Good afternoon and welcome to the November 20th, 2025 board. Business meeting. I will begin by asking members to introduce themselves toablish a quorum. Laura Stewart for district four. Good morning.
Rita montoya, Board of Education member at large. Good afternoon, Brenda Wolff, district five. Good morning or good afternoon. Buenos dias. Buenas tardes. Grace Rivera-Oven. District one. Good afternoon. Karla Silvestre, school board member at large.
Good afton, Natalie Zimmerman, representing district two. Good afternoon. And student member of the board. Good afternoon, Julie Yang. District three. All right. First item on our on our agenda today is the election of
officers. Now, the our presidents or officers service cycle is from December to the end of November. There is a request that we do a little
earlier this year to accommodate schedules. There's an interest. And so for today, we for board president and vice president for term to begin. We're going to do the election for terms to begin on December
1st, 2025. Is there any discussion on this item? Seeing no discussion, I move that the board waive the provision that the election of officers occur no earlier than December 1st to allow for the election of
officers to be held today, with the terms of those elected to begin on December 1st, 2025. So there is a motion to say second. Okay. So there is a motion and a second to proceed. So we have
to be a unanimous unanimous vote for this one in order for it to proceed. So there's a motion and a second. All in favor please raise your hand. And that's unanimously. Thank you everyone. And now I will
for election. I'm going to now turn the call over to Doctor Taylor. As a secretary and treasurer of the board to run the election. Thank you, Madam President, as your non-voting member of the board and secretary treasurer, it's my
pleasure to preside over the election of president of the Board of Education for the term to begin on December 1st of 2025, pursuant to the board's rules, the names of all board members are in nomination. Five votes are required to elect a
president. At this time, I ask the board staff to distribute ballots. When the ballots are collected. I will read each one into the record. Just as a reminder, please remember to ascribe your name or sign your ballot once you are done voting,
and you can pass them to me when you're done. Okay? Thank
you. Thank you. I have collected eight ballots, so
that worked out pretty nicely for today's election. I'm going to read each ballot into the record. The student member of the board, a nouveau malu, cast one vote for Grace Rivera-Oven Natalie Zimmerman. Cast one vote for Grace Rivera. Oven
Carla Silvestre cast one vote for Grace Rivera. Oven. Rita montoya cast one vote for Grace Rivera. Oven. Laura Stewart cast one vote for Grace Rivera. Oven and Grace Rivera oven cast one vote for Grace Rivera. Oven and Brenda Wolff cast one vote
for Grace Rivera. Oven. Having received. Oh, sorry. There's one more Julie Yang cast. One vote for Grace Rivera. Oven having received the required five votes, a unanimous vote. Congratulations to Grace Rivera
Oven as the president elect of the Board of Education. Next, I will preside over the election of Vice President of the Board of Education. The names of all board members other than the
president elect, Grace Rivera Oven are in nomination, so please cancel that out on your ballot. Five votes are required to elect a vice president at this time. I'll ask board staff to distribute the ballots for vice president. When the ballots are collected. I will
read each one into the record. And as a reminder, please remember to sign or ascribe your name to the ballot. Thank
you. Thank you. Board members, I have collected eight ballots.
Rita montoya votes for Brenda Wolff. Laura Stewart cast a vote for Brenda Wolff. Julie Yang cast a vote for Brenda Wolff Grace Rivera. Oven cast a vote for Brenda Wolff. Carla
Silvestre cast a vote for Brenda Wolff Natalie Zimmerman cast a vote for Brenda Wolff a malu. Cast a vote for Brenda Wolff and Brenda Wolff. Cast a vote for Brenda Wolff. Having
received the required five votes, a unanimous selection. It's my pleasure to congratulate Brenda Wolff as the new Vice President elect of the Board of Education. Before proceeding with the remainder
of today's meeting. And I know that there are some folks who would like to make some remarks, because to mark this special occasion and we have an audience member who I'm sure would love to hear some thoughts as well. I would like to take this opportunity to thank President Yang and our
outgoing Vice President, Grace Rivera-Oven, for their exemplary service this past year. And before I invite Miss Yang to make some remarks, I just want to say that it is hard enough being a Board of Education member. It's a tremendous amount of work. It is a full time job on top of a
lot of full time, other responsibilities that board members have. It's a thankless job. There are heavy decisions that weigh on the hearts of board members. There's a lot that's required of them, and to step into an officer role is a tremendous amount of personal
responsibility as well as professional responsibility. And I just want to thank you both for the work that you have extended this past year, and the extra effort that you've put in to make M.C.P.S. a great school system. And so with that, I do want to pass along a small
token of appreciation on behalf of the Board of Education to outgoing President Yang for your service this past year. Miss Rivera, you might have to wait a year for this, but thank you so much and would like to offer Miss Yang an opportunity to make a few remarks before we
conclude this portion of the meeting. Thank you, thank you. I always get a little bit emotional, you know, but today is it's a happy emotion that I have. I want to begin by
thanking my fellow board members for entrusting me with this privilege. As serving as president of the Board of Education, it has truly been the greatest honor of my professional life, and working
alongside you. I'm reminded again and again that leadership is not a solo act. It is a team effort. Now we are a community that believes deeply in public education. I have felt that
belief. Every school I visited this year, in every conversation with a parent or a student, that belief has carried us through an extraordinary year. Despite a difficult fiscal climate and a
turbulent political environment, we never wavered. We stayed focused on what matters most our students excellence, equity, and the long term future of M.C.P.S. And together we
deliver real results. This year, we advanced our system in ways that matter for real children and real families. I think, number one, a clear and ambitious long term vision. We adopted a new strategic plan,
Future Ready, a bold vision for every student success. A plan that sets a unified North Star for achievement, readiness, strong staffing and safe environments. And two, we have a historic investment in our
students. We passed a 3.6 billion operating budget grounded in equity, safety, and teaching excellence. We prioritize resources where families actually feel them in classrooms and student supports, and in competitive wages for
our educators and staff. We strengthened special education, and we have a renewed commitment to belonging and student safety. This was deeply personal to me. I wanted every child, regardless of background,
immigration status, identity or lived experience to walk into their school and feel like they belong. So as a board, we reaffirm publicly and equivocally that our schools will always remain safe places
where every child is welcomed, valued, affirmed, respected and loved. We set high expectations for operational excellence. This board has demonstrated that we are not afraid to confront serious issues and
make corrections, and we set a higher bar for follow through, because families deserve a system that not only plans well but executes well. And this is the year that we met with hundreds of community members
at budget and CIP hearings. We launched the Advisory Committee on Communication and Community Engagement, and we modernized the board handbook and simplified the public comment process to ensure families feel heard, not shut out now. And
one of the moments I will carry with me was testifying in Annapolis twice to support the bill, allowing individuals to take the GED exam in Spanish. I thought of our students and how
this change could alter the course of their lives. Now it is law and that is what meaningful policy looks like. The board also has embraced on better governance in developing
our accountability policy, and also AI regulation. We this year, we truly honored extraordinary educators and students through many of our celebrations. The Distinguished
Service Awards, the recognitions in our schools and in the boardrooms. And we dedicated this boardroom to be the Patricia O'Neill boardroom to leaders who shaped this district. And one of my fondest memory will always be that we
welcome our youngest learner during Get Ready for Kindergarten Months, a reminder that big journey begins. A tiny hand in ours. So serving as president has been the greatest
privilege of my life. Every day I have been inspired by your dedication, by the brilliance of our students, by the resilience of our families, and by the unwavering commitment of our staff. As I step out of
this role, I do so knowing that significant challenges lie ahead. The boundary study, the facility needs of our buildings, the work of planning wisely for a changing county. These
decisions will shape the next generation. But I'm hopeful because the work we did this year gives this board a firm foundation is strong, it's steady, and it is, without question, future ready. Thank
you everyone. This time I'd like to recognize the president elect of the Board of Education. Thank you so much, Julie. Miss Yang, I just want to say I
don't have prepared written remarks because most of you know, even if I do, I usually don't use them. So the staff I think has gotten the message. But I do want to say that I am incredibly thankful to Miss Malu, Miss Zimmerman, Miss
Silvestre and Miss Yang, Miss Wolff, Miss Montoya and Miss Stuart. And with the support from Doctor Taylor, of course, and to the wonderful staff that we have here, present our Chief of Staff, thank you so much for all your work and everyone in
this room. Being a Board of Education member, when you talk to people. I actually filed today for reelection and people are saying, why are you doing this again? But they say, like again, you know, with, with
with heavy hearts. And I think it's not it's, you know, it's hard for us to explain why we do this, but for me, it's not for me, it's about the future of this county. It's about the
fact that I came as a child, as an immigrant, and I had a wonderful country welcoming. This is my new home and my new country, and I have had my kids here and my children were also benefited from our wonderful schools. And like Miss Yang, we
both were immigrants. And also Miss Silvestre, we, you know, and this this is this is where we want to give back. And I think giving back is, is part of just being a Montgomery County. I grew up in the city
of Gaithersburg with a six pillars. I had wonderful mentors throughout my life. And today to be able to give back. I just want to say it's such a privilege. It is a privilege to
walk into schools, to talk to these beautiful children, to be able to encourage young people that si se puede, yes you can. You can acquire your dreams, you can work hard and you are able to achieve what you want
to achieve. I think we're in a very difficult times. And I look at this board and I look at the mirror of what Montgomery County is supposed to look like. I think we represent the voices. We represent the children and the staff, and there's a lot of
work to do. So with that, I just want to say thank you so much for entrusting me in this role. I hope I make you proud. Communication is key for me. And I you know, sometimes I can be a little bit blunt, but there's no harm in my bluntness.
It's just because I feel that we have so much to achieve, and we don't have a lot of time to achieve it because we are behind on certain things. So as we, you know, start this new phase of the board, I want to say thank you, Mrs. Yang, for,
you know, for guiding us through some rough times, for guiding us through some rough waters. We, you know, we were on the news quite a bit and I'm sure that's going to continue. But the wonderful thing is that
we are a body that I think what maybe, you know, separate us from others is that we try to do and be united because I think every one of us, when we wake up every morning, we say,
how can I make our system better for the children of this county, for the staff, for those who walk through our schools every day, for those kids who come with a lot of pain, uncertainty, hungry, cold, how can we make their lives
better? So this job is not about me. It's not about us, but it's about them. And that's what I want us to always focus on is about the children and what is best for them and for
our community. So with that, I have a little gift for Miss Yang. I know this is not traditional, so I'm going to start a new tradition because I love gifts. Sorry, Carla. Because Miss Yang and I started
together this journey. We were, you know, so there is a bond when you start together on a board. And there was a lot of explosions along the way early on on our joining this board. So with that, I just want to say muchas gracias. Oh my God,
you are the sweetest. So with that, I'm ready to roll my sleeves. Thank you staff. Thank you to my wonderful fiancé for being here. Thank you to my family watching at home to my wonderful, my wonderful mother.
Do not turn on the volume. Thank you to my mother who taught me everything that I am and that I do that she taught me. You know, the the empathy is important in life and to give to others. Thank you to my children who are wonderful. Thank you to my community. And
also I'm very appreciative to my God for giving me the privilege to wake up every morning and to do something that I can do for others. And public service is amazing. And thank you to each and every one of you for making the sacrifices that you have to make every day. You know, late
dinner, sometimes, no dinners, you know, putting your kids to bed late at night and sometimes not being able to put your kids late at night. You know, not seeing your grandkids. You know, it's just it's not an easy job. But we do it because we love it
and we love the children in this county. So thank you all. So with that, just a couple of reminders. Since we suspended the board rules for this particular meeting, the election of officers, although
it took place today, takes effect on December 1st. So today's the rest of the meeting will be conducted by the sitting president, Miss Yang. And at that point I would like to to that point, I would like to pass the gavel back to you for the remainder of today's meeting. Thank you. We will now
continue our business and I thank you, Miss Rivera. We will all help you. It's going to be a year that we all work together. I need a little theme music. Yes. Right, right. All right, so can I. I now will ask
to be read 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 and on the basis stated therein. Second, okay, there's a motion and a second. All in favor,
please raise your hand. That's unanimous. We'll be back. Thank
you everyone.
Yeah. In the board meetings this year, we wanted to do a
lot more celebrations. In the past, the Board of Education has passed a number of resolutions, and we've celebrated them briefly in the moment by reading the resolutions. But that's not enough. We want to lift up a lot of the hard work that makes
our community great, and celebrate the many hands that make Montgomery County a great place to live, work, and learn. And so last month, at the October 30th board meeting, we passed two resolutions one to celebrate National Psychology
Week. And yep. So we get to to do some psychology celebrations there. And as part of that, we have not only school psychologists, but we also have some furry friends who are joining us today, which always adds a new dimension of excitement into the boardroom.
And then we're also celebrating American Education Week, and to boot, we are also being able to welcome a number of our students into the board chamber today to celebrate state championships for the first time in a really long time. And
even though the fall season isn't completely done, it is done for a few of our teams. And so we wanted to lift them up and celebrate them. So without further ado, I'm going to pass this off to one of our board members, Natalie Zimmerman, who's going to introduce and talk about
American Education Week. Miss Zimmerman. Thank you. I am so excited and so honored to be doing this today. And I first want to welcome the following
people to come join me. And you'll find there is little marked spaces. Come stand up. So please come join me Oussama Rahbani Nicole Cyrus, who isn't here. She's out of the country, but we will be recognizing her
as well. Miss Jane Stern, who? And Jose Castellano. Will you come join us? Come right over here. I feel especially honored and appreciative of welcoming,
welcoming these folks today. Some of them have subbed in my own classroom, and I'm really happy to be recognizing some substitute teachers here. On behalf of American Education Week. American Education Week is celebrated the week before Thanksgiving. It provides our entire community with an
opportunity to reflect upon and celebrate the critical values and achievements of our public education system. This week is dedicated to recognizing the collective efforts of every individual teachers, administrators, support staff, parents, community members who contribute to the growth and development of every child in
our district. By dedicating this week, we underscore our firm commitment to educational excellence and celebrate the critical work being performed daily in our classrooms to ensure a brighter future for all of our students. A key focus of this week is Substitute Educators Day, which
is acknowledged tomorrow, November 21st, this day championed by the National Education Association, is specifically set aside. Thank you, David Stein. Specifically set aside to honor the essential role that substitute teachers and other substitute
educators play in maintaining instructional I'm sorry and maintaining instructional quality and content and continuity when our regular staff are temporarily absent. To formally recognize this vital work, we will be highlighting five remarkable individuals from our district who exemplify dedication and
excellence to their substitute roles, their flexibility, professionalism, and commitment are crucial to our success, and we are proud to recognize them. Alongside the original organization, the NEA, for establishing this important celebration. I know I would not
have been as successful in my classroom as a teacher without our substitute educators who stepped up when I needed them most, and some of them are right here with me. So thank you so much. We're so happy to recognize you. And we'd like to
take a picture with all of you. Come on to the front. Yes. All
right. Thank you for coming in our schools. We can't do this without you. For these people, sitting here does not carry a M.C.P.S. sign up to be a
substitute. Okay? Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you,
thank you. Thank you. Next, I'd like to invite Miss Brenda Wolff and Miss Julie Yang to come forward to talk about National School Psychology Week.
So good afternoon, everyone. I'm honored to be here to celebrate National School Psychology Week. I'd like to invite up Madison, Buckholtz and Alondra Anderson if you're
here. Yes. Come on. Right on up. You all don't have one of the dogs? No, but what am I going to pet while I'm standing here? Could you bring me a dog? Thank
you. I think the dogs are part of this picture, but National School Psychology Week is here, and it's a perfect time to celebrate the incredible contributions of our school psychologists. These outstanding professionals are
essential to our educational team, always working hard to support our students in achieving academic success, cultivating positive behaviors, and maintaining their mental well-being with their expertise
in crisis intervention, social emotional learning, and assessments. They help bridge the gap between mental health and education, ensuring that every student has a safe, effective environment in which to thrive. But more than those
skills, I know psychologists support students and finding joy in school and in learning. Now again, I'm going to say I would like to find joy. I would like to see one of my dogs up here with me. Brenda. Hold on,
hold on. You'll be here. Yeah. I need get away. I want my I want my dog. Where'd you quit? Quit trying to tell me. Thank you. They helped build confident learners and happier
scholars. And they bring me joy. They help make our schools better, healthier, and more welcoming. I know that our school psychologists were recently recognized at the Mental Health Awareness Week celebration on November the 8th
at Gaithersburg High School. However, we wanted to take this opportunity as a full board together with Doctor Taylor to show our heartfelt appreciation for the vital role psychologists play in fostering
resilience, joy. Academic success across our district. Thank you. A little bit longer. Stand a little bit longer because Miss Wolff won the picture together. All right.
Next, as you notice, we have some furry friends in the room. I want to invite them to come up. So first is fiddles for freedom. And that is vitals for freedom. That's Diane and Noah and friend and Trista and
Monica Brown. And then we have we also have Ross and Cherry. Am I saying chewy, chewy, Hana and IV and Darby and Ziva. Aiko,
Kelly and Jovie, Kimberlyn and Finnick. And then we have Heather, Heather, Heather, Gomez, if you are here. And Kelly. And we have Miss Harriet
Khan and. All right. So please come up here. I know that Melissa Reagan is here. Come on up. All right. So here is here's what I will say. I'm Julie Yang, president of the
school board. So so excited. This is a long time coming that we have them in our schools. So tonight we get to celebrate some of the top dogs of M.C.P.S. the therapy pups and partners who make our schools
kinder, calmer and a whole lot brighter. Okay, a huge thank you to National Capital Therapy. Dog people, animals. Love pet partners. Fido's for freedom and Pets on Wheels. Your
partnership is truly, positively impactful. These certified gentle dogs bring comfort, ease, anxiety and help our students and staff feel seen, safe and supported. One
wag, one nuzzle, one quiet moment at a time. And I was at North Bethesda middle school today during lunchtime, and I saw them in action. Yeah, your work doesn't just lift spirits. It helps us build a school
environment where mental health is nurtured, well-being is front and center. We are forever grateful for your dedication and the joy your pups bring into our hallways. Thank you for being such a
positive force in M.C.P.S. for brightening even the toughest day with every tail wag. Now. Now I think it's Miss Wolf's favorite part taking the picture together. Is that right? Okay, let's do this. Should we
come to the front? In the front, come to the front and do this part because we want to come. We want to remember this moment that we're celebrating together.
Oh. Yes. Yes. Oh.
You guys. Sorry. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. I think you get in there. You in
there? Yeah. Yeah yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Right down here. All right, all right. Thank you,
thank you. That was. All right. That's a lot more excitement than we're used to having. Typically. This is for you. Yeah, I don't know what happened. What happened today.
You do. You got you got this right here. We have a little bit more to celebrate. So I'll ask that our furry friends take
their seat. Thank you. All right. For the last portion of our celebration, I would invite you all to celebrate with us some of the fantastic student athletes this fall season that
have achieved something that very few students get the opportunity, which is to compete on a statewide stage and come home with a championship. So without further ado, it's my pleasure to introduce our Board President, Julie Yang, who will recognize our state champions
this fall. Thank you, thank you, thank you. What a day. Champions and dogs. Okay. This is it's wonderful. So before I proceed I actually want to invite all of them to come up
is the first is the Damascus cheer squad. Can you come? Principal Brad Rauner, athletic director cliff, coach Lindsay,
please come up. Okay. The next I would like to call the BCC girls cross country team with Principal Kevin Yates, athletic
director Mike Quazzo, coach Jim, thank you. Next we will bring up the Clarksburg girls flag football team. Who? And that's principal Anita, athletic
director Ed and coach Kyle. And last but not least, the Churchill golf team. Let's bring in Principal John, athletic director Jesse and coach Robert. Fantastic. Okay,
where's my Churchill? Okay, okay. So so truly amazing. We get to celebrate these young people who show us every day what discipline, teamwork and
heart looks like. Now, as a mom, I have a 24 and 21 year old. Some of my happiest moments of memories are standing on the sidelines, running around the fields with my kids, cheering
with other parents, sharing snacks and watch they make friends from. They have nothing that has nothing to do with last names or neighborhood lines, but everything to do with shared goals and sheer
joint athletic activity gave my children confidence. It truly improved the quality of life in my family, and I know so many of you feel the same. Sports don't just build strong
athletes, they build stronger people. They teach resilience, leadership, time management. Right? And how to lift each other up after a loss and celebrate each other after a
win. They strengthen mental health by creating belonging, connection and purpose. And they remind us that school is not only about what happens in the classroom, it's also about
what happens on the track, the field, the court, and in every space where students push themselves to be better. I'm also not a secret, a big fan of our music and arts program. I think in all these spaces that we find students engage and
that's how we build our community. Tonight, we honor the students who train hard, dream big, and show up for their teams, the coaches who mentor and motivate, and the families who cheer from the stands and do a lot of driving
to early morning practice, all weekend practices, to our champions on the school board, on the school board and the character. You may M.C.P.S. proud. Now, it's my pleasure to
say, hey, let's celebrate! You know what? We have to do this school by school. It's too big a team. Yeah, they can stay right here. They can fill in here with board members. You want to do just one big picture?
We can do it. Okay, we'll squeeze in. Okay, let's squeeze in. Okay. The younger ones. Not us, not the. You will come in for the picture. Okay? What do
we do? Right, here we go. You. Thank you. Am I blocking you? I got such a great. Yeah. Thank
you. Okay. Like this. Y'all
have to think. I like sneaking. Are we all good? Well done. Good, good. Okay. Ready? Yes. One. Two. Three and a couple
more. Okay. Right here. Come here. One. Two. Three. Okay.
123123. And now I want you all to scream champion. Okay, okay, you guys ready? And smiles. You're all winners. Come on.
123. Oh! You guys. Good afternoon. Good afternoon and
welcome to the November 20th, 2025 board business meeting. Welcome to our board members, M.c.p.s. Staff and members of our community here and who are joining us, those who are joining us via live stream. I
will now ask board members to introduce themselves to establish a quorum. Good afternoon. A student member of the board. Good afternoon, Natalie Zimmerman, representing district two. Buenas tardes. Good afternoon. I'm Karla Silvestre, school board member
at large. Good afternoon. Buenas tardes. Grace Rivera, representing district one. Good afternoon, Brenda Wolff. District five. Good afternoon. Rita montoya, board member at large. Good afternoon, Laura Stewart. District four. Good
afternoon, Julie Yang. District three. I will now ask to have a motion to approve the revised agenda. Motion to approve. Second, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please
raise your hand. That's unanimous. Thank you everyone. The next one will be our association comment and public comments. But before we go that I want to say something about
today. So I want to begin by acknowledging the very something very real in this room. Every person here cares deeply, deeply about their school and their children. Your
hopes, your anxieties, your advocacy come from love. And I want you to know you are seen, you are heard, and your school
matters. M.C.P.S. is one community. We may come from different clusters, different neighborhoods, and different experiences, but our commitment to our children connects us.
Even when resources are limited, our values are not. What we do today is not about choosing winners and losers. I know that recently there are a lot of
tensions and headlines headlines, but the board's work is not shaped by political drama. The board should not make decisions based on pressure, media, narratives or any other tactics designed to
divide communities. Resources are limited. I'm convinced that we need to grow our economy and to generate revenue and be creative in our funding solutions and efforts. I ask all of us in this room to
remember we are one M.C.P.S. community. We may advocate for different projects, but we share the same goal doing right by our children. And that's exactly what we intend to do.
With that, I would like to call to the front the O. We need to do the Pledge of Allegiance. In my all excitement, I forgot of that. That's right. So can we please rise? The flag is in the
back. Okay, 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 you. Thank you all. We will. The association's come forward, please. You're solo.
You're solo today. Good afternoon. I want to address these concerns with one of our many impending changes, our secondary program analysis. Let me begin by saying McKay is in
complete alignment with M.c.p.s. On the goals of the proposed changes, we wholeheartedly believe in the need to increase equity and access to specialized programs for students in all corners of our county, and do it with fidelity. Where we diverge with the district is in the
implementation of these impending change. By now, you have read our press release, as well as the PTA articulating our opposition to M.c.p.s. Plan. When educators, parents and community members agree that M.c.p.s. Is headed down a problematic path, you might
have a problem starting six regions with many programs, and each region is a Herculean task. And yes, we can do hard things, but those of us who have been in the district for a long time are seeing the same old script being played out, a poorly thought out plan implemented
haphazardly, and the result what I call Pinos programs in name only. And this is the real danger, having an illusion of equity without real equity. What council member Fanny Gonzalez called it a recent council hearing equality without equity. What's missing?
Authentic input from educators and other stakeholders who have knowledge, experience and expertise in specialized programs. Now, was there a steering committee with McKay participation? Sure there was, but there is a difference between feedback and authentic feedback. And therein lies our
concern. We still lack answers to fundamental questions. How do we intend to staff all these programs? How will these changes affect the existing programs in our high schools, many of which are long standing points of pride for their communities? What about the cost? How do we justify these in times of budget difficulty?
And finally, and most importantly, how will you ensure that all of your programs are not Pinos? There is still time and opportunity to do this right. Perhaps start with one new region, water that and let it flourish. Before we expand. Our educators want to
set our students up for success. M.C.P.S. should work with us in furthering a goal we all work towards every day. That is equity, access and a world class education for all of our students. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is
public comments. We. This year we have increased that public comment slots to 20. While the board encouraged public input on policy programs and practices and will consider comment received, it is not the board's practice during its public meetings to respond to
questions, provide comment or take action on the issue raised. This is the 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 comment 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 flat button and speak clearly into the
microphone. A yellow light and a single beep indicates 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 live
testimony, audio and video testimony will be played. Copies of the testimony are posted within are posted with other materials for the meeting. On board docks. I'm calling the first six speakers to come to
the front rows. Jillian. Boesky. Ryan Sinn, Dylan Bacow, Zachary
Okeke and. Lydia Elia. Press. Rows. You can proceed. Hi, my name is Rose Khan and I'm very glad to be able to speak with
the speak to the Board of Education, including a fellow M.c.p.s student. I'm a 13 year old middle schooler at Forest Oak, and I'm in the seventh grade. I went to Rosemont Elementary from kindergarten to fifth grade, and I've always had to take a long bus ride to
school, especially now from where I live to for Stoke, it can be up to a 30 minute bus ride and I end up late. I end up late to school sometimes. Both schools that I've been to were overcrowded and lacked some resources for the students to be able to learn properly. I
was in a portable classroom for all of my fifth grade year. It was uncomfortable, creaky, and unsafe. My parents moved to Crown and paid a lot of special taxes so that me and my younger sister could at least go to a nice high school in walking distance. As we've now been
informed, the brand new school that was promised to the kids of Gaithersburg might be taken away because schools and other cities need to get fixed up. I think that this is totally unfair, because the kids in Gaithersburg have waited a long time for this new school that we desperately need, and there are families moving here right now. Please do not take Crown
High School away from us. This is a terrible idea to use a brand new $180 million school as a temporary place that will not be taken care of properly. Crown High School should be the crown jewel of M.C.P.S. and Gaithersburg. Thank you.
Jillian. Go ahead. Good afternoon, Doctor Taylor, President Yang and members of the board. My name is Jill and I'm a senior at Wooton High School. Since my sophomore year, I have been advocating for Ada compliance and for a long
overdue major renovation of our school. Tonight, I want to address our emergency evacuation procedures and why the current state of Wooten's infrastructure prevents a truly safe evacuation for all. While we appreciate the Ada improvements, they are temporary fixes to a building
that is fundamentally outdated, inaccessible, and not designed for modern safety needs, our evacuation routes make this clear nearly a third of our student body must evacuate to the Robert Frost Middle School field. To reach this evacuation site, the students must cross a very narrow bridge that can
barely support even a small portion of our school. This leads to severe bottlenecking and unsafe crowding for those with mobility disabilities. The delay becomes even more dangerous because the path simply does not allow them to move quickly or safely during an emergency. Even on campus,
reaching a safe distance from the building is difficult. Uneven pavement, steep ramps, and long distances to evacuation sites make it extremely hard for students with mobility disabilities to get away from the school quickly. In a real emergency, that delay could be life
threatening. We also face serious issues with our fire alarm system. During a recent fire drill, there was no audible alarm in multiple classrooms or in the hallway outside them. Students and teachers didn't realize they needed to evacuate until they stepped into the halls and
noticed the flashing lights. I recorded a video of the issue and I asked that you play the video I submitted. We cannot rely on alarms that do not reach every classroom. We cannot depend on evacuation routes that trap students or place them in harm's way, and we cannot continue to place
temporary fixes on a building that urgently needs comprehensive renovation. Every student deserves a school where they can learn safely and where they can evacuate safely, especially in today's world. Thank you for your time and consideration, Ryan. Good
afternoon, Doctor Taylor, president Yang and members of the Board of Education. I'm Charlie Rollins and I'm Ryan Shin, and we are seniors at Thomas S Wooton High School and the co-presidents of the Student Government Association. We are here today to talk on behalf of a building that is older than our parents and has
been neglected for years. One of the many issues I personally face because of our school's outdated infrastructure is our HVAC systems. Our HVAC and plumbing systems are rated poor, and we are the only school in the entire county to receive this rating in both categories. This isn't an exaggeration. It's a documented state of our
school. As a captain of the county's only competitive and award winning a cappella group, the Onyx, I spent countless hours rehearsing in our room. Yet I have to face extreme temperatures freezing one day, stifling hot the next. As a student body president, my goal this year has been to rebuild
school spirit and show my patriot pride. Yet, how can I expect students to take pride in school? They feel uncomfortable and neglected in. Additionally, our systems breaks so frequently that bathrooms and locker rooms are often closed for weeks, even months. However, that fault
does not lie within our building services team. Rather, it's a result of our systems being so old that parts have to be custom ordered. And because these systems are failing, mold is spreading throughout the classrooms, hallways, and locker rooms. Dead rodents have been found between our lockers, and students have become so
used to seeing mold across our ceilings that it hardly surprises anyone anymore. And our principal, Doctor Bostick, has even had to notify parents that our school would open late because our building smelled like gas due to mold mold related issues. These incidents aren't isolated. They have become a part of the Wooten
experience. We are proud to be patriots. Yet despite our ranking as third in Maryland, or perhaps because of it, our school continues to be told we can wait. But success can never be used as an excuse for neglect. We urge you to prioritize one high school for a full renovation or rebuild.
We are not asking for luxury. We are asking for a school building where students don't feel neglected. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Zachariah. Can we move the mic to her? Like move? Yeah, actually, gentlemen, if one of you could give up one of your seats, that
would be great. Thank you. Push the button to turn on the mic. Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Zachariah. I'm a junior and I've been an
SGA for about two years at Wooton High School. Let me set a scene for you. You're a cancer survivor who's thankfully in remission, but still relies on the elevator to get to class. And even with the Ada renovations the school has received, getting around the school is tiring. Both
elevators, which mind you have been known to get stuck, be unbearably slow and make unsettling screeching noises. Or on the other side of the building from you, even though the pain in your left leg is throbbing and you're supposed to drag yourself to that rusty elevator, you just use the
stairs anyway, and your boot and your crutches, each step reminding you of the outdated damage and soul draining school you attend. Let me set another scene for you. You've been prepping for your Apush exam all year. You listen to review videos on the bus to school, and you're currently sitting in
the middle of the cold auditorium for your second AP exam of the week. The test is about to be administered when suddenly the lights go out. You look around to hear confused murmurs. For the first 30 minutes, it seems like a nice time to review with your classmates. But as time ticks
on, reality settles in. You're not taking that exam today. I'm sure I shouldn't have to tell you this, but power at a school should work. Should children like me really be left to struggle because of the age and structure of our building? We surveyed ourselves to see what the body, the student body had
to say about our school, and we found that 85% of students are open to having makeshift classrooms at the wound site while a new school is being built. If it means we get a new one sooner. This is similar to what happened at Poolesville, and what we are hearing from students is that we want action
as soon as possible and by any means necessary. So let me reintroduce myself. I'm my name is Sarah and I'm still a junior and all that other stuff. But you shouldn't have had to meet me under these circumstances to hear once again that Wooten's building isn't serving students. It's quite literally crumbling
all around us. And we plead you to build a new one. Thank you, thank you. Dylan. Okay. Go ahead. Dylan. Good afternoon.
My name is Dylan Bacall. I'm a fourth grade student at Clearspring Elementary School in Damascus, Maryland. My neighbor, Mr. Jeff, is building an addition to his house. It was supposed to take six months, but it is almost been two years, and they're still not done. During construction, there was a lot of noise, a lot of
traffic, piles of construction materials, and even trash. They even crashed into one of Mr. Jeff's trees and broke one of our lawn decorations with their bad driving. The trucks park on the street and I walked past them to and from the bus stop. It is hectic and not nice to
look at. This is just one room being added to a house. I cannot imagine an entire school being built while while students are trying to learn in the building next door. This is why Crown High School should be used as a holding school. While Damascus High School is being rebuilt. I know that's not why
Crown was built, but I think Doctor T's suggestion makes sense. I also know that means having a long bus ride to and from school, but that is better than kids being unable to focus on their grades, suffering because of the distractions. I think we can avoid a lot of
traffic and kids being around pollution to the Damascus High School renovation has been delayed so many times. US students are hopeful that the new school has been promised within the next six years. Maybe by then, doctor, Mr.
Jeff's addition will be done to please keep Damascus High School on track and think of all the up county schools, not just Damascus, that can be rebuilt faster if Crown is used as a holding school. Thank you for letting me speak today and considering my suggestion.
Damascus needs this. Thank you. Elia. Press the button. You did it. Good evening. My name is Elia Press and I'm a fourth grader and future student at
Wooton High School. This is my little brother, Louis. He's in kindergarten. My family goes on walks and bike rides by Wooton all the time. We had a lot of fun volunteering at the Fall Festival last month too. One time my brother and I even sang
on Wooton stage for Chinese New Year. I loved to tell my brother about how Wooton is the big kids school and that we will go there one day. I get so excited thinking about walking through the halls with my friends Lucia and Gia. But when I talked to older kids in my
neighborhood, they tell me scary things about Wooton. Not bullies or homework, but the building. Like how they hold their pee to avoid going to the bathroom because of the because of the gross floors and broken toilets. I also heard that the
temperature never feels right and it can be mold in the air makes kids feel sick gets special treatment. I did not have the privilege to be selected to speak last time. I think it's a privilege. You have nice buildings and clean bathrooms here. The kids at
Wooton don't have this. Wooton was built in 1970 when my grandpa was in high school. It still has the same heating and air system. I love my grandpa, but I would not want to breathe air from the same machine. For more than 50 years ago, my
parents told me that Wooton High School is not on the list to be fixed. That means when I am a student at Wooton in just four and a half years, nothing will be fixed. It might even get worse. This makes me very sad. I have breathing problems
and need to use two different inhalers. Bad air quality makes me cough and get sick every time I get sick. I miss school, I miss my friends and I fall behind. You can help fix these scary problems at Wooton. I don't want to be afraid of
using the. I don't want to be afraid of using the bathroom or being too hot to focus. I don't want to miss school because the air makes me cough. If Wooton doesn't make the repair list now, I'm also worried these problems will still be there when my brother starts. Please
help me, my brother, my friends and thousands of other students by fixing Wooton now. Thank you, thank you. Thank you all. Please return to your seat and
I'll call the next six to come up. Christy, Daphne. Courtney. Docca, Jessica. Hammack, Nora. Walsh, Noreen. Quadir. I'm not
saying this right. You de matha Yang. Christy. Go ahead. Good afternoon. The proposed
regionalization plan does not achieve equity goals, lacks realistic implementation strategy and creates disparate impact. The Down County consortium includes schools with the highest percentages of economically vulnerable and students of color. All DCC high schools are majority minority,
with farms rates well above 35% at Einstein needs are even more concentrated over 70% students of color, nearly 45% farms with nearly 80% farms and some feeder schools. The proposal sharply reduces access. Today,
over 2500 students participate in school choice, and more than 75% receive their first choice. Under the regional model, only about 500 students per region would access programs outside of their home school. Nothing in the proposal strengthens middle and elementary school programing, so disadvantaged
students can compete fairly with higher income and white students for limited slots in criteria based regional programs. That is, not expanding. Opportunity and DCC students who do access programs will need to travel farther. How is that equitable? Einstein
is projected to lose 500 students, further raising its farms concentration and likely leading to staffing cuts. This means fewer courses, fewer electives, and fewer opportunities for students who already face the steepest barriers. What is M.C.P.S. concrete plan to maintain
program quality and to maintain existing programs while building over 20 brand new programs? Why is M.c.p.s not considering a modified consortium model with choice or alternatives like 2 or 3 regions that could strengthen magnets, reduce transportation strain and allow real investment in feeder schools.
So low income, multilingual black and brown students are actually prepared for criteria based programs. Finally, M.c.p.s cannot rely solely on outside organizations to speak for entire communities, especially when those groups are not required to use structured, transparent processes for gathering input.
For example, NAACP did not have a formal discussion or request consensus from its parent council members before issuing a statement. Authentic engagement requires hearing from parents directly and consistently, and ensuring iteration and feedback loops. I urge the board to pause, to
reassess, and to build an implementable strategy that truly advances equity. Thank you. Thank you. Courtney. Good afternoon. My name is Courtney Decker and I'm a Gaithersburg resident and parent. I want to begin by reminding this board of something M.C.P.S. said many
times and in many public spaces. M.C.P.S. told us Crown High School was needed. It is difficult to comprehend how a project of this scale can suddenly be deemed unnecessary for its intended purpose. So what is change? Because the facts in Gaithersburg have not. Our enrollment is growing. The same schoolssed to justify
the building of Crown High School are still overutilized and in disrepair. The city of Gaithersburg has confirmed in writing the continued growth of our community. So again, what has changed? Because the only thing that changed seems to be who benefits. We fully support the renovations at other
schools, but receiving their upgrades and our brand new high school goes too far. No community should receive double benefits, while Gaithersburg completely loses out. A holding school is being proposed because it avoids a boundary study and some do not want to
face this. If you move forward with this plan, the message will be unmistakable and it will follow you long after this vote. When powerful communities push hard enough, M.C.P.S. takes from the ones with less. It is a tale as old as time, and now our community is positioned as the next example.
The superintendent asked our community for solutions and not emotion. He asked us to trust the process. But trust cannot exist when commitments are reversed, when data selectively applied, and when a growing community is told to stand aside so another can avoid
discomfort. I would also like to remind Superintendent Taylor in this board that when you're fighting for children's children, fairness in your community, emotion is not a flaw. It's a signal of commitment. And if anything good has come out of this painful situation, it is the resolve and commitment that I've seen in my neighbors as we
fight for Gaithersburg future. We're not asking for special treatment. We are asking for equal treatment. You asked us for solution. Here's a solution. Follow the community level data. Follow your own statements. Follow the values that you're entrusted to uphold. All
children matter, including the children of Gaithersburg. Thank you. Jessica, please. Hello, my name is Jessica Hammack, and in representing the Crown neighborhood, I'll address the Montgomery County Tax law that
provides funds for new schools to alleviate overcrowding. In October 2025, our community was stunned by the abrupt proposal to use Crown as a holding school duedeclining enrollment. M.C.P.S. 2027 CIP. It is a lengthy document, well done, explicitly called out
increasing enrollment in pockets of the county which aligns with the Montgomery County Council reports and forecasts showing strong development in the Gaithersburg area and up county. Many of these residential developments provide thousands of schools or thousands of households at a
time, and there's many more in the pipeline. This data supports the board's original purpose of Crown High School to alleviate overcrowding. Our development at Crown had a special tax levied against it, called the School Impact Tax, to specifically and by law, address overcrowding at the local high schools. Our Crown
Farm neighborhood paid north of $30 million to help fund the new Crown School. Due to overutilization in our cluster. Just our development. If the taxes at Crown were paid to use or were paid and used to build a new high school to alleviate overcrowding, great. That's a
lawful appropriation. To use those funds to build a holding school is not lawful. Violates county law. The county law provides an option to request a refund of the county. If the funds have not been appropriated for the school. Improvements allowed by the law. The county is required to maintain an auditable account
of funds coming in and appropriations going out, and I'm sure an information request could confirm where our millions of dollars were spent, if at all. At no point in the process of planning, permitting and building the Crown High School did M.C.P.S. decline enrollment as a concern until very recently. So if they had
this data or concern, they failed to convey it to the public or incorporate it into the most recent revision of this law that levies yet another tax, called the utilization premium Payment, which again, specifically addresses overutilization of schools. So there's two taxes. Now you guys, clearly the
county has a concern with overcrowding. If they're taxing us twice, the proposed amendment not only rejects evidence of overcrowding the original scope but potentially violates county law. Thank you.
Thank you Laura. Good evening. My name is Nora Walsh, a long standing Montgomery County resident, former two term Northwest Cluster PTA president, and a current resident of
Gaithersburg Crown community. I'm here in opposition to the board's October 30th action to alter the scope changing Crown from a permanent neighborhood high school to a temporary holding school for an unspecified period of time. This action conflicts with
Maryland's law governing land use, school construction, and approved project purpose. The 2006 Annexation Agreement dedicates 32 acres for the construction and operation of a permanent public high school. That contract runs with the
land under Maryland land use law. It's not optional, not temporary, and binds all future owners, including M.C.P.S. Your action is inconsistent with the 2019 conveyance to M.C.P.S. The
2021 IAC approval, the 2024 County council CIP, which fully funds Crown as a permanent community school. I testified before the Maryland Interagency Commission on School Construction, whose authority is to ensure state funded
projects remain consistent with their approved purpose. Any change in use, even temporarily, requires formal approval by the county executive, the county council, city of Gaithersburg, and the IAC. Temporary use prohibits the very students
Crown was approved to serve the proposal before you. Not only conflicts with the spirit and the intent, but the legal foundation of this project. It fully disregards community's long standing expectations and completely undermines the
purpose for which the land was donated and approved. My request is simple stop the material change in scope. Deny this amendment. Vote no. Uphold the law and the public's trust.
Thank you very much. Maureen. Thank you. Hi everyone. My name is Noreen. I'm a proud graduate from Paint Branch High School and a product of M.c.p.s. I moved to Burtonsville in sixth grade, and through public education and through teachers who believed in me and
opportunities that lifted me, I'm here. I am here where I am today in the Wooton cluster. That is not privilege. That's progress. That is the promise of public education. And that's what we should protect and celebrate. So when people ask, how did we get here? Why is Cold Spring not rebuilt? Why is
Wooton still in a building where mold grows faster than home? And the responses we hear were privileged that your turn will come. Other schools need more. And those words may mean not to hurt, but they do. They make children feel less invisible, like their needs are
somehow less and less urgent. Earlier this month, I compared our buildings to grandma's house. Nostalgic, yes, but not built for how children need to learn. Today. For those who visited Wooton, you didn't just see the problems, you felt them. You can smell the mold. You can feel the uneven heat throughout the building. And this week I
learned something heartbreaking. Wooton has a food insecurity issue. This is not privilege. This is health and a safety concern. But cold spring is even worse. It is the last open concept school in M.C.P.S. with no walls, no doors to close, no quiet space for children to
learn, focus and feel safe. During safety drills, students shelter in closets and corners of hallways. Imagine being a child and hearing an alarm and knowing there's nowhere to hide. Honestly, at Cold Spring, the safest place is outside the building. This is about safety, dignity, and equity. Cold
spring ranks among the poorest facilities in the county, yet it thrives academically. Imagine what our children could do if a school is built for them, not against them. So today it's very simple. Approve the CIP with Cold Spring and Wooton in the CIP do not support an amendment to remove it. Cold spring is not a small
school. Cold spring is a forgotten school and it's time to fix that. Not because of privilege, but because of equity, safety, and the promise of public education. Thank you, thank you. Uday. Good evening,
members of the board. My name is Uday and I'm a Gaithersburg parent speaking tonight because the proposal to use Crown High School as a holding school is a short term fix, but that will cause long term damage to our community and to M.C.P.S. credibility. Crown High School was designed, funded and built
with a clear purpose to relieve severe overcrowding in Gaithersburg and the surrounding communities. Our students are learning, learning in portables packed hallways and overstretched classrooms. Crown is ready to open and ready to serve those students, delaying its intended use
doesn't solve a single long term problem. It simply pushes our overcrowding crisis further down the road. The shift is also fiscally responsible. We've invested over 180 million to build Crown, another 1.3 million on a boundary study to plan its opening, to abandon
that plan now at the last minute, waste taxpayers money and forces M.c.p.s to spend even more on transportation, staffing and facility adjustments for a temporary solution that doesn't create a new capacity. It is the definition of definition of inefficiency. Inefficiency. Using Crown as a holding school
would also undermine public trust. Families participated in years of meeting believing their voices mattered. Changing course now tells communities, especially Gaithersburg, that their input was optional and their needs are negotiable. That is not the message M.c.p.s should send when we are trying
to strengthen our community engagement. There are other schools with available capacity to Damascus that can accommodate temporary needs. Crown, on the other hand, was built for a permanent purpose and the purpose is desperately needed right now. I urge the board to not sacrifice a long
term solution for a short term patch. Open Crown High School as intended, and deliver the relief, equity and stability our students have been promised for years. Thank you, thank you. Please return to your seats. I
will call the next set of speakers to come forward. Nihar Shah. Sarah Kroko Kroko, Lauren Gibeau, Tracy. Sachs, Brian.
Robin. That's video. Nihar, please go ahead. Good afternoon. Please turn on the mic. Good
afternoon everyone. My name is Nihar and I'm a resident of Crown Community in Gaithersburg. To the parents from other schools I hear you because I am you know, parents should have to send their child into a building with mold, broken HVAC systems or falling ceilings. Every student deserves a safe,
modern school, and we support you in demanding that M.c.p.s fix them. But pitting communities against each other is a distraction. Shifting blame for years of deferred maintenance onto parents who had no role in creating these problems, believing that the only way to repair one school
is to take another one away doesn't fix anything. It's just repeats the cycle of poor planning and neglect. It doesn't fix the problems that Crown High School was originally intended to address. That's not equity, that's mismanagement. It is unfair and it is wrong. Crown and impacted
communities didn't create this crisis. Years of deferred maintenance did. Now M.c.p.s is asking community to community to sacrifice sacrifice. It's legally approved and funded school to cover its own neglect. Last week, Superintendent Taylor told us community come with solutions. So here's a
solution. Follow the law. Open Crown High School in 2027 as planned, approved and funded on land donated for that specific purpose. Our families have already paid our share through impact taxes, and the state has authorized and funded Crown as a permanent neighborhood high
school. The law is clear and so is the need. No amount of word smithing or behind the scenes coordination or selective data points can change that fact. Crown should open in 2027, as promised. That's just not fairness. It's a matter of law,
process and public trust. Thank you. Thank you Sarah, I'm here today as a parent who is concerned about M.C.P.S. proposed changes to the DCC model in its programs. I have two daughters, one in eighth grade and one in sixth. My oldest is in what may be the
last cohort that is allowed to access the DCC program as it currently exists. We have no idea what the high school choices will look like for my youngest. The entire process of making huge changes to the DCC system seems rushed, forced, and not well thought out. I raise this point because this is not the first time I've experienced this feeling as an
MCPs parent. My youngest recently completed the two way Spanish Immersion program, or Twi program, at Oakland Terrace Elementary. The program's goals are laudable. Over the past seven years, M.c.p.s. Has routinely failed to address major problems with implementation. While the program failed to meet its stated goals. As the recent
evaluation of the program emphasized, overall, students not attending the program outperformed their peers in the DWI program in both literacy and math. This is a massive issue. It is incredibly disheartening to think that we have put our children through what amounts to a massive experiment with their primary education, and nobody bothered
to think if it had any potential negative externalities in other subjects. Moreover, there is no evidence the DWI program is achieving its stated goal of improving the achievement in English language acquisition of Emerging multilingual learners, or Emls. It is striking that a program designed to help ESL students has not significantly
advanced this very basic goal of academic improvement. To date, M.c.p.s. Has not conducted systematic assessment of students Spanish language ability in these DWI programs. I saw no evidence that my daughter or any of her classmates had developed any meaningful ability to communicate in Spanish in either speaking, reading or
writing. This report mentions that m.c.p.s. Is using a map style test in the future or thinking about it. It is unconscionable that this systematic assessment was not included from the start. Parents have brought these concerns and others to M.c.p.s. Multiple times since at least 2019, practically nothing has
been done. In response, we've been told that everything is fine. It is very clearly not. M.c.p.s. Keeps asking parents to trust their program development process. I trusted them last time and that trust was misplaced. With the proposed changes to the DCC program. M.c.p.s. Seems to be hurtling towards an uncertain
outcome without carefully considering the potential issues of implementation, I would ask that the board take the time to think through the changes, the implications of these changes before forcing them through. Thank you Lauren. Hi. I'm sorry. Good evening. My
name is Doctor Lauren Giebel. I'm a veterinarian in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I'm a very proud graduate of Quince Orchard High School. I'm even more proud and honored to be a member of the Crown community. Our vets represent our community. We have been under construction for over 12 years. This high school has been under
construction for about a year and a half, but this has been a long term goal of the area. So you can imagine our shock. And when we were caught off guard a month ago when we were told that our high school that we've all been watching be built and very excited and wanted to celebrate as you all celebrated
many things tonight, we've been excited to celebrate the opening of it. So when a month ago you decided to make the consider it to be a holding school, that was very upsetting to us, but it's brought us together. Let me be very clear, though. This is not planning. This is a reaction that goes against 45 years of careful,
deliberate public policy to this community. Crown is not an extra building. It is not available space. It is a school that sits within the Crown Village annexation, directly adjacent to the Life Sciences Center and the very heart of the Great Seneca Science Corridor and the Gaithersburg
West Master Plan, which the Maryland-national Capital Park and Planning Commission spent decades planning. Longer than me, longer than I've been alive. Those plans were created through extensive hearings, testimony, fiscal analysis, and they were adopted by the Capital Planning Committee and
the county council. And they envisioned a high quality neighbor neighborhood school that supports a thriving science, technology and medical innovation zone. The master plans entire purpose is stability, stable neighborhoods, stable infrastructure, and stable schools that strengthen the community and help the
economy grow. Turning Crown to revolving holding facility does the opposite. It destabilizes families. It undermines walkability and local enrollment. It weakens the foundation of a nationally significant science corridor. And most importantly, it breaks trust. Our community was promised the school. We bought
homes here. We planned our lives here. We believed in Montgomery County when it said Crown High School would serve us. And now, in one week, that promise is being thrown aside. This this board should vote against this. It violates the spirit of the master plan. And that's all I have for you.
Thank you. Thank you. Tracy. Hi. My name is Tracy Sachs, a resident of Crown Community and Gaithersburg. I no longer have children in the school system, so I am merely here solely for what I believe is best for M.c.p.s. As a whole, for all of
our children to look back and say, I am proud that I went to m.c.p.s. You know, I believe all schools should be in decent shape for human occupancy at a bare minimum. Unfortunately, we have a problem with the CIP and
that that honestly is the bottom line. Having said that, our meeting last week, superintendent told us we were directed to come up with holding school options. That raises a simple question directed by whom? If this board didn't authorize it, who is the
driving force behind this change or the process that changed as an approved, funded, and legally bound public project? When our community presented to the Maryland Interagency Commission on School Construction just last
Thursday, the commissioners made clear that they are hearing this proposal for the very first time. It appears there may be a coordinated effort to adjust the language and scope in a way that changes crowns purpose without formal approval or public notice.
Crown High School was approved and funded as a permanent neighborhood high school serving the Gaithersburg and Quince Orchard clusters. We didn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars for a high tech school to sit while waiting for finances and funding to be approved for
schools that aren't even on the CIP. No amount of revised wording can make a material change lawful. Transparency is not an option. It's the foundation of public trust. We ask this board to intervene now and restore that trust by
demanding full disclosure of all communications and ensuring Crown opens, as promised in 2027 for the community it was built to serve. You, the board, have the authority to stop this. I am asking that you vote no to make Crown a holding school.
Thank you. Thank you. Brian. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Brian Rabin Wooten, PTSA president. Anyone who walks through Wootton High School is immediately struck by the deteriorating condition of the building. It's not just disappointing, it's alarming.
That's why our community has been advocating so strongly to have Wootton added to the CIP. We invited you to tour the school with us and see firsthand, firsthand what our students and staff face every day. The reality is stark. The building is in poor condition. While we continue to urge
inclusion in the CIP, we understand it may not happen this cycle, but time is not on our side. The HVAC and plumbing systems are recommended for replacement next year, and would take a miracle to keep them functioning for another decade while we wait our turn again. Unfortunately, every time Wooten reaches the top of the list, another school is
prioritized ahead of us. The prioritization process has lost credibility in our community. Many have seen photos circulating online and in the media, but the images only scratch the surface. We are facing serious health and safety concerns that demand immediate attention. Mold is visibly growing in several areas, and the smell of mold
permeates parts of the building. Fire alarms fail to activate in hallways during drills. Asbestos vinyl tiles remain exposed. Rodents are present in the walls. Pipes hang exposed from ceilings. Science lab exhaust hoods have been nonfunctional since 2016. HVAC
regulation is inconsistent. These are not minor inconveniences. They are threats to the health and safety of our students and staff. While we wait for a full rebuild, we urgently need support to make the building safe and habitable. Every student and teacher deserves to learn and work in an
environment that supports their well-being. While replacing the HVAC system at Wooton would be a welcome improvement, it barely scratches the surface of the far more serious health and safety issues plaguing the building. We also want to be clear the Wooton community strongly supports keeping cold spring in the CIP. Cold spring students are learning in
conditions that are simply not safe or suitable, and it is time to rebuild the school. We understand the importance of HVAC funding. However, removing a long overdue capital project like Cold Spring would be a devastating setback. We urge you to vote against the amendment to remove Cold Spring
from the CIP. Thank you. And. M.c.p.s. TV. Can you please play the video submissions? Good evening. My name is Rachel Fitzpatrick and I am the parent of fourth grade twins at Woodfield Elementary, a Damascus cluster school. Thank
you for the opportunity to testify tonight. And thank you to Doctor Taylor and the Board of Education for their time. After my family moved to Damascus in 2020, we were excited to hear that Damascus was getting a new high school shortly. When meeting our new neighbors and expressing our excitement, we learned that the community had been expecting a
new high school shortly for over 30 years. We are very excited once again to have Damascus High School included in the CIP budget, but we ask that you keep this time, keep our new build in the budget. Damascus High School cannot be delayed any longer. Our students deserve to have an
equitable and safe learning environment as their peers in newer schools. The high school has too many system issues to name, but one of the most significant is the fire system. During a recent fire drill, when the administration pulled the alarm, nothing happened. Our fire system has been added on to so many times that some
of our older polls do not even work. Given the recent FCI reports of mold, crumbling infrastructure and electrical systems at the end of their lifespan, our students need to be in a building that will keep them safe, not compromise their health. Keep us on track. And in the CIP budget. I attended Wooton High School through a
huge renovation in the late 1990s and early 2000. Walking through construction dust, plastic sheets, blocking entire hallways, and constant loud noise made the school days difficult and harder to concentrate on learning. Hearing that Crown High School could be used as a holding school during construction was
very encouraging. Using a holding school would allow a new build or renovation to be completed more efficiently, safely and dare I say, ahead of or on schedule. Having the opportunity to move students away from construction would allow MCPs to build the school
our community deserves. Utilizing the full property while students are safely learning away from construction, we are fully in support of Crown High School being used as a holding school and recommend that the board supported this well. Hello, my name is Daniel
Gottesman and I'm the father of a fourth grader in M.c.p.s. Like many others, I am concerned about the proposal by M.c.p.s to split the county into six regions and limit access by region. I am strongly in favor of increasing access to academic programs, but we can do that without putting in danger. M.c.p.s. Existing
flagship programs. I have done my own analysis using publicly available data, and I found that a system with three regions can simultaneously provide good access to programs and preserve the strengths of existing programs. M.c.p.s. Wants us to believe that it is necessary to break up the flagship countywide IB program
at Richmond Montgomery in order to fix the struggling regional IEPs, but that is simply not true. MCPs is fond of telling us that students turned down closer regional IB programs to go to Montgomery, but on closer examination, that claim is very misleading. None of the high school clusters closer to the
regional IB programs at Kennedy and Springbrook send more than ten students to the Montgomery IB program, only for Watkins Mill to significant numbers of students. Choose Richard Montgomery over the closer, Watkins Mill IB, and almost all of those students would be outside the region with Watkins
Mill. Whatever needs to be done to fix the regional Ib's six small regions is not the answer. Small regions also imperil the existing strong programs. They will shrink under the six region plan and be able to recruit students from a much smaller area. They will almost certainly need to lower
standards and to cut back on specialized classes and extracurriculars. But if three region model would not have these negative effects. This slide shows my proposal for three regions. The only new stem magnet would be in region B. One new program means MCPs can focus attention and resources to give it the best
chance to succeed. These regions have been designed so that the travel times to any Stem or IB program are comparable to the travel times between schools in the six region model. The three region model leaves M.C.P.S. flagship programs intact and gives the new programs the best chance to succeed. We don't have to make
a choice between quality and access. We can have both using a three region model. Thank you. Hello, my name is Emily Freilich and I'm a speech language pathologist at two different elementary schools. As a nation, we are facing a
speech pathologist shortage. Our county is directly affected by this. In my years with the county, I have seen schools go without speech therapists, meaning students are not getting the services that they need. I have also seen schools forced to have a virtual speech
therapist, many for students with severe and complex needs. As a county, we will never be able to fill our vacancies and limit virtual contractors if we don't make intentional and thoughtful changes changes that
will help us retain our amazing speech therapists, recruit new graduates, and bring other speech therapists into our county. SLPs are getting burnt out due to our large caseloads and growing demands that we face daily, and these SLPs are
leaving the county. As a county, we need to make a change. So SLPs want to stay. National statistics report that 9400 SLPs graduate each year. While the demand for SLPs exceeds
13,000 a year. Communication disorders affect 1 in 12 children nationwide, and these needs and numbers are growing. We need to make a change now. We need to finally hear and see what SLPs are facing in the
schools. We need to lower SLP caseload numbers. We need to support our SLPs so we can do what is most important help our children. Thank you. Thank you
so much for everyone's testimony. I'm going to now open up for board members for their comments. And I'm going to go one round. So let's keep it brief, okay? Mr. First of
all, actually makes me really proud that we have a full room of people here advocating today. Democracy is not dead, and this is proof I am. I really related
to the Wooten testimony today and the reason why I related to that so much was because I just had a nuts to bolts tour of Wooten from five. I think it was from 530 to 7. And then
unfortunately, I had to leave before the town hall to go to my own community, but it made a huge impression on me and what I saw was a rapid deterioration of that building over the last
five years. It just shows how when a building hits a certain tipping point, the deterioration happens very fast and I am concerned about the conditions at Wooten, and I am hopeful that we can mitigate
some of that sooner than later. And I took it to heart. So thank you so much for that tour. And the students did a wonderful job. Miss Silvestre,
thank you to everyone that came to testify here today. We know that there is a lot of need in terms of our school construction dollars and renovations and repairs. Again, just as a reminder, this process, this budget is
approved and then it goes to the county executive and then the county council appropriates the funding, the funding. We get it back in the spring, and then we have to make the difficult decisions about what to prioritize. So just a reminder of the process. I did want to, just for clarity
purposes, Crown High School, we are not deciding the future of Crown High School today. We are we are approving our capital improvements program, our school construction. The Crown decision will be. Remind me when Doctor Taylor. March,
March, march, end of March. But I know you want to advocate every, every step of the way. So thank you for being here. I just wanted to point that out. Thank you, Miss Malone. I just want to commend all the students for coming out tonight. It takes a lot to speak out for
what you believe in. And I especially want to thank our fourth graders who came out. Your advocacy at such a young age is incredibly important. With that being said, I just want to continue to say that the board is going to maintain transparency about the future of our county and specifically in response to one of our
students, Gillian's concerns about the alarm systems in our county. I would just like to ask Doctor Taylor to look into that. Thank you. I, I would also like to have a staff follow up on that alarm situation. That is a safety
concern that need to be addressed immediately, seeing no other lights. Oh, Miss Stewart, my last comment, because I did hear the concern with the programs. We'll be talking about that today. And I
actually really appreciate continued criticisms, because that's how we can make this stronger by listening to you and reacting. So please come to us with the data that you are collecting. And I want to
continue that conversation. Thank you. The next board business meeting is for public comment is Thursday, December 11th. Sign up for public comment. Will open on Thursday, December 4th at 6 p.m. In
addition to online sign up for public comment. We allow for in-person, same day sign up when space allows and on allocated slots maybe filled on a first come, first served basis on the day of the meeting. And we are going to go right
into the CIP budget agenda consent agenda. I want to get there because I know you all are interested in that. So but first we have to do item number eight, consent agenda. Are there any consent items board
members would like to pull? I need to pull item 8.2, please. 8.2. May I have a motion and a second to approve the rest of the items in block? So moved.
Second. Okay, there is a motion and a second. All those in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. With those present. Miss Silvestre, please ask your question. No, just. There's a conflict of interest contract here, and so I have to
abstain from this item. Okay. So is there a motion for item 8.2? So moved second. Okay. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Okay.
Thank you so much I will present. Yeah. You want to abstain. Thank you. All right. So let's go to Madam President. If I could just add a couple of notations for the community as part of our consent agenda this evening. The board just
approved several recognitions that will be celebrating over the next month. And we'll be highlighting at our next Board of Education meeting on December 11th. Among those recognitions was National Special Education Day, which will be celebrated on December 2nd of this year. It
commemorates the 50th anniversary anniversary of the federal legislation known as the individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or Idea, which guarantees access to a free and appropriate public education. Along with that and and celebrating right alongside that is the National
Inclusive Schools Week, which is the following week, December 8th through the 12th, which celebrates M.C.P.S. commitment to fostering inclusive classrooms that value diversity and ensure access for all students, especially students with special needs. And lastly,
we are also going to be recognizing Computer Science Education Week December 8th through the 14th, and that highlights the importance of computer science education and its role in preparing students for the modern digital world that we live in today. And beyond these resolutions, which
the Board of Education has now approved, will be shared and celebrated again at our Board of Education meeting on December 11th. If you were lucky enough to join us for the celebrations right before this board meeting, it will be kind of the same time. Right before the board meeting, we'll have a
brief celebration and all are welcome. This is a chance for us to honor students, staff and community members who embody the district's core values of learning, respect, relationships, excellence, and equity. Thank you, Madam President. Okay. Thank you. Now
we are going to go into item 9.1 recommended Fiscal Year 2027 Capital Budget and fiscal year 2027 to 2032. Capital Improvement Program. And Doctor Taylor any presentation? Yes. I
don't have a presentation per se, but I do have some staff that are going to come up and be available to answer questions, and I'm going to read a resolved. But before I do that, I'm going to share some, some, some thoughts. So good afternoon, Madam President. Members of the board, first, I want to thank all of our community members, parents,
staff and students for their thoughtful advocacy throughout the summer months and well into this year's Capital Improvements Program process. It feels like it's a short process, but it really goes on throughout the entire year, and this has really helped me to
prepare my recommendation that I brought forward to th board in October. This was my first full CIP as your superintendent, that will get to be reviewed by the County executive and County Council, and that's this Board of Education. I fully expect
the same level of advocacy, if not more, to continue when this plan eventually makes its way down the road into Rockville. Our county executive and our
County Council need to hear from our community as to the priorities of the school system. The folks that are in this room and that are sitting at home know all too well the condition of our facilities and M.C.P.S. and the things that need to
change. And that voice needs to be echoed loudly. My recommended capital improvement program totals $2.78 billion. That's a lot of money. That's an increase of 1.03 billion more than the previous approved CIP. And there's good reason
for that. We've been currently funded at the same level that we've been funded since 15 years ago. A lot has changed in 15 years since I joined Team M.C.P.S. 16 short months ago. I have repeatedly heard the exact same themes from a lot of folks
in our community. First, about the transparency of how we would identify and prioritize CIP projects. To this end, I want to thank our facilities management team, who worked with the third party consultant to assess our schools in a facility condition index and
applied multiple data points to making well-informed, transparent and data driven decisions. And I get that we can pick at the individual pieces and reports, and we can always make improvements. But this is a great start for us and definitely points us in the
right direction for making well informed, data based decisions for the future. I've heard from just about every stakeholder in this community that's made the time to talk to me about Montgomery County and our aging school infrastructure, especially HVAC. And I got to
tell you, it was a rude awakening. Walking through schools my very first week on the job and visiting schools during the first few weeks of school. It was hot and it continues to be hot, except that it's about to get cold and continue to feel cold because our HVAC system and its
infrastructure are really weak. To this end, I'm recommending some significant stairstep increases over the next six years, and it's going to take us a really long time to get back up to equilibrium, because we didn't show up in this place overnight. It's going to take us a long time to get back to
where we need to go. And it's a huge sum of money. And I think you're going to hear that dialog represented by the board today as well. I've also heard from staff about the working conditions in our schools and the various buildings throughout the county. Our students work very hard in our
schools, and their experience is often temporary. They're in a school for a few years and then they move on to another school. But the staff stays behind and so expressing their concerns about indoor air quality, sometimes for decades. Leaky roofs and other aging
building issues is not a temporary situation for them. It's an ongoing experience and something that we pay close attention to, and it is really a challenge with the resources that have been afforded to us. To this end, I have made
increases in this proposal to multiple countywide projects such as roof replacements, fire safety upgrades and emergency replacement of major building components, as well as other infrastructure buildings. I've heard from our operations leaders that our warehouse
literally is falling apart. We even got to take a tour of our warehouse, and we invited our media to join us, and it was literally falling apart. Made from reclaimed materials after World War Two, it is not a structure that anyone in our
community would be proud of. To this end, we've added a secured lease for a state of the art warehouse that is not only will consolidate all of our operations under one roof for the first time in about 60 years, but will also allow
other operational efficiencies that we've never had at our disposal. And it's right here in Montgomery County and a great investment in the Gaithersburg community. I've heard from our employee associations and our county leadership that we have to put
new bus depots, the Carver Educational Services Center and other important central services facilities in our inventory and take them off the back burner, because they've been landing there for decades. And the reality is, is that
this community has made the right choice every time to invest in classrooms when they have had resources. But there's more to this school system than what happens in the classroom, and that there is infrastructure that makes the classroom environment happen.
And we can't forget about that, too. There's a lot that goes on in m.c.p.s. We're a very large organization, and it takes a large effort to move a large organization, and we can't forget about the people that are working very hard behind the scenes to make great things
happen for other people's children. I've heard from coaches, physical education teachers, elementary school principals, and various community members that there are inequities not only in our stadiums and gymnasiums, but also in our playgrounds. And some of our earliest learners
really need to benefit from some constructive social development and play outside. We can do better. I have been clear throughout this CIP season that these problems did not happen overnight, and that they will not be solved
overnight, and that it will take us not just one CIP cycle, but several CIP cycles to right this ship. As I have stated, we are at a critical inflection point. As a community, we are
not only with our facilities infrastructure, but also how we take care of these important community assets and support our children and our workforce. For the last several decades, the majority of our capital budget has been spent on capacity driven projects such
as and neglected things like additions and replacements and and fixing some of the schools that have fallen by the wayside for the first time in in nearly 40 years. Montgomery County Public Schools, the region and our county are experiencing
year over year enrollment decline as a whole. That doesn't mean that every part of our community is in decline. As a matter of fact, there are several parts that are growing, but as a whole, the net change is a little scary, and it's something that we haven't experienced in a really, really
long time. With this shift in circumstances, we have to shift our focus. We have to shift our focus, our approach, and we have to prioritize, not because we want to drive a wedge between communities, but because we have to work together to solve some of these
problems. We are pivoting our construction approach from primary replacements and additions to renovations and renewals. This shift should make the construction projects quicker, more cost effective and have a larger impact on our
school system as a whole. One bottleneck that we've experienced and has surfaced today, even in public comment, is that in the past, we haven't had secondary holding schools in the county, as well as an elementary holding school in the Silver Spring area. A
significant and very emotional part of this year's recommendation is to relocate Sligo Creek Elementary School to a new site and to start the closure process for the Silver Spring International Middle School. This is a big deal, and it is probably the signal of
more changes to come in future years about how we look at our inventory of schools. These two schools currently are co-located in the former Montgomery Blair High School building, and quite honestly, never should have been chopped up the way that it was causing
wayfinding and other accessibility issues. While these schools have daily operational challenges that make it difficult to have a permanent school, they do offer great potential as holding schools for other schools in the Silver Spring area. I will
be coming to you in the coming in the upcoming months, with a recommended scope for countywide for a countywide elementary boundary study, with enrollment projections trending negatively, I am sure that the recommendation of Silver Spring International Middle School
closure will be the first of many hard decisions that we will be confronted with in the near future. Staff in the Division of Facilities Management is here to answer any questions before we read the resolution to approve the fiscal year 27 capital budget
and the fiscal year 27 through 32 Capital improvement Plan. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Adnan Mamoun, our our Chief of District Operations. Unless, of course, Madam President, you would prefer I read the the resolves and entertain a motion
first. I think if they have, there's to there's nothing to present. It's just answers to questions. Okay, so then you should read the resolve before we present questions. Very good. And this is again my proposal
to the Board of Education for their consideration in the Capital Improvements Program. Resolved, that the Board of Education approve a fiscal year 2027 capital budget appropriation, requesting 195.6 million and a fiscal and a
fiscal years 27 through 32 Capital Improvements program, requesting a total of 2.78 billion, as indicated in attachment A, and may it further be resolved that the Board of Education approved the fiscal year 2027 State Capital
Improvements Program request in the amount of $48.7 million, as indicated in attachment B, and may it further be resolved that the Board of Education approve the individual capital items included in the superintendent's recommended fiscal year 27 capital budget
and the fiscal years 27 through 32 Capital Improvements Plan. And may it further be resolved that a copy of this resolution be transmitted to the County Executive and the County Council. Thank you, Doctor Taylor, is there a motion and a
second motion? Second. Okay. Are there any discussions? There's a there's a motion and a second. Is there any discussion, Miss Silvestre? Thank you, Miss Yang. I wanted to start out by saying that I
appreciate this CIP budget. I think that Doctor Taylor, you've done a great job of outlining all of the needs of the schools. We have heard over the years. I've been on the board for seven years. Issues with HVAC, with everyday
quality of life repairs that our schools need, Ada bathrooms and so forth and so forth. So every year we hear this and this. I feel like this budget really lays out all of the needs that we need. And again, it's a six year budget, but it gets renewed every two years.
So it seems like it's an evolving process. And some of you have testified that you've been here year after year after year. So I did want to make an amendment to the CIP resolution,
and that is to to really address some of the testimony that we have heard from the Sims community and Sligo Creek. And what I'm hearing in talking to families is just a lack of
clarity about their the closure of Sims. These additional projects, the process, the process, a clear understanding of the path forward. And I know we're not here to do that. There will be a separate process that will begin in January, conclude in early
March. If I've got those dates correct. Yeah, maybe even start a December to get the ball rolling for their feedback and consideration. But yes, that's the idea. It's a separate process, but because we're approving the CIP budget, it feels like everything is going to start moving forward. But so
the amended language that I would like to introduce to the CIP resolution, I think makes it tries to make it even clearer that first that process will take place. The board will decide whether to close Sims or
not, but there will be a community engagement process that Doctor Taylor has described will start in December and the board will vote. And so my resolution, my amendment here says that all the projects related to Sims Sligo Creek Elementary School, Sligo Middle School, the
expansion of Sligo Middle School, the expansion of Eastern Middle School are all tentative until the board takes a vote on that process, whether to close Sims or not. So I would like to read the please
read it amended language so that we all clear. And does everybody have a copy? Yes, yes, I just received this language for the first time now. Thank you. It was sent to all board members prior to this meeting.
Text of the motion I move that I whereas clause be added to the superintendent. CIP recommended resolution stating the following. Whereas the recommended projects related to the possible closure of Silver Spring International Middle School and conversion of the existing Silver Spring
International Middle School and Sligo Creek Elementary Schools into holding schools, including related projects such as the new Sligo Creek Elementary School, Sligo Middle School expansion, and the portion of Eastern Middle School project that would expand enrollment capacity are to be considered
as tentative, pending the Board of Education's consideration and vote on the proposed closure and conversions. Thank you. There is a motion on the table to adjust the not the result, but the awareness
explanation of the the the superintendents proposed resolution. Is there a motion and a second. Oh, you have a motion. Is there a second? Second okay. Any. Yes. Can I get a point of clarification.
So this is in place of or in addition to one of the clauses. In addition in addition to okay. That makes sense. Thank you so much. Any other questions or comments? I do I think that there might be I know I have an amendment towards this same issue. I'm not sure if any of
our other colleagues do as well. And so it just seems premature to try to pass one issue when there's related issues. So I don't know if we should try to talk about them at this process. The process if our Parliament rules is if there's a motion on
the table before, before, unless it's an amendment to this motion, we have to vote on this motion first. Okay. So this is so that is the procedure. Any other questions
and comments. Seeing none. There is a motion and a second. All in favor please raise your hand. 1234567 against. Please raise your hand. One. Thank you.
Let's continue. Now we are going back to the superintendent's. Amended now. Amended resolution. And I'm going down. Mr. Webster, your light is still on. You have more to say. Okay, I'm going
down here, Miss Montoya. Thank you. So I just want to make sure, as a matter of parliamentary procedure, this is the time when we propose amendments. Is that correct? I wasn't given that information, so I was waiting for a Q. Thank you. I have a a amendment to
propose to this resolution. So many people, irrespective of why you're here from various communities who are here and not here, speak to the transparency, right? We've been hearing about this long before really any of us were even in
the room, and probably any of our staff. And I know sometimes even when we try to be transparent, we're trying to be in the community as much as we can. There are still things that get overlooked that don't quite get relayed in the way that the community needs to be
able to receive it and to understand it, and this resolution is in that vein. In order to close Silver Spring International Middle School and relocate Sligo Creek Elementary School, there must be a board vote. There has not yet been a
board vote. The language, whether it's of the resolution, whether it's in the actual budget sheet, those are value statements that we make as a school system and as a governmental entity that makes decisions that impact thousands and thousands of people in this
county and beyond. And so the motion that the amendment that I am proposing is to make sure that our proposed plan better reflects where we actually are in this process, and so that the community knows that we
hear you, we hear you saying, we have not gone through this process yet, and we don't understand how it seems like it's already been decided. I move that the board amend the recommendation at the
resolution as follows. Number one on attachment A, remove the Sligo Creek Elementary School replacement to decrease funding in individual school projects by 70,516,000. Number two on
attachment a add major capital project and increase funding by 70,516,000. In the elementary School major Capital Projects category on attachment a retitle Sligo Middle School,
Parents Renewal, Backslash Addition, Close Friends and Secondary School major capital projects as major capital project as a placeholder for a major capital project at a middle school. I want to
highlight something that Council President Kate Stewart said recently about this that we, as the Board of Education, need to recognize the scale of the proposal to allow time for proper engagement with the entire school community before moving any part of this plan
forward, irrespective of the back and forth that we may know, it still needs to go to the County Executive and the Council et-cetera to the community. This looks and feels as if we have already decided and are already taking actions
to move it forward, and I feel that is unfair to the community and it is unfair to the process that I very much respect. So I am asking my colleagues to join me today to make sure that the statements that we put out accurately reflect where we are
in the process. Should the closure go through, we can go back and amend to name the projects. Everyone is very aware of what a placeholder would stand for. That can also be explained in our informational letter that accompanies the budget that
goes to the county respective parties. Thank you. There's a motion on the table. Is there a second? I second, okay, there's a motion and there's a second. Any discussion, Miss Wolff? Yes. Thank you. As I understand it.
Your proposal wants to replace Sligo Creek Elementary School with major Capital project as a placeholder and retitle the Sligo Middle School Renewal Addition as secondary school
major capital project. Now we just approved Miss Sylvester's motion, which actually identified the projects. I believe that using the words major capital projects, you
can't say you want transparency and then hide behind those words. The CIP is transparent. It delineates the conversation we will be having from December to March. I think it's
important that we be honest with our public and list the proposals that we're actually considering so that they have an opportunity to come in and share with us their various concerns as they have been
doing. As you noted, Miss Silvestre says this today does not decide the fate of Sims or Sligo Creek. This just begins the conversation until we
receive actual funding information from the county, we will not be making any final decisions. So I just wanted to say, as a BOE Board of Education, we are charged with prioritizing and serving the
interests of the school system as a whole. In our role as board members, our focus should remain on being responsive to the overall needs of the school system. This systemic focus means that there will be times
when some communities are unhappy with the direction we are moving, but we have to keep our eye on the system needs. Thank you, thank you. And I can wait. Wait till I call on you. I'm going down this line. Please hold. Okay. No. Miss
Montoya. Oh. Oh, Miss Zimmerman, I just wanted to align myself with Miss Wolff comments. Thank you. Coming back. Mr. She can go. She can go. Go ahead. Thank you, thank you. I'd like to address the comment prior to moving on to another. Wait till
I call you. Please follow the. Do I have permission to speak, Miss Yang? Yes you do, thank you. Please go ahead to Miss Wolf's comments. I do understand, right. And in this instance, what we've done. And I'm not really actually great at these sayings, but I think it's we put the cart before the
horse. Right. We're starting to say we're having actions here before we've actually made a decision. And so while generally speaking, I absolutely would agree with you that we don't want to use kind of generic terms, right. School, elementary school or secondary school. Absolutely. In a
general context, I agree. In this instance though, everyone knows exactly what that means, right? We know what we're talking about again, each time we send over a budget to the county executive or the council, I see my colleague shaking their heads and I'm happy to
hear comments. We accompany it with a letter, right. Kind of explaining this is where we're going. This is what we're looking at. I understand that this would probably be the same. I have no reason to think we wouldn't do that this time. Right. So I think it's okay to say and include in that letter.
Right. Perhaps, as you're aware, there's a proposal on the table for A, B and C should that proposal. Here's how it will play out. Should that get passed, these will be replaced with A and B, right. So that we are being transparent, we are being clear both to our county counterparts who are going to
look at this budget at the county executive's office and the county Council, as well as to the community, who is undoubtedly aware that there's a proposal on the table and that those placeholders would be Sligo Creek Elementary and Silver Spring International Middle School, should a majority of the board vote to
take those actions. So again, I do understand and I do hear you, and I think generally speaking, I would agree in this instance, though, I think it is a little different given the context and all of the information that has already been put out to the community. Mr. So I tend to
think align myself with Miss Montoya's comments because, well, for instance, I've been through a site selection process and generally site selection process happens
before you program a school. Because I've been through one where there was no school at the end. And I think that happened also in Bethesda and some other areas. And then other times there's a site selection process and then
wherever the site is kind of contributes to the kind of money that you would even spend on the project. So I would like to see the site selection process go through for Creek Elementary, and also continue with the process for the
potential closure of Simms. As we go through that process, there might be other ideas that come to the table that we haven't even thought of. We have really creative community members. And so because of that, I want to be absolutely clear
with the community that this is not a done deal. And I think this helps that understanding. And I believe county council, if they receive this budget with this placeholder, they would understand the context of this. It would be very clear to
them. So whatever we can do to be make that absolutely clear, I'm for so that is why I voted for the whereas and this is why I voted for this particular amendment, because I'm all for more clarity. Even though there could be argument that's less
clear. But in my opinion, it actually adds clarity is where we are in the process. Thank you. I'm checking to see. Okay. Miss Doctor Taylor, I do want to clarify that per the board's
policies, you you cannot go through with the site selection process for an unnamed project. Okay? Miss Montoya, thank you. I just wanted to address the point that Miss Wolf made about
the passing of Miss Silvestre motion to amend the whereas, and I do recognize that. And then obviously, if if for some reason my amendment were to go through, that would then need to be amended. I'm a little surprised to see that knowing I was going to bring this
proposed amendment, that you would bring yours first, because obviously, if mine doesn't, right, if mine went through, then we might want to change some things or not. Right. So I was very upfront with all of my colleagues and as many community members as I could. Once I realized that the
process for proposing amendments at the board is not to post them to the public, that they only come out at the table. So there is no way for the public to, for example, check board docs and see that Miss Silvestre has a proposed amendment, or I have a proposed amendment. But I was very clear
with my colleagues and gave ample time to discuss it. And so I just if we're going to be transparent, if we're going to say that we have processes, if we're going to say that we're here as a board to make decisions on behalf of the school district, then that has
to be all of us. I'd like to have a point of clarification. Mr. Yes, yes. Go ahead. Thank you. Okay. So how do we name a project yet not assign a
definite spot? Because again, I've gone through like a DCC potential DCC elementary school project. It was not in the budget yet. We went through the site selection. So can I get clarification from anybody on
that? We're not aware of a mechanism that would allow that if it wasn't in your CIP as a named project. Okay. And that in that case I will have to
withdraw my second because we need to go through the site selection process. I'm very surprised by this because this has not been my personal experience. And maybe the policy wasn't followed in the
past. So thank you for your comment, Miss Montoya. Thank you. I this is the first time I'm also hearing that despite conversations, despite sending all of this information, despite having a conversation with some of my colleagues with the administration, that's
obviously pertinent information. There's a difference between saying, well, it's it's generic, it's generic, a generic term, right. And so the community might not know or the council might not fully understand what that what that is a placeholder
for to saying actually it's there's something precluded. Right. That is a very different thing. So I'm disappointed to hear that in spite of the availability that I made myself, that here we are now. Thank you. Miss Taylor. Miss Stewart, technically, you could make an
amendment to the amendment and identify your intent as an independent clause in this that you would like to proceed with that site selection process, even though it is not identified as a board action. So, yes, that is a mechanism in
which you could do that. Okay. Then I withdraw my withdrawal. That's what. Totally fine. And I would like to have an amendment to the amendment to identify Sligo Creek Elementary School as a potential. For a
potential new site for that school, so we can do the site selection process. Okay. Please pause. Miss. Miss Mr. has an amendment to an amendment to amendment. Amendment. Is there
a second to her amendment? Can you please restate it? Thank you. I move to amend that Sligo Creek Elementary School is
identified to participate in a new site selection for the school. But just just to do the site selection process. Is
there a second to that motion? Second. Okay. Any additional questions? Okay. So you would be voting on the amendment to the amendment first, then voting on the amendment. Right. Just want you to right now I have a question. Yes. I'm not
I'm not quite clear. So are you saying do not list Sligo. Just list that we're going to do a site selection okay? Okay. Yes. Miss Silvestre and independent
of these amendments, this is going to happen anyway because it is a name project in the CIP if. Right. So the current resolution already will enable us to do it. This is just
because of Miss Montoya's amendment that she not wanting to name the project she specifically wants to name. I want to check with our staff. It may be helpful to get clarity if if Miss Montoya's motion is a substitute
amendment to the amended motion for Miss Silvestre for Miss Silvestre's motion, or if it is an additional amendment, if it's an additional amendment, Miss Stewart's amendment may not be necessary, but if it is
a substitute, Miss Stewart's motion absolutely would be necessary if that were to continue. So, Miss Montoya, is this a Reilly? Is this a
substitute one or this is to. Remove. In addition, this is an independent amendment. I did not propose an amendment to address the Whereases because it was not ripe for discussion at that point, because this had not gone through. If this amendment goes through, then I
would have proposed an amendment at the table related to the Whereases, because at that point, we're just doing semantics with making sure everything is in alignment. So it's clear, okay, I am calling for a vote for Miss Stewart's amendment to Miss Montoya's
amendment. All in favor, please raise your hand. Two opposed. Raise your hand. 806I can't
count. It's only 545. Okay, so motion does not carried. Let's go back to Miss Montoya's amendment. I'm calling for a vote. All in favor, raise your
hand. Two opposed? Raise your hand. Six. The motion does not carried. Are there any further discussions on the superintendent's proposed
resolution, Miss Montoya? Yes. Thank you. If you can give me one moment. The amendment I'm
going to propose. We hear over and over and over again about HVAC. You can't hear anything about M.C.P.S. or the board without hearing about HVAC.
Even to all the schools who are here saying I need a new school, right? Part of it is because your HVAC is messed up and I get that. It's challenging for me as a board member to make significant decisions involving significant amounts of money.
And we're talking about tens of millions of dollars t build new schools when we don't have all of the information. Our facilities and management team, our administration, they have
done a lot of work in a very short period of time. Some of you were not here just a year ago, right? Miss Zatoka is practically living here trying to help us fix all of these facilities, and she's doing a great job. So we're Mr. Conolly Mr. Mahmoud and at the direction of Doctor Taylor. And that is not what this amendment
is about. This is not about anyone not doing a great job of identifying what needs to be done or what doesn't. It's about making sure that we, as policymakers, have all of the information before we make significant, very expensive
decisions. Since the CIP was proposed on October 13th, additional facilities assessment reports have been posted online. Now, while these reports were done many months ago, as a company, the company can only write so many reports
at a time. So it makes sense that there would be kind of a rolling posting of these reports, because the company needs time to write them and put them together. They're very detailed and very lengthy, and then we need to get them on our website. But the reality is that since the CIP was proposed,
at least one elementary school has been added to the the website with a very high FCI score. And when it comes to FCI, high is not good, right? This is not like at school where we want to have those high scores.
We don't even have all of the reports. My understanding is in the next few months or so, we should get all of them posted. That will give us a chance to do a review, to learn the lay of the land completely, to make sure that we don't make some of the mistakes that were made by
prior administrations and prior staff, where in the 90s and the 20 tens, there were assessments of handfuls of schools, typically based on how old the school was, and then there was
a ranking and there was a Q, but the Q didn't move. So even when in later years more schools were assessed, there wasn't a recalibration of the Q, they just got tacked on to the bottom of the Q. That's why some of you have been in the Q
so long. Now, that is not the fault of anyone here. It just is what it is. But now we have a moment. So we have an opportunity to take a pause to collect all of the information, to make sure that the community's money, your money that you pay taxes for, is
being spent in the best ways that we know, because we have all of the information. So what I'm asking here today is for us to consider all of that, what we know and what we don't know. And unfortunately, there are
some things that we still don't know. I'm asking for a historic investment in what we do know, which is failing HVAC. We have an opportunity to positively impact thousands of children and staff members by using $127
million to put or replace HVAC systems in many of our schools. Now, to be fair, I'm calling it historic. But if you know, HVAC 127 million is only going to buy us so many, right? Our high school HVAC systems can be tens of millions of dollars in multiple phases. Some of our
middle schools as well, because some of them are very large. Our elementary schools get a little better, but even some of those can be in the 7 million, 8 million, $9 million. So yes, I'm saying historic, but it's only historic because we've never really done it as a system again, not because anyone doesn't care about, not because anyone here doesn't
want to see that happen, but because there are lots of different things that we have to spend our money on. And with that, I would move that. The board today amend the resolution as follows. On attachment A, remove Cold Spring Elementary and Highland View Elementary School replacement projects to
decrease funding recommended in the major capital projects. Elementary countywide projects by $127,365,000 on attachment a increased funding recommended in the HVAC replacement countywide project in fiscal
years 2027 and 2028 by $127,365,000. On attachment B, revise the list of systemic maintenance projects and fiscal year 2027 State Capital Improvements Program request, consistent with the referenced project removal and funding
allocation. In the second resolved, revise the amount of the fiscal year 2027 State Capital Improvement Program request consistent with the referenced project removal and funding allocation. With an elementary school boundary
study on the horizon, with decreasing enrollment with the things that we don't know, I'm simply asking for a brief pause on building new schools so that we can have all of the information and make well-informed decisions about
how we spend the community's money. Thank you, thank you. There's a motion on the table. Is there a second? Seeing none, the motion fell. I will
continue our discussion of super attendance. A superintendents proposed CIP budget. Oh, Mr. I have an amendment. Please go ahead.
Okay. I move that the board amend the proposed resolution to decrease funding recommended in the outdoor play space and athletic infrastructure countywide project for new turf installation projects and
fiscal years 27, 28, 29 and 30 by 29,900,000 and increase funding recommended in the HVAC replacement countywide project by 29,900,000 to support elementary school HVAC
replacement projects. And the reason I am putting up this amendment is because two Miss Montoya's point we need to invest more in HVAC. This
particular amendment would have the same amount of money coming out of one place and going in the other, and each year, whereas Miss Montoya's amendment had them moving lots
of money from later years in the budget to just the first two years, which affects the year by year budgeting, which is why I couldn't second that amendment. But I will explain that the reason I want to
prioritize HVAC in this way is that I've seen multiple studies that updating HVAC system has a proven return on investment on student achievement and health, according to a study, updating athletic facilities just
doesn't have the same effect. In the last few months, I have seen the effects of compromised air quality, and it really does affect teaching and learning every day. I've also seen studies that plastic fields can
have a negative impact on the environment. As fields age, clumps of shredded plastic go into our waterways. There's chemicals that leach, and there's places like Poolesville that has their own water system, and they had to mitigate for
high levels of PFAS. And we want to make sure that that doesn't continue to happen. I haven't I have actually seen a lot of community input asking that we move forward with installing these fields. And I
really understand that we need to do better with our athletic fields. When I am asking is that we do not continue to what I see as kind of giving up on a state of the art grass field,
and instead moving forward with just replacing all of our fields with plastic. So while we're in this moment, in this CIP and needing all the HVAC improvements and seeing the return on investment, I want to move forward with that. Now,
pause on updating our fields which need to be done. I would like to see an RFP for a high performing grass field that includes maintenance, so we can have that full conversation as to what is possible, and then have a conversation this year
about the positives and negatives of a high impact grass field versus a plastic field. And we can have that conversation just like Pittsburgh is right now having that conversation. They have very similar climate to us. So
that is my proposal. And hopefully some of my colleagues agree that we can pause on this, get HVAC accelerated and have an RFP for this year. There is a motion on the table. Is there
a second second there's a motion and a second any discussion? Yeah. Miss Wolff. Any second it you can ask. Well she has she had her light on. I didn't know if she wanted to
speak. You know, I want to thank the community for sharing their thoughts and perspectives on this issue. And I have heard from hundreds of you, it seems like in the last two weeks. And I do appreciate what you're saying, Miss Stewart, but
during my time on the board, I've heard from so many communities advocating for turf because of the very substantial differences in the usability of the turf fields versus grass. I've been here when the majority of turf fields were in
communities well equipped to advocate for themselves. We've worked hard to make the acquisition of Turf field equitable. When I see Springbrook and Magruder on the list to get turf, I see that as a result of the board's work to bring about equity, and I don't
want to stop that work. So I will not be supporting your amendment. Thank you. Miss Zimmerman. Thank you. I am actually rising in support of Miss Stewart's amendment. I just was were in tough fiscal
times. I have a difficult time supporting something that has a greater cost than some other things. And while all choices that we make are going to be investments, this is just an investment that I personally am not willing to make at this time. Miss Silvestri, thank you.
Yeah, like all my colleagues have gotten a lot of correspondence about this issue. And again, I've been on the board for seven years, so we've heard a lot of pros and cons on this topic. The reason why I will not be supporting the resolution is just this is not the time we again, like I've
said before, we hear back from the county executive and the county council in terms of our funding, and if the board decides that they want to make changes, that would be the time to make changes to cuts. I don't think it's fair to cut
these, these items off. Now when, you know, most school communities don't know this is happening, some of you know this is happening. But if the board decides that this is this is in fact the priority, well, then let's let's think about that. Let's talk some more. I'm
the chair of the fiscal management committee. So I'm I've shared with you, Miss Stewart, that we can take it to the committee and, you know, get more information if we if needed. But I just don't think it's fair to make this decision today when most schools, most
affected students and staff and school communities are not even aware that this is a thing. So, miss Grace Rivera, thank you. Just very quickly. I'm not a fan of taking anything off
before we're told how much money we have. I feel this is very premature. I also feel that, well, Laura, you know how I feel about turf fields and so on, but my personal feelings put aside. I need to see what's
in the best interest of the district of the students. And honestly, we need to have a deeper conversation, whether it's in your committee, Ms. Silvestre or or someone truly, you know, looking at the equity turf fields were not started in
this county with an equity lens, as many things were not started in this county with an equity lens. Right. But here we are, and there's a lot of communities that are waiting on it. I still need to have information about economics with turf fields versus grass. Right. So turf fields
apparently have become much more environmentally friendly compared to what it was. And people can can disagree. But you know that having that discussion with these communities that have been
waiting is important. It is important. The maintenance of turf fields are a lot less than the maintenance of grass. Well, we are in very hard economic times, and I agree, I'm one of those people who thinks what we
need more than anything is to ensure that our children are warm in the winter and they're comfortable in the summer. I'm about one of those people that I believe was inside the school. Whether you need a new bio, you know, biology, you know,
equipment, whether you need those things to me are more of a priority. I'm not saying that sports is not a priority. But then I look at my folks in Damascus, they don't have grass, but they have, you know, a great football team, Quince Orchard. They don't have a turf field. They are, I think, the
best football team. So so I'm just, you know, I'm just conflicted. Don't you are conflicted. That's the I love them all okay? I love them all. I love them all. All right. And I'm a Trojan. But I'm just
saying, you know, so so I think we need a deeper conversation. Mr. about this. Yes, exactly. With better information. But so at this time, I think it's a little bit premature. So I am not going to be supporting. But I just wanted to say why? Because I think it's important
that we have a very candid information conversation with those communities. And and there's going to be other conversations, hard conversations that we're going to have to have, because I think what's in the classroom is important, how our kids, you know, the environment where they learn, our staff, you know,
those all those things are important. So let's so that's why I, I don't like to do things premature. I feel like I'm in the monopoly game. I have play money right now, but I don't have real money. So thank you. Thank you. I'm going to miss Montour. Mr. and I will come back to you. Miss Malone,
did you want to respond to anything before I go? Sure. So this this is. Hold on, hold on. I call on you, Miss Montoya. I'm running the meeting. Do you have something to share with the board? Yes. I just wanted to give Miss Stewart an opportunity to. The community can follow along a little
better, but I'll raise my issues right after you raise what I'm going to say, then I apologize, Miss Stewart. I wanted to elevate the voice of some of the folks that did reach out to me because I got comments and advocacy for folks
who want the fields and folks who don't. This is a very important issue to the community, it seems, and that's why it was important to me to second this amendment, because when there's an issue important to the community, it deserves to be in front of the community. I would like to highlight the comments of Miss Elena Glassman
from Magruder High School. She is a field hockey player and has played since her freshman year. She let me know that there, the safety of their field has resulted in rolled ankles. Because your cleats get caught in the the grass and the mud when the weather affects it.
There. I see some Magruder field hockey back there. In addition to things like the field hockey stick. A really important point that I thought she brought up that I actually had not considered was that it will be harder for her to play at the college level, because she is not played on the same
types of fields as they're playing at at the college level. And so when we talk about preparing our athletes all of the time and investment and monies from various spaces that we put into our students because we want them to succeed and be good at their craft, just like we do for other
things, could all really be undermined by not having the ability to practice on the same types of fields that you're going to play in college. And I just thought that was a really important point to bring up. I also want to acknowledge on the other end, folks concerns about,
even if the quality of the materials has gotten better, right, with technology and things like that, that there still could be an impact on the environment, or perhaps in some spaces there's an argument that it might affect the water. So I just want to acknowledge that there are really good points on
both sides. One question I have, and maybe it's not a question we can answer, I don't know, but you can tell me when we're looking at the proposed regional model, which we'll talk about later. Is there kind
of like maybe some regions which don't really have any turf fields and then some regions which have a lot. And now I did, just to put this in context, I did my own little research because I was like, how did we get these fields right? How did this start? It seems it started with some sort of legal settlement with MSI
soccer quite some time ago. I found, I don't know, and there was so there was a kind of a private investment, but it wasn't necessarily because a certain school's parents put the field in or anything like that. So I just also want to make that clear that I have not been able to find that it's
well, these schools got the fields because they had a wealthy community or anything like that. So I do want to just kind of make sure that we don't infuse that into this conversation. So I don't know. So anyways, with the question I had is just I just want us to
be cognizant that it very well could be then that we have a regional model where there's access to certain types of facilities and some, but not in others, and that is something that I want to consider. So with that, I just wanted to make sure that we have the thoughts of the community on the table. Thank you. Thank you.
Mr. Yes, I received all those emails as well, and I really do feel that we need to do better with our fields. And that's my goal, is to better have safer and healthier fields for our
kids. I just want to bring up a couple issues I did not bring up, because actually there's a very long list. I didn't want to overwhelm us. You would think this is part of this, or should it be a separate conversation? No. I just
quickly want to bring up about the heat issues because they do get 30 to 70 degrees hotter, because grass basically sweats and it cools off itself, whereas these fields don't. And we are entering a hotter
climate. There's also other issues just to hold on. There's other health issues, including burns from the turf, and that I've seen pretty big ones. And
also there are some sports like women's soccer and girls soccer that do better on grass. And there's been a lot of advocacy for that. And by the way, just three days ago, the Los Angeles United, LA, US. D yes, the
district, the school district, they put a moratorium on artificial turf to look at this issue too. So it's not just us. I consider this a pause, not a determination of what we should do forever, but a pause to get
the information and have the conversation. Thank you for that comment. And Miss Malone, I would just like to say thank you to everyone who sent in comments and about their opinions. I want to bring in some personal experience as myself. I was a student athlete
for the last four years in M.C.P.S. played on the very fields and multiple different schools for games, and something I think I can pretty confidently say about student athletes in our system is that they want fields that they can consistently play on. That is a priority of them, and I think it's a very justified priority
that they hold. And therefore I want to align myself with Miss Silvestre's comments and Miss Wolf's comments, too. Thank you. Thank you colleagues, we have a motion on the table and a second I'm going to call for the vote. All in favor of the motion, please raise your hand.
One, two against. Please raise your hand. One. Two three. Four. Five. Six. Thank you. The motion does not carry. I would like to thank everyone for the conversation. We are going back
to the amended superintendent's proposed capital budget for the 2027 to 2032. Any other further discussions? Seeing no night, I
would like to call for the vote. There is a motion and a second there is amended. Proposed CIP budget. All in favor, please raise your hand. 1234567
against. Please raise your hand. Abstain. Please raise your hand. One. Thank you. Colleagues, this has been a long discussion. I thank you for your discipline.
They are a lot of issues we have to work through. I thank you for your cooperation. Let's move on to the next item. Which is recess and bathroom break
will be back. And we'll be back at. Can I shorten the break, colleagues? 630 okay. Oh, you're ahead of schedule, so you may want to. Six. Yeah. 630
we'll be back 630.
Yeah. Welcome back everybody. We are back in session. Next item is 11.1 operating budget priorities round table. And this is the time of the year
folks that we share with our superintendent. The board specific budget priorities as he developed the FY 27 operating budget. And as we begin engaging in the FY 27 operating budget cycle, the
board is committed to a budget that aligns with and prioritizes the four goals of the M.c.p.s. Future Ready Strategic Plan 2025 to 2030. Goal number one academic excellence. Goal number two
future ready graduates. Goal number three positive, safe and effective environments. And goal number four high quality, diverse workforce. We are very aware that due to the fiscal climate, we are limited when it comes to spending on many of
the things we would like to invest in for our students and schools. As fiscal stewards, it's more critical than ever that we are intentional, effective and efficient in the responsible use of our
community resources. We strive to set budget priorities informed by data and grounded in equity that build upon our system's strengths while addressing opportunities for growth so that all Montgomery County Public School System students reach their full
potential and are future ready. So while I did state that there are financial limits that will directly impact the amount of resources available to support our students and schools, I believe it's essential that each of my board colleagues have the opportunity to share
their FY 27 operating budget priorities, and I will kick us off in sharing my priorities with the superintendents. So in the past few years, we have made investments in reading and
math, and we will. The board is very interested in looking at initiatives, successful initiative and continued investment so that we can strengthen the good reading
approaches and and math supports across all schools. And while we are looking at how to support classrooms, and please also consider retention of our. Staff generally and the
impact of no work, no pay days. And that will be one of the things very interested in. Would help to turn my microphone on. Okay, so the board understands the
importance of creating welcoming schools where students feel like they belong, can succeed and build connection with peers and schools, school adults. The board recognizes that teachers are skilled practitioners, responsible for meeting all of
their students where they are and helping them unleash their potential. The board requests that MCPs prioritize reductions in classroom size, especially at the primary and intermediate elementary grades, to ensure
learning environments where every student feels supported, appropriately challenged, and empowered to build a bright future. This is something we were looking into last year, so be great if we could do that in this year's budget. Thank you,
thank you! I first want to align myself with the priority of reducing class size. I also want to, as Miss Yang started to bring up about our educational support staff, we recognize the critical role that our para educators play in educating our students,
especially in supporting students with disabilities and other needs. We recognize that para educators are an integral part of the school's faculty, and deserve to be compensated for their planning and preparation. The board requests that efforts be made to make Paris full time employees with
compensated planning time. Thank you. I want to align myself with everything we've talked about so far, being chair of the Strategic Planning Committee. All of these things are a part of our goals, and I want to talk about goal three,
basically safety and security. We recognize safety and security are of the utmost importance for our students, families and communities. It is critical that students make it safely to and from school and that they are in school. And
when they are in school, they are in safe and supportive environments. We recognize that school safety and security are multifaceted and encompass bus safety, pedestrian safety, safe facilities such as alarms,
drills, behavioral intervention, etc. the board requests that you prioritize investments in strategies and training that provide safe and supportive learning environments. Thank you. I would like to align myself with all of my
colleagues comments, and I want to focus on wellness and mental health. Student and staff wellness and mental health are critically important when creating and maintaining environments conducive to learning. The board prioritizes the effective training of all school staff in de-escalation strategies and believes that if
additional trained behavioral interventionists and counselors were assigned to schools, it would foster positive learning environments. Thank you. The board priority that I chose to speak about was programs. And
as we all know, we're going to hear about this today. We are committed to expanding access and opportunity to programs so more students can participate and be engaged. And as I always emphasize in the home school, in our comprehensive high schools, as well as in the
rollout of our program study going forward, and what we've heard from our community and from testimony and from board members is making sure that our budget this year reflects appropriately so that we can roll out the programs, study
effectively, and do it well. That includes professional development for our our teachers and staff, appropriate staff recruitment to meet the the program needs, transportation and of course,
materials. Thank you. Mr. I'd also like to highlight the need to serve our special populations and closing our gaps. We've been talking about closing gaps for so many years,
so I am excited that we actually put in the investments and evidence based strategies and staffing models to support emerging multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and students receiving free or
reduced meals so that may be effective in helping to close the opportunity and achievement gaps. I. We also recognize that each learner is unique and brings with them their own learning, history and
experiences. While M.c.p.s. Is committed to meeting each student where they are, there are historically underserved populations that require specialized support to meet their potential. So yeah, let's
let's do this in this budget. Thank you. Miss Wolff. Thank you. We're also thank you. We're also concerned about staffing. You know we are trying to turn out future ready
students. School is not just about math English language arts, science and social studies courses like art, music, physical education and Foreign Language in the Elementary Grades promote creative ways of thinking and learning. We also
recognize that embedding special courses in elementary school schedule provides opportunities for collaborative planning, time, and professional growth for core content classroom teachers. The board requests that the superintendent explore how
elementary school schedules could be standardized so that students have five special classes during the school week to expand the students academic enrichment experiences, while also providing time for teacher planning. Additionally, we
request that you look at staffing at the elementary level in general to ensure adequate support with particular attention to special education and at the secondary level. Please consider the staffing of assistant
principals. Consider investing in standardizing AP staffing. Thank you, Miss Wolff. I, I thank colleagues for putting out. Really robust discussion about our budget priorities. I
know it's not an easy task. We and but but we do feel this is an opportunity. Every year is an opportunity. This is another opportunity for us to right size and improve our practices. Thank you, Madam President.
Thank you, board members. And I see such direct alignment with your strategic plan, goals and objectives to your budget priorities, and I look forward to presenting a budget to you for consideration next month. Thank you. Let's look at item
11.2 is the. For the third time, we're talking about the school year calendar. And please give us a up, introduce yourself and give us an update. I'm just going to push things straight to Miss Malchiodi so that she
can take it away. Good evening I am I'm the executive director for District operations. We are here to talk about my favorite topic on the school calendar. So today we're going to talk about the timeline. I really want to take one second to
acknowledge my committees and the community feedback. Talk a little bit about the drafts that are in front of you. Share a little bit about policy management and identify a recommendation. We are also aligned to your fabulous strategic plan. We take that
very seriously. Goals one, two and three. And we are here November 20th. Board review and discussion and hoping to make it to December 11th for adoption. Some of the big things that we wanted to talk about after our most recent meeting were aligning to neighboring districts,
particularly for breaks like winter break, spring break, thinking about the length of winter break, considering interrupted weeks, and what it looks like to have a Monday on, a Tuesday off and Wednesday back on, and then thinking about the diversity of our
communities. So with that, we have three drafts for you. It was really important when I left our most recent meeting, that I went back to both of the committees, and we took it very seriously to go piece by piece
through the different calendars and talk about every single month, and then look at it as a whole. And once we did that, we realized that there were probably like 6 or 7 calendars that we wanted to look at. So then I asked them if they would go back and look at them if I
made them. And so they said yes. And so I did. And so the three that you see are the three that we sort of narrowed in on after those discussions, after those drafts, and really thinking about what really represented as many of the voices as we could and, you know, staying
within the parameters of calendar. So the three that you have in front of you are ABC. A is the one that starts the week before Labor Day, which, as a reminder, is a week later in the 2627 school year, has the
same spring break as the other two. And then the main differences for B and C, they're almost identical, except C includes the 23rd of December, which has come up a lot in conversations. I also
want to give a big shout out to Anova for over 4000 views and social media, and over a thousand responses from our students. She like almost got as many as I did. And so that is amazing because thank you.
And so those are really the three calendars that we felt as committees. And again, our committees are M.C.P.S. everyone from community partnerships, many people who've been with me for the past three years, some people who came to me with strong advocacy and now are really
strong calendar people because they just really like it. And so just a huge shout out to them because this was an extra labor of love. Bless you that I asked them to do this year. And so, you know, we continue with our engagement, we continue
with our planning, and we come to you really feeling like, bless you. We have some really good examples of what could be a very meaningful calendar for our 2627 school year. And we had a great discussion in
policy management. I always love going and just kind of hearing people's perspective on it, and that's really where we land today. So thank you. All right. I'm going to open up for any questions from my
colleagues. We went over it and Policy Management Committee. And after this this is going to tell us the the this is going to be come back to the board for approval in December, 11th,
December 11th. Okay. On December 11th. All right. Thank you so much. Question over here. Oh there are questions. All right. Mrs. Mrs. Zimmerman, thank you. Thank you've done a lot of great work. I have just
two points that I want to make. First, I had heard is that educators are the least represented in the feedback that we've heard. Can you enlighten me a little bit on that? Is that true? Tell me a little bit more. So the surveys are open to everyone and so
everyone can fill it out. What what I have found and our committees are representative of all of the three associations, as well as some of my members who are not part of one of those sort of groups came with advocacy. And then I asked him to join the committee.
One of the things I find is that a lot of staff parents tend to weigh in. And so but the survey was open to everyone. And so and we asked both of the committees to put it out in different spaces. I do hear
from staff in different ways to, I would say, and, and different levels of staff have different sort of areas of advocacy. Okay, great. I just hope that staff continue. Please. Do you know, as a former teacher, please, please do that? Absolutely.
Because this sets a lot of the options up for how, you know your school year will be structured. Speaking of which, I noticed that just I think some of it is nature of when our holidays are celebrated, but others of it could maybe be something that we could
consider that a lot of Mondays are days off of school, and the complication for that is, if a class only occurs on a Monday or, you know, other kinds of block scheduling and things, that it can be difficult to miss a lot of a single day of
the week. So it's just something that I'd like us to consider as we're looking at options. Absolutely. And that is something that definitely comes up, especially for elementary, because of the way their scheduling works. Absolutely. Thank you. Miss Silvestri. Yes. Thank you. I
wanted to ask, is there a recommendation of the three options? I know we're voting at the next meeting, but I know which my favorite is. But based on the feedback that I've reviewed with Miss Malchiodi, I'll be recommending that the board look at option C as its
preferred calendar. And at this point, I know we've still got some more collection of feedback to go, but right now that seems to be the strongest feedback that we've received. And that's where I'm leaning at this time. And it's my
intention. Unless more compelling information comes through in the form of feedback, to recommend to the board the the option C thank you. And I like that option because it starts school earlier, which I think is better for teaching and learning and doesn't have
us here at the end of June still in class, and also because we have off on the 23rd. And I think that a lot of people miss it because they're on their way to winter break. So thank you. Seeing no other lights. Thank you, thank you.
Have a great afternoon. Alright so next we will go to item 11.3. That is the must see TV tonight. Also the boundary study and program Analysis update staff. Please come forward while the Army is coming forward to take
their places. We are pleased to bring forward an update to two major efforts guiding our vision of equity and excellence in M.c.p.s. The boundary Study and the Academic Program study analysis for our secondary schools. Our goal is to create
a coordinated countywide system that is fair, efficient and expands access to high quality programs and ensures strong local opportunities for every student. We continue to talk about the boundary study and academic programs together,
because decisions about school assignments and decisions about learning opportunities must evolve together. If we want a system that truly serves all students today, we will share an update on community engagement as input from staff,
families and community members continues to be essential and community and staff feedback actively is shaping both boundary studies and program design, and we hope that our community sees their commentary reflected in some of the changes that we've made. Our
Boundary Studies team will share the next steps on the additional options, based on the resolutions that were adopted by the board on October 30th, at the Board business meeting for revised scopes to include the Crown, Damascus and Woodward Northwood boundary
studies, our Programs Analysis team will share a full implementation plan for the proposed regional program model, as well as a plan that all local high schools will have strong programing. Before I turn it over to Mr. Mamoun and
Miss Porter, our Chief Operations and academic officers, respectively, I also want to point out that we've included some things on board docs that are worth some community review. We of course have our our slide deck, which
has some timelines and some information that may be of interest to the community and as well as some additional details. But we've also included a draft budget. Now, as somebody who is a budget guy, I can tell you that it is a draft budget. Very much so. And, and and still something that
I'm spending some time reviewing. I do think that it is conservative. It is a net budget, not not one that takes into consideration some things that may even be redundant. There are some things that I think are maybe a little on the low side, and several things I
think are a little on the high side, but that's okay. The, the general gist and the approach that they've taken is a good one. And I think it's a great starting place. And those are good round numbers from which we can base some decisions moving forward. And so I want to congratulate my team on a
great first stab at that. And and we're as we develop this even further and bring a final recommendation that will look a lot more polished as we move forward. So, Mr. Mamoon, take it away. Good evening. We are
here talking about boundaries and programs together. They're definitely linked, as Doctor Taylor has already talked about. There's one that, you know, one infl the other. We do have shared assumptions between the studies and then fundamental structures guide how we plan and build out both
the boundaries as well as the programs. So today, as Doctor Taylor already mentioned, we're going to give a quick update on the boundary. And then Miss Porter and her team is going to talk about the programs update. And then we'll talk about the process. This is a process. We've been talking about it
both for the boundary side as well as the program side. This is an iterative process because we get feedback that gets built into the next round of information that we share with the board. Next slide please. Quickly. As Doctor Taylor has already mentioned, the on November 30th, we did have two
additional resolutions from the board that added scope to the scope of the boundary studies. And our consultants is currently working on developing these options. These options would take into account additional options for the
Northwood Northwood High School construction when it finishes, as well as the Woodward reopening. And that would consider the possibility of the closure of Simms. And those options would reflect that. And
then for the Crown and Damascus expansion boundary study, the options would reflect the consideration for using Crown as a holding school. I would like to remind everybody that these are additional options. So the options that are already
out on our website, as well as what was shared with the community, the options A through D for each of the boundary studies are still options that we're collecting feedback, and I would remind the public to continue to give us feedback on those options. These new options will be
released to the public after the Thanksgiving holidays, and we will go over the schedule in a minute. We will hold additional public meetings, both in person as well as virtual meetings, to share these options with the public. And then we will keep the
surveys open for the public to continue to give us feedback. If you could go to the next slide, please. So these are the dates for the in-person meetings for the Woodward and Northwood Boundary Study would be on Wednesday, December the 3rd at Einstein High School.
And then we would hold virtual meetings on both Monday as well as Monday, December 1st, as well as Thursday, December 4th for the Woodward Northwood study and for Crown. We will have an in-person meeting on Tuesday, December 2nd at Gaithersburg High School, as
well as virtual sessions on Monday, December 1st and Thursday, December 4th. Go to the next slide quickly. I'll just quickly go over the timeline for the boundary studies. So. We have had, you
know, additional programs in person, engagement sessions in November, and then in December we will have additional public engagement sessions for the additional options that are coming out end of this month. And then we will keep on
collecting the feedback through January and share it with Doctor Taylor and helping him produce the recommendation that is going to be presented to the board in February. And then we will have work sessions and public hearings with the board, where the public will have an
opportunity to provide feedback. Before the board makes a final decision on March 26th of 2026, but that I'm going to pass it over to Mrs. Porter. Mrs. Porter. I just want to let you know how I where I prepare to
take to do questions and breaks. I think you can go all the way to keep update to high school regional program. That is one section of question. And then you can go all the way to stop at before you head into middle
school program. That's. And then so three Q and A sections okay. Thank you. So I actually get to chime in for a quick second to revisit a critical part of this program, which is
the why and a question that continues to resurface time and time again, a little bit like a broken record. You know, we are a big system that has a lot of moving parts. And, you know, oftentimes we get criticized
for how slow we move as a school system, especially when there seems to be really urgent things going on. I'm going to elevate two things in particular our literacy and our math performance. We are moving very slow to make corrections, although we did see some
improvement for the first time in over a decade this past year on state assessments. It's an an important opportunity for us to reflect on our organization and what we stand for, and to
look at the things that are not changing and whether or not we're choosing for things to to stay that way or not. And a much has been made about our readiness as a school system to make a big change, like the change that we're proposing.
And there's an overwhelming feeling by some people that is trepidation. And you know what? I get that trepidation. I'm a little nervous, too. And I get the anxiousness because, candidly, our past performance hasn't really earned us a lot of trust in making big changes.
But I do want to emphasize that being ready is not a feeling. It's a decision. And we need to decide whether or not we are going to be ready, not feel if we're going to be ready and
we're ready. And our community has been waiting for an awful long time for facility upgrades, but they've been waiting for an awful long time to equitable access to programing. And will everything be perfect on day
one? Not a chance. Does that mean that we should stop trying? No. Were the programs that are a huge success today perfect on day one? Not a chance. Did it stop them from trying? No. So we have a pretty clear path
forward. We know that we need to start somewhere, and we're choosing to recommend that we start now. So if you could advance the next slide. Thank you. So this is really about two things in our eyes about how we manage the capacity within our schools. And we have
an interesting advantage with declining enrollment that we might be able to manage capacity better if we get our shared assumptions right, we can link programs and our boundary study very well and create a foundational structure that can be long lived for a
generation of students until we think of something better candidly, and we have to be nimble enough to think of things that are better in the future. The second thing is about service, the kind of service that we can provide both operationally and academically, can exist better
for our very large county. When we leverage some of those efficiencies and we take a hard look at some of our parts of our community that have been historically underserved and why they have been underserved, and take a look at that head on
and address those issues head on. I turn this now, back over to Miss Porter to go through the details. Thank you very much. Good evening, President Yang, members of the board. Before we get started, I do just want to acknowledge all the folks that are sitting in
that back corner by the door. They are from the Teaching and Learning division and really helped provide a lot of input and feedback around what we are presenting today around the programs. So tonight's presentation provides a very
high level update on the comprehensive work that we have been doing. We're going to share what we've learned from our community in terms of engagement and feedback. We will share updates on the regional pathway placements. We're not going to go through
every detail, but we will share highlights of those of those updates. We will also share with you our implementation plan. And then we will have more conversation about our local schools and what we've been hearing from the community, and update on middle school programing. So at this time,
I'm going to turn it over to Miss Franklin. Thank you, Miss Porter, and thank you for having us back to return and share some key information tonight. So I first want to start off by saying that transformational work is big and it's demanding. And when it's for our students and for
their futures, it's definitely worth it. I share this because we appreciate the board for acknowledging the program analysis work that was presented to you our last time together on October 16th. On October 16th, we brought to you a number of key updates for the budget, the updated regional
program placements, our timeline and transportation estimates. So let's take a look at some of your recommended next steps. You can see that we have addressed or are going to be addressing all of the next steps. I just want to highlight a few. You said expand
communication. So communication has been expanded to beyond the principals with their support, our collaboration and the program supervisors collaboration. We're working with teachers and staff regarding programs and facilities. Educators have been
part of the design work and their feedback has been critically important. The next steps will absolutely continue to engage many more of them for standing up and scaling our programs. And the last item you have received, a multi-year budget, which is an attachment,
and you will see a snapshot of our program plan in our presentation. One final item we wanted to make sure to share is that there is another attachment, just a small 498 program page, a set of frameworks that set it for in a
PDF light reading for after the meeting, of course. Next slide please. So we brought to you before what are the problems. So here are the problems. I'll just mention a few. You've seen these before and we'll talk a little bit about them when we
go forward. But again we do have 2000 over 2000 students who remain on a wait list or on a wait pool. This says that there are a number of students who are looking for programing that might not be available at their local school. We do have big variants when it comes to providing bus transportation
and resources to our programs, something that we need to tackle. There is a vast difference for students who have access to programs. Some have access to as many as 22 and some don't. And so that's a big difference that we need to also tackle. And a contributing factor to all of these
challenges is that M.c.p.s does not have a systems approach to deciding when to implement programs, how to implement programs. They happen to come at different times over the past 50 years, all well-intended. But now we have this really great opportunity
to try and address these issues. So next slide please. So let's look at the two solutions. The first solution is that we want to focus on strong local schools. You'll hear more about this today. And then the next solution number two is that we
want to offer up the idea of a regional program with in six regions. And that's to address barriers of transportation, seat capacity and distance to programs. We offer regional program model because it is cost prohibitive to try to
offer all of these programs in all schools. And we also likely won't have the critical mass of students to staff to to offer the various courses that we'd like to. So let's take a look at our next slide. Okay. Don't
stare at this too long. So on an earlier slide, we mentioned that there are about 2000 students that do not have access to programs because they're sitting on a waitlist in a wait pool. Look away, look away. I know it's very tempting, but this is an AI generated
showing of 2000 students. It's hard to find 2000 students and get them on a slide deck, but this is an example of what it can look like. But let me tell you who these students represent. These students represent 465 students who are on a wait list for the health care pathway at Wheaton and
Edison, 261 are on the wait pool for the biomedicine program at Gaithersburg High School. 536 of these students are waiting for a seat in the Leadership Academy for Social Justice. 391 of them are waiting for a seat in the
P-tech at Clarksburg. So these are just some of the examples. And we have 35 full time programs I listed, maybe 4 or 5. They might be represented in a multiple of them. But what you're hearing are hundreds of students who are looking for programs that might not be available at their school. One piece I wanted to add. We also
have the two middle college programs, one at Northwest and Northwood. We have over 700 students on a wait list for those programs. Next slide please. So now we also know there's been a lot of concern
about the pace of the work, the timing of the boundary study, the movement of the planning, and some concerns about the process for the program analysis work which feel which some feel that it needs to be delayed. We want to share that we are on track, and it is unnecessary to delay. We have
shared a great deal of data that says this is the time to change. Our students deserve more choices, more opportunities. It is time to correct historical inequities, as Doctor Taylor shared, and I'm sure it resonates with all of us. What we are not changing.
We are choosing, choosing to remain in our current model that has inequities. Choosing to delay when we are on track to serve our students with more choices and opportunities, we are ready to move forward. Next slide please. So we are on track to tell our students, yes,
we have five big buckets that I just wanted to highlight, letting you know why we feel and why we believe and why we know we are on track. Our teams are assembled. They're here in our back corner supporting us. So if you have any questions about the program frameworks, they are here to help support the essential parts of our
program. Frameworks are complete our vision, our goals, our course progressions, the elements of support, our middle school families. We have many of those intact. We're building on our assets and we can also build on those. We're actually preparing to launch an early campaign in March, the regional
program plan. We have pathways for high school. We have the proposed seats. We have a proposed admission process. But this is an opportunity for us to refine and reflect with our teachers. And then we also have a strong local school plan that you'll hear this evening. Next slide please. And now I'll turn
it over to Miss Langford Brown. Thank you. Good evening. When we were here before you five weeks ago, you asked that we create authentic opportunities for two way communication with stakeholders to make sure that we're not making decisions in isolation. We've been engaging
with our stakeholders, our parents, our students, staff and community partners. Next slide. With regards to community engagement over the course of the development process, we've held 16 design team meetings, collected over 12,000 survey responses, and
welcomed more than 3000 participants in virtual information sessions sessions. Over the past five weeks, we hosted six multilingual, regional in-person meetings with a fantastic showing of over 1000 attendees, of which 282 were speakers of languages
other than English. Language specific support was provided by our Family Engagement specialists in Spanish and French, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese. During these in-person sessions, attendees were able to hear an overview of the model, ask
specific questions about the model, and provide feedback directly to system leaders. We also expanded our access through Spanish language feedback, Facebook Live sessions that reached over 3000
viewers. We've been intentional about meeting people where they are, whether it's the NAACP, identity, MCPs, PTA, or Down County Consortium meetings. Next slide. We've also gathered student voice through various
engagement opportunities. We engage with middle and high school students, student journalists, and multiple student voice feedback groups with over 57th graders from schools throughout listed on the slide.have three more student feedback groups
scheduled in the upcoming days. During the session, students shared the five most important things to them when thinking about high school. One. Going to high school with friends from middle school. Two. Receiving college credit for classes taken. Also earning a special certification or license that would help them
get a job. Learning a language and lastly, having a short bus ride or being able to walk to school. Thank you to the school teams who helped with this work, especially those grade seven students who share their thinking with us. In the
upcoming weeks will be will be sending a survey to families of four to families of grade four through seven students to get more feedback. Next slide. Staff engagement has been ongoing, including engaging with teachers appointed by MCE
on the design team. High school and middle school principals. World language and fine arts resource teachers, career and technical education leaders. Coordinators of criteria based programs and consortium counselors and coordinators. School based staff who touch program programing have had a
voice at the table, and their voices will grow as a part of the development of programs in their schools and regions. Next slide. The last category of engagement reflects the input we received from some of our key community advocacy and advisory organizations,
including. MCPs, PTA, MCE, the NAACP, and the Black and Brown Coalition. This slide captures what we heard from our partners, as well as how we are responding as a system. One thing we heard was the importance of teacher voice. The organizations want to be
sure students are fully involved in shaping the work, and we agree. We brought teachers, coordinators, resource teachers, and counselors directly into the process. As we developed the What, we will systematically increase our engagement with with them on the how, including everything from refining
pathway components, designing professional learning, and creating outreach plans. We also heard the need for ensuring genuine two way communication and creating real opportunities for people to speak directly with us. We are reviewing what came out of the six in-person engagement
meetings and building the next round of engagement opportunities. We heard two competing messages about timing. Some organizations, some organizations said, slow down and wait until the boundary studies are finished before moving forward with the regional program work. We
acknowledge this concern. This process is moving quickly, and we're committed to helping families understand how the pieces connect. And the truth is, the program analysis and boundary studies are interdependent. Program seats affect capacity, and capacity
directly affects boundary decisions. They have to move forward together. But we also heard the opposite message message don't delay. This work is overdue. This statement is true as well. Some partners have said that expanding access, eliminating scarcity, and
correcting historic inequities cannot wait. So while we are listening to the concerns, we also are honoring the urgency. We're prepared to move forward with the timeline. Mrs. McLane will provide an overview of the changes we have made in
response to stakeholder feedback. Thank you. Let's let's pause for. Questions. Board members anyone has questions I'm going to start
with Mr. Page ten I saw. One of the items was a clear plan for middle school program analysis. I don't maybe I've missed that plan, but could you share? Thank you. All right, Miss
Zimmermann, thank you. I first I'll talk about the boundary study with the additional options that are going to come out with new models, new proposals. We will really need to increase that engagement
portion. For this part of the boundary study. We're going to have more options, more complexities. And unfortunately that causes greater confusion in the community. And I, I look forward to hearing about all of the robust and varied
opportunities that the community is going to be given to truly engage and give us feedback on these upcoming options. Madam president, can I add one piece of information? We didn't we didn't mention this, and we probably should have and we should have even
put this on a slide. And this is something that we actually talked about earlier today in a in a team meeting. So it didn't really make the queue for the slides. One piece of feedback that we've heard consistently after we released a second round of maps is that whenever
we put out the the final version of things that have been generated by the process, that we include the previous options in the conversation with surveys that go out. And so this last phase of of
conversations with these new new additions, new additions to the the consideration, we'll also bring back the previous maps to request some some thoughts and and consideration so that folks have the whole picture to look at, not just one slice of the picture, and
not just the new options, not just the second round of options, but really all options to really give us their their final thoughts on that as we go into the recommendation phase. So does that mean even the four options in in June or July
comes back? The summer options, we at least want to put them in in the scope of the feedback loop, because one of the limitations that we had is that when we released the second round of maps, people were like, hey, where did the first round of maps go? I want to give some
feedback on that as well. And so we want to make sure that folks have access to giving us feedback on on all versions that come back to the board for recommendation, not just one. Thank you, Miss Silvestri. Are you going to cover all the
slides in the presentation today? Yes, yes. Okay. I'll call some of my questions because it looks like you're going to cover it. But the one that I don't see addressed here and it's about the why they have to happen at the same time. And you say that they are
linked because of capacity seats. So I just I really need to see that visually or give me examples of how that plays out, because it's about capacity. You say they are in a strict,
inextricably linked one influences the other. So give me an example of I mean, it seems to me like all schools give students out and all students receive, so it should work itself out. Help me understand why that's not the
case. So if I'll start and they can fill in if they want to. Not all programs have the same number of students, and not all programs have the same amount of interest from different corners of the community either.
And so, for example, you may have one program like, say, a dance program that may struggle to to have even enough seats to operate versus something that might be a musical performing
group that you have many seats, hundreds, sometimes seats that you may try to fill in an orchestra or a full size band. And so part of this is trying to be sensitive enough that you would not want to put an oversize program into a school,
that that the capacity is already very, very full. And you do want if you if you are committed to it and you're like, my gosh, this school has got to have this program no matter what, it is going to influence
the size of the attendance zone that you draw. And the perfect example of this is actually Montgomery Blair High School. There are several programs that operate out of Blair High School. It is a very large footprint in terms of its
boundary. And several years ago, it would have made a lot of sense for us to either do one of two things for either us to move the programs out of Blair to create capacity, because right now there are how many trailers at at Blair, it's lost
count. Yeah, it's I think it's actually more than that. I think it's 22 actually I do, which is an entire wing of a school, which is fairly significant. Or we should have
reduced the boundary size to Blair now. Well good news. Funny thing is, is we're expanding the size of its neighboring school, Northwood. So we actually do get to adjust the boundary of Montgomery Blair High School at least a little bit, because they have that into consideration, which
means that our ability to run programs will actually be okay in terms of managing it within the capacity that the school was designed. Right now, Montgomery Blair is over 3000 students. It was not designed for over 3000 students. We did
that to ourselves. That was a man made problem because we did not consider program capacity. At the same time as considering our attendance boundaries. So using the Blair example. So we have a new boundary for Blair, let's say. And then you're
doing I guess my question is can we do the boundary study first and then take our time to do the the program placing of programs in different places? Why wouldn't that work at Blair. So you could but you would be
limited. You would be creating limitations. You would have to think about your programmatic offerings with hard caps, and you would have to force hard caps versus looking at it through the lens of abundance versus scarcity. And in a sense,
whatever your attendance boundary is that you would create would be forcing a scarcity model. So when you are taking that into consideration and looking at the other dynamics that are connected, you could be more generous with the space that you're allowing,
knowing that programs might influence your attendance more than they would have if you had a hard cap. For example. I'm not seeing it. So okay, tell me a different way, teacher, for for example, if you drew your
attendance boundary for there to be 2000 students at Montgomery Blair and you have a program that has 100 students per grade level, you would have to be very concrete and very
prescriptive about how many seats could come from the Blair attendance zone, versus how many seats could come from outside of Blair attendance zone, without exception, without exceeding that cap and creating a capacity issue? If you take that into
consideration on the front end and think about how you could draw your capacity differently and think about creating almost generous boundaries for that capacity, you you could manage that a little bit better. And
programs could be your future mechanism to control capacity versus always having to go to the attendance zone as a mechanism to control capacity. Okay. Let me think about that,
Miss Montoya. Thank you. I just wanted to say thank you to all of you and all of our friends in the back there. I know that it takes a lot of work that you guys have been doing everywhere around the county, and just thank you for hearing us and the community and then taking action. I know that there's
still a lot of work to do. I'm I've looked at the attachments, not word for word. I'm still working through them. They're quite long. But I appreciate that. And I appreciate you providing all of that information so that the community can understand, they can ask questions and then they can continue to provide feedback as we continue to work.
Thank you. I have a question about student engagement, staff engagement and community engagement. It's wonderful you have done so many. Truly, I know that your calendar looked very full because sometimes I
say, Doctor Taylor, can we invite you to. No, no, no, I'm at this school. I'm at this school. I get that. However, as we develop this program, as you
go into even deeper into each region and deeper into each specific program, I want to understand what would that engagement look like? So almost like every month you are giving
us an update on your, you know, the progress, the update in that I would like to see every month that how what engagement we did this month, you know,
and what area was the engagement and how that have impact our work. Because when we have the very broad what the regional program, you are now getting into the planning phase
of how and that is when I think it's so important to understand how it really works. A practitioner's view. You know, a student's view, right. And and the lived experience, you
know, point of view. So that is what we like I would like to see. Thank you. Mrs. Zimmerman. Thank you. I also want to thank you for the feedback. I know we talked about hearing more from
our younger students. I appreciate that. That's something that we're going to work on. I also had some questions about that capacity. So thank you, Miss Silvestre, for pulling that thread for me and for getting some answers there. And I just want to say I appreciate the sense of urgency
here. I understand that we have students that currently have limited access to programs, and that is something that we want to solve that I believe that's something that we as a board wish to solve, and I believe that it's something that the community wishes to solve. That
being said, I just feel there's a little bit of like a mischaracterization of this sense of urgency that the parts of the community that are asking us to slow down or to delay aren't doing so because they want to prevent access to anyone. I just I just want to
make that that really clear. That's not what what I believe is happening. And I respect that they're asking us to do so. Thank you. If I may, I would like to add, just to as far as the timing and Doctor Taylor
has done a, you know, has explained the the capacity, I would like to also point out that there is an operational challenge, which is solved by doing these two studies together, because there's an inherent assumption that there will be grandfathering of the programs, and there will also
be grandfathering of the students with the boundary changes. And if we're doing this together, getting to that decision together, there is operational efficiency, because we do have to ramp up our transportation services for all these grandfathering. And if
the program study is lagging, that means the grandfathering is going to continue, which means the transportation, which is already very difficult with all the the, the, you know, regional programs that we have is going to continue farther along, which means it's going to actually have an operational
impact from a cost perspective. Just wanted to add that I just want to make sure that I have this clarified. What you're saying is that if the two occur at different times, that the ways that we will implement where students who are currently in a program will
continue to be in that program. Same with some students who are currently attending a school, despite how boundaries may change, will continue to attend that school, that the transportation element of that will continue over a longer period. If we drag out that process, that is correct. Thank
you, thank you. Let's proceed to the next section. Good evening. You've seen this slide before. These are our program themes. They provide the framework for the program pathways in each of the six proposed regions. And I'm going
to highlight some recent changes tonight. Over the past several months we listened closely to schools and families. And the adjustments you see here today reflect that input. Every region now includes a stronger Stem footprint, including engineering. We heard consistently that families want
more hands on Stem options closer to home, so each region now has access to engineering as part of its regional offerings. We've intentionally paired criteria based and interest based pathways. The structure allows us to maintain rigorous, selective programs, but also create open access
pathways so more students can explore high demand fields. For region five, we drafted an alternative model in the case that Crown is not part of the region. So there are two ways that students can access our
high school pathways interest based and criteria based. This approach ensures that every student student has opportunities that match their interests, strengths, and future goals. Criteria based means that students must meet certain standards or academic markers to be eligible for the pathway. Criteria are based on
a variety of data points, and will be explicitly identified for each pathway. All students who apply and meet the criteria will be eligible for the program, and acceptance decisions will be made by a review committee. Interest based programs are open to all students wanting to pursue the
pathway. All students who submit an interest form will be placed into a lottery for selection. As we shared in the last board meeting when we shared our transportation estimates, we are operating with a minimum seat number per program to be conservative in the early part of this process,
as we learn, interest based seats will range from 15 to 30 per program at a minimum, and criteria based seats will range from 30 to 60. Also at a minimum. Both will have opportunities for students locally to access. So I won't
go through all of the changes, but I'll highlight a few for you. The most significant update in region one is for Northwood High School, where we have now identified the specific pathways within within their program themes. These pathways build on Northwood's existing strengths and prepare students for the opportunities that will come with the opening
of their new school. School building one pathway a new pathway will we originally named it agroecology caused some confusion, and with the guidance of the school staff, we have renamed it Environmental Science and Leadership. This new name better reflects the programs advanced sciences, environmental policy focus and
student advocacy components. This pathway complements Northwood strong set of existing criteria and interest based programs that include law, criminal justice and leadership, dance, theater, and the highly sought after middle college
program. As part of our work to expand Stem options across the county, we are elevating the existing engineering program at Sherwood High School to a regional program. This shift ensures that students in region two will have expanded access to engineering and hands on
Stem learning. Region three is an opportunity to talk about our investment in increasing access to those less commonly taught languages and global learning. Since our last presentation, the team in the corner has developed a new, distinct pathway focused on
less commonly taught languages called critical languages, cultures, and global connections that's separate from the humanities pathway. Similar to region two, region four has also also has expanded access to engineering.
Rockville High School's existing engineering program is now elevated to a regional program, giving region four students increased Stem options at Rockville. This will sit alongside the medical science and middle college programs at the school, creating a strong and balanced set of
opportunities. In region five, we worked with the Magruder High School staff to determine their leadership and public service pathways at Magruder. Their program will include leadership for social Justice and their existing and highly valued JROTC program. We also
know that potential changes to region 5th May affect how program themes are distributed. Because of this, an alternative model is in development in case adjustments are needed. If regional changes are
implemented. Our early recommendation would be Quince Orchard High School host the medical science and healthcare themed pathways in Magruder High School hosts the humanities themed pathway. Should we move in this direction? We will work closely with both schools to refine and
finalize the pathway details. In region six. Based on staff recommendations, we have added Northwest High School's biotechnology program as a regional pathway option. This is currently the only biotechnology program in the district, and elevating it
ensures that more students can access this high demand field, and that northwest can play a key role in developing this program in other regions. Please note all the updated pathway frameworks, including the course sequences, and evaluate evaluation metrics, have been posted on board docs
with today's materials. I want to note that as we continue this work, we have these written pathways, but we're working closely with schools and with program teachers to really refine and make those pathways come alive for students. As we shared before,
some programs are especially difficult to replicate. They require highly specialized equipment, facilities or instructional expertise. These programs will continue to be offered as part time career programs that students can access while remaining enrolled at their home schools. The
career hubs include Edison High School of Technology, that will serve regions one through four, and programs at Seneca Valley and Gaithersburg High Schools serving regions five and six. I'll now turn it back over to Miss Langford Brown to talk about the implementation plan. Thank you. Our team has
identified key deliverables needed for a smooth launch for students, families and staff. This Gantt chart highlights some of the tasks we will complete from March 26th through August 26th. We will finalize the pathway frameworks and work with school based
staff to develop grade nine courses and professional learning plans. We will also craft communication materials and outreach experiences for grade seven students. This slide shows only a small snippet of the full regional Program implementation grant
chart that spans from December 2026 through September 2027, when the class of 2031 begins their freshman year of high school. This board. Would you like to continue? You know what
I think you I think this actually is a place because we're going to talk about local high school later. Let's let's stop right here. I'm going to open up for colleagues for questions. Miss Malu, please go ahead. Hello. I didn't get to say it earlier, but I do want
to say thank you so much for all the work that's been happening. And I'm very excited to see the timeline progress as we go further. I'm curious if we go to Poolesville, which is in region six. It offers global ecology as an interest based program, but I don't see that offered in any of the other
regions. That's just off me looking at it right now. Is there a reason for this or. That's a really good question. So when we worked with the school regarding their global ecology program, they mentioned that there's a lot of interest that it's more science based
because the idea of ecology, environmental, that was the idea. But after talking with them, they said that the program is really public policy and it's more leadership. So we moved in that direction. And so now it's a pathway in leadership. And we also discussed the idea of creating
more access to the program and moving up from a criteria based to an interest based. If I can follow up and ask, as far as I'm aware, for my friends that do attend that program, they're they often tell me about the field trips that they get to go on, etc. in so many different circumstances regarding the program, will that be offered
with the variations of the similar parts of it that are taken from it and implemented in other regions to there will be a core set of experiences, but each of the pathways may still look a little different given the resources and given the experiences that they that they have at those different
schools. Can I talk about field trips for a second because you brought up something that's great currently, right now for all of our countywide programs, we do not have a set aside budget for them. And this is actually a real weakness of
these programs, is that they rely heavily on outside support, or they rely heavily on school based allocated funds and their materials and supply budget that comes to the school. So to me, if we are going to go to
the effort to to stand up this effort, we need to not only resource any kind of new program that we that we might launch or an expansion program that we might launch, but rather also look at the existing programs and actually resource them properly. So one
of the things that that I'm glad that the team put into the budget was things like tuition fees, competition fees for extracurricular activities, field trip money, and because those are the things that
really level the playing field, it's not just the academic experience in the classroom, but it's all the extras. And candidly, if we were to launch a school in a program that has been struggling with finances and didn't provide the extra resources, we would be setting
them up for failure. So part of this is to make sure that we have an equitable access model for those those things that we do believe are core experiences that make those programs unique and special, and make sure that that we are financing them
properly and that we set a marker for that. It's it's been something that has been missing for quite some time. And even long standing programs that have had great success have not benefited from being properly resourced. And this is really
our chance to do that. Thank you so much. I have more questions but I'll wait till next. Yes. Thank you. I will go as many rounds as we need because this is the bulk of the discussion for today. Miss Zimmerman. First round. Thank
you. This is kind of related to capacity and also kind of related to criteria versus interest based. Some of the programs that we already have. Will their seat size their general size. Is it possible that that could decrease based
on this model? Yes, it is possible that their seats will decrease. So we can take an example for the IB program at Richard Montgomery. So currently they take 100 out of area students and 25 local students. But that's from 25
high schools in a six and a five region model. They will be going to 60 seats and then a class of local students. So let's let's re-emphasize that that's a minimum of 60 a minimum. So they could actually
have 125 seats. But we think that that they're likely going to be in the 60 seat range. So then to follow up on that, it's possible that theoretically, any of the programs, given that there's higher interest or the
criteria is met to a certain point, that they could increase to a greater beyond the minimum. Of course, there's going to be limitations in other ways, but that they could continue to grow. Yes. Got it. Thank you, Miss Silvestre. This is a
comment on slide 25. All your region slides. I'd like to see capacity seats added to that because I'm not I don't I'm not wrapping my head around seats for all of these programs. If you have that already, like in parens. Like on the slide. Yeah.
Next to it. Yeah. Versus in the budget sheets okay. Right. Like International Baccalaureate engineering okay. That's 4030 or whatever. Okay. My question is about admissions. There's a slide here about admissions.
Right. So you often talk about like some of the Blair magnet programs that they were predominantly some schools were sending a lot of students to that. How will you control for that. So that doesn't happen the same again in the region so
that, you know, the application process isn't so that the folks that have the most resources and time to apply or hit the button right at the same at the right time, how are you going to make sure that we have equity within the programs and diversity? Well, I think one of
the things we're learning is that when it comes to the application numbers, we do talk to families who say they don't even apply to programs because of distance or where the busses, the bus stops to pick them up, or the the time it takes to be
on the bus. So we anticipate in this new model because the the programs are going to be closer to students homes and the transportation, there will be transportation, provided that we're going to see an increase in students applying. The other thing that we recognize is we do targeted outreach as well.
So we work with middle schools to encourage students to apply to programs. In terms of the admission, what we are going to look at is we're going to take what we've been doing with our current admission, and we probably and we're going to talk with teachers to talk about what what are the characteristics of students who
are successful. And then we're going to back map that, and then we're going to also benchmark with other systems to look at their models for admission. We've done that. We do that every year. And so we'll continue to look at that. And then one of the biggest efforts we believe is just
students who are prepared and also believing that they can thrive in these programs. So we believe we need to start that actually in fifth grade and letting them know that if you want ex high achieving or a course pathway of excellence in
math or humanities or any one of these programs, we want to start earlier. So we actually believe that our outreach is going to start much earlier than eighth grade. So the hardest thing that folks are going to have to get their head wrapped around is, I think,
something that we're struggling with here, too, is I'm reticent to put a seat number next to the program because again, we're talking about minimums, not maximums. It's a very different way of thinking about
how our programs operate. So even the timeliness of you getting in an application, if you meet the criteria, you should be considered for admission. And there shouldn't be an arbitrary cutoff or a line. And that we need to be thinking in terms of cohorts
and how we can fill a cohort. And if we can fill one cohort, can we fill a second cohort? And if we can fill a second cohort, can we fill a third cohort? And if we can fill a third cohort, can we fill a fourth cohort. And where we might be looking at at denying admission might be especially
on a criteria based program. Either a student significantly did not meet the criteria, hasn't demonstrated that they could be successful in that program, and there wasn't enough to fulfill a cohort beyond the initial cohort.
That's a very different way of thinking about this. That is a very fundamentally different non m.c.p.s way of thinking about programs, because what we have been doing is there's 90 seats and will I be a part of
the lucky 90. And luck is a word selected for a reason. And how. But how are you controlling for equity in that model. So part of the benefit is, is that you we have a diversity already represented
in the students who are not receiving admission, and we have diversity in those who would apply for programs that are not applying for programs in terms of ensuring equity and diversity, we can set some targets and set some
expectations, and we may even come back to the board to ask for some guidance on what you think is appropriate and what makes sense, because that is a program goal. We have failed miserably. If we are just shuffling around one group of students, that is not at all
what our expectation is, and certainly not at all reflective of the 2000 kids in the entering ninth grade cohort who are sitting on the bench. As a matter of fact, the 2000 kids who are sitting on the bench are very reflective of our of our school system's
demographics. I'm concerned about the kids that don't know the bench exists, so. But Miss Franklin is an expert in choice program, so I look forward to how this develops. But you know, this obviously is very important. So we will we want to train that. Thank you, Miss
Wolff. Thank you. I want to thank you for the work you've been doing on this. I know it's been a tremendous amount of work, and it's taken a lot of time away from your own family. So I want you to know that I really appreciate it. You know, when I, when I get bothered, I
start scribbling so you could see I've been scribbling all over this. But I first wanted to address something that Miss Zimmerman said that I actually disagree with, I think, and that is, and I'm paraphrasing, I'm not using your exact words,
but it it seems as though you believe that the community supports change. They just want more information and to slow it down. Am I right about that? Basically. But see, my position is that we have a lot of
program deserts. I live in a program desert, and if you look at the people who have been coming in here to discuss this, they are people who have kids in the program or they have kids that have graduated from
these programs. They don't want change. That's my belief. They don't want change. So they come in here with all kinds of delay tactics. Now question. Yeah, we don't have it all figured out. It's not going to be all figured out this year, next
year, and probably not the year after that. But do we want to let perfection be the enemy of change? See, I say no, we don't, you know, because there are many deserving students that are not getting a quality education now, many of them,
because they're just not enough seats. You heard I heard you go over the numbers originally there, just not enough seats. Maintaining the status quo is just not an option. So I just wanted to say that I don't have any questions on your your
slides, and I look forward to hearing from you further. Thank you, Miss Montoya. Thank you. To Miss Sylvester's point about like, making sure that the kids, you know, the kids that are not getting access are getting access. I'm a new middle school
parent, and I can tell you, I keep encouraging people to apply to the middle school programs. And it's always but I don't know how I'm going to get them there. Oh, that sounds really great. Oh, it's over there. Oh, I don't know if I can do that. And these are black and Latino families, so I definitely see it at that level.
I have no reason to believe it's any different at the high school level. Right. If we have to do all of those logistics, it does make it hard where families don't even want to apply. And I'm always like, no, just apply. We'll figure it out. You have time, you know, to see if you can figure it out. So I do appreciate that this is a
model that can help families and kids to have more access to, hopefully, the things that they love. And kind of in that vein, I guess that's really the the one kind of comment suggestion that I have in looking specifically at region one, but just generally, I think I just want to make sure, like some of
the schools have 4 or 5 different pathways to get in from the region. And then if you look at, for example, region one, it seems the only way to get into B-cc is if you can qualify for IB, which B-cc naturally has a lot of students from their school that go to
that program and engineering. And I do appreciate the addition of the interest based engineering. I know last time I think it was just the IB, but something to consider there just for that by way of example, is that both of those programs
presume, in my opinion, kind of a high investment or high caliber of your middle school and probably upper elementary experience such that you can, for the IB qualify to get in.
But even for the engineering as an interest base to do well, right? Maybe you are interested in it, but if you haven't had a lot of math or I don't know about engineering, I'm not sure what else you might need, but let's just say science right to
do well, even if you can get in because there's no criteria. Are you going to do well or are you going to get in, not be able to compete with your peers because you didn't have accelerated math or what, what have you? And then now you think you can't be an engineer
or you can't do science or you can't do math. So I just want to make sure that all of our schools have a wide variety of programs, not just that we're seeing the C or the I, but that in terms of what it takes to get there and to do well,
because we don't want people thinking that, well, we're not really trying to invite kids into b-cc unless you can do these certain things. And I know that's definitely not the intent. So just generally just if we can take a look, make sure that there's about the same, you know, some schools have like five programs, some schools just have two, that
kind of thing. Thank you. Mr. Yes, I actually do want to thank for the addition of the interest base program. And also, I do take your point that it's good to have a wide variety and
of different kinds of programs in each school. So they are accessible. And I just also to go off of what you said, I see it as capacity building. And so we have to kind of engineer our way actually into making sure
we have that capacity. And that means starting in the very early grades to build the capacity and starting putting some investments in certain elementary schools where you could have that opportunity to
build capacity and put in after school programs and work with our partners, get some mentors in. So but my question is about actually on the same region. One Northwood. Thank you for
environmental science. That sounds amazing. I think a lot of kids are going to be interested in that. I know my own kids talk to me about the environment a lot. That theater, that theater, technical theater.
So here's my view on that being interest based. Every school is going to have a theater program, right? So to me we need a criteria. Am I saying that right. It's really late. Based
program. So I just want to make sure we get that right. Because then that is a cohort. Right. So we might want to go with a C there. At least look into it. Because again every school will have some kind of theater
program. And also thinking about the the middle college here, I think it was North West I believe had also an engineering pathway for the
middle college. And I thought maybe that was also going to be the case for Northwood. And so because that actually gives another level of Stem for Northwood, which would be amazing. And I also want to
point out to our, our audience that any school it's up. And let me confirm this. It's up to individual schools about their local programing and what they have in their schools. And so if there is a need for the kids
going to that school, that has nothing to do with it, interests or criteria it, if there is like a capacity for something there, if you work it with your principal, then that can happen, right? Yes. And
actually the board has featured prominently in the role of developing local programs at schools through the course approval process. So the board has actually historically had a big hand in, in helping support local programing at school
based on where there has been pockets of interest and the ability and the, the, the resources to do so. Because I've heard our Northwood had a lot of success with their AI pilot course, and they also
have esports. I was in California and learned that esports really does support learning in schools, and it is a whole career. So if school is interested in that and can build, there's some synergies, could be some synergies there
with AI and esports. So I just want to let people know that there will still be local programs. And so thank you. All right. I'm looking at slide 33. Yes. Well we came from her. So
I will go back to her. Thank you. My question is related to slide 33. I'm really looking at solid instructional foundation because one of the things we always talk about, whether it's program or just our regular
schools, we have a lot of variances in terms of how we conduct our instruction. So if I look at the items, the curriculum development, grade nine courses, codified scopes and sequence unit overviews and
resources for existing courses, so can you help me understand what vetting process is there to ensure that scope and sequence the unit overviews and
resources are being developed that that meet the rigorous what we say, you know, rigor, accessibility or or the equity requirement. You know, for our multilingual learners, for our
students with with disabilities or students who are entering below grade level. So how you know, how when you do these things, how what's the vetting process like you say, okay, let's do the scoping. Let's do whatever, I have this program
now, I'm going to put it in five other high schools. I'll start. And there's there's two things that are a great starting place for this. And this is a practice that we have across the district because it's required nationally is to
do a syllabus review of our Advanced Placement courses. We actually have to submit syllabi to the College Board, and they do have to be reviewed for exactly what you're talking about, to make sure that the scope and sequence covers the content as outlined, so that
they can call it an AP class. IB has a similar process, but different one. One thing that we can do is to start with course syllabi, scope, sequence, and curriculum materials to review one. If we think that
there should be any additional enhancements or even corrections that that might might need to take place and level set to make sure that resources, materials and supplies textbooks, real actual live textbooks, and learning materials are also consistent
and available in all locations. Beyond that, if you all want to add to to any part of that process, there's definitely additional layers that go into the how you teach the course, not just what the course is, but if you all want to add to
that. But I just know that that's a common practice that every school district has to go through. And we would similarly replicate that process is a good start to we'll get to that part of how. But just to your point of talking about
materials. So it's very well documented right now that we are we have inconsistent tests, for example, in our English courses, we have people using outdated photocopies instead of text. So that's already an
existing issue. So then in this process how are we addressing this. It's actually a little part of the next part of our presentation. As we talk about just building the strong schools, we are doing an audit
currently of all of our courses that are being offered in our schools, looking at our materials that schools are using so that we can have more consistency. So we have a wide variety of resources being used
and currently, and we want to make sure that as we are rolling out our programs and building that strong local school, that we are maintaining a level of consistency. So we're actually going to put some monitoring and metrics in
place so that we can make sure as we move forward, that we have consistency across the district. So I got one more thing to add to that. And sorry to cut you off, but I just want to add to this because I think it's important. This is probably one of the benefits of
starting something new versus trying to add something piecemeal. And actually one of one of the reasons that we got to the place that we are right now is because we've been adding things piecemeal and not really with a strategy. And I'll take our curriculum launch
of Carla. Definitely. People have a beef with certain elements of the curriculum, and you know what they're entitled to. And launching any new kind of curriculum definitely has its challenges. But one of the challenges that I think we've
done a pretty good job of solving for, it's pretty clear where teachers should be on this day, on the next day and the day after. And and we've observed this as a board and going with me to schools that when we visit a classroom, what
we're seeing in one classroom in fourth grade is very similar to what we're seeing in another classroom, in another school in fourth grade, and that we are starting to see that continuity, because that was one of the objectives of launching that curriculum. So I think that if
anything, this gives us a chance to level set where we haven't introduced that as an objective in the past and, and really does give us that chance. Let me summarize what I have heard. You're saying that right
now. Currently, you are doing a curriculum audit in our high schools to look at the materials that's being used at the high school level for courses in an effort to
standardize the material. And what I'm hearing also is that in this process, there will be effort to say that we will look at how we meet the needs of different students. So first
it's standardized, then how we meet the different population that I just mentioned. Am I understanding it correctly? Yes. And you can actually see that on this Gantt chart under section two on the slide that's presented with curriculum
development for ninth grade courses, where the second line, although that's my question, general and not really spelled out because this is like the this is like the abbreviated version. We also talking about outside vetted science research
based curriculum. Or are we saying we're writing our curriculum, but we'll try to standardize it across our high schools? It is both, but we are looking at outside open source, evidence based resources as well. And so I'll give you an
example. We we have some existing programs that our curriculum has been written by M.C.P.S. teachers. And it's excellent. We don't need to get rid of some excellent content and excellent curriculum. And you know, I think some, some of the, the work that the Blair
Magnet program has done has been really inventive and, and captures a lot of ingenuity in the field and has really elevated our, our outlook on on advanced math classes. We wouldn't want to get rid of that. So they wrote their own
math curriculum, I all right, Miss Malone, I also I just want to speak on that too, to say that an example of that could be our a lot of our elective classes, such as linear algebra, linear algebra that's offered our statistics class, which is
taught in a semester. We have advanced stats and we have multi of our differential equations also as well, which are both taught semester each. I just have some quick clarifying questions about region one. So I noticed that for Northwood it said environmental science and
leadership and then parentheses C comma I. What does that mean exactly for the program. For middle college. No it's environmental science and leadership. Does that mean that the first one is criteria based. And the second part of the
program is interest based. Sure. So a lot of our programs have both a criteria based pathway and an interest based pathway. So a criteria based pathway might have accelerated science okay. And so or you started a different math level. But we wanted to provide a interest
based pathway as well to meet that need okay. Thank you Mr. Oh sorry. Go ahead. Just to clarify also for the career hubs, are you saying that region one, two, three and four
will be sharing Edison High School of Technology and regions five and six will share Gaithersburg and Seneca. Is that not too many regions to be sharing one school or is there a capacity I'm just curious
about? So Thomas Edison has a variety of different programs that are many more than Gaithersburg and Seneca Valley put together. Okay, yeah. So and so. Thomas Edison currently also is able to provide
programing to throughout the county where Gaithersburg and Seneca Valley do just a section of the county. All right. Thank you, Miss Silvestre. Doctor Taylor, one of our many community engagement meetings,
you spoke about the year one. It's more related to this ready to launch slide. So I see this this is the plan to get ready through July. In the fall students will be applying. But
you are you you said something to the community that said I'm just working to fill this many programs and seats in year one, and that's doable. Could you elaborate on that? Sure. And this is the perfect slide for
us to be on because we're we're not trying to fill out 10th grade, 11th grade or 12th grade classes in the first year, although we'd love the idea of creating off ramps and on ramps, we actually think that that could be a pivotal,
distinguishing characteristic of what we put together is that you don't have to be married to something in in ninth grade, find out that you hate it, and then still have an opportunity to switch later on. We we we think that that could be a great hallmark of this. But
you'll see here in section two of of this this ready to launch abbreviated Gantt chart and it is abbreviated the bigger version. Did we attach it online I think I think we attached it as well to board
docs, but it says curriculum development for ninth grade courses. So the year before the launch of the ninth grade cohort, we would be working on the ninth grade cohorts. The following year, we would be working on the 10th grade courses the following year.
After that, the 11th grade courses and the 12th grade courses. I got to tell you, I don't I don't know that I could slow this down any slower because it's a it's a five year rollout of, of this program, not a one year rollout of this
program. And so our preparation is really five years in the making to launch this, not one year in the making or two years in the making. So my preparation and this team's preparation for the ninth grade
cohort is really where the focus is. I'm not I'm not totally obsessed over what happens in 10th or 11th grade, knowing that we have this existing already in other places, but rather how we make modifications in years three,
four, five and six. And this would be for new programs, because we have many of these are already existing programs that we're replicating. Yeah. And we'd still want to take a look at even the ones that were replicating. And, and to do just what Miss Yang is talking about is how do we ensure
quality from point A to point B to point C is that we we should be looking at even the stuff that we've had going for several years to make sure that it's it's consistent and high quality. So, you know, we've
got a effectively five core domains that we're really looking at, not, you know, 80 but really five. And just making sure that that the materials are what we would consider high quality, that the instructors are selected with a
lot of intentionality and a lot of focus, and that we have provided the right materials. It's 90% of it right there. And how many new new programs will there be? Do you do you have that number off the top of your head? We haven't counted, but
we're thinking if it's roughly 15 strands over six regions, that's how many. But in terms of brand new standing up, give us a little bit to count those out. It's really just a couple that are brand, brand new that
we. Yeah, that are brand languages we haven't conceived of before. Oh okay. Wait. Miss Stewart, no speeches, just questions. Why didn't we use
equity type model when we looked at field trips for all the different schools, draft budget. Okay. Thank you. And my next question is I keep getting
a lot of questions about transportation and what that's going to look like. And I know we have a transportation budget. Is that door to door service? Is it only from high schools? Is it from elementary schools? How is that priced out? And is that still draft as well? It
will largely depend on what the board wants to do with other grandfathering efforts, because like we've been saying, programs and transportation and operations and boundaries, they are all connected. And so some
of this is solving for the problem that Mr. Moon was trying to focus on, which is based on how the board wants to grandfather people into boundary changes, will influence what your transportation availability is and what that model may look
like. You may have one service delivery approach during your grandfathered period of time, versus another service delivery model that you employ once your grandfathering period is over. Because think about it like this. You are going to have to
run two transportation systems simultaneously no matter what, whether you do regional programs or not is irrelevant to the fact that you will literally be running two transportation systems on top of each other. And to the extent that you can create and
look for efficiencies, is really one of one of the reasons in Genesis is behind this, is that we think that we could be a little bit more efficient with transportation by going to a regional approach, we should try to fill in the gaps with our public
transportation. And then where there's when we have that, and then we can fill in somewhere, somewhere else. And we might look at my new favorite word, vans. What vans. Vans. Oh, vans. Oh, vans. Got it. Okay. My
question will be I just heard you said you have you are going to have a number of brand brand brand new programs. As I understand brand brand brand new programs need curriculum.
Curriculum is under the approval of the board. So are you bringing the curriculum to the board for those brand, brand, brand new curriculums? Let me give you an example. Instrumental music. Yes, brand new program. We do not have a
regional instrumental music program, and nor do we have a countywide instrumental music program. But yet we teach instrumental music. So whether or not we are bringing a scope and sequence for the board to, to review. Yeah, we we will
definitely want to put some things in front of you so that you can put put your eyes on it, whether or not we will purchase a curriculum for instrumental music is unlikely, so it is unlikely that you're going to see such a radical departure
from what we have already previously adopted and used as our instrumental music curriculum. But what you will see that will be very different is leveraging things like music theory, using advanced pieces to play, and a much higher
level of musicianship than what you've seen before. And get ready for this, this, this might get really exciting, especially for you, Miss Yang. Maybe even looking at instrument construction or instrument repair. Okay, so but
if you are setting up brand new programs, I would like to see your sequence and scope. Yeah. Okay. And number two, my question number two, professional learning. Nice slide right here. Convene a
cross-functional team to develop a comprehensive plan for teachers and leaders. Sounds great. I will ask you a few things. Number one. In professional development you have generic professional
development right. How to be how to be culturally proficient teacher. Right. But you also have curriculum based PDS. So I
would like you to show me an example. For example, you are going to duplicate the northwest biotech programs in other regions. That one will stay as a school based program, but you are going to open
regional program. That's biotechnology. I would like to see an example of your professional development. Say, hey, I'm scaling this to six out of high school, but I'm going to use a in school
program to help me and maybe even use the curriculum or whatever. What does your PD look like? Give me an example. So in one of our monthly update to say, hey, I have curriculum based PDS, I have general PDS,
or maybe I even have informal guidance that's built in for professional development. I think all three are needed. So but I would like to see how you do it. Give me an example in the future. All right. Thank you. I'm looking around to see
if there are any other questions. Oh, we can move on to the next session. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. If we can go to the next slide, we want to spend some time talking about our local high schools. We have shared with you each time we've
come that approximately 10 to 15% of our students access our regional programs, and the majority of our families stay in their local schools, and many of them we've heard from
the numbers choose because there's a capacity issue, but most of our families choose to stay in their local schools because that's where they want to be. And we have heard time and time again from our families that there are two
main issues that they want to see as it relates to local school programing. The first issue is that they want to see that we are still thinking about those students in local schools that have not yet met
proficiency, and that we aren't forgetting them in this process. So that is one area that we continue to hear from our families as we go through this process. And the other area that we hear from families is that they want to ensure that
if they are remaining in their local schools, that they have access to rigorous programing. If you go to the next slide, you can see here, as we worked with our design team, we continued to hear feedback from them around some of the expectations they would like to
see in all of our high schools. They want to see parallel, advanced courses across all high schools, robust preparation for advanced coursework, coursework, well rounded elective and pathway options for each school. They want their children to have
research experiences and financial literacy and other financial experiences that support college and career readiness. So as we are working to build equitable programs across the district, we want to ensure the community that just as we are working on the program side, we are also
working on the local school side to make sure that all of our students have access to high quality programing in their high school career. So if you move to the next slide, please, we want to highlight for you things that are
happening in all of our high schools that are working really well and not going to go through every single area for you, but you can see the numbers there. We have a number of students who are completing financial literacy courses, almost 7000. We have a number
of students, 75,000 or more who are participating in career advising sessions. We have 2500 students earning seal of Biliteracy. So these are some areas that we really are very proud of and really reflect
strong foundations that we're building upon. If you go to the next slide, we want to just highlight another area that we're really excited about and that's dual enrollment. We have over 2700 students who were in the dual enrollment program
last school year. We don't have our current numbers as of yet, but they are earning college credit, and they are engaging in rigorous post-secondary expectations while they're in high school. So these students are going to earn an associate's degree at the same
time that they are getting their high school diploma. And so we are really excited that we had a 24% increase in student participation. And it continues to grow as we go forward. And again, this is available to every single student in in all of our high
schools. So as you go to the next slide, we want to just highlight some areas that we know we need to continue to work on. We've heard about inconsistent implementation of courses and curriculum in our schools, and so we want to make
sure our first goal is to reduce the inconsistencies in curriculum implementation we want. We are we've already been doing an audit of the courses course offerings in our schools. And now we're we're digging in. We want to ensure that all of our schools are providing on
grade level courses and honors and or AP courses. Additionally, we want to examine our GPA waiting structures and establish clear metrics for monitoring, implementation and rigor. If you go to the next
slide, our second goal is to strengthen our placement, preparation and preparation. So we will refine placement protocols for advanced courses. And we will ensure that all of our high school students have those experiences, research experiences that are preparing
them for college and careers. Next slide please. Our third goal is to refine our system for monitoring student progress at the secondary level. So we started our multi-tiered system of support. That's a fancy word
for saying our supports for providing interventions for students who need additional support. And we will outline those tiers of intervention, the data that should be used to to collect as we monitor the
progress of students throughout our second, their secondary experience. And then the next slide, we have several state driven changes that are coming by the year 2027. And so we are
going to be looking to have major revisions to CTE. And we are also going to have major revisions to mathematics as the state is changing its standards, which will also change the courses, the course sequence
and pathways. And so we are going to be doing that work to make sure that our students are clear about the pathways to graduation in mathematics. I also want to if you go to the next slide, highlight what will
be happening in middle school. One more slide please. We are going to be seeing some big changes taking place in middle school. We've had a lot of questions from our families about whether or not we are going to change all the programs in middle school or, or add programs to align to
high school. That is not currently our plan to do so, because we want to make sure for the high school program and we get that right. But for middle school, what we want to ensure is that they have rigorous programs and that we
want to make sure that the prerequisites are available in all of the middle schools so that they can be ready to apply to those high school programs. So I heard someone mention that earlier, preparing the students so that they can get to high school. We want to make sure
that every single middle school has the prerequisite courses to prepare them to apply to those programs, and once they have those courses that we are putting the supports in place to make sure the students are successful. So that is one goal.
The other goal we have for middle schools is to ensure that every single middle school student is informed about these programs. It's not just going to be a one time information session, but we want to make sure that they have experiences along their middle school time
so that they understand every single program where they're located and understand the application process. So that will be another part of the middle school experience. We also, as I mentioned, we are going to be having changes with
the Maryland State Department of Education blueprint from Maryland's future is bringing forward a lot of changes. And in mathematics, with those pathways, one of the expectations that Mmsd has is that we'll start to have 60 minutes of math in middle
school that, as currently, does not exist in our middle schools, and that is going to require some pretty big changes to our scheduling, to our structures, to our course offerings. And we are working with our middle school leaders, and we'll be
working with our community to talk about what the change may look like as we move forward for middle school. That is set to begin in the year 2027. So a lot of changes taking place and we have time to to begin to prepare for those those middle
school changes. We have just two more slides. Would you like us to just continue to to wrap it up? Okay. So I'm going to hand it over to Miss Langford Brown. Thank you. So we've made a great deal of progress over the past few weeks as we continue to navigate this
complex and critical endeavor. As you see, we will not present to the board in December. This is our final proposal for you. In March, the Board of Education will vote on the boundary and program proposals. Next slide. Please. Wait, what
happened to February? It will be February. What's February? Yeah. Can you ask the question again? The timeline here is November, December, January, February. This about the update
or this is about action. This is about action. Thank you. And yes. All right. Monthly update. No worries. So we've been getting questions about what we're going to do between now and March. So we'll be we will
be working on refining the program plans, conducting additional informational sessions and providing resources to families and community community members. We will we will be collaborating with principals and school based staff, drafting a communication plan for early outreach, and launching the
Early Communication Plan pending board approval. Next slide. So today we have shared key information to address inequity in our system. We have responded to all of the Board of Education requests. We feel our plan is strong and we are
ready to launch. We look forward to addressing any additional questions you have. Thank you. I'm going to look at it, Miss Stewart, being that this is the last presentation. Oh, wait, that is what I was
unclear. Why is this the last presentation I am? We'll come back in January with a recommendation. Proposal and final recommendation in February. But you get a break from us in December. Okay. Thank. We run out of months. So we're out of months at that
point because there was a couple like I thought maybe there could be a couple corrections that I mentioned. There's a few things with the I and the C and the engineering anyway. So we can we'll look to update you on those corrections.
Thank you. Thank you very much. And I have other questions but I'll move on for now. Sure. Miss Montoya, thank you. One question that I get a lot is is this going to be ready. And so I just want to again remind everyone that, yes, of course
there are still things to work out and small details. And those are being worked on. I stumbled upon some very, very old meeting minutes from the Board of Education when they were voting on the Poolesville Global Ecology Program. And if you look at those minutes, what
they say in the minutes is we know we haven't even done a needs assessment yet. We know we need science labs. We know we don't have these things in there. But they took a vote and they got the program in there, and they worked really hard and got it up and going. And it's excellent. And I know these
programs will be too. So thank you, Miss Zimmermann. Thank you. I also am really interested in seeing curriculum come up. Like Miss Yang had mentioned. I kind of in the same line. I still feel like we are missing
information about the educators who are not only certified, but also interested in teaching in these positions and whether that comes with a change in the school that they'll be teaching at or, you know, a change
entirely in the program. If we have that interest to teach in the program, if there's not the interest, where's the pipeline to find the people who could be certified? I think that also relates to the professional development and the plan for that and the cost for that as well. So that all kind of
packaged together, just like how some of the other parts are inextricably linked. I think these ones are as well. I just feel like we're still lacking a lot of information there. Miss Malone, I just want to align myself with Miss Zimmermann's comments and also say thank you for the response on middle school programs. I know I've
been asking for it for a while and talking to Miss Franklin about it a lot too. So I just want to elevate the fact that we need a high emphasis on that despite whatever is occurring in the future, especially in regions where those programs have not existed in the past. Thank you, Miss Silvestri.
Could you explain the additional documents that are on board docs? I know there's a budget. And then the other one is, I'm sorry, the big the four working draft sample the
pathways. What is what are we what's the takeaway there. So at the last meeting we presented one region. We did region four. And we presented all of the pathways and of course progressions in that region. What you have in that
very large attachment is all of the pathways for all of the schools. And you're calling a pathway, you're calling a program a pathway. There are program pathways. So the theme is at the program level, but they're pathways within each of those themes. The courses each
year will of course will course build on for that program. A pathway may be visual arts for example or path may pathway might be biotechnology. And so that's the pathway. And so what you'll find in that attachment
is information about the vision. For that the student opportunities for that, the course progressions for that, the metrics for that as well. So all of those things for each of the pathways is in that
handout. Okay. And then the budget document has a lot of information that I need to digest. But what's the takeaway in that document. What what do you want us to know about it tonight? I think the team did a very nice job of, of taking a
first stab of trying to, to do some cost accounting around some of the intangibles that haven't really been thought about before when considering programs. I would venture to say that in Miss Montoya's research of the Global Ecology
program, it probably didn't include a budget. And the reason is because there isn't one. So us elevating to encapsulate some of those intangibles, whether they be transportation or whether they be materials and supplies or
whether they be fees, you know, I don't think people recognize that, that some of the extra activities that that we do in some of these programs, we've either passed the expense on to the parents or we've passed the expense on to the school or the kids to find mechanisms to fund
some of them, whether it's a trip to a model UN conference or a zero robotics competition. All of those things have entry fees and ancillary costs. And so we tried to account for some of that in a first, first stab.
So are these additional dollars to our current. Yeah, they would be net. What we haven't done is scrubbed it for other things that we're already covering. There may be some stipends and some some already professional development that
we're already covering already we do an extensive amount of IB professional development, and that may be redundant. So so there's some elements in there that we know are already a very conservative overestimation. And there may be some things
too that are a little under two. So I think that that will get more refined as we get a little closer to understanding, you know, where where we're going to land with this. So what budget items do you expect t to put into your budget in December for this? Well, taking
a look at FY 27, it's very slim because you only have small personnel costs, because we're not actually launching anything in FY 27. It, it it doesn't take full effect with students until FY 28. So we're still two fiscal years away from this
seeing students. So a lot of the things that are in the FY 27 budget, which is a really good job, guys, is largely tied to school based personnel. Some division support from the teaching and learning team and some materials and supplies.
Money for M.C.P.S. to print some stuff for them. So you said this is a draft, so we'll see refined versions of it in our next presentation. Thank you. All right. I feel like I have asked a lot of you today. I have made a lot of requests.
And the reason I make those requests is I have seen the continued improvement of your plan since you presented it in August. The role of the board
as a governance body is we are trying to, by asking questions to trying to provide a guardrail to make us well
prepared as we can in launching new programs. So today I have asked for you if it's a brand new. Program that let us see
your course and sequence. I would like to see professional development flush out that you have peer learning. You have curriculum training, you have
general PD training. That even though we are taking a break, that you are taking a break from us in December, but your engagement with our community, with our students and our staff
are not taking a break, that when you come back in January, you will tell us what some meaningful engagement and how it has helped you shape your planning in the how we do this.
So you have been working so hard and there are more work to do, and I really appreciate you. Mr. The one thing I forgot to
ask earlier is or. Yes, ask Will to make sure that we have even programing throughout the different regions as we're building capacity. For instance
for IB. Most of our regional IB programs right now do not have the analysis and approaches high level math. The the really physics, sciencey math. And I
would like to ask if we could use the virtual or virtual learning component for some of these programs, some of the the very high level if you can't, if you can't fill, if you can't do it, I'd rather offer it and
then not offer it. For instance, multivariable calculus at Einstein, a kid actually has to take a bus to Wheaton to take it. It's not ideal. They didn't want to take a college level. They want to take the high school multivariable calculus that other kids have access to.
So I just want to make sure that we're remaining open. And I'm not saying go for virtual school. I'm saying if you can't provide a teacher, can we at least look into offering more complete programs? Is that a
yes? Okay. Thank you. And along with that,king forward at the new math pathway, I know it affects middle school but also affects high school because there will be new pathways through high school. And so I
assume as that rolls out that we will update our pathways in these programs to match. Yeah, we'll have to. And I got to tell you it, you chose multivariate calculus for as
long as that exists as we know it. Okay. Got it. By the way. My son took it and then he took it again in college. And he aced it in college because he took it in high school. So anyway, thank you for all the
work. I really appreciate it. And thank you for my little last minute tying the ribbon. Thanks, Mr. Zimmerman. Mrs. Zimmerman, thank you. I want to echo the sentiments of my
colleagues that we appreciate a lot of the work that has gone into this. I also have a remaining ask. My apologies for that. But looking at the budget, I appreciate how there's additional detail. And I know
we were talking about the first stab. I think the other remaining piece of information that would be helpful here is to know what we're spending currently on programing and transportation, so we can look at that as a cost comparison and look at what we might be
investing if we choose to move forward with this model. And taking a look at how we can compare those. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes this topic of discussion. Thank you very much. I'm going to move on to
item 12 informational items. These are included in both packet. No action is required of the board on these items at this time. And as for item 13. Oh that's for adjournment. May
I have a motion to adjourn? I move, we adjourn. Second, there's a motion and a second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. With those present. Thank you everyone, the meeting is
adjourned.