001Afternoon. This is Chairwoman Jane Liar. I call to order the meeting of the Board of Education of Baltimore County for Tuesday, Tuesday, May 20th, 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 Fios 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 B8 and B9 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
002or more specific individuals. Consult with counsel to obtain legal advice. Consult with staff, consultants, or other individuals about pending or potential litigation, and conduct collective bargaining negotiations or consider matters that relate to the negotiations. So moved, Harvey. Thank you. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. May I have a roll call vote, please? Musleski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes, Miss Pumphrey Mr. Young. Yes, Miss Dominowski. Yes, Miss Hen. Miss Frmpaw. Yes, Miss Booker Dwire. Yes, Miss Harvey. Yes, Miss Chica Kulu. Yes, Miss Licter. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Good evening. This is Chairwoman Jane Licter. I now call to order the meeting of the board of education of Baltimore County for Tuesday, May 20th, 2025. I invite you to recite the pledge of allegiance to be led. Is this the last time?
003It's not. Okay. To be led by Miss Chica Ko. We will then have a moment of silence in recognition of those who have served education in Baltimore County. Aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to theublic which stands one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Tonight's board of education meeting is being broadcast through the BCPS online live meeting broadcast and on BCPS TV, Xfinity channel 73 and Fios channel 34. In order to efficiently conduct this meeting, all voting items this evening will be done by roll call vote. The first item on the agenda is the consideration of the May 6th agenda. No, not the May 6th, the May 20th agenda. Dr. Rogers, are there any additions or changes to tonight's agenda? I'm unaware of any
004changes to this evening's agenda. Okay. Hearing none, the agenda stands as presented. Earlier this evening, the board met in closed session pursuant to the open meetings act for the following reasons to discuss the appointment, employment, assignment, promotion, discipline, demotion, compensation, removal, resignation, or performance evaluation of appointees, employees or officials over whom it has jurisdiction or any other personnel matter that affects one or more specific individuals. Consult with counsel to obtain legal advice and consult with staff consultants or other individuals about pending or potential litigation and conduct collective bargaining negotiations or consider matters that relate to the negotiations. 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.
005McCall. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. Like the board's consent for the following personnel matters. Tonight, we have terminations, retirements, resignations, leaves, and deceased recognition of service. Do I have a motion to approve the personnel matters as presented in exhibits D1 through D5? So move choo. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second from Paul. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Miss Dowski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumprey? Abstain. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Fmpong, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Cholu, yes. Miss Lter, yes. Thank you. Thank you. The next it Thank you, Mr. McCall. The next item on the agenda is administrative appointments. And for
006that, I call on Dr. Rogers. Madam Chair, Lar, Vice Chair Harvey, and members of the board, I'm bringing forward the following administrative appointments for your approval. Principal Jacksonville Elementary School coordinator instruction behavior and placement department of special education coordinator literacy K through 12 department of special education senior supervisor procurement and distribution department of food and nutrition services and specialists transition department of special education. Do I have a motion to approve the personnel matters as presented in exhibit E1? So move Stleski. Thank you. Do I have a second? Second. Harvey. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Dleski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumphrey? Yes. Mr. Young? Yes. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Hen? Yes. Miss Fong? Yes. Miss Booker Dwire? Yes. Miss Harvey? Yes. Miss Chicka Cole.
007Yes. Miss uh Licar. Yes. Thank you. Dr. Rogers. Thank you. Our first appointment this evening is Matthew Bane. Please stand to be recognized. Matthew is attending with his wife Christina. Please stand. Matthew is being appointed as the principal at Jacksonville Elementary School with 20 years of BCPS experience. Prior experiences include English teacher at Parkville High and Talson high schools, assistant principal at Papsco High, Arbutus Middle, Deer Park Middle Magnet, Glenmire Elementary, and Victory Villa elementary schools. Congratulations. Our next appointment this evening is Mel Carter, who's attending with his wife Nicole. Please stand to be recognized. Mel is being appointed as the senior supervisor of procurement and distribution in the department of food and nutrition services with 20 years of experiences. Former experiences include general manager at Ruth Chris Steakhouse, director of operations, managing partner at
008Finn Mcool's Irish Public House and director of operations managing partner at 938 Conkling LLC. Congratulations and welcome to BCPS. Our next appointment is Aaron Roberts. Please stand with her husband, Derek Roberts. Aaron is being appointed as the coordinator of literacy K through 12 in the department of literacy and humanities with 21 years of BCPS experience. Her prior experiences include elementary teacher at Hubville Elementary School, instructional support teacher at Middle Sex Elementary, Sandy Plains Elementary, Hebill Elementary and Winfield Elementary Schools, resource teacher in the office of student services, assistant principal at Scots Branch Elementary and Edmonson Heights elementary schools, principal at Edmonson Heights, and specialist in the department of literacy and humanities. Congratulations, Next appointment is Bernardet Photopoulos. Bernardet is being appointed as the specialist transition in the department of special education with 20 years of
009BCPS experience. Bernardet's experiences include special education teacher at Hallebert Middle, Kenwood High, and Dundock high schools and the office of special education. Prior to that, she served as a special educator at Case Middle School with Watertown City Schools. Congratulations to Bernardet. And final appointment for the evening is Jacqueline Hardwick. Jacqueline is being appointed as the coordinator of instruction, behavior, and placement in the department of special education with 16 years of BCPS experiences. Jacqueline's former experience include special education teacher at Kinwood High School and resource teacher and specialist in the office of special education. Congratulations to Jquel. So again, congratulations to all of our appointees. 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
010the board, members of the public may submit their comments to the board members via email at boebcps.org. The Baltimore County Police Department's Homeland Security Unit and the 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 in 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 to public education in Baltimore County. Inappropriate personal remarks or other behavior, such as language that promotes violence against a BCPS employee or that disrupts or interferes with the conduct of this meeting, are out of order and will not
011be tolerated. Persons who otherwise disrupt or disturb this meeting will not be allowed to continue their remarks and will be escorted from the meeting. Please observe the 3minut clock which will let you know when your time is up. The microphone will be turned off at the end of your time or prior to that time at the discretion of the board chair. It's the practice of this board to allow elected officials to provide their comments to the board. And first to speak is delegate Cheryl Pastor who is speaking with us um virtually. Delegate Pastor. Okay. I thought I saw that she was there. Okay. Did you call me? I did. Delegate Pastor, are you there? I'm here. I'm so sorry. I'm at the JCNC meeting some place. Thank you for being here. Go ahead. Alrighty. Well,
012good evening everyone. I know that normally I come and and talk about something that is going on out there in the general world, but I just really wanted to come tonight to tell you about my visit to Owings Mills High School yesterday. On Mondays, I tried to go out and visit a school, generally schools in my district, but I'll go anywhere. But three years ago, I went to Owings Mills High School and it needed just an inordinate amount of work. And with the superintendent's help and and facilities and the PTA especially, um we were just surprised yesterday to see just how wonderful Owings Mill is looking. Um, that auditorium is incredible. Three three years ago, they had to use a flashlight so I could get from the stage down to the floor. They have such
013a wonderful lighting and sound board. I was just so excited. I'm excited at the pro by the programs that have been instituted in the last couple of years there. it that the lockers have been painted. The the behaviors and the attitudes and the teachers feel better because when we take care of our schools, we make our children feel worthwhile and loved and and it it it was just wonderful. I literally was in tears. And so I encourage all of you not just to go out to Owings Mills, but to remember while we get caught up in all of the business of the school system, just how important it is to see our schools, to articulate the needs of our schools and the things that we can really do to to just booster what is going
014on there. um and bolstered and just make it better for our children so they feel good. So, I wanted to come with good news tonight and that's it. But I'm just so full. It was it it was wonderful. So, I want to thank the school board, encourage you to get out as much as you can. um this administration for Baltimore County schools and facilities for putting up with me sometimes and also putting up with the PTSA that is hard but they are there as your advocates. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And now I'm going back to my meeting. Have a good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Delegate Pestor. Our next speaker is from PTA Council Balmer County, Miss Leslie Weber, who is also virtual. Hello.
015Can you hear me? Yes. Good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Chair Leter, Vice Chair Harvey, Board of Education members, and Dr. Rogers. I'm Lesley Weber, president of the PTA Council of Baltimore County. Um, I want to go off off script real quick just to say thank you, Delegate Pastor, for um, highlighting the work of the wonderful PTSA at Owings Mills High School. I was happy just to hear that. Um, so back to my comments. Um, on tonight's agenda is an update on the BCPS cell phone pilot. We're grateful to be involved in this partnership which addresses the critical need for responsible cell phone use in our schools. All of us, students, families, staff, and community members need to be part of this important effort to address the effects of cell phones and social
016media on our children's health, social, and emotional well-being and academics. At our June 9th leadership training for new and returning PTA officers, we'll present on educating parents and caregivers on the appropriate use of smartphone technology. Thanks to our family, school, and community partnerships committee chair, Ramona Basilio, for spearheading a responsible cell phone use campaign. Over the summer, our multilingual community partnership led by BCPS educator Edwin Perez will continue to plan drop-in meetings to inform immigrant families and new Americans about rights, community resources, and student supports. We're reaching out to CASA and other community partners to be a part of a resource panel. PTA's council policy is not to comment on personnel and bargaining unit matters, but I want to speak broadly about budget cuts affecting teacher salaries and the staffing of school psychologists and school
017counselor department chair counselor department chairs. There are no easy answers. We're in a budget crisis, but retaining our educators and key support staff is of the utmost importance. We also hope that music and art can be protected to the greatest extent possible in this difficult fiscal climate. BC Best students and teachers are routinely recognized for their excellence and their continued outstanding achievement deserves to be supported. Thank you. Thank you. Our next category is our unions and our speaker is Lloyd Allen representing Tabco. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Rogers, and members of the board. Thank you for your time. I am Lloyd Allen, he him bringing greetings from the board of directors of Tabco. Promises made should be promises kept. When the three-year contract was originally passed, there was
018much celebration. The three-year contract was a three-year promise. As recently as Sunday, President Ston had planned to be here herself. However, she is out knocking on doors of Northeast voters to ask them to ask for the promise to be kept. County Executive Clauser has historically been a champion for public education. Tabco has engaged with the budget process through its members, including visiting state legislators in Annapolis where over a busload of Baltimore County educators shared stories about the impact of the budget and the blueprint on the students in the schools. Through MSEA and by member visits to Annapolis, we helped to get the blueprint passed in the first place and to continue to be funded in the current year. Additionally, we testified at multiple county council town hall operating budget hearings. At the hearings, we heard
019from the county executive's office about the $9,460,61 for a teacher retirement that was shifted from the state to the county. Indeed, together with non-public placement, community college retirement, and property assessments, the state appears to have shifted almost $18 million for to the county. What I don't remember hearing at the hearing was that although this is not offset by the $2.1 million in increased revenue due to income tax changes, it is covered fivefold by a $91 million 7.7% increase in state aid, including an 8.9% increase in state funding of our public schools. This covers the $55 million needed to fund the five negotiated agreements. We're concerned to see reopening negotiations listed as a cost-saving measure on the Maryland Association of Counties in the same list as reducing funding for supplies by almost a quarter as that
020level of reduced funding for supplies had been in the original draft budget. Tabco through its members will continue to advocate for our working conditions, which are the learning conditions for our students. Breaking the pro promise of the three-year contract endangers short-term prospects for retention and long-term prospects for recruitment. We need both today's and tomorrow's cohort of educators to remain intact so that educators can develop relationships with students through reasonable ratios and schools can serve students needs educational and otherwise. May we return on June 10th to celebrate the full funding of the negotiated agreement. Please keep the promise that we made to each other through the agreement that we signed with each other by funding it through your budget. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Our next category is nonprofit community groups and our speaker is Jennifer
021Bgants from the Student Support Network. Good evening. Evening. Good evening, Superintendent Rogers in the Board of Education. I'm Jennifer Bergans and I'm the development coordinator for the Student Support Network and I'm also the mom of two BCPS students. The Student Support Network is a nonprofit organization providing food and basic necessities for BCPS students in need. The Student Support Network provides rooms of support in our 21 partner schools and we now have a weight list of 30 schools. The rooms of support are safe havens for student in poverty where we provide basic items for students in need as identified by the school staff as quickly as possible to improve a student's ability to attend and personally participate in school. We know children of low-income families frequently lack adequate clothing, shoes that fit, winter coats, school supplies,
022personal hygiene products, and the food needed to concentrate and succeed in school. The network provides all of these items and more at no cost to BCPS students in need. We know hunger and food insecurity affect concentration and behavior and they present major challenges to successful academic performance. Because hungry children cannot learn, we provide food including snacks, weekend food bags, and major food distributions before the school breaks. Last year, we supported 15,000 BCPS students in our 21 network schools with over 600 students identified as homeless. We work as a team with our partner BCPS schools and we assist students in need beyond what the school schools are able to provide. Our wraparound services follow Maslo's hierarchy of needs learning theory that a child must first have food, shelter, and safety in order to be able to
023learn. Meeting basic needs supports the school district's quantitative goals of higher attendance, test scores, and graduation rates. For example, among our five partner high schools with rooms of support. In the past year, the graduation rate rose 3.9% with four of our five schools showing an increase. Poverty in Baltimore County is still increasing. And a recent study by John Hopkins University reported that one in three Baltimore County children are now experiencing food insecurity, which is a chronic lack of access to nutritious food. We are working in uncertain times. We need to work together during an economic restructuring where funding sources are changing for both the schools and for the nonprofit organizations supporting our students. I'm here tonight to ask for your support to increase funding for partner nonprofits, providing essential items students need to make it
024to school and to learn. We strongly urge to allocate more funding and to increase flexibility on spending funds for immediate needs, especially in community schools. And we hope you will consider student wraparound services in budgets and as future grant applications. Students cannot take advantage of all BCPS has to offer when their basic needs are not met. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Marietta English from Baltimore County NAACP. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Lectctor, Vice Chair Harvey, Dr. Rogers, and members of the school board. I am Marietta English and I chair the education committee and the AXO committee for the NAACP Baltimore County branch. To paraphrase a Charles Dicken phrase, it is the best of times and the worst of times. The best of times because Baltimore County has made great improvements
025academically with the most five-star schools in the state, improved attendance and support for the arts. As you heard delegate um Pastor say about Owings Mills, the auditorium is beautiful. The uh I've gone to Carver, it's great. I've gone to Randlestown is great. So we the what's going on in Baltimore County is the improvement. As we are moving forward, the national climate is not supporting the improvements in education. closing the Department of Education and cutting funding for education, especially special education and programs for the most vulnerable population. Therefore, it becomes the worst of times. I would like to thank Dr. Rogers and the school board for your continued support of the AXO program. Because of your support, we have helped you've helped us develop leaders in the community. You know, we have eight going to the
026national eight gold medal winners. I hope you will continue to fund this program even though these are hard times. Dr. Rogers and this and the board, I am so proud of our partnership. We are proud of the accomplishments of Baltimore County Public Schools. Now we must work together to combat these cuts and challenges. The need to support the labor contracts and the education workers and how we can work together to support the board and our education per personnel in this climate of slash and cuts. As a former union leader, I have faced these challenges and I feel that if we work together, we can overcome and continue to move forward. I am willing to work with you in any way possible to make this happen. Again, I thank you for your support and I look
027forward to working with you. Thank you. Our next category is individual citizens or students. And our first speaker is Kyle Potter, who I think is virtual. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes. Good evening, Mr. Potter. Good evening, uh, board members. Dr. Rogers. My name is Dr. Kyle Potter. I'm a licensed psychologist in private practice here in Baltimore County as well as a certified school psychologist working thankfully for another school system. I have a child that is a BCPS student and I have another in kindergarten uh next year. I'm speaking tonight to talk about the cuts to school psychologist positions in BCPS and how harmful that decision is and will continue to be. I decided to testify at the board tonight because despite emailing every person at your table back in March and then following up
028with three more emails and a phone call to my own representative, Miss Harvey, directly, I've gotten zero responses. This is uh behavior that I can only surmise is intentional since the only meaningful public statement that I've heard any of you make about this was a really uh feckless pre-written statement read by the board chair at the last business meeting. With that out of the way, let's talk about the actual cuts. First, the decision was made without talking to even one appropriate stakeholder. No psychologist or psychological services administrators were consulted. Instead, the decision was made in the ivory tower by people that I would bet don't even know what a school psychologist actually does or know how their work impacts students, families, and schools. Even in the summer, without this proper consultation, there is no chance
029you understand what this will do. You will be out of compliance with state and federally mandated special education 504 timelines. There will be evaluations and IEP meetings that won't be covered, and students will be told they need to wait until the fall for their mental health services. Hopefully, our students and families can hold on to their problems and concerns until September. Second, your treatment of your own staff is deplorable. The psychologist found out about their positions being cut, 98 individual people during a 15minute staff meeting. Their supervisors found out only a few minutes before they did. This was done in a way that was completely devoid of any empathy for staff who were about to have their salaries cut by 10 to 20%. They were told so late in the year that the hiring season
030is basically done and they have very few options for next year. Not to worry though, BCPS will undoubtedly experience a mass exodus with psychologists over the next couple of years as they move on to other school systems where they will be treated with respect and paid the salary they've earned. Further, you will not be able to fill those newly open positions because prospective staff have now seen how you treat your current staff and how little you want to pay them. For some context, starting salary for BCPS psychologists is now going to be $17,000 lower than Carroll County, $21,000 lower than Howard County, and $23,000 lower than Hannah County. Lastly for tonight, the the total cost savings of this decision is really insignificant to BCPS. The total saved by cutting these positions is $1.8 million or
03106% of the proposed budget. In closing, you all have made a really horrible decision that will have lasting impacts on staff and students and their families. You made it without proper input from stakeholders. And to top it off, you communicated it in the crulest possible way. The good news is that you still have time to fix it. It's okay to admit that you made a mistake and change course. And I hope for the sake of our school system you do. Thank you. Our next speaker is Scott Coderites. Good evening. Good evening. need glasses. Can't see. Um, good evening, Superintendent Rogers, members of the board and community. My name is Scott Kataris, and I've been a Baltimore County teacher for 26 years. I understand that the budget crisis facing all local districts due to the Maryland
032blueprint, but a deal is a deal. The county executive, Tabco, and BCPS leadership celebrated the teacher raises and salary compression last election year. all received good press and cited the BCPS teachers would be some of the best compensated in the state of Maryland. According to public record, despite a difficult economic forecast, this year the board approved a $21,700 raise for the superintendent. Additionally, the chief of staff received a $25,000 raise and the chief operations officer received a $21,000 raise. The average central office raise was 5.1% but the average teacher raise was 2.7%. Do you believe it is equitable that these significant raises were given when positions and re resources were cut and salary raises are set to be renegotiated? In 2021, the operational efficiency report by public works LLC indicated that stakeholders lack confidence and
033trust in BCPS budgeting and finance reporting. It suggested a reduction in the number of executives from 11 to 7, which BCPS did and often sites. However, a closer look reveals that BCPS has more mid and high level administrators than similarly sized counties. In 2023, according to MSDE, BCPS had the fewest superintendents at 7, but the most directors, coordinators, and supervisors at 334. By comparison, McGomery County with 160,000 students had 249. Prince George's County with 131 students had 162 executives. Public works also reported that BCPS has a practice of employing individuals to high level leadership positions who are not highly qualified or with direct experience in that specialty area. Changing the organizational structure is only efficient if the percentage of money spent on executives decreases. Title changes but executive titles change but executive salary expenditures do
034not. The 2024 MSD report card for BCPS indicated that only 5% of students in seventh grade and um 15.1% of students in algebra one were proficient. In fairness, these were increases. It is hard to understand though how the board cited system performance as the rationale for the raise given to the superintendent. Performance data is not good. The way to increase student achievement is to hire and retain highly qualified teachers. If you believe that the superintendent deserves a raise, what does it say to renegotiate teacher raises? News was the news that was given no less during teacher appreciation week. Public works found low employee morale and high employee turnover for years at BCPS. It was suggested that BCPS address the salary disparity with neighboring schools. Renegotiating leaves the disparity and further weakens morale. 60% of new
035teachers hired by BCPS this year were provisionally certified. Many don't stay. Teachers regularly work beyond contractual time without compensation. We understand caring and kindness can be exploited, but students are our priority. So, we do we do what needs to be done. Thank you. Our next speaker is Chennai Herbeck. Good evening. Good evening board members. My name is Sean Herbick and I've been a speech language pathologist for 32 years. My career has taken me through hospitals, private practice, and education. I've run a department at John's Hopkins, treated a stroke patient in Switzerland, and built my own business. In August, I joined BCPS at the as the SLP at Cockisville Middle School. Drawn by the promise of shorter day duty days, built-in vacations, and summers off. Something I needed for my family. But that promise of balance
036turned out to be an illusion. This has been the hardest year of my career. I spent the first months crying in the school hallways, sobbing on my commute home, and dreading each morning. I didn't want to give up, so I kept pushing. I told myself it would get better, but even now, nearly at the end of the year, it still feels impossible. By November, I was prescribed medication just to get through the workday. My doctor and therapist both were hesitant. Nothing else in my life warranted medication except to do this job. That's how much this job took from me. I work most evenings and nearly every weekend, all unpaid. I've had to put my private practice on hold. The toll of my health, my family, and my friendships has been significant. But I know I'm
037not alone. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of SLPs across the county because my experience is not unique. The workload is simply unsustainable. Case loads range from 60 to 100 students. We are responsible for each student's IEP meetings. Some weeks I have over 10 hours of meetings. That is two full school days. We need to make up missed minutes due to IEP meetings, personal or sick leave. We score, analyze, and write comprehensive assessment reports which can take three to six hours each. We document daily notes for 20 to 30 students and are expected to do all of this plus plan individualized group sessions with just one hour of planning and docu documentation time a day. The math just doesn't add up. This is driving experienced clinicians out of BCPS and deterring new applicants. Just today, I
038heard about an SLP who left the public school systems for a private job, working three days a week for twice the pay. And who could blame them? No one wants to work under these conditions. Burnout isn't a personal failure. It's a systemic problem. The system has set us up for failure. And every day I try to make an impossible job work. When dozens of highly trained professionals are exhausted and walking away, it's not weakness. It's a sign that the structure is broken. We're asking the board to take action. Consider case load caps. Implement workload based staffing models. Pro provide protective time for planning and documentation within the duty day. Please hear our voices. Support your SLPs so we can continue to support our students. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. Our next
039speaker is Gail Venderbick. Good evening. My name is Gail Vanderbeek and I am also a speech language pathologist currently working at Gunpowder and Victory Villa elementary schools. May is designated as better hearing and speech month and I feel the need to advocate for my students and colleagues during this month set aside to highlight communication. Speech language pathologists do not just help people say their S and R sounds. We support language, stuttering, voice, social skills, and other areas of communication. And this impacts our students abilities to communicate and learn. More than 10% of primary age students have been identified with speech language impairments. This has been the most challenging year in my 33-year career. After working as a contractual SLP at many Baltimore County schools and other settings, 14 years ago, I decided I wanted to
040work full-time for BCPS. Last spring, I was informed that I would now be split between two schools. I am now stretched between two schools with a much higher case load and I struggle to adequately serve my students and I am not alone. In a previous meeting, you were told that there is a nationwide critical shortage of speech language pathologists. We appreciate that you were told how much we care about our students and how flexible we have been, but the workload that we have been given is not manageable and the conditions we are working under will not keep or attract skilled speech pathologists to serve our students. As a result, our students are missing legally mandated therapy and consultative services while we are also asked to assess, case manage, attend IEP teams, and document our services
041appropriately. Parents are complaining to schools and to MSD. Last year, we learned that Baltimore County had ended most, if not all, in-person SLB contracts and moved to a virtual contractual model to supplement BCPS employees. Many schools now have virtual providers servicing many of our students. And while research suggests that this can be an effective service model, there have been significant problems with how this has been implemented in the county. I am a member of the SLP educators council which has been working with TAPCO to try to solve the many issues in delivering speech language and other related services to our students. According to our national association, ASHA, the national average case load is 50 students with a manageable case load size of 40. With Tabco's help, we conducted a survey of our case loads earlier
042this year. It revealed that 62% of our speech pathologists have case loads of 61 to 100 students and 95% indicated that they were not satisfied in their jobs. Some of my colleagues have doubled their case loads this school year. The SLPs of Baltimore County are tired and frustrated. We have tried to work with our administrators and with Tabco for support and relief and had hoped for an improvement in workloads in the next school year. Many of us do not see that in our new assignments and allocations for next year. We have been working with Tabco to develop anou to help provide us with manageable workloads. We ask that the board provide the support we need to serve our students, cap our case loads, keep current SLPs from moving to new positions, and attract more highly
043qualified speech language pathologists to Baltimore County. Thank you for your consideration and happy better hearing and speech month. Thank you. Thank you. We did have one um individual um that was not able to attend who had been selected. So from the wait list, the first person to sign up is Miss Sharon SH. Good evening. Good evening everyone. I'm going to do a little bit of an echo concerning the speech and language therapists, concerning the school psychologists, concerning the fact that this county is significantly out of compliance right now and you're going to be out of compliance even more if we continue. I have students whose timelines are three and four months behind. The typical timeline for doing an assessment to qualify a student on an IEP is 60 days. That is federal law. That is
044not We make up the rules as we go along, which is what's happening in Baltimore County. I should not have to go to compliance to ask for the enough personnel staff to make sure that an IEP is in compliance. If you take school psychologists out of the picture for the summer, you're going to widen those timelines. I have school psychologists that are not willing to do more testing if it's going to take them over the summer when they're not going to be available because their contract was cut. You're out of compliance when you have students who have no services for an entire school year. I have three students on my case load right now that have no have not received speech and language services for an entire school year. You know why? Because of how
045you're treating those people in the back there. The school system is out of compliance. I shouldn't have to say that multiple times, but I have been here in front of you multiple times this school year, and I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall because nothing is being done to fix it. It's only getting worse. That's what I have to say. We need to keep those contracts for these people so we can keep the very well-trained individuals who are sitting behind me who we so we can keep those school psychologists and get back in compliance. Thank you. Thank you. Next on the agenda is public comment on board policy 6401 and then 6500. for 6401. The first person to come in is um Dr. Ferrron. Evening to all. Good evening. I'm recovering from flu.
046my voice. Okay, hopefully you can hear me. All right, the first policy is 6401 page two line one and four. Uh basically talks about disability, gender, ethnicity. I I don't have really with all of them except one and that one is the one about multilingual um status. And I really want to throw this idea for you. What does multilingual mean in a policy like this? I really don't know. You know, how far you would accommodate a child that is speaking a foreign language and now uh come in as illegal or legal resident and wants to learn in an English school like ours. I would suppose knowing the school system may attending for so many decades that you probably will hire special educators, bilingual teachers, spend extra effort, etc. And that really cost money. The way
047I look at English, especially as an immigrant 51 years before I came here to Baltimore, is it's about identity. Okay? So when I grew up in in Syria, I learned English from third grade on my own and nobody really had to push me out and the culture basically permeates in. So when I immigrated basically it was relatively easy. um Englishness and the English language should be the focus of students in this system because if we take care of bilingual too much, there would be little incentive for them to learn English or to pronounce English the right way, the understandable way. I can't tell you how many people who are immigrants uh their kids and them themselves you really can't understand them and often time their allegiance is not really with the United States or partially
048is not with the United States as I told you ever in my career with you I don't believe your responsibility is to solve every social problem this cost money you really don't need it there. I recommend that you would not really put the multilingual two words in that sentence. I have 17 seconds. Okay. Thank you. We have other speakers for that same policy for the second one. Um yes, for 6401. No, we're still on 6401. All right. So, are you Well, no. Are you finished for 6401? Yeah, I'm finished. Okay. Thank you. Our next speaker for 641 is Sharon Shoff. Oh, good evening. I read this policy through twice. And a couple of things stand out to me that I think need to be clarified, double down on, whatever you want to refer to it
049as. I think teachers of students who are gifted need to understand that if it's something written in a policy, they need to follow it. An administrator needs to know that as well. It says in your policy that students who have uh disability or special education status will not be discriminated against. I've seen that hundreds of times, including with my own two children. There is something called twice exceptional. No, it's not a category in IDA. It doesn't have to be. Kids with disabilities can be gifted. Teachers and administrators need to know that. And it needs to be prominent in your policy. It needs to be something that you train your teachers on. And you don't offer them that training. You provide it and make sure it's required. And that again should be in the policy. We
050have a lot of kids who have special education concerns and according to federal law, they are also allowed to be in gifted classes and because of their special education status, they aren't in it. And there are teachers who literally prevent that from happening. So that needs to be in your policy. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker for policy 641 is Jamie Scott. Our next speaker is Ashley Cunningham. I think that's virtual. Okay, we'll move on to policy 6500 research and assessment. And our first speaker is Dr. Ferrron. Madame chair, board members, this is going to be the first in my history with the board of education, this is a wonderful policy. I honestly could not find one thing wrong with it and I don't have anything to say to you. So, thank you very
051much. Thank you for that, Dr. Ferrron. Our next speaker on policy 6500 um again Jamie Scott, Kathleen McDermott, I think that person's virtual. Nope. Okay. And Ashley Cunningham. I think that's okay. All right. Thank you. Let me The next item on the agenda is unfinished business report on board policies. This is the second reader for these policies and I think I'm calling on Miss Harvey. Um, Miss Harvey. Thank you, Madam Chair. On behalf of Chair Pumphrey, members of the board, the policy review committee asks that the board accept the committee's recommendation to amend the following board policies. Board policy 1240, visitors to schools and office buildings. Board policy 402, obligations of employees of the board of education of Baltimore County. Board policy 4010, nepotism. Board policy 6304 commemorations and observances and board policy 6307 patriotic
052exercises. These policies are presented to you on tonight's agenda as exhibits G1 through G5. Thank you, Miss Harvey. Board members, are there any separations requested? Okay. May I have a motion to accept the recommendation of the board policies review committee for board policies 1240, 402, 4010, 6304, and 6307. So moved. Thank you. No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. Is there any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Mr. Luski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillion. Yes. Miss Pumphrey, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Fong, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Chica Ku, yes. Miss Lar, yes. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is action taken in close session. And for that, I call on Mr. Burns. Good evening,
053Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, Dr. Rogers, members of the board. Earlier this evening in closed session, you considered and took action on two uh appeal cases. One HA25-022 and the other HA25-024. Thank you. May I have a motion to approve the action taken in close session on hearing examiner's case HA25-022 and authorize Miss Gover to sign for those board members not physically present second. Thank yes. Okay. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Miss Stleski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumphrey? Abstain. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, yes. Miss Hen, yes. Miss Fong, yes. Miss Booker Dwire, yes. Miss Harvey, yes. Miss Gulu, yes. Miss Leter, yes. Motion carries. The ne next may I have a motion to approve the action taken in close session on hearing examiner case HA25-024
054and authorize Miss Gover to sign for those board members not physically present. So move Ker. Thank you. May I have a second? Second. Seavoy. Thank you. Any discussion? May I have a roll call vote, please? Miss Dowski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumprey? Abstain. Mr. Young? Yes. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Hen? Yes. Miss Fong? Yes. Miss Booker Dwire? Yes. Miss Harvey? Yes. Miss Chulu? Yes. Miss Lter? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Barnes. The next item on the agenda is consideration of the FY2026 internal audit work plan. And for that I call on Miss Booker Dwire. Thank you, Chair Licer. And so the audit committee which consists of Miss Rampong, Miss Harvey, Mr. McMillian, and Mr. Young had the opportunity in March to review the work plan that was presented by the
055um audit team led by Miss Bar. And um in April, the committee uh unanimously approved the work plan to be brought before the board for consideration um to for approval. If you notice, the work plan is heavily focused on payroll and student activity funds. And so um we would like and Miss Bar is present if the board members have any questions about the work plan, but we definitely appreciate u Miss Bar and her team and this intentional focus on payroll um student activity funds and things that are um specifically focused on um the finances of Baltimore County public schools. And so at this time, the committee would um would request that the board approves the FY26 work plan. And as I said, Miss Bar is available if board members have any questions. Thank you, Miss
056Booker Dwire. May I have a motion to approve the FY2026 internal audit work plan? So moved from Pong. May I do I need a second since it was recommendation of the board? No. Okay. Um any discussion? Any questions? Miss Hen, I have a question for Miss Bar. Is Miss Bar, are you on the line? She's here. Oh, okay. Poof. She's here. All right, Miss Hen. Thank you. And I believe my question is for Miss Bar or other um staff. Good evening, Miss Bar. Um my question is, as Miss Booker Dwire said, um school activity funds is a um significant portion or focus of the work plan. Do you happen to know what percentage of the BCPS budget um school activity funds encompasses? School activity funds are not part of the BCPS budget. They're a fiduciary
057fund and they're separate from the operating budget. Okay. Do you happen to know what percentage if we were to include those in the overall budget um operating what percentage? I wouldn't know off the top of my head, but I would think that it would be um a very small percentage. Okay. Um the reason I ask is because the public works efficiency report cited the school activity fund specifically in their recommendation that um the office of internal audit focuses on low-risk investigations and does not prioritize high-risisk threats to the school school system. Um, in FY21, which is somewhat dated, um, they site school activity funds representing.70.7% of the FY21 operating budget, yet receive 28% of the allotted hours for internal audit staff. And they recommend that internal audit focus on more significant um, items um, in
058regards to financial impact. Um, and I'm again reading from that. So they recommend that the internal audit department use significant portion of its resources um towards those high dollar amount items. So do you happen to know what portion of the hours of your team are allocated towards school activity funds in this work plan? Mhm. So most of the school activity fund related audits will be uh we'll be using data analytics especially for the three-year um cash analysis and looking at the uh accounts through the um SFO for school activity funds. So when we do data analytics that is not as much time as going out and completing full-blown full-fledged audits um at the schools. So, I'm hoping that it will be a um not a significant amount of time focused on school activity funds, but
059the reason that we've uh reinccorporated and we're looking more into um school activity funds and including it in our work plan for several reasons um the external auditors rely on the work that we do related to school activity funds and um it is part of what we should be looking at even though it might not be a lot dollar-wise, public relations wise, if there's anything that we find there um it could be a significant liability or concern for the um school system. Sure. And dollar-wise, and this is my last question, one of the items I was happy to see in the um work plan was the ERP system because there are um significant operational impacts to the system. However, there were no financial um items included in the work plan. Is that something you considered
060looking at the ERP expenditures themselves given the significant investment in um public dollars in the ERP system? Are you talking about the contract for the and looking at the contract and the expenditure of dollars spent on the ERP system implementation and spending overall that was not going to be the focus of of the review of the ERP system in FY26. Our concern was more with uh data migration and the internal controls over the data moving from the old system into the new system. Making sure that the folks that are supposed to have the access to certain data within the system have the the appropriate access things of that nature. And then because HR and payroll um are the first modules to be implemented, we do have we are heavy on payroll if you notice um
061for FY26. And then we do also have a human resource audit included in the FI26 work plan as well. Um there was not a plan to look at the actual uh contract for Oracle. So two of the recommendations and I'm sorry follow up. Thank you madam chair. Um two of the recommendations of public works were to look at in addition to overall um high dollar expenditures specifically were IT and school construction and it one of the sizable recent expenditures were around the ERP system but also on school construction. So, I'm surprised that um that wasn't given um more consideration to look at the ERP expenditures given the size of that investment and that it's a multi-year project in looking at um those contracts, those vendor contracts and looking at the expenditures. Okay. Well, also included
062in the work plan for next year are contracts and consultant agreements. So if it's a a suggestion or recommendation that we look at that contract, that is something that we could explore and include that in that particular audit if it is a concern of this board. Thank you, Miss Far. You're welcome. Thank you. Other questions about the work plan, Miss Dominowski? Yes. Um my question is um on page seven, the assess the asset management special education. Okay. Um what what exactly are can you explain what that audit is about? It's inventory. inventories to make sure we have all the appropriate Yes. Um Yes. So um this past year we um worked on an inventory related to special education equipment equipment and there was a concern because of um some of the equipment was was missing
063was unaccounted for things of that nature. So we just are going in to make and and they're in process of revising that. They're they're um uh actually putting controls in place. So, we've been asked to go out and make sure that the that the approach that they're using is now effective in managing the inventory for special education. Okay. Thank you for that. Um, we heard a lot tonight and and in the past about um SLPs and psychologists and, you know, being in compliance with our IEP. Is that something the audit committee can do? um make sure that you know audit compliance with special education requirements as opposed with you know going to through the IEPs and making sure our students are receiving their required services. We can we can audit compliance. Um keep in mind
064that uh the external auditors do a single audit and on on a maybe a two to three year rotate rotation special education is included in their rotation. I'm not sure that they necessarily look to make sure that services are delivered or properly or appropriately delivered. That would require uh that would be almost like a performance audit slashcompliance audit that would require us to go out and complete observations in the classroom. That is something that our office did back in 1999. Um that was a long time ago and um I was involved in that and that's what we did. We actually worked with uh uh special education folks and visited classrooms and and made those observations and uh I mean it's not out of the question but it would be something that would have to be
065planned. To your knowledge the last time it was done was 1999. Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I just have a followup to Mr. Dominowski's um and you might not know the answer. Does MSD usually do audit compliances of special education? MSCE does do a I they do program audits, right? I am not aware of specifically what they do. Okay. Um with relation to special education, I I don't know. Okay. Dr. Rogers, can you get an answer on that at some point? Yeah. Okay. And then when the when was the last time that that audit was done, if MSD does that type of audit? Yes. uh MSD regularly um monitors compliance and um you know they have a regular process that they follow so I can get that information and share it. Okay.
066Thank you. Each I'm sorry no each audit group has a particular focus. Okay. So uh I would not want to speak for external auditors you know um and if it depends on what the objective is. Okay. Right. Okay. Thank you for that. Other um questions about the FY26 internal audit plan? Okay. May I have a roll call vote on approving the FY2026 internal audit work plan? Mr. Luski, yes. Dr. Seavoy, yes. Mr. McMillian, yes. Miss Palffrey, yes. Mr. Young, yes. Miss Dominowski, no. Miss Hed, no. Miss Frenpaw. Yes. Miss Booker Dwire. Yes. Miss Harvey. Yes. Miss Chica Ku. Yes. Miss Licter. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Bar. The next item on the agenda is new business report on board policies. This is the first reader for this policy. And for that, I
067call on Miss Harvey, vice chair of the policy review committee. Thank you, Madam Chair. I am catching up. On behalf of Chair Pumphrey, members of the board, the policy review committee asks that the board accept this report of the committee's re recommendation of proposed changes to the following board policies. Board policy 6401, advanced academics and gifted education, and board policy 6500, research and assessment. These policies are presented to you on tonight's agenda as exhibits J1 through J2. Thank you, Miss Harvey. May I have a motion to accept the recommendation of the board policy review committee for board policy 6401 and 6500. So move young. Thank you. No second is needed since the recommendation comes from the committee. Is there any discussion? Miss Booker Dwire for policy 6401 there's language in uh item B where it
068says students who show the potential for performing and then it goes on don't all students have the potential for performing is this specific enough to address the the demographic of student that we're trying to target because I believe when we say the students who show potential I would say that's all students have the potential and could potentially show the potential. Um do could we include a definition of what we mean? Then when I go down to um 2A on page one and it speaks to the potential again all students have potential. So I'm just wondering could we define what we mean by potential? Thank you. Other discussion, comments? Okay. Did you want to say something? No. Miss Harvey, did you want to say something? I I'm just looking for the reference uh to that Miss
069Booker Dwire and looking at the analysis again. I I don't want her comment comment to go unadressed. And and if the intention is to keep it open enough for any student to be able to get into these programs, then keep it. But if the intent of the policy is to target a specific group of students, then we may need to, you know, tighten up the language. So, it's whatever the board's intent is. Hi, this is Miss Pumprey. Have a quick Pumprey. Go ahead. I believe the intention um what Miss Booker Dwire said is correct that we were trying to leave it as open as possible to be able to include all students. I'm trying at this point to reference reference the rule the um accompanying rule to see if it more defines exactly how that
070um how we come about deciding who has the potential because like you said all have potential. I'm thinking that definition may be provided more precisely in the rule. I'm trying to look at that now. But I do believe the intent is to leave it open for any student to be able to because as you said all students have potential. Um is he good evening? Good evening. Miss Booker Dwire, I think you took the words right out of my mouth. I think the word potential is in the policy for that exact reason of making sure that that because in the same sentence it talks about not restricting access. So I think it's just another way of saying we don't want to restrict access. We want to um tap into everyone's potential. Okay. Go ahead Miss Booker.
071So then student then there should be no there's no testing requirements then like a parent could opt their child into this into a advanced academic program or dual and or whatever program it is without having to do anything extra because their child has the potential right is that what we're looking I I think that would be determined in the rule but I don't think that's what the policy is here comes help. So the rule is the policy is meant to be very open-ended which is why we identify that you know students with any exceptionality would be welcome to participate in advanced academic um program or courses. is what the rule outlines are those multiple measures that align with COMAR that we do look at so that it's a single isolated item is not used to
072determine a student's participation inclusion or exclusion from an advanced academic course. So it's not just a student's uh score on MCAP but that a holistic view is looked at of a student. So parent input is provided is one of the measures but also grades, classroom performance and achievement. There's standardized measures in second grade. We do the KOAT assessment, our universal screener data. So it's it's multiple measures. So the potential can show up in lots of different places and in lots of different ways um that would have us look further to to identify a student. Minowski. Uh, I just had a recent parent come up to me asking me about this. Um, I don't even know if you can answer if it's, but when it comes to like a student that maybe is on the edge
073or on the verge can get an a could go to an advanced course, especially in like elementary school, what is the rule in like keeping them out or like denying them? Why would we deny them? Is that in the is that in a rule that be in the rule? But also, I mean, there are diagnostics, there are considerations that the the GT team at each school considers when they are determining whether or not they will identify a student as gifted and talented and taking courses that are related to that identification or even just like advanced placement like as far as, you know, if they're a fourth grader, they wanted to take fifth grade math, they would have to they could aside from, you know, really not performing anywhere near that level, but like if they
074were close to that level and the parent really wanted them to. Why would is that a is that an issue that we would have to a a parent could request that um the GT and advanced economics team take a look at that request for sure, right? Um parents are always able to make that request and then the the team would follow the um outline of the rule to determine whether or not that student's best needs would be best met in a different math class or the math class they're currently in. with just following with that role of like all students that show you know you know ability or you know have the opportunity wouldn't that apply to them so or is that more nuanced in the role so I guess it's hard to infer from
075a specific student case that you're sort of referencing um you know what I can say is each school team has a advanced academic liaison that has someone who is works with the advanced academic office who gets training professional development and then works with their school team to um review various data points for students to identify students to be placed in advanced academic courses or um diagnostically placed. In the case of what you're referencing, could a student Yes, absolutely. Um, in the case of math, there is when you're looking at a student who from fourth to fifth grade, um, we do have various pathways to help compact curriculum because what we saw when we look at our math data historically is we did do a strategy where we had students just absolutely skip an entire year
076of math content that has not bowed well for us. And so it would be a matter of looking at is that a point where we can compact curriculum so that we can put them set them up for success. um so that they might uh do a beginning of the year assessment for what the fifth grade class is doing to see what are those prerequisite skills that the student has in place. But I would encourage if a parent was having a challenge with that to talk with their advanced academic school team and if not certainly reach out to our office that we can assist. Thank you. You're welcome. Any other questions or comments? Okay, then where are we? Um, okay. May I have a roll call vote on 6401 and 6500? Miss Tleski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy?
077Yes. Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumprey? Yes. Mr. Young? Yes. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Hen? Yes. Miss Fong? Yes. Miss Booker Dwire? Yes. Miss Harvey? Yes. Miss Chica Kulu? Yes. Miss Lter. Yes. Thank you. Thank you both. The next item on the agenda is the report on the Greenly community boundary recommendation. And for that I call on Dr. Grim and Mr. Taylor. Good evening. Good evening, Chair Licter, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Dr. Rogers, and members of the board. With me this evening is Mr. Paul Taylor, director of the Office of Strategic Planning. We're here this evening to share with you the committee recommendation for the Greenley Community Boundary Study. Next slide, please. As shared with you previously, this slide notes the process for boundary studies as outlined by board policy and superintendence rule uh 1280. Next
078slide, please. The objective of this particular study was narrow. It was to realign the attendance boundaries for the Greenley residential development that is currently under construction to mitigate potential transportation issues. Next slide, please. This study consisted of two committee meetings and a public information session. This slide depicts some examples of our focus on community engagement throughout the specific boundary study, including the opportunity for stakeholders to provide comments online, communication from schools to the community, and each committee meeting was livereamed. This map shows the boundary areas for Chase and Vincent Farm elementary schools in relation to the study area which is in that small box which you'll see larger on the next slide please. The current boundary includes 105 residential units at Greenley that are within the area zoned to Chase Elementary School. No students currently
079reside in this area. The recommended boundary aligns the Vincent Farm boundary to the Greenly development and implements a solution before students are affected. This recommendation supports current transportation routes. As no students currently reside in the change area, there is no change to the utilization or demographic data. Further, the entirety of the Greenley development has always been included in Vincent Farm enrollment projections, so there is no change in the projected utilization. The survey results for this study were mixed. Those in favor felt the community continuity was important for students and that the entire community should attend the same school. Those opposed were concerned with overcrowding. With respect to next steps, the board will host a public hearing on the proposed boundary recommendation on June 18th, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. at the Vincent Farm Elementary to gather
080additional public comment. The board of education is then scheduled to vote on the boundary change at its July 8th, 2025 meeting. We would like to take this opportunity to recognize and thank all of our committee members and community members who engage with BCPS throughout this process. Thank you. Questions? Miss Fang? Good evening, gentlemen. Good evening. Good evening. Um, you know, I love the boundary studies. You're the only one that does. I know. Um, so I just wanted to ask a little bit more in more detail. Um considering that it said that there were not um students in that area um I was surprised to see the 24% and the 6% that were either strongly or somewhat opposed. So what is specifically that concern with overcrowding if there's no students there now? Well, there even though
081there's no students in the area where they're living, we imagine and we anticipate that students will come from those houses once they're built. That's what we do with our um student yield studies. And those schools, those students would end up going to Vincent Farm and with this change and Vincent Farm is currently overcrowded. So that was the concern that even though the students aren't there now, we're going to put them into a school that was overcrowded. But then there was the other part that said something about I guess in your projections you already consider that. So yes, we did. Yes. Okay. So I guess with those projections, what did that look like? So Benson Farm is already overcrowded. Like how much more are we talking? Um honestly I would have to do a calculation to
082see 21 students out of the the whole total um capacity of 6 or 700 at that school. Um but it was a small is a small increment that these students would would represent and the and the projection with the change over time. So when we do the projections for 10 years out as m as Mr. Taylor said it would there there may be an immediacy if if families with school age children automatically move in versus families that do not yet have children but will have children that attend in the subsequent years over the over the 10-year projection. Um we we did not see again a sign a significant change in um in the in the data. Uh but it's important to note that the school is already a school that we're we're looking at for
083solutions because it is um overcrowded. Yes, that was my next question as far as then what are the options to help alleviate that overcrowding and and that's those are some of the next steps that we hope to bring you next school year next school year in in that area and and some of the others. Yeah. Was um Oliver Beach considered at all in this boundary study or it was just Chase Senica and Chase and Vincent Farm? I mean, so for for this for this particular piece because of the way that it it landed in the zoning and the fact that these are under construction and the current transportation boundaries. This was part of um the the list, if you will, that we looked at and we said we this is something that it would be
084good for us to correct because we'd have a community that would be split in terms of transportation before those houses were built. So, uh there could be consider uh consideration in the future to use uh Chase and Oliver Beach for some uh other moves down the road. Um, we are still in the early exploration stages of what that might look like. Okay. Thank you. Other questions, Miss Booker Dwire? Yes. So, so we're looking at having uh 105 homes built in that area and you're projecting about 21 students will be added to the to the current population of Chase of No, Vincent Farm Elementary School. Correct. and and then we would still need to do a a boundary study because so my my question is students then so when are when are families set to move
085into these homes? I drove by there today and about half of the homes that are in this area are built. The other half is still vacant. So, I don't know um when the other half will be built, but last time we checked, no students have registered for classes from the built homes. And there's a possibility that uh parents who purchase homes in here in this area and they think they're going to Vincent Farms Vincent Farm and then it could be a year later or two years later that their school is moved because of the redistricting or the um changing of the boundary. We try not to change boundaries for the same students within a three-year period. We try to space them out. And I I would also contend with its proximity to Vincent Farm that
086it's unlikely that that this neighborhood would would be impacted by uh by those kinds of changes. Okay. Thanks. You're welcome, Mr. McMillian. Mr. Taylor, in those 105 houses, and you said about half of them are finished, are is that half occupied? Yes, they're actually I I saw cars there. saw people. Um, so they clearly approximately 50 52 of the houses are finished and occupied and they have they started the others or No, it's it's all dirt. They haven't started foundations. So there's no students coming out of the approximate 50 houses right now. Right now there definitely are not because if we had those students they would have been registered and we check the addresses. We have no students with those addresses. Is there any way to determine how many families even have kids out of
087those houses? No, not that I'm aware of. Yeah. So, how do you come up with these projections? Because I know you, you know, in previous years they used to brag about how accurate the projections are down the road. So, how do you actually do that? Well, projections are different than pupil yields. Student yields. Student yields are based on existing housing and what students come out of those existing housing and we do it in a large group so that those numbers can be used for future planning. Um projections are based on trends of actual enrollments that happen every year. So if a school is has a trend of increasing enrollment then we would apply that factor to that school for the future. So they're just two different calculations. Thank you. And to look at the and
088to look at the student yields, we work with very closely with Baltimore County government with the type the types of homes that are being constructed. Um what what what u the size of those homes. So it's so it's the style, it's the type, um it's other types of amenities that are close by. We work very closely with them and they help us determine the yield. based based on it's a lot of it's based on um the trends that we see throughout the county already and in specific planning blocks. And if I could add the um agublic facility ordinance, the APFO also dictates how student yields are calculated and we follow that guideline. Other questions? This is Miss Pumprey. I have a question. Yes, Miss Pumprey. Thank you. Um, for the survey results, the 34 results,
089are they completely anonymous? Do we know anything at all about those 34 stakeholders? Um, you are they Chase parents families? Are they vincent families? We have any information at all about those 34 stakeholders? Um, no, we don't. We It is anonymous, so we don't have that information. Okay. Thank you. I was just looking to see if we've reached as many families as possible. Thank you for that. Anyone else? Miss Hen. Thank you, Madam Chair. So just to confirm um based on this recommendation all 105 units will be moved into the within the Vincent farm boundary the entire Greenly development and the pupil yield b it's based on the pupil yield that we're only expecting 20 21 21 based on the the calculation based on all 105 105 townhouse units based on the student yield calculations
090would produce 21 elementary students and we have already counted them in the projections for Vincent Farm which results in them being and we're not sure what the percent of well it doesn't cause them to be overcrowded they're already overcrowded capacity so and do we know what that would do to Chase's numbers if we did nothing alternative Chase is Chase is currently um Chase is currently not a concern in terms of being overcrowded So it wouldn't it it wouldn't it wouldn't tip them one way or another. It wouldn't impact them one way or another. They would still be within their utilization. Okay. So the impetus then would be transportation as you explained. Yes. Yes. The way the development is built, the access to these houses comes in from 43 into the Greenley development. And so they
091would have to pass all of this Vincent boundary kids just to get to the chase kids if they kept it in the chase. So that was inefficient. Sure. Thank you. Miss Harvey, can you um I just want to be clear the the new development those kids would go to Chase. Yes, ma'am. But because of explain to me again because of what we're adding more students or projected to add more students to um so the re so the recommendation the recommendation from the committee was um in in looking at the greenly community this the under under the current uh boundaries it div it divides the community between Chase and Vincent Farm. So that's that's how it currently sits. The new boundary or the proposed boundary would allow all the students that reside within Greenley, including these
092105 units, which have not all been built yet, to all for this for the students to live there to all attend Vincent Farm Elementary School. And as Mr. Taylor said the um transportation has shared this is this is this is one that when we were looking at this um you know this part this section of Greenley has as as we've said has not yet been built and so we would be driving past um we would be driving past the stops that we're already making for Vincent Farm to go pick up students to go to Chase and then we picking them up and driving past them to go uh to a different elementary school. So that was that was the impetus for that change and we do real we do understand that it is concerning because
093of the overcrowded nature of Vincent Farm. Did that answer your question, Miss Harvey? It did. It did. Thank you. You're welcome. Do what is the percentage of Vincent Farm? Is it like 130% or is it 105% capacity? Do you have It's definitely over 115%. Over. Okay. So, it is under and Chase is not not at 100%. No, Chase is not. Okay. It's much better. Chase is lower than 100%. Okay. So, then the reason the real reason is this is the transportation piece. Is that the would be it would be it would be transportation that was the impetus. Um I think th this would also fall under u community continuity. If if that's you know something that we wanted to discuss further we could but the but the impetus was really about transportation because this part
094of the community hasn't even been fully built yet. So for continuity if they all went to Chase it would help the continuity but it wouldn't help the transportation. So, it would, but if you look at where Vincent Farm is located, it's it's close enough to the Greenly development that um it would it would create an inefficiency if we moved all the Greenly kids to Chase. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Dominowski. So, I know you've said this a few times. There are no students registered to attend public school in that new development. Correct. Right now. Right now. In that in that section. in that section. So if there's none in there now, then the continuity doesn't really apply because if you're you we would create the continuity by whatever school we assign them to. So the I
095think the what what could end up happening is to to say it a different way is there are none there. Now, let's say that um let's say that less than the projected yield occurs with the 105 units and it's 10 students. Then we would be we would be sending a bus far back into that community past all the other past the kids that are going to Vincent Farm to pick them up and then to take them to Chase. So from from the transportation from the efficiency perspective, it it it is it makes more sense for efficiency for us to include this entire neighborhood for one for one school, which would make sense to be Vincent Farm. So my only concern there is the potential if that became more and Vincent Farm gets even more overcrowded
096and then we're at a boundary study again and we're going to take kids we could possibly take kids that have been going to Vincent Farm for years and having that neighborhood switch to a different school. That is correct. You are correct. Okay. Thank you. You are correct. And I think that's one of the complexities of of growth in that area. As we said, we do know that we need um to address Vincent Farm. Dr. Rogers, I think um first, thank you for everyone's uh feedback and comments. I think um the concerns have been uh noted and they are fair and reasonable and so um we will have an update. Thank you. Okay. So with that I will go back to what what Miss Frohang. So um you guys may not know the answer to this
097but why why was it split up originally? Do you know why? Because we normally try to keep that continuity in a neighborhood. So why I guess did it originally have a part for Chase and then a separate part for Vincson Farm. Is it possible to bring up this the uh slide again please? drive control. I don't think you have pulled up. Well, I was going to show you the the original development when we get our office gets development plans from the county and they're in the early stages when we get them. So, we figure out what um where that development is. And if you look at this plan right here, the yellow is the Green Leaf development, but it's only part of the Green Level development. The Green Level Development extends very far to the
098left. So once the developer, they say they're going to this is how many houses we're going to build. We figure out the student yields. We build in our calculation. We make assumptions of when the houses might be built. We use consultants. We use the county's advice. And then we build it in. So that's what we did in terms of projections. Then as years go by, the developer starts to come up with real plans that actually show what the buildout's going to be. And what happened was they ended up building it in a different manner than we assumed. We didn't know. Uh they may have made changes, but it ended up that small section ended up being over the line. And we didn't have anything to look at before. When they did that, it showed a
099small section over the line. So, it seemed to us and access to that small section is only from the north and west. You can't get there from the south. So, it made sense to us for continuity of that community to move the line south so that it was part of the greater community versus um a small piece that people would have to drive through the greater community to get to. I hope that helps answer your question. It does. Thank you. Yeah, based on Dr. Roger's comment. I think we will suspend the discussion um pending more information, but thank you very much for answering all of our questions. The next item on the agenda is a report on graduation. And for that, I call on Dr. Jones, Mr. Landon, and Miss Mustaper. Good evening everybody. Good
100evening. Good evening. Good evening, board chair. Licker Licer, Dr. Jones, and we were partners at one point. Dr. Licker. Okay, that's that's that's ex that's that's exhaustion. I'm sorry. I'm going as fast as I can. I'm going to start that again. Good evening. No, don't do it. Good evening, Board Chair Licer, Vice Chair Pumprey, and members of the board, and Dr. Rogers. Um we are happy and excited to bring to you the um graduation update for this evening. I am joined by Mr. Tag Landon and Miss Patricia Mustaper. To begin our presentation, we just want to make sure that everyone is aware of the fact that we continue to keep our eye on our milestones benchmarks as it relates to preK through 12 here in Baltimore County Public Schools. As you can see, not only
101do we have high expectations for our students, but we have high expectations for ourselves to make sure that our students achieve and succeed according to these metrics. And good evening everyone. Uh, in order you want to try our names, come on. I could do it. Lear Harvey Rogers and the rest of the board. Um, in order to graduate, uh, students still need to meet all course requirements and, um, high school assessment requirements along with the 75 hours for student service learning. If we uh, get a quick reminder of last year's numbers, our four-year adjusted cohort rate was up by 0.85 points to 85.84%. 84% and this was nearly double the progress of the previous year. Uh it included 12 schools increasing their graduation rate. Uh with the biggest increases coming from Parkville High followed by
102Owings Mills and Woodlong High. And as you can see there, we also had six schools with a graduation rate greater than 95%. If we turn to this year's class, there are some new MSD requirements that the class of 2024 did not have. So, this year's class is the first to require four math credits rather than three. It's the first class to require a full credit of health rather than a half credit. When completing the University of Maryland system completer, students must earn two world language credits in the same language rather than just two credits. And finally, the advanced tech completer has been phased out. So, we only have the beforementioned University of Maryland completer along with the CTE completer as the pathways for uh credit requirements. [Music] So, every school in BCPS has a high
103school has a a project graduation team and the makeup of that team differs by school but um will include for the most part administrators, counselors, department chairs, PPWs, records secretaries, social workers, school nurses, myself, um the corresponding executive director And uh schools and the teams use reports like the ones that you see on the screen right now that are updated nightly to give the most up-to-date information on progress for students earning credits, earning um making progress toward earning credits in the classes that they need for graduation. This allows schools to be proactive rather than reactive and allows us to have no surprises. Now I'll turn it over to Mrs. Muster. Thank you, Mr. Landon. So, um, as we talk about graduation, early intervention is key. Um, the communication that we have with our families, our
104students, um, and our staff at our schools, it's key. Um, our relationships that come through, it's key. making sure that we are all aware of the information that's out there for our students and families. So, one of the greatest um pathways that we have for information for parents and guardians is 247. It's our schooly platform. Um, additionally, um, we have students and staff as far as and administrators, um, that also engage in graduation conferences. And if we do have concerns, sometimes we also include our parents in required parent conferences to have those conversations about how do we make sure and in how do we ensure that we get our students on the pathway to graduation and meet with that success. Um, we also have various letters with status updates and supports for students that are
105mailed to students and families as well. Um, we've also engaged in home visiting that's um, completed by our pupil personnel workers to talk about make sure you're attending school, but also when you're in school, we want you to be in those classes earning your credits. Um, additionally, course reviews and credit checks are extremely important and regularly engaged in by our school counselors. Um, at minimum twice a year, but can be more frequently and that's one of the early interventions when we recognize the signs. We want to be re reviewing those courses and working with our students to get support. Additionally, um BCPS um has credit recovery options that are accessible um to our students and are listed on the slide in front of you. So, in summary, um what you see here, the bullets show
106um how we can maximize um supporting our students towards the graduation rate. You heard Mr. Landon speak about project graduation teams. That is the starting point. Um, as we have those conversations and we're thinking forward about what the data tools are, uh, we also have every school has an attendance team. Again, reinforcing the fact that we do need to be in the school um to be able to receive those um, credits. And then also support staff digging into if a student's not attending or not meeting with success, what is happening and how can we leverage our supports and that of our school communities. um additionally um interventions as well as credit recovery so that students if they are struggling they can make up those credits um on their journey and also as Mr. Landon referenced
107the data tools using data to drive those conversations be it a project graduation meeting attendance meeting or just simply taking a look at how our students are doing academically. All right. And finally, we want to absolutely wish as we start the graduation season for 2025, we kicked off today with Ridge Ruxton and we'll finish this week with our special schools. Um, and then we also start off next week with our comprehensive schools. Um, we are wishing all of our graduates in Baltimore County tremendous success and we look forward to seeing each of you at the graduations ahead. Thank you for that. Um questions or comments from board members? Miss Chica Kaloo. Yes, thank you for the presentation. So if a senior doesn't complete a dual enrollment course in the fall semester with success like a
108gra required graduation credit, so maybe their fine arts or English 102 for the spring semester kind of what is the solution for that student to still graduate at the end of the year since it's a one credit course? You're nodding. Do you want to answer? You want me to go that? Well, you you could retake at for dual credit in certain situations. Um, we could also do credit recovery um in one of those options that was mentioned up there before too. Um, okay. Thank you, Miss Booker Dwire. Thank you for this presentation. And when I see the presentation, it makes me think um is there any discussion around developing a portrait of a graduate for BCPS because when I look at this and I look at our vision, purpose and core values and I look
109at our uh priorities and you look at all those different pieces, I feel like we we have a portrait of what we expect for when students graduate, but it's just not all in one tight story. We have some here, some there, some there. Is there any discussion of that or any interest in that? So I could speak to the fact that uh individual schools continue to compile their data and create that portrait. Many times you'll find the counselors uh or the registars include it with the transcript and the recommendations that are being sent to colleges. But we haven't compiled all of the schools and created one um at a system level. We couldn't take a look at that though. Yeah, we can. take a look. I like that. Other comments, Miss Dominoski. Yes, I did.
110Sorry. What is the grade level requirement for a credit to count? You have to get a D or higher. A D or higher. So, what uh Okay. And then also, what are the the ELA and English requirements? How many credits do this? No, I four four four ELA for math. And they're all uh nine 10. I mean they're for most part for English it's a LA 9 10 11 12. Okay. And then um the health requirement is there like a a certain health class or course that counts towards that credit? So there's a half credit called um health 910 and then there's another half credit called um health 1112. So they they have to take both of those. You have to get one credit now, right? Instead of a half like we used to do.
111Okay. Okay. Thank you. Other questions? Mr. Alleski, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. For parents or guardians that are watching that are interested in credit recovery for their child, um can you um just briefly talk about what's the kind of next steps so that they can start the process or know for the future? Thank you. Absolutely. Um if a parent or even a student is interested in credit recovery, um absolutely reaching out to their school counselor to make that connection and then to explore what the p what the options are with respect to um recovering credits would be the first approach that I would use. Um and you can also talk if you have a conversation with your administrator. That's certainly a conversation you can have, but they will um they will always be
112meeting with their school counselor to get that process started. Thank you, Miss Galoo. Yes. Um, with the four math credits, so if a student wants to graduate a year early, just confirm, would they have to take an additional math credit at like CCBC to get four credits to graduate in their junior year? As soon as they hit that fourth credit, they're going to be eligible to graduate. So you know each individual student could be different but the situation that you mentioned it would be one pathway um you know so it depends on um individual bases and again I think that's um again that communication working with your counselor on what's best for individual students is the way to go. Okay. Thank you. And I know with English 102 that's not required to be taken year
113round, but for your math course, do you have to actively be enrolled in the course for both semesters? It's it's it's credits that it the math is um computed by credits. So it's simply um it simply depends. Right now, you know, we're on the the half um the half credit. So essentially, you would be enrolled you would be enrolled in math to get the the one credit. Um, if you are taking other classes outside of of BCPS, you could also accumulate other credits. So, the student, if let's say they were a senior or junior, they could take the math credit at like CCBC to supplement it in their senior year rather than taking math all four quarters. So, we're not counselors. I think it's important for us to speak specifically about students. And I know
114you know this. Um, I think a review of the the student and the profile could lend itself to some of the scenarios you're asking about. Okay. Thank you. Any other comments, Mr. William? I I just want to say if if you haven't had the opportunity to observe the credit recovery program, you know, I have when I was actively teaching and it's really something to observe. uh as a former athletic director, I'd go into that program and and check on kids that were, you know, trying to uh recover. Uh so, it's really something to see. So, I recommend that if you haven't seen it, take advantage of it. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. And I just want to acknowledge the reorg that you did last year to put Mr. Land in with um Dr. Jones because
115I've heard principles really talk about the help and support that you've given them to really look at their data in a different way and really try to make differences. So, I think that reorg really benefited um our high schools and I I see Miss Caster in the back nodding her head. So, um thank you for the work that you're doing with our with our high schools. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next on the agenda is the update on the cell phone pilot. And for that, I call Miss Charlie Green, Miss Caster, Mr. Carney, Miss Somerville, and Miss Basilo. [Music] Do we need one more? Thank you. All right. Okay. All right. Well, good evening, Chair Licer, Vice Chair Harvey, Superintendent Rogers, members of the board of education. I am joined tonight
116I've got by some incredible colleagues, and I'd like to introduce them. I have with me principles Caster and Carney, who will talk about their individual school experiences. I have with us our director of um health services, Deb Somerville, who will talk about some work that she's done as it relates to our development of a systemwide cell phone policy and plan. and then certainly our PTA partner, Miss Ramona Basilio. So, we are pleased tonight to provide an update on our cell phone pilot and to share with you some plans for next year. And if we could go to the next slide, someone has that. Thank you. So, the slide before you just provides a little bit of context where we've been. Um, as you recall, we came to you uh at the beginning of the year
117to say that we wanted to put in place a pilot program based on a growing concern we had about students, student distractions in school that we felt were impacting not only their academic achievement but also their social emotional well-being. We weren't alone in this concern. We see that our lawmakers at the state level have been discussing this and in fact have passed legislation which actually requires every system in the state to have a cell phone policy. We're very pleased that we are ahead of the curve with this because we had already begun piloting a cell phone uh pilot in our system. Our goal was to reduce distractions for students by separating students from their phones, by making sure that their phones were nearby so that they certainly knew that they were safe, but that they
118were able to focus on what was happening in the classroom and engage with peers, engage with teachers, and make sure that they were learning and achieving at high levels. We reached out to a number of schools to see who would volunteer. We had 17 schools decide that they wanted to be part of the pilot. and our early deliverables. We came before you in December to share with you just some perceptions about how people felt about how they were doing and we're here now that we are at nearing the end of the year. We're not quite there yet, although graduation season is upon us to outline some key components of what will be the fall and it says on this side 2025 uh it should say 20 2025 2026 systemwide implementation plan. So, as we look
119forward to full-scale implementation, what are some lessons learned and what can families expect to see, family, students, all stakeholders expect to see in schools across BCPS? And so again, just to show you where we've been, um we when we left you last, we decided that the schools that were the 17 schools who were engaged in the pilot would continue their work and they have that we would onboard additional schools that we would collect some quantitative data recognizing fully that much of the data we shared with you in December December was qualitative data and perception data and then certainly to evaluate that data and plan for next year. So the experts are here with me who've been piloting these programs in their schools. They are going to share some of their quantitative data, some of what
120they found in terms of perception and overall climate and so that we are able to learn from them and plan for next year. Before we get to them, we certainly want to hear from our PTA partner, Miss Basilio, who'll talk about the role that families have to play as well as Miss Somerville, who'll talk a little bit about what this looks like across the nation as we try to work to make sure the students have what they need to be successful. So, I will turn it over at this time to Miss Basilio. And there should be a slide for her. Well, what a difference 18 months make. Um, I want to thank um the superintendent, Miss Charlie Green, um our partners here, and all of the schools participating in the pilot. In the spring of
1212023, um, we felt like everyone's hair was on fire. We had teachers complaining about students being respect disrespectful. We had parents anxious about students not having their phones. We have stu we had students literally fighting teachers to keep their phones. We had parents saying, "I can't do anything about this, so I need the schools to handle it." So, I'm I'm here to say and we're pleased to say the school system superintendent and the board is really trying to handle this. We um had a goal of trying to advocate for responsible cell phone use. A primary goal was also to connect with parents and to provide education opportunities to put it in plain English to help parents understand that we are not trying to take the students phone away from them for life. We just want
122to live and we just want to support BCPS's prime directive and that is to um prepare our students for college and careers and to focus on quality instruction and a positive climate. We believe that the cell phone distraction had interfered with that. So we wanted to as a PTA work with parents to understand that. So how do we do it? We had interviews and conversations with about a hundred parents um small group discussions, surveys, focus groups. Um you know what is the issue? Why is this a problem? And we have a variety of responses and some are included in the pilot study. I'm sure we also partnered with eight schools to help parents and students and teachers really have a visual and understand the impact of cell phone misuse, compulsive use and issues around cell
123phone but mainly around the distraction that it causes. So, we got together, parents, um, community partners, we got together and we sponsored screenagers and we were pleased, we're pleased to report that over 700 parents, students, and teachers attended those viewings. We had small groupoup discussions. Some of the discussions were pretty intense. And I'm just going to say we're really happy that we were able to do screenagers. Um, we reviewed about six documentation documentaries and that was the one that was the most impactful. And I just want to close with what two students said in one of the discussions. One student said, "This is my phone. It has everything that I want on it. Why?" And dad was there. Why would I have the phone if I can't use it when and where I want to
124use it? another student young man said to said to her, "Get over it. It's the policy." So, that's kind of where we are right now. Thank you. Okay. Good evening. Um, my name is Emily Caster. I'm the principal of Sparrow Point High School and I want to thank you for having me back. I was here in December. Um, so tonight I'm going to share a final update on our progress with the cell phone pilot program. I would like to share we were one of the eight schools for um screenagers and I echo everything that Miss Basilio said. It was a phenomenal program for our kids. We showed it to every student in health 910 and 112 and quite a few parents as well. So hoping we can bring that back next year. Uh, as I
125shared with you when I was here in December, our staff identified cell phones as really the most significant um, disruption to instruction and also to engagement teacher to student and student to student. So through the program, we really hope to work with our older students, our high schoolers to learn to balance balance those benefits with the need to res uh support that responsible digital use as they're going on to postsecary and career. So it's been nine months um and I'm pleased to share that yes, we actually have met those goals. I can say that with certainty. We have seen a significant improvement in cell phone responsible use from our students at the high school level. However, we have learned this is not going to be a quick fix and we have to make sure we
126are embracing the attitude of progress over perfection. Next slide. So, I'd like to share some of the lessons learned um since I was here last time. So, one of the um most important things that we've shifted to is talking about the why and realizing that that is equally as important as the policy itself. So, really widely sharing the negative impacts that we've already talked about, um some of those excessive use behaviors, the impulsive behaviors. Um, at my school, we used our advisory lessons, we used parent newsletters, we actually did a book study with our staff, um, which was really helpful to to talk about the why behind the policy. I would also share that having that staff buyin and really consistently communicating with with your staff is going to be incredibly important. like everything we
127do, it's going it's only going to be as effective as we are as being consistent with that um that policy. Also, being really specific, having um a schoolwide strategy that doesn't have a lot of gray area, making sure that kids really understand exactly what we're expecting of them. And um in all honesty, students will find ways to circumvent our policies. They will, especially at the high school level. And that's okay. we can expect that and when that happens we adapt we talk about it um and we just find ways to work through it. Um, additionally, we notice that our students may initially feel more anxious without their phones. And that's something that again we have to talk about, we have to name it, and we just have to work with the kids and the families
128on. Also, um, considering cell phone misuse as really its own behavior, separating that from other discipline that we may be working on in our schools. And as Miss Basilio said, partnering with caregivers, they agree with us. I have not worked with one parent this year that has not been supportive of what we are trying to do. Next slide. Oh, okay. Sorry. No worries. So, we um surveyed our staff since I was here last time. We administered a survey. Um and I'm pleased to share over 90% of our staff reported that we were making progress towards holding students accountable for behavioral expectations including cell phone responsible use. And at that point, just over half had said, "We have seen a marked improvement." Which was great news. I want to share some of the quotes from some
129of our teachers. Since students are off their phones in class, they are attending to instruction and making progress each day. Students are more receptive to listen and behave in the classroom. They care more about their grades and are held to a higher standard. No phones are by far the biggest change. It works well in my class with my students. Cell phone policy has been a godsend in general. I just love my interactions with students every day. And the last one, students are more productive during class time. Phone use has most definitely decreased. We also surveyed our kids just last month and they um answered some open-ended questions um some questions that allowed us to gather some data and I found some of this to be very interesting. So, at the at the start of marking
130period 4, they were offered this survey um to provide input, which I think is very important. Um what you'll see, and this is just a small snapshot, um without a cell phone policy, most of our students said they will check their phone between one and five times per class period. 17% of them said they would check their phone five or more times, just for each class period. They also report their primary activity after finishing an assignment or task early is to check their phone. So to me, this really supports the need for the schoolwide cell phone policy. They also had some interesting comments as teenagers do uh what they hoped would come out of this policy. So I'd like to share a few of those and these are the words of our students. More success
131in class for students who don't do their work because of phones. improvements in academic results, progress, decreased withdrawal symptoms from screen time addictions, better class engagement between peers, teachers, and students, students in the lesson, and actually talking to classmates instead of sitting on phones after class. So, thank you. And I'm uh pleased to turn it over to my colleague, Principal Adam Carney. Thank you. Hello, everybody. I'm Adam Carney. I'm the principal at Cockisville Middle School. And this is just who we are cuz I was not here last time. Um so um we are one of the most diverse schools in all of BCPS. Um and that is a lot of fun um in a lot of ways but it also makes us a great spot to do some get some data that spans across every
132demographic. Um you know so we are extremely happy to um provide that tonight and I want to thank you for having me. Um, we have, excuse me, we've been engaged in this conversation at Cockisville since right after COVID. Um, we dove right in when we came back and we were kind of a little bit of an early adopter on trying to prevent cell phones in schools. So, I want to start out by saying we are not currently a pilot school. Um, we put some things in place um, already before the pilot started. So, we wanted to continue what we were doing because it was working. Um, so we are we were kind of doing our own kind of thing before that. Um, and we'll be happy to kind of get in on that after. um
133this year's done. Um the biggest thing for us is in 2122 we came back to school and I sent out a survey to staff. I had about 10 things on it. What's the biggest problem at CMS? You know, you cannot get 80 teachers and staff members agree on anything except for this time we did. Number one, cell phones. Get rid of the cell phones. That was unanimously the number one problem they stated at the school. So our ILT over the summer, we went to work and we came up with something. We didn't know if it would work. We had no idea if it would work, but we gave it a shot. Um, and every teacher was ready to take it on. And it shows that when everybody in the building is behind something and ready
134to get on board, um, you can do a lot of really good stuff. Um, because we were able to really crack down on cell phones that first year to the point where it was absolutely amazing how little we saw them. Um, and what happens for us is every time a student has a phone out, all the teacher has to do is mark it, email the team leader. We keep a spreadsheet. So, we track every time a kid pulls their phone out at CMS. Now, do we miss a few? Absolutely. I'm sure we can't get all of them, but for the most part, we we're able to do that. And we mix in some consequences. Lunch detentions, required parent conferences. Um, and we've adjusted them in the last couple of years. And now we're down to
135like we we make them lock it up after, you know, a much shorter time period than we used to. But our goal is to change behavior at the middle school level. Um we don't want to necessarily tell them, "No, you can't use your phone. It's a bad thing." It's no, let's teach you how to use it responsibly. And when you're not when you're in your middle of your classroom, that's not responsible usage when teachers talk. And even if it, you know, is when your work is done. Um, so, um, this is a very unique opportunity for us and we take advantage of that, um, because we're now able to track data. Um, so I can put in a spreadsheet how many violations everybody has and that means I can look at your test scores, your
136GPA, and all of that academic impact on data because we track everyone and I have for the last couple of years. And I share this with all of our parents at fifth grade orientation night, at back to school night, as Miss Dominowski would know. Um, we want their we want their children uh we want them to know the impact on education on their children. And I will tell you most of our parents come to me and say, "I had no idea that this was such a serious problem. I want my child to have it because of safety, but I didn't realize that this was such causing such an issue that my my child's academics are are suffering." Um, as a parent myself, I'm I need to be cognizant of that as well. Um, so I
137present national data. I do research every summer just to try to present that. Um, and I also have our um, CMS data. So, I'm just going to share that really briefly with you right now. So, here's some national research data um, on cell phones. Um, I share this with parents. I put an infographic together. I give it out. Um, I like to make sure our families are educated because that's the only way we're going to solve this problem is working together as partners. It can't be the school is cracking down and the parents don't understand why. Um, so the parents need to understand like this is the negative impact. Um, as you can see, half of kids own a cell phone by the time they're age 11, which is about sixth grade. Um, and so
138when parents come in, their sixth graders are always like, "Everybody's got a cell phone but me." Not true. Only half of you have cell phones. And we make sure we hammer that home. So if you're standing strong on that cell phone debate, we can help you stand strong. Um, and most of our families do appreciate that because they get that pressure from their child. Everybody's got one. No, not in sixth grade. By eighth grade, yeah, they've all probably got one, but sixth grade about half. Um, average age of student joins social media is 14, which is good because 13 is the age you're supposed to join social media. So, anybody before that, not good. Um, but 28% of kids report being on it before age 13. Um, once they do join, however, 63% of teens
139said they use social media every day, and that's an increase in 18% from the last 10 from the study, same study 10 years ago. Um 53% is the amount of time they spend watching videos. 31% of their screen time is spent gaming. Yet only 32% of them read for pleasure once a month. So if you compare those numbers, it's easy to see what an impact we're having outside of school. And that's coming into school. Because if you're not reading for pleasure, I mean, I don't know about you guys, but when I was in school, my teacher told me all the time, the best way to move your SAT score and move your academic scores is to read a lot. Um so that's what I did and worked for me. Um, but if only 32% of
140our students are reading for pleasure once a month, that's a problem. Um, here's the other stat that usually gets everybody. Only 50% of middle school age parents check their child's phone. 50% according to this 2003 Common Sense Media study where teens and parents self-reported, only half actually check what's going on on their child's phone. So, that's a big one that I felt like needed to be brought to everybody's attention as well. Um, and teens average nine hours online. That is what they self-reported. That does not include homework. Um, I felt that was also interesting. Um, so what we do is we also make sure we send home in our newsletter every month a video that shows parents how to set your settings, how to make it so they can only contact you, how to block
141it during school hours, how to shut it down. We really try to partner with them and our kids who are at a high level of phone violations, we make sure when we sit down for that parent conference, they see those um so that they can do that. So now let's take it from the national level to our CMS level. Here is our data last year. Um and because we track every violation, like I said, we can provide you this data directly. This is actual Cockisville Middle School data. This is not some national vague data from somewhere nobody knows about. This is what we actually see. If you look, kids who didn't have any cell phone violations all year long, Denver got caught with their phone out once, had an average of a 3.37 GPA. You
142had it out just five times all year long, 2.58. Now, I know statistics, correlation, and causation are not always the same thing, but that's a pretty strong correlation to me. Um, look at your math course. Look at your math. your MAP u math and reading above 61st percentile look at our MCAP scores. I like to particularly address math because I know we've all been looking at math. I just want everybody to take a look because if you get distracted in math and you miss a step, guess what? You might miss an entire standard. So, that doesn't surprise me that there is such a large difference between if you are generally distracted versus if you're on task. Our GPA data from this year backs that up as well. And I put we do track lateness the
143same way. Um like Miss Caster was saying, we track it separate from a disciplinary thing. They're violations on a sheet and we have a different separate process for that. It is worse for you to be distracted by your cell phone than it is to show up late to class. And all research shows that the first 10 and the last 10 minutes of class are the most important for getting the objective and and making sure you wrap everything up. coming late to class isn't as bad as having your phone out. So, to me, that that's about as big a reason as any. Um, I will tell you that, you know, what we've been doing at CMS has had a really positive impact on our environment. Uh, I will also add that aside from just academic measures,
144behavior, we spend a lot less time dealing with social media drama in the middle of the day. doesn't mean we don't have to deal with it in the morning and in the afternoon, but in the middle of the day, we don't have kids meeting up to do things they shouldn't be doing in school. We don't have behavior issues stemming from kids on their phone messaging each other non-stop. Because we have to remember when a lot of us grew up, people pass notes, you said something, but you go home and it's done. Everybody gets to cool off overnight and come back. They are bombarded 24/7 and that will ramp up overnight rather than the other way around. And the same thing happens during the school day if we let them have their phones. And um in
145addition, the addition of social media to that and that's more of a high school thing based on the data, but like by eighth grade it becomes a really big deal. Um it's the wild west. There's no sheriff and it's very difficult for us to keep you know parentor's box shut once the students are on social media and they're engaging in behaviors on Snapchat and things like that. That cuts down during the school day as well and that's been a huge help for us as well. So hopefully this um data kind of illuminates the level of distraction that we're really looking at and this is in middle school. Um I can imagine by high school this would probably be even more significant. So all right. So as you can see our principles are engaged in this
146work and they have the data to show it. The climate in their schools certainly is impacted but we also see that our students are impacted in terms of their performance. And so we're very excited to be able to take these lessons learned and use those to inform what will be our systemwide plan for uh cell phone enforcement across the system. Our principles aren't alone. We have some other voices that we wanted to include. So I've got just a couple of comments here uh from the questionnaire that I just wanted to read to you so that you get a sense of what other principles who were either engaged in the pilot as either phase one school or phase 2 school what they have to say about their experience. Um the first quote, one significant positive in
147uh outcome of the cell phone pilot uh policy pilot was the high level of student compliance with minimal complications. When the policy was consistently enforced by staff, students responded positively and adhered to the expectations. This demonstrated that clear guidelines and unified enforcement, students are capable of meeting behavioral standards, contributing to a more focused and distraction-free learning environment. And so I'll allow you to read the other two. Just pointing out that these are the three key ingredients that you're going to see when we talk about what systemwide implementation looks like. The impact on grades, the impact on social emotional well-being, and the importance of consistency and communicating the why. You heard that from our principles. It bears out in the other survey data. And we think that it is an important part of anything that we
148decide to do as a system. And so as we look forward to next year, we have expectations that we are going to enforce at all of our secondary schools a cell phone um restriction policy. And one of the reasons why we're kind of playing around with the words is we've done a little bit of research and I know Miss Basilio has on our own attended a couple of webinars and sessions where the language is really important. When you're talking about a student policy and you're talking about getting people to come on board, it's important that it's not just punitive. So, it can't just be responsible use. What does that mean? What does that mean in terms of student language? Um, often away um separating students from their phones. This is language that we as adults
149use. But what we know from some of the work that all of us on this panel have done is that students need to see the student benefit to this. So really, we'd like to bring in the student voice to talk a little bit about how are we protecting their social emotional well-being? How are we empowering them to be better students? So really looking at positive studentfriendly language so that they feel that this isn't something that's being done to them, but something that actually protects them and helps them be better students and achieve more. And so we're working on what that sounds like. and I'm so grateful to Stacy Wade and a number of our student leaders who are going to be part of that effort to make certain that we hit it uh correctly. Um,
150one of the other things that we're looking to do is have a robust roll out that starts with summer training for our leaders. So, our summer training this summer will include clear consistent expectations are set for all of our stakeholders, including model lessons or not lessons, but model implementation plans created by our principles with learning uh that they've gotten from being part of the pilot or some of the early work that Principal Carney described so that a principal interested in implementation will benefit from the work that's already come forward. And then certainly FAQs that can be shared with families. Answering all of the what if questions we hear? What if students have a need for assisted technology, for example, how is that managed? Um, and what if there's an emergency? How do parents learn, you
151know, what's going on? And how do they hear from their child? And so we want to bring our communications team in to make certain that parents are aware of the multiple ways that they can get information from their child's school in case of emergency because we do know that everyone needs to be on board. You heard me say earlier explaining the why and really focusing on the benefit, the academic benefit, the social emotional benefit, the climate benefit, really leading with those things as opposed to all of the things you can't do. Um, we certainly know we don't get to the benefit if you are not sharing what our restrictions are, but we want to lead with all of those benefits. We want to plan for multiple ways to collect data throughout the year. Uh, one
152of the reasons that we asked Principal Carney to join us is because some of the early work that he had done with collecting data as it relates to the number of times students were uh, on their phones or distracted by their phones and the direct impact it had on their academic achievement. That's certainly something that we want to incorporate in a systemwide plan. We were also very interested in, you know, some of the learning that we heard from Principal Caster and that the cell phone has to be separate. It can't be something that's bundled into one of those check marks on focus. student was disruptive and had phone and did this and did that. We're losing the cell phone piece. So making sure that that is a category that we can track so we can
153see what the direct impact is and then certainly enforce the policies that are already in place but to do that consistent consistently. We do know that there are systems that did not have policies in place. We did one of the issues we had was with implementation and so certainly we think with a robust roll out we think with education for all stakeholders parents students staff members making certain that there are a number of things in place and so that people are aware of what's happening how to make sure that they can make suggestions about how to make things better that we will have a very strong policy uh next year and so the expectations at the school level if we do our work in the summer what you can expect at every school every secondary
154school in BCPS is that at the beginning of the school year, school leaders will proactively communicate what the policy is at their school. They will communicate what that plan looks like. They will hostformational sessions, perhaps a screening of screeners or something that that school uh community chooses in partnership with their PTA so everyone understands that this is something that we must do together. It's not something that the school can handle alone. It's not something that home can handle alone and it's not something that will work if individual classrooms inside a school building are doing something wildly different from what it is that we plan. And then certainly the team at a school would establish their clear plan, communicate that plan, and then recognize that it's not perfect. um that there are going to be times
155where students either circumvent or do something different and that it is something that we're going to have to be nimble with to make sure that we're constantly monitoring and thinking about how we can make it better. And so with that, that is where we are. Um we don't have the nitty-gritty details of what every plan will look like because we believe strongly that in order for it to be successful, it's got to be something that we do collaboratively. And so I'm grateful to Principal Caster who is leading a work group of principles who are developing what those model implementation plans will look like. I know it'll be informed by all of her colleagues. And I do also know that when we get the students engaged in this work as you start hearing communication in early
156summer, um it'll be crystal clear what the expectations are at every school. And so with that, that is where we are and that is what we expect for the roll out. I do want to thank um um director Somerville for being here. While she did not have a slide, she is definitely wellversed in all of this work and we wanted her here just in case you had any questions um from you know the clinical sense about what it is that the impact is on students um when they are engaged with their phones more than the people around them or the work that's going on. And so we are open to any questions. So, thank you very much for that very comprehensive presentation and more importantly the work that's been do that you've been doing all
157year long to get the results that you're getting. So, it's wonderful to hear directly from principles and how it's working in your schools. Are there any questions or comments from board members, Miss Dominowski? So, yes, thank you so much and um I fully well remember being in that auditorium listening to that presentation and being like Mr. Carney needs to come to the board and do this presentation for them. So, I'm really glad you were given the opportunity to do that because those that data is is is key. I mean, it's just you can't. So, anyway, my questions would be um is Mr. Carney and Miss Caster, are they going to be involved in that the summer trainings, especially when it comes to lessons learned and the data? Absolutely. Miss uh Caster is leading the work
158group and so she will be involved. Mr. Carney has not been directly asked yet, but I hope he can infer from his presence here that he will be. Um, I will share that Mr. Carney has presented to our principles uh before about the great work that's going on at his school and so certainly we would want him to be part of that. Okay, great. Thank you. Um, and then lastly, um, as far like when you're saying that some of these schools are just not enforcing this policy on a consistent basis, is there going to be accountability level moving forward with those schools that are consistently not, you know, enforcing these these policies? So I do know that our executive directors of schools are looking very closely at schoolwide data and this is directly linked to
159academic performance as well as climate and these are key measures for how successful our schools are. So it would have to be part of that conversation on any school supervisor revisit, what's going on, what's happening in terms of the climate, how are the students doing? Why or why not? And so there will be accountability absolutely for implementation. Thank you very much. Thank you Miss Pumprey. Thank you. Um, first just to reiterate Miss Damonowski's comments um about Principal Carney, just the presentation of that data is is just eyeopening. So I appreciate that and I also appreciate the way you discussed um consistency and how you collected the data that every classroom collected for every instance that they obviously saw. Um so thank you for that. My I have a question about um it was on slide
16017 where you talked about each school proactively communicating their plan. Um so my question is are we thinking and I know we don't have details yet but is the thought to be consistent across all schools with whatever is implemented or is it more of a school by school basis that we're thinking or you're not sure yet? So we are not sure but I can tell you what it is not. It is not on a school by school basis. Um we are looking to as part of the work group come up with a couple of models and so the expectation is across schools in BCPS we would have you know one two three models and I made up that number but I think I would rely on my principal colleagues to make adjustments but you know
161you should not see a great deal of variance in terms of high schools across all 26 high schools. What we are envisioning are a couple of models that people could use um that are you know most appropriate for their school. So we are looking for consistency. Thank you. Um I because I think part of our issue even from the beginning was not the policy itself off and away. It was more about implementation um inconsistency with implementation. Um a concern that we also heard from teachers some teachers was just um enforcement inconsistency and enforcement from classroom to classroom. And oftentimes it wasn't because the teacher just didn't want to enforce but because some classrooms weren't and some classrooms were it was inconsistent. And so they felt that when they were pushed to enforce the policy um
162and they had a good a good relationship with their students, they felt that they were breaking that relationship because so many students are so addicted to their phones. Um so any thoughts about how we were going to make sure that also the consistency goes from classroom to classroom and that teachers aren't felt like this is all put on them, but it's just schoolwide. This is what we're doing and everyone's doing it and there's no um there's no exception. And I I appreciate that and I we we have also heard that consistency is key and we think that that the approach we are looking at is a little bit different than perhaps schools have used in the past who either were not a part of the pilot or didn't benefit from some of the learning and
163that is if you approach it from a punitive and an an absolute accountability and oversight measure then you do end up with a great deal of variance. If you start with the why and why this is important and this is a climate issue and this is a student achievement issue then I think we are able to get a greater degree of buyin and that we've got all stakeholders who are on board and so that's something we heard loud and clear from our survey data and so our goal really is to begin with the why um as you know it has been said by a couple of people the data presented by both principal caster and carne is very compelling starting there and then saying as a school we commit too, you know, doing this work.
164It's very difficult then for an individual teacher to make a different decision or anyone to make a different decision when as a school we're committed to positive climate and student achievement. So, we're hoping that that approach will help. And remember, we're also looking to bring student leaders on board. Um and so we think that if we are working with our student leaders who are very much focused on the importance of their social emotional health and help them uh send that message and be partners in this work that we'll get a better result as well. And so those are our aspirations. Uh we will certainly be back here again to share with you where we are and if we need to make adjustments we will. But we're very excited about what we've learned and we think
165that the the approach of beginning with the why involving students and all stakeholders will yield better results than perhaps we've seen with implementation in the past. Thank you Miss Oh thank you Miss Hen. Thank you Madam Chair and thank you all for the presentation. I share my colleagues enthusiasm. The data are incredibly powerful and I also share the enthusiasm about this approach. I think it's different. I I'm encouraged by the results and I it's powerful. So, I'm I'm really glad to see the collaborative approach, the involvement of parents, families. I hope that continues. Um, regionally, I hope to see a regional roll out of this and involvement of of parents throughout the system. Um, as well, I I I really see this working. So, thank you for that. Um, my question for Miss Charlie Green
166is that no matter what method is chosen, I would imagine that taking this approach will require data collection and the enforcement of that that accountability that my colleagues have talked about um regardless of which which method is chosen. Is that a fair assumption? Absolutely. Absolutely. And in fact, I think what is most compelling is the data that is very specific um to you know the number of instances and the impact on academic achievement um the uh enforcement and the impact on climate. I think there are lots of ways to triangulate that data and we will be doing that and so without a question the accountability is key. Yes. And sh and sharing that why I think that's that's powerful and and what parent doesn't care about their their students achievement. So absolutely that's compelling. Thank
167you all. Thank you. We actually track that like a phone violation because it's hooked to your phone. Um same thing with like something like AirPods like if some kids hiding AirPods um under you know like under their hair or something that's also a phone violation for us because again what are they hooked to? So that just here for me but is there what your microphone Dr. So yeah, uh are they able to get the Apple Watch in any way in the classroom? Oh, they they will try to sneak um they'll be like, "Well, I wasn't on my phone. I was on my watch." But you know, you can kind of watch. Makes it a little obvious if you're like, you know, okay. Well, good luck with the program. Other so much with presentation. Thank you
168all of you, Miss Chica Kaloo. Thank you so much for your presentation. I think I was especially happy about the student group and I thought you were gay. That was one of my questions. You had me cross it off. So, thank you. And just even about explaining the why behind it cuz I think that is the one of the greatest barriers. But I had a question for Principal Carney. And so with Cockisville Middle School and you talked about teachers marking the violation on their paper. So with it being tracked centrally, does that mean that the teacher doesn't directly confront the student and take the phone? And if that is the case, have you seen any instances of this escalating into a bigger issue or bigger conflict? Actually, one of the advantages of the way we
169do it is they don't have to. They just let them know they got the violation, they email it in, they can get two, three a period if in theory they were. It's more about trying to change behavior. Um, so we'll catch them later with the consequences for that because it eliminates that confrontation because you know, I mean, as we've known and somebody said earlier, the confrontations between teachers and students with their phone, we try to cut that out um because that's a power struggle and you don't need you always lose when you get in a power struggle in the middle of a classroom um because you're losing instructional time either way. Um so we don't want that to happen. So that's one of the reasons we do that. I absolutely love that. Oh my goodness.
170And is that something that would be implemented systemwide, the tracking, like the teacher just tracking it and then it's communicated centrally for them to get the discipline? And that might be a question for Miss Charlie Green. And and that would actually be a question for our work group to be perfectly honest. That's one of the things that we would we would explore. you know, what are uh some ways that we can track the data and what is something that actually sounds great in theory, but perhaps in terms of the actual imple implementation, there's some hiccups. And so, we want to learn from our principles. We want to hear directly from them. And so, we're hoping that it is a lot of work. Yes. Um I'm not going to lie, it takes a lot of work
171and time and adult energy to track those down, give the like it takes a lot of work and a lot of schools may not, you know, want to set it up the way we've set it up. Um, so I mean it works for us because of what we have as a staff in place, but whether or not that would work for everybody. Yeah, thank you. Oh, I had a few more. Go ahead. Thank you. And Miss Charlin, in your presentation, you were talking about students who might need it for assist of technology. So, for those parents that might be watching, how are you protecting students from receiving disciplinary action if they use it for translation, medical needs, home obligations, or whatever the case may be? Well, I think one of the things we want to
172do is is speak with our principles directly. So, their sensitivity to that and I think that that many of the concerns that I've seen uh from parents related to that is the lack of differentiation or concern for students who have needs beyond the you know other compulsive need that a student might have to check their phone. And so, we want to uh recognize and there was a little box that said recognize the attachment uh students have to their phones. But I think we need to add to that recognize the need. This is a tool and you know many of our students um it is a valuable tool. It is an important tool and we need to educate our peers so other students know why they are using or or at least aware and then educate
173teachers as well and so that's going to be part of the roll out. Okay. So that is something that can like of course on a student by student basis but it would be on a student by student basis but there would be an awareness that you know we need to have this as a consideration and so that's one of the reasons why a one-sizefits-all doesn't work but I do think identifying those exceptions um is going to be important and so that's some of the work of the work group. Thank you. And for my I'm sorry I just wanted to note for everyone who is watching we're talking about documented concerns. Yes. sorry that yes that we would be analyzing on a case-by case basis making sure that the students safety was taken care was prioritized.
174Thank you Miss Hen. Thank you. Just a quick followup to Principal Carney's comments um and to Mr. Charlie Green as well. Would it be possible to look at BCPS's existing technology infrastructure in terms of providing a centralized tool for tracking? And maybe Principal Carney, you've thought of something that you said if this were only tweaked, this would enable us to do this more easily that perhaps this could be a centralized solution that would make it more I mean, we use an Excel sheet. I I don't know how else I would do it besides that. Um I I would be interested in maybe like I guess I would have to think about it. I mean, the Excel sheets been working for us, so I haven't really thought much further than that to be honest. But I
175I appreciate your efforts and and hear that it's laborious. So perhaps more principles would be receptive to the idea if we could um make it easier for them. Thank you Miss Booker Dwire or Miss Framp or somebody which one? Miss Framp. Okay, Miss Framp. And so my question was about middle school versus high school. So we heard from principal at high school and we heard from principal at middle school. Um, are the plans that different or are we looking at also with kind of as we roll this out kind of taking different approaches for the middle school versus a high school? I believe so. I think there are some key differences. So, at the high school, we're preparing them for adulthood. And the middle school is doing that as well. They're preparing our students for
176high school. So, we're really looking at responsible use, but also reasonable use. So at our school, we do offer students some cell phone breaks, brain breaks throughout a 90minute class. That's very reasonable for a teenager. We cannot expect them to not have any access certainly throughout the day, even in that that 90minute class period. So we found a lot of success with that. That may be less appropriate developmentally for a middle schooler. Um also just thinking about preparing our students for college, for the world of work. um for different career paths and making sure we're really getting to that why that we've been talking about all evening and really helping them to understand what the expectations are going to be as they go into adulthood. Thank you. And then for the parents coming on board,
177I think that's always the right need that partnership. So is there a difference I guess again between high school and middle school? How do we bring parents on board to understand this is a good thing that we're doing? Sure. I can um speak to what we did this year. I did start talking about this in June and July with our family. So the newsletters home, the emails home. I think just making sure no one is surprised is really important at the high school. I think um parents have been super receptive. Like I said before, I have not talked with one parent or caregiver who has not been supportive of what we're trying to do. We have talked about the why. We really shifted. So at the start of the year, we were talking about the
178plan and the steps and the consequences and we really shift to shifted to why are we doing this and how are we hoping to help your child and I think parents were much more receptive to that piece. I would say that's about the same as middle school in that respect is the why is the most important thing and being able to share the data that we just have because we've been tracking it. But that's what opens parents eyes to, oh wow, this is worse than I thought. you know, this isn't some parents initially feel like it's not that big a deal. I need them to have it. What's the big deal if they check the phone a couple times during class, but when you show them that impact, usually it's like, oh, it is a
179big deal. So, and um so yes, we're looking at middle schools and high schools, but the one um research data slide 12 was talking about the 53% of the children owning the smartphone by age 11. So, I guess at some point, are we going to have to be looking at elementary school for this as well? So, no. Oh, I've been removed a long time. Okay, Miss Pooker. Well, thank you for this information. This is really, really helpful. And um Miss Caster and Mr. Carney, you are doing a fabulous job with this at your schools. This is just amazing. And Miss Caster, I know you presented to us before. So, Mr. Carney, I have a ton of questions for you. Uh, so the data that um that you're collecting, so the teachers, they're they're marking it
180off on the Excel sheet. Is there any type of appeal process for the student? Not really. I mean, you had your phone out. Um, I will I will say they get a sheet at lunch and that tell it circles like here's what violation you're on. This is your consequence, whether it's lunch, detention, whatever. um if they feel like I just dropped it and I was picking it up, they will tell the team leader, they will tell the teacher and it's up to the teacher if depending on what they saw. Um because at the end of the day, I didn't see it in the classroom and how it came out. So, it's up to them. Um so, that's kind of what I always tell kids. Did you have it out? Because are you supposed to have
181it out? If it fell on the floor, it wasn't supposed to be out, which means it wasn't secure very well. So, not really. No. and the students who um because the state is very interesting that you know that they're performing uh lower than the students who don't have their phones out. So were these students that you're identifying were they already um performing lower prior to collecting this data? It you know I would have to go look at my spreadsheet. It's pretty insane. But um I think uh before we started collecting it we weren't tracking their phone use. So odds are I would bet if they're distracted on their phone now, they were probably even worse before we even put this in place. Um because if you know teachers are looking for it right now and
182it is a policy and it is a rule in the school and we hammer it home over and over and maybe over too much again. But um if you were going to have that out in the first place when we're looking for it, odds are you had it out a lot more. So I would imagine their grades would probably be comparable if I were to look. I'd just like to make one quick comment about the middle school piece and the parent responses. Um, the policy provides for the phones being taken away after a series of violations and infractions. Um, in our interviews and conversations with parents, especially many of the middle school parents, the comment has been, "I have one time to come up there because you wouldn't put your phone away." Um, and so
183the consequence carried over at home. The next day the kids got their phone back um and had it put away and um we thought that that was a very effective deterrent as well. That's good. And then I know in high school they get the the brain breaks and they get to pull it out sometime. Um are there any brain breaks in middle school for it? So lunch is and that's kind of a our time my time thing. Um, if you can respect our time, we will. But it but they're very clear like if if it becomes a problem during the day where we're seeing too many phones out, we will take it away at lunch too and you just won't be able to have it at all. But we also like par like parents to
184know like if you you text them in the morning, you text them at their lunch or you text them right after the end of the day, they will be able to see what you're texting them. So that's another thing too because a lot of parents want to communicate, you know, is practice canceled or, you know, is there a meeting after school? Like things like that. So lunch is a good time for kids to be able to share that. And Miss Somerville, this is where my question is around uh the lunchtime use or like before or after, you know, like on the bus or does that impact the health and well-being of students um if they have these kind of strategic breaks during the day to use their phones is because I know lunch is a
185good time for them to kind of socially interact and to get together in person. Um and so yeah, if you could just speak to that a little bit. So what I would speak to is balance, you know. So we are not the cell phone banners from life. We're not saying that cell phones are the worst thing. They are wonderful tools when used appropriately. All about teaching children to experience cell phones being off in school and to learn to value that kind of social interaction. They're getting that that opportunity in the classroom. I think more and more students may choose to do that at lunch. Recognizing that at the same time there's days where probably most people in this room don't socialize at a lunchtime or at a break but get out their phone to handle
186things. So that's that can be appropriate in healthy use and we're really focused on that. Well, I love this approach that we're taking in Baltimore County. I think this is is going to long term I think we'll see the um improvements with this approach. So thank you all. Thank you. Any Miss Sleski? Yeah, just very quickly, I remember um Dr. Rogers in her address to graduating seniors last year put a plug in about balancing life, which was beautiful. I think I told you that last year and looking at this program, this has the potential to be the absolute best gift for students. So, thank you to everybody who's involved. Thank you. Thank you. Really quick, Miss Dominowski said, um, are we enlisting the student who said get over it to help because she sounds amazing.
187Okay, thank you. Miss Chica, do you have a last comment? Yes. One more question. Okay, go. Okay, so you mentioned how the form infractions are a separate checkbox in focus now. So given how subjective disciplinary might be especially for discretionary discipline especially for our underrepresentative groups like our black and brown students will we have that data disagregated for students across like just for gender race and if you're a multilingual learner special education so we know who's more susceptible to that infraction. So all of our behavioral and disciplinary data is disagregated so we can see what the impact of it is. But I do want to point out that we we have made adjustments in focus but as you've heard from um you know principal Carney that's not necessarily what the work group will decide is
188the best way to track implementation moving for uh moving forward. So but we would dis disagregate data absolutely for all discipline or for the cell phone for all including one of one of the reasons why a tool like focus is important is we are able to disagregate data. It looks like Dr. Rogers wants to add something. No, that that was it. No, but I saw you do this, so I figured you had something. Do you want to say something? Sure. Are we finish? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, um, thank you everyone for for your engagement. One one of the things that we wanted to, um, highlight is while Mr. Carney was not a part of the pilot. Um, two years ago, I think we invited him to speak to all the middle school
189principles because our data showed us that the top violators across the system were our middle school students. And so that's why two years ago, we invested in those lock boxes for the middle schools for students that have several um infractions. uh as you have heard this evening and throughout the year, consistency is key, but also that partnership along uh amongst all groups. And so what everyone who is watching can expect this upcoming year is that we're going to be making a concerted effort in all of our secondary schools that you don't see phones. As we go into schools to um observe lessons, we go for events. The feel of a building that is participating in this pilot formally or informally is completely different than a school that is not. You don't see students um asking
190for passes to go to the restroom and not even looking up because they're on their phones. They're in class speaking with each other. They're speaking to the teacher. And it makes that much of a difference that we know um that it is worth it for us to take this approach and really be thoughtful about implementation across uh team BCPS. It also is aligned with what the state is asking us to do. Um there's a requirement for a policy which we had but um it's really the implementation that we're going to focus on. And so I really um appreciate the feedback that has provided. Excel spreadsheets are a lot of work, but we are looking at, you know, the costs versus the benefits. And so really, the principles will continue to inform what our next steps
191need to be so we can help our students. But anything and everything that people can do to help educate people on the why, the broader community, the why we need to put our cell phones down, um even though they are critically important tools, uh is truly helpful to the work that we're trying to do to advance um the academic progress of all of our students in team BCPS. So I wanted to thank the whole team that is here but also thank everyone um all board members at the DEAS for everything that you have done and uh other opportunities that you have to uh you know uh work with stakeholders about the importance of moving this forward. Thank you. Thank you for being here so late in the evening too. The next item on the agenda
192is board committee updates and we'll start with the audit committee that we had audit committee. Okay, Miss Goldber, if you could pull up my slide deck. No, I'm just kidding. So, we had an audit committee meeting on May 13th. Uh, Miss Bar and her team, they shared the employee benefits audit report and the objective of this audit was to assess the eligibility of active employees and their dependents for enrolled benefits. Internal audit found no reportable issues to the benefits eligibility process for active employees and their dependents. Our next audit committee meeting is June 17th at 4:30 p.m. Thank you. I skipped ahead, but that's okay. That the next item was supposed to be information which includes the meeting minutes from March That's a lot of M's. the meeting minutes from the March 24th Southeast Area
193Education Advisory Council, the quarter 3 audit report which was presented at the April 22nd audit committee meeting and the revised superintendence rule 5140. Now back to our committee updates and building and contracts, Mr. Young. Thank you, Miss Lter. The next building and contracts meeting will be Monday, June 9th at 5:00 p.m. Thank you. um curriculum committee. We met last week on the 15th and our next meeting will be June 12th at 4:30 p.m. And then Miss Fang has our equity committee. The committee met uh May 8th and the topic of discussion was the national board uh certified teachers looking at increasing numbers and um looking at the ways to support teachers in enrolling and supporting the teachers while they're doing the work working towards certification. So we currently have 162 and kudos that we have
194373 that are expected to um complete um the certification. So that's more than doubling um the numbers that we have. Um teachers that have the certification have higher outcomes for their students. So it's a benefit to all of our students as well. Thursday, May 22nd is the next equity committee meeting with the equity advisory council. We are going to have a student panel and the student panel will share their experiences as well as their ideas and suggestions. Thank you. Thank you. Legislative and governmental relations, Miss Booker Dwire. Um, there are no updates for this committee. We had our last meeting on April 30th and there are no upcoming meetings scheduled. Thank you. And then policy review committee. I don't know, Miss Pumprey or Miss Harvey. Miss Pumprey. Yes. Um our last meeting was on May
19512th. We discussed policy 5210 grading and reporting 5440 telealth services 5550 student conduct and 8270 duties responsibilities and board committees. We discussed specifically 5550 in depth all in depth but we had um a a long discussion on 5550 because we need to try to approve approve this policy um soon so that uh the the information can go in the student handbook for next school year. We did have on our agenda discussion about a community schools policy that was postponed until the next next meeting in order to adjust for time. Um and we were provided with the committee meeting dates for next year and our next policy review committee is meeting is scheduled for June 6th at 4:30. Thank you, Miss Pumprey. The next item is um any consideration for agenda items before I ask for
196board members who have any. I just want to follow up. Last time um Mr. McMillian asked about delayed start times. staff is looking into um that topic and then we'll report back when they have more information for us. Are there any board members that have um an agenda item? Mr. McMillian, I want to expand on that just a little bit. We received an email. We received an email on Thursday, May 15th talking about a free webinar. It's solving the school bus puzzle. Smart transportation solutions for healthier start times. So, the webinar is on Thursday, May 29th at 1 12:30. So, it's a free thing if you're interested in getting a jump start on it. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Um Miski, did you have your hand up? I did. Thank you. Um I have two
197items. Um number one um in light of the um employee and community concerns regarding special ed speech uh speech and language and school psychologists um I think looking into both a case load cap and a performance audit um is something worth considering and then of course a response to the community. And then my second item is I do want to make a motion um to resin the censure of Maggie Dominowski. Thank you. Is there a second for that motion? Second, Miss Hen. Is there any discussion? Do you want to speak to your motion, Miss Stleski? Sure. Um, just in reflection with the time that has passed, I'm just considering kind of course what's best for the board. It's it is really important that we work collaboratively and in unity and you know, I personally feel
198that she has conducted herself with the utmost respect. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody other further discussion? May I have a We had a second, right? May I have a roll call vote, please? Miss Stleski? Yes. Dr. Seavoy? Mr. McMillian? Yes. Miss Pumphrey? Yes. Mr. Young? No. Miss Dominowski? Yes. Miss Hen? Yes. Miss Fong? No. Miss Booker Dwire? No. Miss Harvey? No. Miss Chica Kulu. No. Miss Licter. No. Favor is five. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other um agenda items from board members? Hearing none. Um our next board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 10th, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. The meeting is now adjourned. Thank you.