Good afternoon and welcome to the July 10th, 2025 board meeting. Welcome to my fellow board members. All the M.C.P.S. Staff, community members and people who are joining us online. So first, let's begin by
standing up for the Pledge of Allegiance. The flag is in the back. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Please be seated. Yes. We will have two board members joining us online later. And here I first asked my fellow
board members to introduce themselves to establish a quorum. I want to start with our student members of the board, and today is her first meeting. Let's give her a round of applause. Thank you. Julie
Anumolu, 48, student member of the board and beyond. Excited to be here today at my first meeting. Good afternoon. Buenas tardes. Carla Silvestre, school board member at large and I am still excited to be here with
you. Good afternoon. Welcome. Grace Rivera oven representing district one. Good afternoon, Brenda Wolff, district five. And welcome, Minerva. Good afternoon, Laura Stewart. I'm
representing district four and I'm getting over a little virus. So that's why I have the mask. Thank you. Good afternoon, Julie Yang, district three. So once again welcome. Before we go to adopt agenda I would like to
give a little bit background information. Moving into the new school year. Our board meetings have a new format. We continue to have board business meeting every month. But in the months that we have two board meetings, we are putting one meeting as a
rk session that will focus on talking a lot about going through presentation for us to understand the system better, and another meeting we will focus more heavily on action items for the board to conduct.
Now, both meetings welcome public comment that stay the same. So with that background information, can we can we have a motion to approve the agenda
for today? Move approval. Second there's a motion. Second okay. So a motion and two seconds. All in favor please raise your hand. That's unanimous with those present. Thank you very much
everyone. And then next we will go to. 2.2 is future closed session resolution report of previous closed sessions. Is there a motion to approve item
2.2 Future of future closed session resolution and 2.3 report of previous closed session in block. So moved. Second, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, raise your hand. Thank you everyone. That's
unanimous. With those present and I. Doctor Taylor, this is the full boardroom. Yes. Thank you, Madam President. Our viewing public from home. It might be hard to see, but it must be summer because the boardroom is packed with a lot
of folks for consideration for board appointment today. And I'm thrilled to bring forward an outstanding slate of excellent leaders for the board's consideration today. When I call your name, if you could please stand, I'm going to read some wonderful things about you
before the vote. Board votes on your appointment first for consideration for the position of Deputy Chief of Transportation is Mr. Michael Lewis. And it is customary to
give the applause after somebody is appointed. But clearly we're bringing forward an outstanding candidate for consideration for this deputy chief role. Joining him today are his parents and his chosen family, Jason, Nathan
and Christopher. Mr. Lewis has been employed with Montgomery County Public Schools for 13 years. He started as a bus operator, a bus route supervisor, a transportation cluster manager, an operations manager, a supervisor, an
executive director and assistant director, and most recently as the acting director in the Department of Transportation. Mr. Lewis is honored to step into the role of Deputy Chief of Transportation, where he will lead the newly established Division of Transportation
Services and usher in a new era of innovation and excellence, ensuring safe, reliable and equitable access to education for more than 100,000 bus riders and M.C.P.S. Every day. Is there
a motion so moved? Second? Okay, that's a motion. And a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Welcome, Miss Montoya online.
Congratulations, Mr. Lewis. Thank you. Next for consideration is Mr. Norman L Coleman for the position of director in the Department of Student Conduct and Appeals and
the Division of Equity and Organizational Development. Joining him today is his wife, Monique, sons, Jonah and Joseph, and his mother in law, Gina Stevenson, a current M.c.p.s employee. Doctor Coleman has been employed with M.c.p.s for 22 years as a teacher, assistant
principal, principal intern and most recently as the principal at Francis Scott Key Middle School. Shout outs to his mother, Sara Coleman, and sister Crystal coffee, both retired educators, and to his family and friends who are watching online.
Is there a motion so moved? Second, all in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Congratulations. Next
for consideration is Miss Shannon Pettiford for the position of director in the Department of Management and Budget, in the Division of Financial Oversight. Miss Patty foot has been employed with M.c.p.s. For two years as a director in in and the board
senior analyst in the Board of education's office. Prior to her current role, miss Patty worked in the private sector and in educational field, specializing in grants and financial operations. She looks forward to joining the Department of Management and Budget to support
the budget development process. Shout outs to her mother, Carol, and sisters who are watching online. Is there a motion to confirm so moved. Second that okay, all in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous.
Congratulations. And it's my pleasure to welcome Mr. John Ander. Who is the gentleman in the blue shirt who is joining us online for the position of director in the Department of Facilities Operations. Mr. Ander
brings more than 20 years of facilities and maintenance experience in managerial and administrative roles in education and in the private sector. He is incredibly excited about this opportunity and eager to start on the leadership vision for M.c.p.s. Shout outs
to his wife Marion, who support him unwaveringly. I can see her in the background there. Okay, right. Is there a motion to confirm? So moved I second that
okay, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Congratulations. Next for the board's consideration is
Miss Sarah E Diehl for the position of executive director in the Division of Human Resources and Talent Management. Miss Diehl brings to M.c.p.s more than 15 years of experience in talent management. She is thrilled to be joining M.C.P.S. To advance the talent, strategy
and operational effectiveness of our human resources in service to our staff and students. Shout outs to her friends and family who are cheering her on today, including her mom in California and her partner Robert in North Carolina. A motion to confirm so
moved. Second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Congratulations. Got a familiar M.C.P.S. Face. Next
for consideration, doctor Lakisha Lashley for the position of director of the George B Thomas Senior Learning Academy. Joining joining Doctor Lashley today is her husband, her two
sons, Logan and Brandon, and her sister, Hazel Stevenson. Cousin doctor LaToya Williams and her mentor, Doctor Mira Smith. Doctor Lashley has been employed with M.C.P.S. For 27 years as a teacher, resource teacher, principal, intern, assistant
principal, and most recently as the principal at Fairland Elementary School. She looks forward to joining the Division of Teaching and Learning and the Board of Directors of the George B Thomas Senior Learning Academy. Shout outs to her family and friends who are
watching online from Delaware and outwards in Maryland. So moved. Second, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's
unanimous. Congratulations. Next for consideration is Mrs. Katie Ramadi for the position of executive director and the Division of Safety and Emergency Management. Joining her today is her husband, Roy, and her son,
Braden. Mrs. Ramadi has been employed with M.C.P.S. For 25 years as a teacher, staff development teacher, acting assistant principal, assistant principal and most recently as a coordinator in the Division of Safety and Emergency Management. She looks forward to continuing her work with her wonderful
team, many of whom are present in the back. Just checking shout outs to her son, Ryland and to Mrs. Edith Lee, who are also watching. So moved. Second, there's a motion and a second.
All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Congratulations. I'm pleased to introduce Mrs. Emerald J. Becker
for the position of supervisor of Central records and reporting in the Department of Shared Accountability in the Division of Equity and Organizational Development. Joining her today is her husband, Robert Weinstein. Daughters, Julia Jules Weinstein and her mother
in law, Jerry Nokes. Mrs. Becker brings to M.C.P.S. Experience and record retention and reporting in the educational field. Mrs. Becker is excited to join the team M.C.P.S. To serve the community that she lives in, and support M.c.p.s students and
families and schools through great records management. Shout outs to her brother, Abe Becker, who is watching online. So moved. Second, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. And
that's unanimous. Congratulations. I'm very excited, Madam President, because now we get to talk about principal placements. And this, of course, is of great community interest in our, our our county.
And first for consideration is Mr. Ahmed Adelakun for the. Mr. Adelakun is up for consideration as principal of James Hubert Blake High School. Joining him
today is his wife, Doctor Sherry Adelakun, and his sons, Mookie. Excuse me, Makai and Elijah. Mr. Adelakun has been employed with M.C.P.S. For 13 years as a special education teacher,
special education resource teacher, assistant school administrator, assistant principal, acting principal, and most recently as the principal at Benjamin Banneker Middle School. Shout outs to his sister Lola and Faye, sisters, plural,
Lola and Faye, his parents, and to his mentors Doctor Sean Robinson, Miss Jewell Sanders, and Miss Kimberly Bolden. Multiple applause. Yeah. So
moved second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's. Oh, okay. So that's unanimous with those present. Congratulations. There's a small
delay. So just wait one more second. I see my hand. Yeah. Sometimes the internet is not at our speed. That's right. Next for consideration by the board is Doctor Joseph D Bostick Jr for the position of principal at
Thomas Wooton High School. Doctor Bostick has been employed with M.c.p.s for nine years as a teacher, team leader, content specialist, assistant school administrator, assistant principal and most recently as the acting principal at Thomas
Wooton High School. He looks forward to continuing building strong relationships with students, staff, parents and the community members within the Thomas Wooton community. And I got to tell you, I'm disappointed that this wasn't in his printed bio. He is also a former district wide teacher of
the year for M.c.p.s. Yes, that's right, shout outs to his family who are watching online. So move. Second, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. With those
present. Congratulations. Next for the board's consideration is Mrs. Edith you Lee, for the for the position of principal at Whetstone Elementary School. Joining her today is her mother.
Jung Young sook. Her sisters Hester and Oriana. Her brother Darren, and her son Winston Lee. Mrs. Lee has been employed with MCPs for 18 years as a teacher, resource teacher, assistant principal and most recently as a
principal intern at Argyle Middle School. She looks forward to joining the Whetstone community and building strong relationships as an inclusive learning environment where every student can thrive and achieve at a high level. Shout outs to her husband Mark, her daughters
Eleanor and Vivian, and her son Walter, who are cheering her on from South Korea. So moved. Second, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, raise your
hand. Miss Montoya. I think she's over there. Yeah. All right, it's up. It was frozen. It's up with those present. Congratulations. Next for the
board's consideration is Mrs. Monica G. Kellner for the position of principal at Twinbrook Elementary School. Joining her today is her husband, Greg, her children, Nate and Maddie, and her parents, Pam and Jim Grant. Mrs. Kellner has been employed with
M.C.P.S. For 20 years as a teacher focused teacher, resource teacher, staff development teacher, assistant school administrator, assistant principal, principal intern, and most recently as the acting Principal at Twinbrook Elementary School. She looks forward to serving the continuing to serve the
Twinbrook community as they work together to support student success so that they can all achieve at a high level, shout outs to her family and friends who are watching virtually, including Mrs. Sean Robinson, Mrs. April and Doctor Elena
Murray. So moved. Second, that's a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. With those present. For our last
recommended appointment for this evening, I'm pleased to introduce Mrs. Stacey L Haynes for the position of principal at Stephen Knolls School. Joining her today is her husband, Terry. Mrs. Haynes has been employed
with MCPs for 25 years as a special education teacher, staff development teacher, assistant principal and most recently as coordinator in the Department of Special Education Services. She looks forward to joining the Stephen Noles community in this new leadership capacity. Shout
outs to her supportive family who are watching online. So move. Second, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's
unanimous. With those present. Congratulations to all of you. We look forward to your great success within our M.c.p.s
system. Thank you. That's now. We'll take a minute. So we settle.
She's over there. Is that right? No, he's a good guy. Do a good job. Can he pick the right person to step up and support
him? Okay. He's he's all. So basically. What? What to tell us what? You know what that might
be true, but. It's always. He's a nice guy, but he's a hot mess.
No, no I agree I. Yeah. And I would just say that he's not ready. Yeah yeah. This is the
resolution. Okay. We just want to give a minute for them to clear the room.
We were giving it a minute as there are a lot of excitement in the room. And we typically have a few appointments today we have 13. So this is summer months. We're getting ready for the school year. So thank you for
your patience. So next on the item is previous new Business. And I will begin by asking our Vice President, Rivera-Oven to preside over this item. Thank you. President Yang. At the
Board's June 10th, 2025 meeting, a new business resolution regarding local preference for procurement contracts was presented for the board's consideration as at the June 2425 meeting, a motion and a second were received to table
consideration of this resolution until today's meeting. Is there any additional discussion on this item prior to a vote? Thank you, Mr. Rivera. Since our last welcome to board member. Natalie
Zimmerman online. Since our last board meeting, I received feedback from our colleagues and Miss Wolff has suggestions of language. And prior to last board meeting, Miss Stewart has
suggestions of including Maryland business. Also in Maryland in the resolution. So the portion you see in green where for one paragraph that's including business in in
Maryland, in Maryland and the portion in the next resort say will report to the board the result of the review and options for the board's consideration. So, Miss Wolff added, for consideration for the board's
consideration, it's not so for implementation. It's just for consideration. What this is, is that we all recognize, I think all of us do recognize we are at a very unusual times that never
had been before. More important to strengthen our local economy. And we are emerging from. Maryland's uncertain times and the business in Maryland and in
Montgomery County need our support. Marin County government has already has a local preference policy. The state of Maryland is currently studying the benefit of one. So it is time for us. And what this
resolution recommends is for the school system to review and learn and explore options and study all the possible options that that are out there so that we can for the board to
consider. So this is resolution is just doing that. It asks the superintendent to review the procurement practices from other agencies and develop some options for board's consideration. It's a signal that we are not only open for
business, we are open for business, open to business. So thank you, Miss Wolf, and thank you, Miss Stewart, for your feedback. This is a collective process. So you move to amend
the document. So present Yang. Yes. So I moved to amend this to include the language is for board's consideration. Okay. That's my motion. Thank you. President Yang, is there a motion to amend the previous
resolution? Is there a second? Second? Who said that? Oh, there's a second by Miss Stewart. There is a motion and a second. Is there any discussion specific to the motion to amend? A separate vote will be taken on
the merits. Once a motion to amend is approved, is there? Miss Montoya? Sorry. My hand is to address the merits. Okay, so I'll refrain until we do the vote on the amendment. Okay, so
there's no additional discussion. There's a motion a second to amend the previous resolution. All those in favor, please raise your hand. That is unanimous. That passes. Thank you. Now, is there a motion to
adopt the resolution as amended so I can move it? Yes. So move because I'm not used to it. Right. So move. Is there a okay. Is there a second, second second by Miss Stewart. There is a
motion and a second. Is there any additional discussion, Miss Montoya? Thank you. We were in receipt. So at the last board meeting there were several of us that had questions in relation
to various parts of the amendment. And so we were in then receipt of answers to those questions. I did ask those to be posted on the public portion so that the community can see them, since they were asked in the open meeting. And so I want to make sure that we address those
points, because I think there was some important information that came out there that needs to be considered. So what we learned in response to my question was, what, if any, other preferences does M.C.P.S. Have already in place for procurement? And the answer
received was that there are no preferences for procurement of goods or services, and that the Department of Procurement follows annotated code. Maryland Education Article five 112. And when we look at that article, what we see is, is that in
section article five 112 friends de close friends open friends, two close friends that actually specific to Montgomery County that Montgomery County Board of Education was required to establish a minority business utilization program to
facilitate the participation of responsible certified minority business enterprises in contracts awarded by the Board of Education in accordance with the competitive bidding process, a bidding procedures. So it's not clear to me if we have implemented that portion yet.
Maybe that's something we just need to look into as well. But the best I can tell from this information is that if any current preferences, it would be in alignment with this subsection D two. I bring that up because I think it's important to look at this not
just in the context of what does the state need, or the economy or the or the county, but what is best for Montgomery County Public Schools in that context? When we look at further, the another question that was asked
was about data regarding how we might expect this to impact the cost of doing business for Montgomery County Public Schools. Right. Budget is something we're always dealing with. We're always trying to find ways to maximize our dollars, to minimize waste, so that we can make sure that as
much money as possible goes into the schools. And so what we learned from that question was that Montgomery County Public Schools already works with local Montgomery County and Maryland businesses, and I think that we can attest to that from looking
at the vendors on our consent items and other items that come before the board to pass those contracts. There's always places from Montgomery County and maybe other counties within Maryland, or maybe just across the bridge in Virginia. And so we see evidence that we're already
doing these things, even without requiring a formal processes or additional staffing, which I'll get to in a moment. The other information that we received is that kind of anecdotally, what has been found is that when
Montgomery County Public Schools engages with smaller companies or smaller local businesses, that there's often what was termed as a ramp up of service, where they are charging more and bidding or submitting offers that are higher. And so then
what happens is if we were to entertain those contracts, we might actually be paying more than we would if we entertained a contract with a vendor from another location. And I think that becomes concerning to me because, again, our dollars are always so stretched, and we
actually expect that to become even more challenging because of some of the things happening on the federal level that will then trickle down to us at the state and the county. The information also indicated that in looking into the way that others have done this, for example, the Montgomery County government,
that they started with a disparity study. So again, that's another cost of having to issue an RFP, hire a vendor, pay them to do this study in addition to if we were to do it internally, we also then have time and resources as well as
cost, because we're paying staff to do that when they might be doing something else. Additionally, the information we received was that these types of programs are often require more staffing and more offices because they have to be handled
independently from procurement. It might not be reasonable to think our current procurement setup staffing setup would be able to just absorb this without hiring more staff and establishing more processes. So again, we're looking at cost
resources to launch, implement and run this program. So while I definitely support small businesses and local businesses, my father is a small business person actually, all my life, my job as a Board of Education
member is to look out for the best interest of the school system. So it's challenging for me to understand one. I think the need, because it seems like we're already doing this. And then also the additional cost that we would incur in trying to potentially implement something
like this, even if all we're doing right now is asking for like a review or a study, because those studies, you know, they do cost money. We can see from the boundary study vendors that we've secured. So I would just offer that information to my colleagues for consideration. Thank you. Thank you, Miss
Montoya. Miss Rivera. Yeah. Thank you. I think it's a very valid that we are always mindful as we are being forward looking and as we are being supported to all our community. It is our
responsibility to look at the costs. And I see that our chief financial officer is in the audience. Maybe she can highlight some of the shed some
light on this question. Thank you. Could you just identify yourself? Thank you. Sure. Good afternoon. Yvonne Alfonso Windsor Chief Financial Officer And thank you. Thank you
for bringing this, you know, to, to for us to look at and review. There are some costs associated obviously with implementing anything new. And we're going to have to look at, you know, things. But you know there's some ways, you know, that we can look to establish some local
preferences that might not be, you know, as that the resources might we might not need as many resources or, or to spend more money. We can look at local preferences for maybe bids over under 25,000, right under that
threshold that obviously that would not require board approval. And it's you know, it's the process would go a little bit faster for those, you know, local, local preferences. We can look at a small businesses, you know, within, you know, Montgomery County that might offer niche products or
niche services. And we could that could be funded through some of our grants. Right. A smaller grants that might need to be spent, you know, in a very timely manner and that could, you know, could help accelerate this process in a way, you know, so those are some ways that we
can start looking into this and figure out, you know, how we can, you know, support our local economy, build relationships with our small businesses, you know, if that's the route that that we want to explore. Thank you for that. Doctor Taylor, do you have anything to add? Yeah,
I think I think that there's a couple of things to add. The first one, which I think is an important question that Miss Montoya asked, was, oh my gosh, are we actually following what's in Comber? And, and are are we adhering to that. And yes, we, we do have a disadvantaged and
minority owned business program. And we tag our procurement as such. So the public can see that we are awarding business to minority owned and disadvantaged business owners. And so that is important. We are following as,
as was reported to the board and now to the to the public. We are following the procurement law as it's written and as it applies to Montgomery County, so that that that's an important thing to clear up. But yeah, this this introduces a world of
possibilities for us to look at. I will say as a, as a downside, it's, it's some sometimes disappointing that we have to be nudged as a school system to innovate and to look at new ways of doing things. And this, this
resolution asks us as a school system to look at what m be versus what is. So there are a number of things that are innovative practices and other jurisdictions that they accomplish a lot of these same goals to, to formulate
partnerships that with people that are invested in our school system, that are right here locally, that have their children in our school system, and encouraging them to be partners with us, not just as parents and as taxpayers, but also as business partners and helping us accomplish some of
our goals. So this introduces great opportunity for us. And if this resolution passes, we welcome it with open arms and look forward to bringing reports back to the board of some clever ideas that we could come up with. Thank you for that
willingness. I have a question. Sure. Doctor Taylor, I guess my question is to you that. This should already be part of your portfolio to be able to be looking at this anyway. So is
there a need for a resolution for you to do what you say you were going to do? Because one of the areas that we did discuss was procurement and how to improve procurement. So what I was hoping for was, you know, to see you've been on the job for a
year. So there was a lot going on. But this is one of the areas that I know. Yvonne has also been looking into. And I guess I just feel that we're jumping the gun with this resolution a little bit, because I think the
staff and yourself are already doing this, but if you're not, and if you need this resolution to do what you say you're going to do, that's a different story. Well, hopefully we don't need resolutions to do everything that we say we're going to do,
but for whatever it's worth, we have a very hard working procurement team. There's a lot of room for improvement and a lot of our operations and to not only make sure that we're operating in an efficient way, but that we're crossing all of our T's and dotting all of our
i's. Procurement is one of those things that that does need some attention and does does need some work. We are absolutely attentive to what needs to transpire in terms of following comar, whether or not we have
gone into the space of establishing a framework for local preference, even though we do business with local entities, we don't. Does this indicate to us the board's will for us to
explore and to nudge us to create that framework? It does. You know, I could make the argument that I'm not sure that any resolution is needed, but maybe a firm conversation. But this is also an opportunity for the board to make it known what
its preferences are and to and to hold us accountable as a school system to what its expectations are. So should the board decide that that that this is a priority, this becomes the system's priority. And we would
develop a framework and some ideas that we would bring back. As far as resolutions go, the workload as I'm interpreting it, is to bring back ideas of how we might versus saying, you must do. And I think that this is a
friendlier version to that and gives us some opportunities that we can bring back ideas for the board's consideration before you all adopt anything and say, this is what our policy is moving forward, any additional comments? Mrs. Wolff? Yeah, I want to thank you for that,
because my concern the last time and the reason we wanted to revise the wording a little, is that it it came across more as a directive to come back with something. And I think we were more interested in having you explore the possibilities. So
thank you for that. Is there any more comments, Miss Montoya? Miss Stewart also, Miss Stewart, sorry, I don't know who came first. We'll let Montoya go first. Okay. No, go ahead and let Miss Stewart first. I've already made one comment. Okay, Miss Stewart, look at that. This
is more in general about the procurement process. I don't believe we've had a review, at least since I've been on the board, because I know that there was some discussion on how to make sure that we're following
best practices. And this also includes to make sure we're actually getting the best vendors as well. And that that we're being fair about that. Even if there's a local
preference. So I'm looking forward to that in the future to have that review. If it's not in at the board meeting, then at the in the fiscal committee might be nice. Miss Montoya, thank you. I guess my
overarching question and concern is that if at least to a certain extent, we're already doing this, however informal it may be or whatnot, with all of the issues that need to be addressed in the school system, and we all
know there are many. Is this the best way that we want the system to use time, money, and resources? Right now? I always go back to Miss Silvestre's question because she's always said it. And so now I always think about it is what is the
need, right? What problem are we trying to fix? Do we actually even have a problem here? And I'm eager to hear from my colleagues because I want to know, you know, how do you feel? Do you feel like we have this problem such that then we need this? And I guess because it
however way we cut it, it it does take time, resources and money. That's just the reality. Miss Stewart. Well, actually, the one time I remember maybe
this coming up was one of the first board meetings that we attended. There was a contract that was given to a different state to support. I think some
of our Hispanic students, I just remember that specifically and wondering why, when we know we have a lot of these supports right here in the county. And so that's just one instance. I have no idea why that was chosen,
that company. But maybe this is a way just to have that check and balance to make sure we're using resources or educating our providers so they have a better
chance of providing a service. Thank you, Miss Stewart. Anyone else? Miss Yang? Yes. So I would like to say that the work is never ending. It's a huge school district. And then we always are
trying to improve in our work. And there are different departments that that have different roles in the school system. And as the board, we talk a lot. If you have watched
our work sessions, we talk a lot about academic performances, safety and security, but it's also our duty to review and understand how we are using our money and how we are engaging with our local community,
business community. Thank you. Okay. With that being said, Miss Montoya. Please. Thank you. No, I absolutely think that procurement and you know, these kind of like the back of the, of the business, right. The part that people, the community
sometimes doesn't see, it's absolutely essential for us to make sure that those are working properly and that those have the, for lack of a better phrase, investment. Also in making sure that those systems are tight. And so even with that, though, I think that there are spaces in the procurement
area that need to be addressed. For example, we had an emergency procurement item at the last meeting, and that helped to uncover some spaces where we needed to make sure things were in alignment. So it was wonderful. It was a great learning space for us to then realize we needed to do some
review and address that. And perhaps there may be other, you know, areas where we need to do that as well. And so even if we want to just talk about procurement, there's already some issues that need to be addressed. So again, I come back to the question of with the issues that already need to be
addressed, is this a priority of the board that this such that we then we're having a resolution to say, hey, put this at the top of the priority list, because that's effectively what we're doing. Thank you, Miss Montoya. There's any additional comments
from any of my other colleagues? Miss Zimmerman, I just want to make sure. Nope. Okay. We're all good. And my final comment, it from me would be that I feel
that if we are to tell Doctor Taylor, you know, to do something as a board of education, as a member, I would hope that he will do it. I don't think we need a resolution. So that is where my dilemma is. And so anyway, with that being said,
if there are no further comments, then. I'm going to take the vote. All those in favor of this resolution, please raise your hands. To be Mr. Miss
Wolff, miss Yang. Miss Silvestre, miss Urbana. That would be. And Miss Zimmerman. All those I got you, Natalie. All those against the resolution. Please raise your
hand. With that the resolution carries. And I'm done. And I'm gladly passing this back to Miss Yang. Thank you everyone. Thank you. We are going to we have audience here that has waited so
patiently. The next item is number five public comments and I thank you for your patience. I have some official verbiage that I need to read through. The next item on the agenda is public comment. What the board encourages public input on
policy, program and practices and will consider the comments received. It is not the board's practice doing its business meeting to respond to questions, provide comment, comment or take action on the issue raised. This is a public meeting, and the
board expects the conduct of all speakers and members of the audience to be within the bounds of proper etiquette. Inappropriate personal remarks, rude retorts, or other such behavior is out of order and will not be tolerated. Those who
demonstrate disruptive or disrespectful behavior during public comments may be asked to leave the room. In addition, public comment is not the proper avenue to address specific student or employee matters. Such matters should be directed
through the complaint or appeal process. Each speaker has two minutes to deliver comments. When your name is called, press the button and speak clearly into the microphone. A yellow light and a single B indicate you have 30s remaining. A red
light and repeating beats signal that time has expired. Once you have finished speaking, press the same button to turn off the microphone. Following the live testimony, audio and video testimony will be played. Actually, today we are all in
person, I believe. And then copies of your comments are posted online. All right. I'm going to call the first six because there are seven. We can only accommodate six at a time. So one of you will be special at
the end. Okay. So number four Jaden Herrera. I am. Gavin. Yao, Joshua Frank, Lucas Bennett and
Lindsay Bennett. We always love it when our students come to speak. Jaden, you may proceed. Good afternoon, board members and Superintendent Taylor. My name is Jaden Herrera. I'm a
rising eighth grader at Herbert Hoover Middle School. I graduated from Wayside Elementary, and I'm in the high school class of 2030. I'm here today because I care about my education and my future. I work hard in school and want to make the most of my high school experience. But the current
boundary study and academic program analysis proposals make that really hard for students like me. All four options would require me to attend Churchill for ninth grade and then transfer to Wooton and 10th. That means starting high school at one school and then starting over just one year later. For students my age, high school
already brings a lot of change and pressure. Switching schools after one year adds even more stress, confusion, and instability. It takes time to build relationships with teachers, counselors, coaches, and classmates. These connections aren't just important for academics. They also play a big role in
supporting students mental health and overall well-being. Changing schools midstream makes it more difficult to join clubs, sports, or leadership opportunities that often begin in ninth grade and build over time. Another big concern is distance. Churchill is less than two miles away from my neighborhood in falls, which one
is about two and a half times farther away? That means longer bus rides, more time in traffic, and less time for homework, activities and rest. Many of us currently walk or bike to Hoover, which shares a campus with Churchill. That would not be possible at Wooton. Churchill already feels like home. We go
there for school events, music concerts and sports games. Some of us even take classes there while still in middle school. We know the building. We know the people moving us. Mid-high school would isolate us from our friends, teachers and the school community we already feel part of. Rather than spreading small
new programs across many high schools, a better solution would be to make Crown High School a central mid county option for magnet and choice programs that would help fill the new building, reduce overcrowding elsewhere, and promote equity by giving more students access to high quality programs in a central location. This plan
supports stability, well-being, and long term success while letting kids like me stay connected to the schools we've grown up with. Thank you for your time and for listening. Thank you. Adrienne. Go ahead. Hello respected members of the
board. My name is Ariane and I'm in seventh grade at Hoover Middle School. I'm here today because I'm really worried about the boundary changes that might happen in 2020. I was in second grade and that was when everything shut down because of Covid. I spent a lot of time doing school from home staring
at a screen. It wasn't the same I got. I didn't get to make the kind of friends you normally make in elementary school, and it felt really lonely. I also don't think I learned as was I did, as I would have in a classroom. By the time I came back to school in person, I was already in fourth grade. It was
hard at first. I was behind on some stuff and I didn't really have close friends yet. But when I got to middle school, things started to get better. I worked really hard on my grades and got better at keeping up with school. And most importantly, I made finally good friends. My
friends mean a lot to me. We've built relationships, worked on group projects together, and cheered each other on in everything from sports and school stuff. We've made it through the hard parts of middle school together, but now I'm finding out that I might have to
leave most of them behind after ninth grade. If the boundary changes happen, I'll have to go to a totally different high school than the one my friends are going to. I'll have. I'll also have to leave behind any clubs, sports, or leadership roles I might get at the start
of high school. Just as I'm getting settled, it feels like the class of 2030 from Wayside Elementary already had a tough start. We've lost a lot of time during the pandemic and socially, and now it's like we have to go through it all over again, starting when everyone
else is settled into their friend groups and teams activities. I'm asking the board to please consider keeping Wayside at Churchill. That's where I've always thought I'd go. I've been going to Churchill football games since I was a little, was little. I've always dreamed of playing on that team.
One day that's where my siblings went. That's where my friends are planning to go. I don't want to lose all of that. We should not split up middle schools. Being a teenager is already hard. This is just going to make it hard. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Gavin. My name is Gavin Yao and I'm a
rising eighth grader at Herbert Hoover Middle School. I am part of the class of 2030 based on where I live within the Wayside Elementary School District. The four options in the initial school boundary study all have me attending Churchill for ninth grade and then transferring to Wuhan High School in 10th grade. I came to speak today to share
my concerns with you. I wanted to share my experience as an MCPs student. I attended three different elementary schools Stonemill, Wayside and Cold Spring, which made it hard to establish a close group of friends. One change was due to moving homes, and the other change was so that I could attend the CES program at Cold
Spring. The frequent change was challenging, and so after my time at Cold Spring, I really wanted some stability and returned to my home middle school at Hoover. Fortunately, my time at Hoover has provided me with that stability. I finally found a space to be my authentic self, and have met a great group of friends who
support me and make going to school fun and exciting. It gave me comfort to know that the friends I made in middle school would be with me throughout my high school years, too. I know that transitioning to a high school to high school will be a big change in my life, but the thought of having to start a new
high school twice will make it even harder to adjust, both socially and academically. I am extremely concerned about its impact on my mental health, as well as my fellow classmates that may be forced to go through this change as well. I hope you will reconsider forcing kids like me to attend two different high schools. I believe it will
be harmful for students in my grade, not only socially and academically, but also for our mental well-being. If I could stay in the same high school through my four years, it would help to provide stability and consistency with my support network of friends, academics,
athletics, and other extracurricular activities I plan to join in high school. This applies to all M.c.p.s students impacted by the four options. Well, really only one if you think about it. Thank you for listening and allowing me to share my thoughts. Thank you
Joshua. Press again. There you go. It's fine. Hello, my name is Joshua Frank and this fall I will be in fifth grade at Farmland Elementary School. I'm in competitive math and advanced
reading classes now. I want to be able to attend a school in my neighborhood with the academics. That will help keep me challenged and help me be successful after I graduate. Also, studies show going on a long bus ride every day can
negatively impact mental health, and it makes it hard to participate in extracurricular activities. For example, I am close to getting my black belt in karate, and if I had a long commute to and from school, kids doing activities like this,
including me, would not be able to continue doing them because of how much of our day we would be spending on a bus. Thank you for listening and considering the feelings of kids in our district. Thank you Lucas. Hi,
I'm Lucas, I am ten years old and I go to Farmland Elementary School. I am here to share my thoughts on the boundary study. I really don't want to travel far away. For school. Long bus
rides every day means waking up earlier, getting home later and having less time for homework, playing outside and being with my family. I also please don't break up our school cluster.
I've grown up with kids from the nearby school. We play sports, go to birthday parties, and do other activities together. We have built strong friendships that help us feel confident and safe. Please keep my community
together. Thank you. Lucas. Lynsey Bennett, Board of Education members I'm a parent of two children at Farmland Elementary, one of which is next to me, and I'm here to share a personal story that illustrates
the real impact of these decisions, not in data, but in the lives of children. My son is among the 13% of MCPs students with an IEP. He is a person that stutters and, not surprisingly, has faced bullying from peers
this year. But instead of retreating, he chose to educate. He has delivered a presentation on stuttering to every fourth grade class that's over 125 students, sharing facts and strategies to help them become allies. This act of
self-advocacy was only possible because of the peer to peer trust he's built at farmland. That foundation he's laid is now 125 strong. He's thriving as a leader among classmates, close friends and their families, all
who stand up when newcomer comments arise. That is what neighborhood, schools and community means to us. For him, for the thousands of M.c.p.s students with added challenges and for all of the children, including my daughter, who works very hard to build confidence
among peers during these formative years, starting over in unfamiliar settings would be detrimental to their educational and emotional development. That's why introducing introducing entirely new feeder schools into the WJ cluster, or worse, dispersing current
communities, risks more than logistical disruption. It can dismantle support systems that take years to build, especially during those vulnerable middle and high school years. That's why I'm advocating for three things today to keep feeder schools intact, prioritize
neighborhood schools, and in the next round of the border study, consider students from rapidly growing developments who will quickly fill our schools and naturally integrate into our community. Thank you, thank you. I'm going to call the last two,
but public comment to come forward. But thank you all for your comment. Last two is Sahel. Kataria and then is Tian Lan.
Please come forward. That's going to be a very high bar. All right. So Zahir, go ahead. Good afternoon, board members. My name is Sahar Kataria and I'm a
rising junior at Northwest High School. I'm here today to share some concerns about theent changes to the M.c.p.s grading policy, especially how will impact students mental health and overall well-being. When this policy was introduced, we were told it would affect students in grades six through nine, but with little warning. It now includes students up to
12th grade. That means people like me who built our schedules, GPAs and academic goals under one system are expected to adjust to a whole new model in the middle of high school. This isn't just a change, it's a disruption with real consequences. Not surprisingly, junior year is very challenging. Many of us are taking multiple
AP courses, working part time jobs and preparing for college apps plus SATs. Right now, this policy is pushing more stress onto max out students. We're not asking to be graded easily. We're asking to be traded fairly. This grading policy may also discourage students from taking harder courses just to
protect their GPA. That's not what a county with one of the highest AP IB enrollment rates in Maryland should look like. What's most concerning is how little support has been put in place to help us. The policy seems to assume that all students have easy access to counseling and mental health resources, but that's just not
the reality. I personally waited over three and a half weeks to meet with my counselor last school year over one scheduling change, and I know I'm not the only one. If students began to e their GPAs drop on transcript and no counselor support, that can take a serious toll on their mental health. With all respect to the superintendent and his beliefs,
the policy is simply detrimental, and it is unrealistic to believe that this will not have an impact on the incoming 11th and 12th graders. This change feels rushed. It feels like students were left out of the conversation, and it feels like we're being used to test out a policy that wasn't designed with our reality in
mind. I'm asking the board to reconsider. Let the new policy apply to incoming middle and high school students, and allow us to continue under the system we started in and make a strong commitment to increasing access to counseling and mental health support in every school. Please join your colleague, board member Grace Rivera-Oven, who has officially changed her
position over this policy and listened to the students that you serve. Thank you. Thank you, Tian Lan. Please go ahead. My name is Tian Lan. Oh yes, I started. My name is Tiana. I'm a parent of two kids at Travilah
and I want to thank M.c.p.s and the BOE for the great work you have been doing in the boundary study. It's certainly a very complex process with a lot of data to analyze, with a lot of factors to consider, but at the same time, there's also community perspective. There's a human perspective that should be given high priority. I know that
we have this online survey input, but the data does not show everything. And this already echoed in the comments by our students earlier today. And I want to say that share some information I have learned in the past few weeks. I've been working with parent volunteers with PTA members at Travilah. We have done extensive community
discussion. We have online chat groups with over 350 participants. We have three zoom sessions. We also have community flier campaign. We also have talked to a lot of neighbors, and we don't have time to share all the results. I have a lot of notes, a lot of reports that I
can share with the board with M.c.p.s later, but I want to just make a few quick points. First of all, many students are already facing post-Covid academic and mental health challenges combined with teacher turnovers. I don't have time to go into the details here, but I know that changing this school
assignment at this time will create new stress and create new disruptions to our students, and this will negatively impact our students well-being. And also, Travilah is the oldest in Wooton cluster. And we I talked with a lot of people from Toby Town, a historic African-American black
community, and I knocked on every door there with another parent. And we have learned that one parent, maybe I'll just cite the words of one lady, she said, my parents went to Wootton, I went to Wootton. Why changing it? So shout out to M.C.P.S. Shout out to Bowie to please keep traveling. Wootton. Let's
focus on the schools already having overcapacity issues and minimize the change to our community. Let's prioritize stability for our students and have guardrails for their development. And I also want to encourage the M.c.p.s to please consider the opening of Crown High School as a unique
opportunity to launch new education programs, education. Technology education programs given location that will help better serve our community. Thank you, thank you. That concludes the public comment,
and I want to open up the opportunity for my colleagues to see if they have questions and comments. Mr. First of all, I want to thank the students for coming out today. It's true you are a hard act to follow because
you really speak from experience and from your heart, and we hear that and appreciate your perspective. I do have a question about the grading policy. I've heard that there
were some technical issues, and I thought it would be good to go over that with the public. So it is actually not technically possible for us to operate two different grading systems in the same classroom. And by that
measure, at this time, we don't have the technical capability to split grades or to split classrooms and have two separate systems at the same school at the same time. So when we do make a change, as every school
system in America makes changes, we do have to do it. Sweepingly when we made this change to lower the expectations and adjust the grading policy down, that was done at one time across the, the, the secondary schools.
And so when we have to make a change back, we, we, we are in fact having to do it all at the same time as well. So it's not by cohort. It really would require us to operate two separate systems simultaneously
and require teachers to issue different grades for the same assignments, or different grades, for the same courses, for the same work simultaneously. And that is not something that we have the
capacity to do. Thank you for that. As brought to my attention, that maybe when the state assessments came in that those get rolled out by when
you're going to graduate. So you're saying that this is a different situation. Yeah. This this literally has to do with our actual grading systems and how we grade students. And having a bespoke calculation for
individual students in a specific classroom based on their grade level assignment or cohort is not within our capabilities at this time. I'm not saying that it's impossible. I'm not saying that that's not a future consideration. It's just not something that we can do at
the flip of a switch. Thank you for explaining, miss. Keyword. Not impossible. But I do want to say that I want to commend all the students for coming out. I mean, I remember testifying at this very board a few years ago, even upcoming up until this year
during my campaign. And it truly does make a difference. Your words are definitely heard, and it takes a lot, you know, especially for the parents to get you to come out here too. So thank you for that. And your words do matter, Miss Silvestri. Yes. Thank you for everyone that
came to testify about the boundary study. This is a process that is evolving and we are in the community engagement gathering phase. So we want to hear from you. So thank you for making the time to come out to testify on this issue. We are we
have options on the table and this community engagement process. Your input will help inform the next set of options that will be released later this fall. We will not make everyone happy, right? We have to make the best decision for the entire
school system. So we are listening to your testimony. We are reading the emails. We're getting feedback from the survey and we will, we hope to put out options that meet the needs of what we're hearing from the community, because we do. I
personally do believe that you as users, you're living it every day. You know the roads, you know the community. So your input is very, very valuable. And so I it is my hope that the next set of options will do its best to incorporate the feedback
that we are hearing from the community. But remember, we have to make decisions for the entire school system and so that that is a hard thing to do. But we will we will do our best. And we want to thank you so much for taking the time to testify here
today. Miss Rivera-Oven. Thank thank you so much. I'm sorry the Lucas and Joshua left because I really wanted to commend them for their for their testimony. And to the students who came to testify about the boundary
study. The decisions that we make are not easy, but we are a system of over 160,000 children. And I know sometimes that is hard to famine, but that's what we have to consider as well. And
it is not our intention to cause any mental health distress and so on. And trust me, as somebody who has lived, lived at the same address for the last 23 years, who has been redistricted three times through three different
high schools, I know how you feel, and I know the burden that that can take on friendships and that, you know, and in the community. So please know that at least some of the folks that you have on the Board of Education have your best interest at heart, but they are
definitely difficult decisions that, you know, at the end of the day, we will have to make. But with that being said, thank you for your testimony. We really appreciate it because we need your advocacy, and I hope that you come back and advocate on other issues as well. So to
the grading policy here, thank you so much for coming. You're one of the students of a group that I had met with to talk about who wanted to meet with me from different high schools in the Up county, and I was just asked the, you know, Doctor
Taylor and so on, that it is a burden, I believe, on these young people who are going into their junior year and their senior year, and it is something that we really do need to take into account how that is going
to affect them. When colleges are going through their transcripts and so on, because that does have an effect. And from talking to counselors and so on, they are very concerned about it. So this is something I think, that we do need to bring
back to the table and to have a discussion, you know, we're not a small district, right? We're the largest district in the state of Maryland. So I don't know exactly how many juniors and seniors we're talking about. But this is something this is
this is what I know. I know that we are a community, that we can always come up with solutions specifically to ensure that we're doing what's in the best interest of our students. And I know that Doctor Taylor is going to turn over every rock to
ensure that that happens. And that is my hope that that we do. Because at the foremost, our job is to ensure that you guys have what you need without causing any stress that you're already going to encounter as you become
juniors and seniors. And these are tough economic times. So thank you for taking the time to come and testify. And I know that you're speaking not just for yourself, but you're also speaking for a large group of young people, especially those from northwest. I believe it was
Clarksburg High School, Damascus High School, and Seneca Valley. So I thank you for doing that, for coming and speaking on behalf of them. So thank you all for caring so much about our our wonderful county. Not to be
repetitive, but additive. I think it's very courageous that you walk into the boardroom and provide your feedback and testimony for our consideration. And I also want to commend all of you, not only state the issue
and your need, but you also suggest solutions. I think that is very helpful. We live in a community with a lot of brain power and people know our community well, so when we listen together we can find a path forward. So with that,
yeah, Miss Wolff, go ahead. Yeah. I wanted to thank all of the students who came in. It's never easy to come before the board and talk like my colleague. I really wish Joshua and Lucas were here, not because they were the only students, but
because they were such young students who got up the courage to come and speak. With regard to the grading policy, I have to say that I do have concerns, and I voiced them at the last meeting. However, I do understand that with so many
different students at so many different levels, grades oftentimes do not have just one grade level in a class, and that really would be hard for the system to deal with. But we will come up with something, because
we do know that it's important to you and keep thinking about it and keep talking to us and give us your ideas. Thank you. Can I just say plus one with both Brenda and with Grace? I would like to follow up
associate yourself with that comment. Thank you, thank you, thank you. So our next business meeting of Board of Education for public comment is on Thursday, July 24th. Sign up will be open on Thursday, July
17th at 6 p.m. So in addition to online sign up same day, sign up in person. It's allowed when space is available. It's at a first come, first serve, and it will close at least 15 minutes
before the start of open session. With that, we're going to move to item 6.1, blueprint for Maryland's Future. It's a big topic. It is a big topic. Thank you, Madam President. Today we'll provide you with a
few key updates about what's happening with Maryland's blueprint for the future at the state level and connected to our local accountability work that supports M.C.P.S. Student achievement and monitoring. We will have an opportunity to share and discuss specific
implementation progress and the Accountability and Implementation Board's work over the next few months and what they have planned. The Maryland State Department of Education and the blueprint, Accountability and Implementation Board have been working to administer guidance and monitor the implementation
of the blueprints rollout. And now they have taken steps to collaborate even further with us. We have developed our own new M.c.p.s Strategic Plan to make us future ready. That incorporates the blueprints, pillars and our and we are fully
aligned with that. So we're thrilled to report that we can draw a fairly straight line from the state's metrics and data collection to our own local metrics embedded within the Future Ready Strategic plan. Our work on the blueprint is important to our community, to
our schools, and to our staff. It supports us helping to close our gaps that we see, and to raise the bar for all students across the county. M.c.p.s is four years into our implementation of the blueprint legislation, and we have measured success in not only
meeting, but exceeding many of the state targets. And we are the undeniable leaders in the state of Maryland. It's my pleasure to introduce our Chief Academic officer, Niki Hazel and our fearless blueprint leader, Janine Beckie, who is the director of our blueprint for
Maryland's Future in the Division of Teaching and Learning. To begin today's presentation. Thank you very much, Doctor Taylor. Good afternoon, president Yang, members of the board. I'm going to keep my comments very short. Today. You're going to hear updates on the blueprint that include the specific statewide
metrics that have been developed. These metrics are also mostly aligned with the MCPs strategic plan, especially Ela and math targets. As an example, these metrics will be used to evaluate successful implementation of the blueprint
across all of our LEAs statewide. So Miss Mackey is here today to share more about the collaboration at the state level and the specific metrics that guide the state's monitoring work. Miss Becky, thank you. Good afternoon. Today
I will provide a very brief update about information that is happening at the state level for the blueprint for Maryland's future. Thank you. Next. Next slide. There should be one right
before then. Today we will provide an informational update about what is happening at the state, the Accountability and Implementation Board and the Maryland State Department of Education have come together to collaborate on the development of a memorandum of understanding that will help to delineate who
will be responsible for which aspects of reporting and monitoring of the blueprint for Maryland's future to begin this school year 2025 2026 Accountability and Implementation Board will also meet with a leadership team from each of the school systems
across the state to review our progress. To add dialog about our challenges, and to evaluate successful implementation of the blueprint. And once we have been able to document successful implementation of the blueprint,
the AIB will indicate to the legislature that it's time for them to release our funds for FY 26 for the blueprint next. Here we are. There are for the viewing public. Again, there are five key pillars to the
blueprint. The first is early childhood education and expansion. The second pillar is high quality, diverse teachers and leaders. The third pillar is college and career readiness, including CTE. The fourth pillar is more resources to ensure all students are successful, and the fifth pillar is governance and
accountability. Next. Just briefly about the memorandum of understanding, it's going to clarify the roles and responsibilities between the Maryland State Department of Education and the AIB. And it's going to really help with the guidance that we are provided as school systems across the state.
It will identify who will give what guidance, who will provide the monitoring of certain aspects of the blueprint, and then it will provide also a point of contact in each one of those agencies to be able to help us to get information when
we need it right away, and it will hopefully help to smooth the process for all the school systems in terms of guidance and implementation. Next. The AIB
will be monitoring fidelity of implementation. As I mentioned earlier, for each of the school systems and M.C.P.S, along with the other 23 LEAs, will have an in-person meeting with the AIB staff sometime between August
15th and October 15th, and there will be some key data metrics identified, and our data will be held up against the standards, and we will have a discussion of successes and challenges across all five of the pillars. And then upon successful completion
of that, our funds will be released for FY 26 next. The blueprint has a set of state aligned metrics, and there have been some preliminary metrics and key targets aligned to the key blueprint outcomes. They've already been adopted by the
state to assure that blueprint related initiatives are leading to increased outcomes for all students across the state of Maryland. Generally speaking, that includes student proficiency outcomes, chronic absenteeism, and teacher recruitment and diversity as the three larger issues, they will
monitor the data on both the state and local levels, and additional metrics will be added as baseline data becomes available. I would just like to identify that the state has been working on this process over the last few years, since the passage of the blueprint, and our own doctor, Keisha Addison,
was a part of the early committee for the Outcome Measures Committee at the state level. So we're really proud of that. Next slide. And here's just a sampling of some of the metrics that the state will be
using to determine if we are meeting our targets. As you can see, we're looking at Ela and math on MCAT assessments. We're looking at chronic absenteeism. And the state has already identified a baseline for this past school year. And then a
goal for 24, 25 and 2526. So they're continuing to look at some of the state, same state data that we are evaluating as a part of our own process, and also that are reported annually on the Maryland Report Card.
Next slide. Also, there are specific targets that are related to workforce diversity and retention measures related to retention of teachers, retention of teachers of color, and retention of brand new teachers to the system. So they're also looking that
relates to pillar two. And they're looking at how we are working with teachers and some of the other initiatives, such as salary supplements for national board certification and other things are ways in which the state has been working through the blueprint to try to raise the status of teachers and
incentivize the profession. Also, the starting salary reaching $60,000 or more was also a part of that next. There are some additional aligned metrics for which there has not
been a baseline established as yet, but these are the target areas that the state will be looking at. They're going to look at the number of kindergarten students demonstrating readiness, teachers participating in each level of the career ladder. All the systems are still rolling out their levels of the career ladder, so that will be
forthcoming. How many students are meeting the college and career standards before high school graduation? Number of students who have completed the post college and career pathways, and then numbers of schools with one or more psychologists or social workers. So they haven't set baseline
data. They haven't gathered all the baseline data yet for these targets, but they will be forthcoming over the next the course of the next year. Next. And just briefly, the ties to the strategic plan, the newly revised MCPs strategic plan is
fully aligned with the blueprint. The metrics embedded will capture the key data points that M.c.p.s uses to measure our local blueprint progress, and then we will also be able to benchmark against other large systems across the state who have similar demographics and
similar sizes. M.C.P.S. And then the state will add the additional measures after the baseline data becomes available next. Again, this is just a brief update on what's happening at the state level. All of these
items really relate to actions that are being taken by the Accountability and Implementation Board, as well as the Maryland State Department of Education. Through the slides and the outcome measures and metrics, you should be able to see where we're looking at some of those same target measures that we're also measuring in
M.c.p.s. So you can see where the alignment exists. And we will we're looking forward to the evaluation visit that will be upcoming over the next few months. And really having a dialog with the Accountability and Implementation Board. What they have asked us to do is to
come with a team and meet in person, and to also really be frank and honest about some of the challenges that we might have faced over the last few years and perhaps bring any suggestions that we have for how we can continue to streamline some of the guidance and streamline some of our
activities within the system. So next, next slide and I will open up for any discussion. Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. Must be the new school year. I notice that this is a new format. It's wonderful.
One upgrade I noticed is our presenters are listed on this slide now. It's wonderful. I'm going to open up for my colleagues for any questions or comments. Mr. Just one little
bit of feedback. I don't see numbered pages on the so, but I have my computer open so I can go look at the number slide. So it's slide number seven
blueprint student metrics. Do you mind drilling down on that a little bit more? Because I know you went through it, but you didn't really go through the numbers or exactly what each of these columns mean. Okay. Thank you so much for the feedback.
The state is going to be looking at the data from each of the school systems, and these are some of the specific targets that they will look at the data for each school system in the state. So they will look at the percentage of third grade students who are scoring at or
above proficiency level on grade three, in English language arts. On the Ncap assessment, the baseline data statewide is 46%. So that's the average across the state. And then the goal they had set for the year 2024, 2025
was 51%. So they were expecting a statewide increase from 46% to 51%. And then for next year, they're expecting an even greater increase from 51% to 56%. So they will be looking at
the English language arts for grade three. And then next they will be looking at the percentage of students in grades three through eight who are scoring at or above proficiency level on grade five and Cap assessments. And so the baseline for the state for this past year
was 47%. The baseline. The goal for 2425 was to increase up to 52%. And they're having an expectation that statewide would be at 57. So that that helps because this is for the whole state, not just for Montgomery County. Right? Okay. Right.
We'll also be looking at our own individual data within M.c.p.s. But we also will be able to compare with other larger counties like Anne Arundel and Prince George's, who have similar demographics and also our large size school systems. But the state establishes its own baseline. And in terms of
what they expect statewide, and then each individual school district will take their progress and their outcomes and benchmark it against the state as well as other counties. And when will we drill down on our Montgomery County numbers and
look by school, by area, by farms and all of that? We will be able to do that on an annual basis, because this data will be made public through the Maryland Report Card. And when do we usually. So to answer that, the state has not released data for
this most recent school year. Not yet. So as soon as they do, which is typically later in the fall, we have preliminary data but not final data. And once they do, they'll also release Maryland report card information as well. We'll get to throw a
party because I think that we'll we'll showcase that we are making improvements for sure. But but that is not until after the summer, which is a little difficult for us because it's a little bit like an autopsy and
not like a diagnosis. So it doesn't really help us to improve our instruction in real time because of the data timeline is so protracted at the state level, but it is that that is the timeline that we're working with. Do we? So to fill
in so we can have more recent data, do we use map data. They're not perfectly correlated and not 100% aligned. It does give us some indication. We do have some preliminary
information that we make some basis off of. But but again, these are general brushstrokes that help with our planning versus concrete information that we don't get until actually after the start of the school year. Thank you, Miss Wolff.
Thank you Janine. Question. Now these are state goals, but on page I guess it's the couple of slides back. I just want to understand evaluation is directly tied to approval and
legislative release of fiscal year 2026. Blueprint funds for M.C.P.S. Evaluation of moving towards the goal, moving towards the state goal or M.C.P.S. Goal. What goal? That's a great
question. And the answer to that is that the state will develop a preliminary template that they will populate with what data is available, because we're always subject to their timeline in terms of what data they provide. But we have been informed that for this evaluation conference
process, they will develop a preliminary template, they will populate it, and they will send it to each Lea. Each Lea will have an opportunity to review. And we can again use other indicators or things to benchmark the data against or to review what data they provide. I
don't believe that it's going to be exactly aligned with the data points that are on the slide, but they will determine some preliminary measures. They will send it to us, we'll review that. And then that will be the basis for the evaluation conversation. So it won't be this these exact measures for
the evaluation review. But they will give us some data based on what we have submitted over the last few years in terms of our implementation, reporting and some other reports that we have supplied to them over the course of the last two years. So
they're going to use what data they have. They haven't said exactly what it is, but they're going to use what data is available. And some of it will also be in the form of a dialog. What progress have we made towards implementing our career advising? What progress have we
made towards expanding pre-K? What progress have we made towards providing wraparound services at our community schools? Things like that. Some of these are more broad based questions about our overall implementation and movement forward, as opposed to some of
these specific targets. They are still working on refining what these specific outcome measures will be, but it will be a little bit more of a broad based conversation. Okay, my second question, and you may have answered this because I had to
step out a minute on the chronic absenteeism. You have a not not applicable for 2425. Did they change the definition or what? This is the data that was provided for the baseline. If
you look at the bottom of the slide, there's an asterisk there and it says baseline is for 20. I was going to ask you what does that mean. Where does that fit in. Because I don't see 22 to 20 for the for the for the basis for the development of this chart. They didn't want to add
another line, I believe for 2023. So they put the 2024 data and then listed the baseline that was developed from 2223 and listed that below. Okay. Because that is their chart that they created. Yes. And I and that's what was throwing me off. I
thought they might have meant that it's not percent. It's the school year. The school year. It's for that school year. Yes. 2223 I got it, I got it, yes. Thank you. Okay. This is, this is the States from their chart. This is how they. So the goal
for 2526 is 15%. Absolutely. Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. Okay I'm going to this way miss Rivera. Evans. So I, I have a question about our community schools. And I just since you've
been involved at the state level. It's been an issue the lack of flexibility that the counties are giving when it comes to community schools. And I heard I don't know how
reliable it is. This is what I'm going to use as you're the expert on the blueprint that they were reconsidering, giving flexibility to the counties when it comes to community schools, can you give us an update and maybe just an update of how many total community schools we're going to have in Montgomery
County starting in the fall? We're going to be adding 19 community schools to the 53 that we already have. The issue regarding the funding flexibility was one that was raised in the legislative session and has also been raised by the CFOs and the blueprint
directors in each of the county. And there has been some flexibility in how the in in the directions and guidance about how community schools have been able to spend their funds. The state also recognized that there
was a shortage of folks in the community Schools office within the state. So during this past legislative year, they have actually expanded the community schools. They have a specific director in that office, as well as it being staffed so that they
can be able to more quickly answer some of the questions, including fiscal questions that community school directors may have. They've also developed a evaluation process, which this year will also have a fiscal component. But it is my understanding, after some long
dialogs about some of the areas in which school systems needed to be able to use dollars to meet the needs of the community schools, as opposed to the structured rules that were there, that more flexibility is being given. And I think that there's even an opportunity to have some dialog around other
areas that may not be explicitly stated. But if the system can make a case for why they might need to use funds in a certain way, that they would at least be open to that dialog. So I think a lot is happening, especially around the evaluation of community schools and the addition of the fiscal
component. And I think it's a result of those questions coming from counties and those concerns being raised by counties as the evaluation is taking place. When are we. Because I know it was hard to evaluate early on, but now we have had community
schools for three years longer than that. Longer. They gave out some of the money early under the Kirwan Commission. Okay. That's right. It's really that we're waiting for the state. It's not something that locally we're not doing, it's that we're waiting for the state. And they have just sort of they're just
been expanding and developing the evaluation for community schools. There was some outcry that there were just a data points related to chronic absenteeism and provision of services, and that there needed to be more data collection around the academic pieces. In
terms of the impact of what's happening in community schools. So the state has been really doing some work towards that and really developing and expanding their evaluation program. So I honestly, I don't believe that we will be able to have any real statewide data, probably for at
least a year. I mean, that's that's what I would imagine they will probably be be compiling all the data from the school systems and then trying to analyze that over the course of the next several months so that they can be able to determine an
impact. I do know that a little over a year ago, when we came to the board, the community schools issue came to the board and there was a discussion for one of the subcommittees about engagement. There were a few principals who came to speak about community schools, and one of the things that each of them highlighted was the fact that
they their attendance significantly increased because of the wraparound services. And the families and students really wanted to come to school because there were all of these other services that were being provided that helped to meet their needs and their interests. Correct. So we so as we're
moving to expanding community schools in Montgomery County, I know we started traditionally in elementary school and then we are doing some middle school. Is there talk about high schools? Yeah, I believe there is a high school. We have one high school included for this year as well.
Yes, they use the indicators of poverty, not just the farms to determine. So it really depends on what the indicators of poverty say. That would determine the next round of schools that will be selected. And the state actually does that selection. Even though we keep our data about poverty, the
state actually assigns which schools will be selected. Okay. Thank you, thank you, Miss Sylvester. Thank you. I think that just kind of from a high level perspective. So we started
the blueprint several years ago. We were directed to do things every year. Money was disbursed, and now we're seeing the first three metrics of what we are expected to be showing for that
investment and that those activities and these are just the first three, as I'm understanding correctly, there will be other metrics developed for all the different components of the blueprint. Is that correct? That is correct. But these are not the only ways in
which the state is measuring whether or not we are successfully implementing the blueprint. So the reporting that we have, those large reports that we've submitted the last few years, that's where we really talk a little bit more in depth about the actual implementation and the aspects
of the programs and what we're doing. So the state is also looking at our progress over a period of time. It's not just it's using these metrics as a standard to say, are the students making progress in their academics? Yes, but that is not the only way in which
they are measuring the successful implementation of the blueprint. So they're looking at our overall implementation. They're looking at are we expanding access for our pre-K students in full day pre-K? Are we, you know, how are we doing in terms of recruiting and
moving more teachers into national board certification, things like that, where you don't see a metric here, but they're still evaluating us based on. And in addition to that, there's program evaluations such as the community schools, which were just right. It has many, many legs. So this is these are the
outcome measures that they can look at our progress in terms of what comes out on the Maryland report card. And there, you know, there is a focus on English language arts and mathematics. There's a strong focus on the academic pieces, but there's also well-being and other aspects of the blueprint
that they're evaluating on. So as vast and large as it is across all five pillars, we are being evaluated on a number of measures in addition to these outcomes, I guess I'm also thinking about the evaluation of the blueprint itself as a reform
strategy. Yeah. What things work of all the things that we're doing, what things don't work are not showing any evidence. So I hope that we will have as the blueprint implementation matures, we'll be able to say, you know, these things are the high impact activities that we
should continue to do, continue to fund, continue to implement. And these things are not showing return on investment. Therefore, maybe we stop doing them so we can focus on the things that are showing. Right. And there has been a lot of that conversation at the state level. There's also
a updated revised blueprint, comprehensive plan. It's sort of a draft that the state has been working on for a while. They're still gathering some feedback around that, but there have been a lot of these sort of discussions during the legislative sessions, because they're talking about perhaps diverting funds to one area of
the blueprint or another that might be more successful. So those conversations continue to be ongoing, especially as fiscal times are tight at the state level. So those conversations will continue to happen. And then as a part of the blueprint legislation, there are dollars allocated for a statewide
evaluation of the entire blueprint and the effectiveness of the entire blueprint. That was pushed back about a year, but that will still be that will be getting underway very soon. So we'll also be able to look at from a state's perspective. Has the blueprint blueprint been
successful in the state of Maryland? Has it been worth the financial investment? And we'll continue to track it in our strategic plan? Absolutely. I have more questions, but I'll wait. Yes, Miss Montoya, did the hand go down? Miss Montoya, I did, thank you. Everyone asked
the questions that I planned to ask. Thank you. Okay. I think one of the questions I have is. How many years have blueprint been, if been implemented? The blueprint was passed in February
of 2021, but there were. So we've been working on implementation since that time, but there were some preliminary dollars that were given, especially for the start up of the community schools. Prior to that, under the recommendations of the Kirwan Commission. But officially, it's been since 2021
that the blueprint has been put in place. And then about six months after that was the creation and the standing up of the entity of the Accountability and Implementation Board. So it has been a few years since we have started implementation. Thank you. Now my question is in
terms of these three metrics, one is still being developed. The two have been developed. Is the are these M.C.P.S. Specific metrics or this is the metric for the whole state. These are for the entire state. These are the blueprint metrics for the
entire state. So for example, the diversity and retention metrics say percentage of new teacher of color for the entire state is 55%. Yes. That's correct. Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Now, one of
the things that in your work with other counterparts in the state and in our continued work with state legislation and other levels of government, one thing we noticed this year is we learn
about we have new community schools allocated to us after the superintendent has already submitted his budget proposal to the board. So one of the things we need to look at streamline the timing of that state level,
or how to work with local level in terms of the timing of allocating community schools. And another thing, in terms of community schools, out of the four top jurisdictions that in terms of number of community
schools, M.C.P.S. Is one of the top four school districts with the number of community schools. And we are the only one that have a local share of. Money share. Within the top four,
right? Some other counties also have, but they have a very small number of community schools. So that also it's worth for us to look at how the funding is decided. Montgomery County has
changed. Our poverty level has changed. Our income level has changed as a as a community. So I think that is more of a my comment in our collective work with different levels of government, we will continue to
ask about how best make blueprint work for our school system. Right. I just want to add one comment to that, because Montgomery County is subject to the wealth equalization formula. So for certain areas of the blueprint, there's an allocation that comes from the state. And
then they apply the wealth equalization formula which looks at our percentage of growth of wealth within the county. So even if our percentage of growth of wealth goes up just even a few points, that means that our local share increases and the state share decreases. So we are
also subject to that. So I think that's one of the other things I want to keep in mind that even though there may be increases in poverty, if there are increases in wealth, that's what really impacts us. So I think that we're subject to that in a number of areas across the blueprint. So I do want to point
that out. Yes, I wish that it was based on increases in poverty. But they look at the wealth equalization formula that we need to take a look at what it says. Yes. And the state applies that. It's not something that we really have control over. It's our work with different levels of government.
Yes. Thank you. Any other questions, Miss Silvestri? I know we touched on the data, student achievement data that's not yet available, but when will the board get updates on the current the three. Well, student
achievement is one a chronic teacher diversity. How are we planning to bring that in a memo or how will that come to the board. So this is somewhat clunky and painful in dealing with some of our partners at
MSD, we have an idea of where we've landed on some of those things preliminarily, but the data is not finalized and not approved by MSD until much, much later in the summer and into the
start of the school year. The Maryland Report card for the previous year's performance is not released until December, and there are some barriers to that. We absolutely can can look at
what preliminary data that that we feel pretty confident in, that we can share with the board, and we would do that in a memo form. I was thinking specifically about workforce diversity and retention. Oh, absolutely. And we did a report for the board a few months ago
that that looked at the previous year. But we can absolutely recycle that again and, and share that with the board again from this past year. As, as you know, we do hiring year round. So we do have to pick a point in
time that is our our cut off time for reporting that. As to the previous year's hiring data because we're always hiring. Okay, I guess so my larger question. So these three
blueprint priorities will the board will be updated on our status in different ways throughout the year. That's right. Will get updates on where we stand. And all of them are in your strategic plan too. So we've got a handy dandy scorecard to keep track of it as well. Thank you. Yeah, I think
two of the previous presentations we've made over the last few years, we have identified that teacher retention and new teacher numbers have been a part of those presentations. I know, but I just want to reiterate that we are really subject to or at the
mercy of when we get the data from the state. I know that there was a some data that they asked us to collect regarding diversity, hiring and other things, and we've been waiting. We were supposed to get a file from the state, and then the staff could compare that file with our information. And the
local school systems have been waiting more than six months to get the preliminary file from the state. It just hasn't been available. So we use both our data and they're right. There are some things that we can use locally through our own data. But for some of this we we're at
the mercy of the state to wait until they provide us with. So to Miss Becky's point, in particular with the hiring data, we need to verify that their data and our data are line up and that they match, and that there there isn't a missing set
of data that reflect our true performance. And more often than not, it seems as though our shared accountability officer, our human resources office, has to fill in some of the blanks for some things that the state may not be aware of. And they're
looking at things through a narrower lens, oftentimes, like through licensure or things that they they see as filters from the state level, and not necessarily through the wider aperture that we look through in the school system. This has been, as you know, a priority of the board for as long as I've
been on the board. The workforce diversity and the I think recently we're a data request that's on its way to the board in terms of what are we doing differently to recruit the workforce diversity that we need
in our county, because it we know the challenges that are out there. So looking forward to hearing more in that follow up about what we're doing to keep up with that. Right. And just very briefly, to the real answer to the question, one of the previous presentations, we
talked about how human resources and talent management has been reaching out to historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic serving institutions, Asian year. So we want to hear what's different, what's more aggressive, what's working, what's understood. And so this
is a moment of celebration too. We have a very large workforce. Our full time and part time employees put together make up just right around 30,000 employees. And this past year, our most recent data that that we've collected reflects that we
are becoming more diverse, that we reported to the board, 1% more diverse out of our workforce. And although 1% doesn't feel like a big number, but in an organization our size, when you have only a small
percentage that's turning over every year, of that 1%, that is actually a substantial amount in terms of a percentage of our turnover, in terms of an increase closer to 10% of an increase in our turnover. So that's actually pretty
phenomenal. And we're very proud of that. Thank you. I don't see other lights. So I thank you for this update. And we it's a pity that we won't be able to have all the data at the same time
and have one open discussion and it's piecemeal. But we thank you for the information, inform our work and we'll go to item number 7.1, School Improvement Plan development. This is an evergreen topic. I have been on
the board three years, and every time it's a different, different format it seems like. So I look forward to this presentation and conversation. I've been looking forward to this presentation too, Madam President, and I'm going to deviate from my script
and just say this. In addition to Chief of Schools Doctor Peter Moran and our two principals who are joining us today for this conversation. Continuous improvement really does need to
become the theme of Montgomery County Public Schools. We do alt there are an infinite number of areas where we can continue to grow. And I'm very fond of telling our team of leaders and
staff that it is impossible for us to be the absolute best at everything. But if I had to pick one thing for us to be the best at, it would be the best at getting better. And a big part of that process is our continuous improvement planning process at the school level and at the department level. One of
the barriers that I observed as your new superintendent was that we had a very large, detailed and clunky process. As a matter of fact, school improvement plans ran as long as 17 pages, 12 point single spaced font,
really intense documents that really weren't very useful to our school teams. Hard to read by the community, hard to digest by the community, and not really well understood by our our staff teammates. I had the opportunity to talk to our school leadership
team and a number of our principals about this problem, and candidly, they rose to meet the challenge. And today I have a couple of representatives of a team of 32 leaders in the school system, both from Central
Services, from our school based staff and from experts in the field of school improvement, to talk about process improvements that they made to the School Improvement Plan. And so please let me welcome our Chief of schools, Doctor Peter Moran, and the fabulous principal at
Farquhar Middle School, Miss Angelica Rivas Smith, and our fantastic new rookie principal at Westland Middle School, Miss Nicole Walker, who will lead today's presentation. All right. Thank you, Doctor Taylor. And
good afternoon, President Yang and members of the Board of Education. Like Doctor Taylor said, I'm extremely excited to be sitting next to two of our finest principals and leaders, Miss Smith and Miss Walker. So as you guys know, we've come to
the table, talked about school improvement before, and we have made a lot of changes in the past. Some of those changes contributed to what Doctor Taylor just described as a clunky process that was not community friendly in terms of
being able to identify the goals and the actions to achieve those goals. So we've made significant changes this year to model that continuous improvement that that Doctor Taylor was talking about. I want to just say that one of the things I'm most proud of as
we delve into this presentation is the change in collaboration. We have had years of collaboration where there was a lack of authenticity around it, and a lot of times was a top down collaboration as opposed to a bottom up collaboration. This
is representative of people, principals who are going to be using this every day, being empowered to have ownership in the creative autonomy, to develop something that is going to work well for them, for their staff, for their students, for their community. So today we're going to talk about the key
changes that will be discussed over the next. Here we go. So we're going to talk about making it. It connects to our our previous presentation around the blueprint M.C.P.S. Future ready connected to our strategic plan and the Maryland School Report
card. Like Doctor Taylor said, it's been streamlined to a single page focus sheet, which is a was well received by all of our principals. Rowdy round of applause when they when they heard we were moving in that direction. They're no longer,
you know, writing literature for school improvement. So this focus I will say though, it results in when you're when you're very focused and your goals are very public and upfront, it results in greater accountability. Everyone knows your goals. It's very clear, easy to find them connected to
the actions that you're committed to taking. So there's a greater accountability when you've condensed something like that. The other thing that we've made that's a change is the utilization of technology for schools to access and share resources that will that will support their respective
opportunities and needs of their school communities. If we could just go to the next. So the key change that will be discussed, discussed today is making it a more focused document and really aligning it with goal. One of
the board's strategic plan, which specifically is 100% of M.c.p.s. Schools earning four stars or higher on the Maryland School Report Card, and approving proficiency rates by at least 50% on the report card. For students that are identified
as economically disadvantaged multilingual learners, students receiving special education services, Hispanic and Latino students, and Black and African American students. Our work continues to center on equity and access to opportunity across all student groups, ae're
using our data to differentiate and support students and staff to ensure student growth in all academic areas, which will be covered in greater detail by our principal. So at this time, I want to turn it over to the to the to the stars of the, the
presentation. And specifically Miss Walker, who's going to kick us off. Good afternoon everyone. We just wanted to share some highlights of the school improvement plan that a team of us have worked and created to align and streamline the process. First and foremost is
it is aligned with our current strategic plan for 2025 to 2030. It aligns also with the Maryland Report Card and the annual targets that we have each year. So providing that alignment. So it's understandable to look at specifically in Ela, math,
English language proficiency and culture and climate. It also builds off our school improvement leader learning. As leaders we're always first learners. And also that we take that back to our schools. So the professional development that we have had throughout the last few years is aligned with our leader
learning as well. As Doctor Taylor mentioned, it is definitely streamlined and that it is a one page document that you can look at and see everything that we're looking at to monitor on one page versus multiple pages. 17 pages is that
has happened. So it was very right about that. It's streamlined and it's focused on the essential priorities, avoiding complex and unreadable plans. So to eliminate that barrier of being confusing, very complex and not having that clarity is very focused. And
it's easy to review. And it provides that clarity. Next slide. And I'm going to shift it over to Miss Riva Smith. Good afternoon to continue. Miss Walker's points. We are really building the plan in
collaboration with our school leadership teams. But the plan was designed with like Doctor Taylor said, 32 other colleagues. There was a lot of rumbling that went down over what is actually meaningful, useful and purposeful to us. When we meet with our leadership teams on a weekly basis. And how
can we strategize our efforts using this plan to drive results much more efficiently? The central services partners we have are now in a position to support our work, as opposed to directing our work, which is a massive upgrade for us. And on
the next slide, I'll share that we actually have two CIP models for schools to choose from. Key word choose so that the school can determine the resources and tools that best serve their unique school needs. We're following the research based
plan do study, act cyclical process of continuous improvement, which means that we're intentionally trying strategies, assessing whether those are effective and trying studying whether they were effective, and then making data driven and informed next steps.
And ideally, we would do that multiple times during the school year instead of waiting until December to find out if they worked the in a partnership with the School Improvement Plan is a monitoring plan that would be internally used only, not for
public consumption, but it would delineate the strategies that we are attempting in each of the different measures to drive that improvement. And we would come back to and evaluate the effectiveness of those strategies once a quarter again, instead of waiting until
December to find out if the report card yielded the results that we were hoping for, another upgrade that we'll talk about shortly is that we're going to have a school Improvement landing page created for all of the schools to share our expertise and our knowledge. We.
It's a very small district. We do all know each other, but it is helpful to know if I wanted to know what Nicole was doing at Westland, I would normally have to pick up the phone, call her, schedule a time, and now I can just open up her school improvement plan and see what her team has come up with. And
is there any expertise that I can bring in to Farquhar, for example? So having all of our work at each other's fingertips is going to be a really nice upgrade for us. So these are the two formats that that we came up with as a team. The one on the
left is ideal for elementary and middle school, and like Miss Walker shared, each of the four quadrants represents the four areas that are assessed in the Maryland School Report Card with English language, English language proficiency, well-being and climate, math and literacy.
There's also an area for us to briefly summarize what how we're building the capacity of teachers, how we're building the capacity of leaders, and really how we hope the cross-functional teams to support the school efforts toward meeting our goals. The format on the right
is ideal mostly for high school, because high school has an additional element in their Maryland School Report card, which includes graduation rate data and other program requirements for being college and career ready. We do want to shout out Summer Snyder, who
helped us develop the format one, and Mr. Mark Carruthers from Poolesville High School, whose team developed the high school model. We did do a lot of grappling about whether one format is best for everyone, but again, leaning on that school leadership decision to choose
the format that best works for you and the goals, even, that make the most sense for your school to continue earning more points toward the Maryland School Report card is important, so we preserved the two separate formats. Okay. And what we spoke
about briefly before is having a new School Improvement landing site, which is a great site for resource for our leaders and our school system. That collaboration piece, and it provides resources for school leaders and providing that information on exemplars and
looking at different other plans from other schools. Resources are at each level at elementary, middle, and high school to make sure that each level has the resources they need to build effective school improvement plans, and it also will have that database from all schools with their sharing that
information across the schools and central services. So it's a nice one stop shop to help us work together and collaborate to make sure that we are focused on student improvement. Good. So at
this time, we'll entertain anyqy have. Oh, I, I am trying to read it very intensely. And first of all, thank you so much. And I, I really appreciate when you mentioned these two forms that
you're using. They're designed by our principals. So this is a welcome sign to me that we're not doing top down. We let the practitioners who knows their work, their craft to provide the
leadership in this space. I'm going to open up for comments and questions from my colleagues. Miss Wolff, I don't have any questions. It's just I can't see this little print very well. That's what I was. I was I was just trying to understand,
okay, what I'm seeing here is academic data, but isn't that the same data that we would be seeing in the strategic plan? Yes it is. It is the same exact data. And even though this the state doesn't show us their
verified data for how M.C.P.S. Did, we do have access when the when Pearson for example, makes available for example, the science data. We see how our schools have done. And so we're able to get that data directly
from the source. It just takes many, many months. And it doesn't all come out at the same time. So slowly but surely we can have some preliminary data, but it is the same exact data. I guess I probably didn't ask the question that I'm really trying to get at. Why? Why how is this
a school improvement plan? If it's the data that's in the strategic plan? I mean, I'm trying to figure out what is it that your school is getting from this, that you don't just get out of the strategic plan? I think the number one difference is the statement of the goals
are you understand, I would I would just say so this is the first time that there has been coherence between the strategic plan and the school improvement plan. So we're moving to adopting the state accountability system, which is the Msde report card, which is on the strategic plan. In
previous years, we've been going with evidence of learning, which we know was was challenging for people to navigate and understand. And, you know, there was always kind of discrepancies in terms of the measurement. So there's the clear connection between the two. But I just
wanted to I hear you I just want to be clear though, where is the improvement if you're just taking the numbers out of the strategic plan. So we have focus areas that the board has identified in the strategic plan that that we should be focused on as a district. And each
school is going to have numbers that are a little bit different than the district average. Some might be higher, some might be lower, and the school is able to formulate goals, strategies and objectives. And there's a space for that on their form where. I
can't tell, I can't see there's a there. There should be blank forms also attached on board docs for, for you and the public to take a look at to and to spend some time with. Okay. But the idea behind this is, is to take our very big goals as a
district and translate them to the school level and make the school level goals and the school level approach and the school level strategy align with what we're trying to be doing as a district. Okay, I'm just trying to understand it so that
I could explain to somebody else what makes this a unique school improvement plan. Brenda, is this portion that you can't see. I can see I was like doing all this kind of thing, trying to see this is the school specific. What would help me more is to see one that's actually filled
in. Yeah. Thank you. We have exemplars to Mr. So I see where the strategy is going. Format one. Format two is that where the goal is blank? Is that where the strategies would go anyway? You can get back to me on that.
Like like you said, we can see it filled in. But I would like actually to. I like here follows research based and do study at cyclical process of continuous
improvement. But this is something actually I'm craving to hear at the board level of the system overall. So I think in the few months I've been on the board, I kind of feel like
I've been missing the looking at the data and then saying, and these were the strategies and this is what happened with the strategy and this is what didn't happen to strategy. And so we need to go back and try this other strategy go forward. So I
feel like that's what this is for the schools. But to look at it as a system. So then we can evaluate. And so we understand how what we can do in the budget moving forward, etc. So anyway
that that's my vision following your vision. And I just wanted to see if that is that also your vision? Yeah, that absolutely aligns. And so when the when we look at system wide strategies
and it's important to discern the difference between something that a school may adopt as a tactic that that works for that school versus something that we employ as a system. And I'll give you a distinct difference. A school principal and their
instructional leadership team might say, team, we need to focus on student engagement in the classroom, and we want to have an emphasis on a turn and talk teaching strategy. And the next two months, we're going to
observe teachers doing a turn and talk teaching strategy to get kids engaged. That's maybe not something that we're going to collect data on at a district level, because it may be a strategy that a school has chosen to employ to increase
engagement for their school. That might show up on on a school improvement plan, or it might not, but that would be the sort of tactic that would be something definitely driven at the school level. Changing our elementary literacy approach
like KLA for, for example, would definitely be a district wide strategy that we would say we had a big curricular change. This particular curricular change comes with it. A lot of
prescriptive teaching direction. This we're going to be monitoring through the implementation over the next several years. And yes, and so you you maybe haven't received end of course data, partly due
to the fact that the state is not super timely in providing some of that end, of course, data, but you have heard some of the lessons learned, and even some teachers have come to the board table and said this was effective or this wasn't effective, or we need to do this
and we need to not do that. And so I think that that absolutely aligns. And so the number of district wide approaches and strategies may be few. The number of school strategies and tactics that the school implements may be many. And so
it really is us to be selective of the handful of things that we really are monitoring at the 30,000 foot view level, because there are many campuses to monitor that may be doing things just a little bit differently based on what the school feels like they need. I just think
that to I know the data is a problem, but even if there's other data sources or preliminary data, I just think it would be great if we could get some more check ins a little bit through the year. And I don't I don't exactly know what that looks like, but I feel like
also some of our advocacy partners are craving that as well. So it's just something to talk about in the future. Miss Silvestre and then Miss Rita. Thank you. I wanted to thank you
both principals for being here today and Miss Riva Smith, if you could tell us. I'm sorry if I missed it. Just what are what are some tactics that you're working at Farquhar to that will
be in your school improvement plan for the upcoming year? Just to give us kind of that concrete example of what we're talking about here. Thank you. So, for example, the instructional learning focus at Farquhar next year is going to be examining five different strands of what we believe is strong instruction
from framing and objective writing, curricular rigor, differentiation, engagement and assessment. And so we are building the capacity of teachers to examine their own practices in any of those five
areas throughout the year. And we find that professional development is most effective when teachers have choice and what they choose to develop personally. And so we're going to have five different leaders of differentiated professional development to teach them strategies. So for example I'll be leading the one on assessment. And we'll be
discussing the difference between assessing for learning and assessment of learning and teaching teachers how to do little plan do study, Act models with a specific curricular standard so that they can know how their students are doing in real time. Make an instructional adjustment in that lesson, and
then drive some kind of formative assessment at the end of a lesson to know whether the students mastered that objective, which is aligned with the curriculum standard. And so by increasing the amount of assessment points at the site of learning, we should see improvement by the end of a
marking period, for example, or by the time we reach a progress check, or ideally an assessment. So that's just one very tiny example. But yeah, that's how that's how granular we get. And you're using format one for your yes school improvement plan
okay. And so where is that detail that you just mentioned. Where would that be captured in the school improvement plan. So the school improvement you would find that probably listed in one of the three blue boxes at the bottom. I don't have them memorized, but I think there's one for like an instructional learning focus, leader learning focus, cross-functional team
focus, and community engagement. Yes. So leader learning focus is going to be in building the capacity of leaders to coach their staff on those five areas that I mentioned, where you would see the more granular information about how we go through those steps would be in the monitoring plan that our
cross-functional team supports us with our directors and supervisors that way. But the steps of the strategies that we that we implement are not on the one pager, but the goal would be where's climate? Climate is in the bottom right. It's very
small, I apologize, but the wellbeing and culture there a lot there are a lot of metrics that the state holds us accountable to. It's that bottom right box. They include metrics like student survey, staff survey. Suspension,
disproportionality and chronic absenteeism is included in culture. Absolutely. And so we have our own ways to internally measure those things. We know we have internal records of how often students are being suspended, referred the demographic information of that. We also have our district wide
surveys and then the state surveys that we give for the state. We won't get the state level data on this year's surveys until probably July or August, if I'm being frank. But we'll so the other thing that's really nice is that the state has has a public document that
teaches us how to take our data and do the math to translate it into a projected result. So once we have our our various different metrics, we can do our own math and say, we have a pretty strong idea that we're
going to get this percentage and likely get this many stars, but we won't know until it's revealed in December. Okay. Thank you. I have another question, but I'll wait. Yes, Mr. Rivera, all this. Okay, so
I'm very visual. Unfortunately, and I appreciate Mrs. Miss Sylvester's eagle eyes. So just first of all, I think this is brilliant. I'm just going to say that because I think this brings
a lot of cohesiveness into doing what is right, because even though we want to be true to the curriculum and so on, each school has their own, their own challenges with different populations. So when I'm when I'm looking at this, so just
help me understand a little bit. And for the people at home. So the school improvement plan. So you have this format on ideal elementary school and middle school. The elementary school, this form that I'm seeing, the blue that will be filled out by the teachers. Correct. But no.
So the school is the school leadership team. So is the school leadership team. Okay. So the school leadership team will look into the improvement of the different groups, like whether, you know, and then the percentage, right. Oh look at you. You're so sweet okay. So
then. With the middle school you're you're able then to see what they're working on. Right. So that way when you, when those kiddos kind of go to your school, you have an idea of the
population that's coming down the pike to you. So then you can reinforce what those kids need per se, to kind of do the continuum of where you where instead of guessing, instead of,
you know, we're going to do an assessment again this year, blah, blah. Now you have a better idea that, you know, for the kids, you know what? They're really good at math. They're really but this is where they're a little bit where they're lacking. The emo students are not doing very good in the English area. So we need to
reinforce our team to focus on that instead of guessing. Yes, that's correct, I love this. Thank you. Okay, I think I got it right I think I got it okay. Thanks. All right, Miss Montoya.
Thank you. I also really welcome this. I appreciate kind of this system wide standardization of like the plan and the approach and the template, understanding that each school will then tailor their goals based on what their students and their school needs. I've been at a lot of
different schools with a lot of different administrators, even within the same school. And in my experience, these improvement plans have varied just across the board, including sometimes I didn't even know that we had one. So I think this is really great, and I see how it could really help the professional development also, and the kind
of making it easier to connect between schools and that continuum of care. The question that I have is that if I heard correctly, I heard this will this is internally only. It's not for public consumption. And so my question becomes where
does the community come in? How do school families see progress goals and hold the system to account? And one of the best experiences that I had as a parent was when the School Improvement Plan was presented to us families, we were able to talk about the goals, we were
able to engage in discussion, and then we could have continuing conversations throughout the year about how things were going, how we were receiving that, how what the kids. And it just seemed to really work really well. So I guess I'm just wondering why we're we're presenting something here in the public, but then
we're saying, okay, this is all you're going to get to see, because now it's going to go behind closed doors. I can provide some clarity to that. So the monitoring tool is the school framework to make sure that we are doing we're moving in the goal of the school
Improvement Plan, the one Sheeter. So it's mapping out our steps on how we're going to meet those goals by who's responsible within the school and monitoring on a quarterly basis. So it's our our plan book inside to make sure that we're being
accountable for the monitoring and implementation and analyzing how we're doing and progressing the school improvement plan and the communication out to families. That's going to still stay the same. We're going to still continue that outreach. It's just providing more clarity on what it looks like and being
able to explain it clearly and show how it aligns with the Maryland report card. I can give an example for myself. As doctor mentioned, Doctor Taylor mentioned, I'm a rookie principal and I had a PTSA meeting earlier last year and trying to explain the school
improvement plan and how it and also try to provide that comparison with the Maryland report card. And it provided some confusion to families and trying to being able to share it, I was able to provide that clarity, but it was still confusing. By having this framework and being able to go
and speak to our parents and our community about it, they can actually see how we're looking at the data that the Maryland Report Card is providing the our score, our school rating of what stars we are and how that aligns, and the data that we're looking at to make sure that families understand that these
are the core content areas that we're definitely looking at. We're looking at all students and the goal that we want to move towards to make sure that our students are being successful. So it provides it to be very clear and not as cumbersome that it has been in years past. So that that helps
us. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. And I did want to apologize. We didn't actually go over the information on the last slide before we entered into discussion. The two formats that are in the presentation, those are public. They will be posted on our on our school websites. They will be up for discussion at various PTSA meetings,
especially during important times when we get a lot of data at once. Most of us do quarterly school updates with our pizzas, and so the school improvement plan will be front and center during those conversations. The information that's in our monitoring plan is what would
not be made public. However, the information in it isn't secret. We would definitely make it family friendly and talk about some of the strategies that I just shared with you, Miss Silvestre, and say this is this is how we're building the capacity of teachers. It's just not in a one page document
that's posted online. I honestly feel even more confused because I'm hearing kind of one that we are putting it, but then we're not. And so I guess I would just say. The community always, in my opinion, deserves to know what
the plans and the goals and the things are. And I think that to the extent that we can put it in a digestible format so that the community can understand what's going on in their own spaces and to whatever extent they feel need to hold us to account to implement implement those plans.
I would hope that we would always do that. I feel a little confused about what's going to be up or not in regards to this. But I just, you know, we want to make sure the community always knows what's going on. So, so exactly what you just described will be, is captured on that one
page sheet that will be distributed to every family. Every family will have access to what the what miss Walker and Miss Smith were speaking to is the monitoring document has specific student data on it with student names. It has specific
teacher names on it. So you wouldn't distribute that publicly to the community. So the monitoring sorry I'm sorry I don't mean to interrupt, but the tools that we see in the slideshow, that is not the monitoring document. No, no, I guess that that would be helpful just to. Right. Because we're
using a lot of words, but it's unclear what we're referring to. So is it that these charts, whichever one the school likes to use, that would be, for example, on the website in the way that some schools now have their school improvement plans, but there's then another document that's internal, that
is more specific and detailed to the students that obviously, for privacy reasons would not be correct. Okay. Thank you. All right. So Miss Silvestre and then Mr. Doctor Moran the my
system of schools versus school system question every time. So we have all this great work happening at the school level. And so we want to have cohesion and consistency so that every
student is having a quality, high quality education no matter where they are in the county. So how will you monitor what schools need extra support? I'm guessing cross-functional team,
but how how will you look at the county wide data based on school improvement? Where do you need to allocate resources so that the schools that are struggling can get the additional help that they will need? And then what do you do if a school continues to
struggle year after year? So great questions. And we just had our I guess it was just summers kind of flying. But two weeks ago we had our summer leadership Academy, and one of the things that we went through with all the principals was the way we're going to tier support based off
of student achievement. So taking the MSD report card score and looking at that, combining it with culture and climate data and then determining what tier a school falls in. And we'll have three tiers. So I always try to explain it. It's similar to a
classroom right. And you have tiers, tiered interventions where you know some tier one support which is just that kind of core instruction. Tier two would be, you know, enhanced support, maybe some pull pull to the side. Tier three would be more comprehensive and wraparound support. So using the
data to identify specifically the comprehensive support that they would receive from a school. So when you have a cross-functional team, no one should expect to receive the same support. They should expect to receive the support that is based off of their student achievement data. And it
shouldn't stay the same like any intervention should. So for 6 to 8 week period of time I'm providing my cross-functional team is providing an intervention that is, let's say specific to math, meeting with the math department, doing some co-teaching in classrooms, modeling some of the strategies
that Mrs. Smith just shared, and then looking at what happened with the data after those 6 to 8 weeks. If you're a tier one school and it's just a standard support, right, what you can expect, a lot of it would just be like, you know, on call
principal or ilts putting in a request to receive support, maybe on KLA, but we, we need to really provide we have done a lot of work around equity, equal services to schools, and we have talked a lot about providing
equitable service to schools. This next year we're going to EP. Schools are going to experience the community is going to experience equitable supports through cross-functional teams specifically based off of their data. It will change throughout the course of the year, but we
won't be providing a one size fits all approach to supporting schools to achieve these goals. To the question about schools that continue to have, you know, struggle to make progress, I mean, we're going to have cross-functional teams. And I
mean, this morning I was meeting with the directors around their specific goals, which are tied to the school improvement goals for their particular schools. Some cross-functional teams are going to be really part of staff at some of those schools, working side by side with
teachers, providing wraparound supports throughout the entire school year. And I don't know that we really need to wait to even see that. I think we already know from just trending data which schools those are right now, and those are the schools that would be tier three
and receive comprehensive supports. Okay. Yeah. It sounds like maybe you need a tier three star. You know, tier four something something different needs to happen, you know, rather than just continuing to do the same thing and hoping
that they'll they'll come out of tier three. But yeah. Mr. Just one last comment, because now I've actually been able to my eyes adjusted and I could see this and especially like the
format one is the one that I can actually see everything. And it really is comprehensive and great. I mean, I think this will be great to put for parents to go look at and then check in with their principals saying, oh, where are we with this? And
then you mentioned quarterly updates to communities. So I don't know if that's something that could be operationalized, because I know that that doesn't always happen. It just depends on schools, et cetera. So
anyway, this is a great tool to ground that work. And including community engagement. So I want to thank you for that because I know that this is a big effort change. And it took a lot of
work to put this together. So thank you. My compliment to you is I'm looking at the elementary school and the middle school form. I can see every family can see themselves on this form. And that's that's what we want, that
everyone knows that their school is working to help their students to succeed. Everyone can see themselves reflected on this form. So kudos to you. Then on the same regard, help me
understand the high school form that how do I see myself in the high school form? Any families, any kind of families? So the data that you see pre-populated in the elementary and middle school model is going to be
actually pre-populated by central services. It comes from the state. This is where you were last year at the high school. Because the format is different. The high school leadership teams are going to have to plug in that same data. So while the format, the picture of it that you see now is blank,
all that same demographic and performance data is going to be in the high school model by the time it's front facing to the public. Okay. Last question. When does this come alive? I believe the due date is end of September. Yeah. Is it on the
school's website now? Are they done? It is not on the school's website now. One of one of the things also that I just want to plug, because I want to recognize our Office of Shared Accountability and our technology partners, is that you're not going to have to go data hunting for these things.
So they're going to be populated by our Office of Shared Accountability. Actually an uploaded tomorrow. They have their data right at their fingertips. They're not going to have to go looking around for all these different data points and everything. And then we are going to go through the process of providing some feedback still
on people's, you know, school improvement plans. The one box that I didn't mention, I think this is a really a key piece, is we've talked a lot about shared accountability and a, a school system. First, a system of schools. There's a box on there for the cross-functional team
and how they will have a very specific goal of what types of support they will provide and what their goal for data movement will be. So that on paper and, you know, organically as we work together throughout the school year, our data we the
data is owned between central services and the school. It's not the school's data alone. We carry responsibility for the movement of that, that data, the final school improvement plans are due September the 15th. Okay. And then we'll go live and
be on all school websites. Following that, I do want to also just go back to what Mrs. Stewart said and connect it to, again, a system of schools versus a school system. All principals will have quarterly meetings with their community where they will provide updates on the school improvement plan. So in addition to it being
changed and uploaded on the website, if you want to access it that way, there will also be the opportunity to engage in dialog with your community around the progress that's being made or not being made and what you're doing about it. Thank you so much. And I think this is wonderful discussion. I think I
really learned a lot this time about our school improvement plan. A very concrete steps. I just want to thank Miss Smith and Miss Walker for taking time out of your busy summer schedule to join us today. Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you ladies.
We are now move to item number eight is for informational summary. This summary is for June 16th, 2025 and June 24th, 2025. Two meetings. No action is required of the board at this
time. Now there is item number nine. Adjournment. I know this is always the part that gets people very excited, but today after this part, I need you to stay seated for one more moment. Okay, so may I have a motion to
adjourn the open session? So moved. Second, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. The reason that I ask you all to sit back down.
Because we have a few business that we did not finish during the closed session, so we do need to return. So I am now ask the student member of the board to read us into closed session. I move that the board meet in closed session to address topics
listed in the posted resolution for today's closed session and for the reasons on the basis stated therein. I second that motion. Okay, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's
unanimous. Thank you everyone. The meeting is the open. Meeting is adjourned.