the May year-to- date budget report, which is the ninth budget report you've received this year. And Mr. Saras uh kicked off the pres presentation of this report um in May. So

203next page or where do I have the next page? Oh no, I can control. It's your first solo run. Uh the first uh page just gives you a little uh summary of the revenue for the general fund. Uh so year to date we've received $1.8 billion which is about 92% of the budget. Um uh the report complies the report that you receive complies with all MSE and county uh reporting requirements. The majority of our revenues are uh received monthly and consist of regular dispersements from the county and state. uh while the count for the county we request uh the revenue as we need it to meet payroll and other expenses while almost all of the state revenue state aid blueprint etc is automatically sent to us in bimonthly payments so we don't have to request

204that though there is some state revenue that's reimburseable such as non-public placement um other revenue which is our other large bucket is mostly um our fund balance usage, but there's also some smaller streams such as uh interest income. And then we get very little federal revenue in the general fund budget. It's really just our ROC uh reimbursement. There's a noise where I'm going. Okay. Um, and here's just a shot of the year-to-ate expenditures in the general fund. Um, it's split up into the activities that this board is used to seeing. Uh, it's how you approve and adopt the budget for the year. Uh, you saw it recently with our budget appropriation transfer and our supplemental. Everything is by activity. So, you can see the year-to- date spending by activity here. Uh, our expenditures are about

2051.84 84 billion or 93.9% of the budget. Um, payroll and benefits are most of our budget which you've heard many times over 82%. Um, the activities driven by salaries which are administration uh mid-level administration, instructional salary, special ed generally uh go proportional uh to the percent of the year that has expired. since uh it's proportional to our paychecks. You can see there there's two uh activities that are actually over spent through May um uh and that's uh administration which is due to the ERP project and maintenance of plant due to maintenance contracts, relocatables and fuel. And there's also two categories that are just about over spent. Other instructional costs, which is due to Kelly services, uh, and the private prek, uh, bill that we just started paying this year, and also special ed due to,

206uh, additional assistance and related services. However, all activities will be in balance at year end uh, once the BAT and the supplemental appropriation are pulled into the budget. that's actually occurred already in June after uh this board approved both documents and then the county council in the beginning of June um approved both of those uh requests. They've been incorporated into the budget. So when we show you the year-end report, you'll see the extra $35 million from the supplemental appropriation and dollars will have moved between activities in accordance with the BAT uh that you approved. Um, so everything will be copesthetic at that point. And then, uh, for the last page, uh, we're just going to show you a little snippet on our year-to- date special revenue or grant expenditures. Now, this 676 million is not

207what we have spent this year. Uh, this particular report shows um projecttoate cost for all of our active grants. that's different than the amount that you approve in the uh annual budget. Um I think we've talked a lot about COVID and ESSER funds. The uh BCPS did a fabulous job of getting all our uh all of our uh expenditures in and expense. Nothing was left on the table other than just a couple of dollars here and there, but really a nice job. the vast majority went uh to compensation for teachers in one form or another, whether it was the 15 minutes, whether it was tutoring, whether it was bonuses, etc. Uh grants are primarily reimburseable. As we expend the money, it gets uh reimbured to us. Uh there is a lag depending on timing in

208the process for both uh the state and federal grants. And the largest state grant which will come of no surprise to own here is our con our concentration of poverty grant which is fairly new which is 37 million this year growing rapidly uh in FY26 and our largest federal grants now that ESSER is gone our title one at 57 million and the IDA specialed pass through grant at about $33 million. Uh that's all I have uh for the presentation. You got both the April and May reports posted to board docs and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you for that report. Are there any questions from board members? Okay. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is information which includes the board policy schedule for 2526 and editing conventions. The FY2020 Oh,

209I'm sorry. All right, Mr. Noman asks you, did you have a question? I have one quick question. I'm sorry. That's okay. We'll bring him back. Come on back. Thank you. Go ahead. He's back. Thank you. Um I know this doesn't include June, but are we projecting to stay within budget after June totals are accumulated? Uh yes, we will be on budget in all activities. uh which was um that was really the purpose of our budget appropriation transfer and the supplemental to make sure in accordance with our forecast we got everything into balance and we're still projecting that we will be in balance in all activities at year end close and then thank you for that and then lastly I know this isn't what we were talking about but um as we are already preparing for

210the 2027 operating budget schedule do you know when the complete amended version of the 2026 budget will be available. Uh do you mean the adopted budget book? The amended? Yes, the amended July. It will be available this month. Uh Miss Dominowski, we'll send an email as soon as it is posted on the website. It is in final uh review phase now. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Umformational items. the questions and answers on appeals and hearing handbook, the revised 2526 school calendar which includes updated language and the addition of the closure of schools and offices for primary elections and revision to superintendence rules 1240, 4010, 5550, 6307, 6401, and 6500. Oops. Okay. Next are time for board member comments and agenda setting items. if there are any. So, please raise your hand if you

211have um an agenda item or a comment that you would like. Oh, whoa, whoa. Okay, then that was okay. I then next is Y'all surprise me sometimes. The last item on the agenda is announcements. The board will hold a special virtual meeting for personnel matters only on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025 at 6:30. Our next board me board meeting will be on Tuesday, August 12th, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. Thank you everybody for joining us tonight and the meeting is now adjourned. Woohoo.