Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the May 8th, 2025 board meeting. Welcome to my fellow board members, M.c.p.s. Staff and community members who are here with us in the room and online. All right. First, let's
begin by standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. 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 all. Please be seated. I would like to start by asking my fellow board members to introduce themselves to establish a quorum. Good
afternoon. My name is O'Neill Sivana, representing students as a student member of the board. Good afternoon, Natalie Zimmerman representing district two and a very happy teacher appreciation week to all who celebrate. Yay! Good afternoon. Buenas tardes. Carla Silvestre,
school board member at large. Good afternoon. Buenas tardes. Grace Rivera oven representing district one. Good afternoon, Brenda Wolff. District five. Good afternoon. Thank you for being here today. Rita montoya, board member at large. Good
afternoon, Laura Stewart, district four. Good afternoon. I'm Julie Yang, district three. We have a big meeting coming up. Can I have a motion to approve the agenda? Move. Approval. Second. All in favor, please
raise your hand. That's unanimous. We're going to talk about a few very big items. Curriculum boundary study, program analysis. Legislative update is packed. It's packed. But before we begin this afternoon, I would like to
formally announce the result of the election for the 48 student member of the Board of Education. All right. The election was held on April 23rd. There are some students in the audience. They might know more than 61,000. M.C.P.S. Students
cast ballots in this year's election between Montgomery Blair High School. Junior Anuva Malu and Northwest High School junior Peter Boyko. When the ballot was counted, Anuva Malu
was elected as the 48th student member of the board of the board, receiving 62% of the vote. Miss Malu will begin her term on July 1st, 2025.
Congratulations to Oliver. We look forward to working with you. All right, let's give her a round of applause. Thank you. So, Miss Savona. Clock is ticking. Let's get things done. You guys are still stuck with me
for a little while longer. All right. Happy to be all right. Doctor Taylor, any recommended appointments today? Thank you, Madam President. Yes, I have one recommended appointment for an administrative position. And I'm thrilled to introduce Andrea Sueoka for the position of
deputy chief of facilities management. And if you'll stand, please. Thank you so much. I know that our current Chief Operating officer is thrilled to add somebody new to his team and to have that right hand person
be considered this evening is or this afternoon is just a delight. Miss Sueoka comes to us from an architectural background and brings to Montgomery County Public Schools more than 17 years of project design experience in the private sector, as well as at the
county, local and federal government level. She looks forward to joining M.C.P.S. And the Division of Facilities Management as its lead. Excited to move this forward for approval. Second, all in favor,
please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Congratulations. Now we're going to move to item 3.2, Doctor Taylor. Thank you, Madam President. We do have two former
teammates who have passed, and we would like to recognize their service with some remembrances and some condolences. I have two resolutions for the board's consideration, and I'll read the first one. Whereas the passing of Mr. Dominique Perry, a para educator at Seneca Valley High
School, on March 12th, 2025, deeply saddened the staff, students and the members of the Board of Education. And Whereas, during the five months that Mr. Perry worked for Montgomery County Public Schools, he demonstrated adeptness at problem solving as well as for
his ability to work out solutions that positively benefited the parties that were involved. And Whereas Mr. Perry displayed compassion, demonstrated exceptional skill when communicating with students, and held high expectations for their success. Now, therefore, be it resolved,
that the members of the Board of Education and the Superintendent of Schools expressed their sorrow at the passing of Mr. Perry and extend our deepest sympathy to his family, and may it further be resolved that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to the family of Mr.
Perry. Move. Approval. Second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. And for our second and final resolution. Whereas the passing of Miss Mary
Doyle, an English teacher at Sligo Middle School on March 17th, 2025 has deeply saddened the staff, students and members of the Board of Education. And Whereas, during the 6.7 years that Miss Doyle worked for Montgomery County Public
Schools, she clearly communicated classroom expectations to her students, resulting in their willingness to learn and improve their skills in English and language arts. And Whereas, along with being a respected team member, Miss Doyle was a passionate advocate for her students,
enabling them to take risks and feel supported. Now, therefore, be it resolved, that the Board of Education that the members of the Board of Education and the Superintendent of Schools expressed their sorrow at the passing of Miss Doyle and extend deepest sympathy to her family. And may it further be resolved
that a copy of this resolution be forwarded to the family of Miss Doyle. Move approval, I second that. All in favor, raise your hand. That's unanimous. Thank you everyone. We're going to move to item number four.
This is the public comment section of our meeting. I have a long verbiage to read through if you this is the first time the next item on our agenda is public comment. While the board encourages public input on
policy, program and practices and will consider the comments received, it is not the board's practice during its business meetings to respond to questions, provide comments or take action on the issues raised. This is a public
meeting, and the board expects the conduct of all speakers and members of the audience to be within the bounds of proper etiquette. Inappropriate personal remarks, rude retorts, or other such behavior is out of order and will not be tolerated.
Those who demonstrate disruptive or disrespectful behavior during public comments may be asked to leave the room. In addition, public comment is not the proper avenue to address specific student or employee matters. Such matters should be directed
through the complaint or appeal process. Each speaker has two minutes to deliver comments. When your name is called, press the button and speak clearly into the microphone. A yellow light and single B indicate you
have 30s remaining. A red light and repeating beats signal that time has expired. Once you have finished speaking, press the same button to turn off the microphone for live testimony. Which today we don't have is
usually audio and video testimony. All right, copies of testimonies are posted with the other materials for this meeting on board docs. So I'm going to call the first six to come to the front of, filling it from my
left to the right. Charlie Healy, rookie David Stein, Ronnie Peel, Jamie Coble, Coble, Laura Wallace, and Valerie
Davis. And. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. It's okay, I think I
figured it out. I know many of you. All right, so, Charlie, you may proceed. Good afternoon, honorable board members. My name is Charlie Horiuchi, and I'm representing myself and my partner, Riley Carlock. We are from Loiederman Middle School, and we would like to raise the
issue of school lunches once again. In the past, the board has allocated the time and money they deemed necessary to school lunches. You invested in healthier options and more vegetarian meals. Yet even with this, we still walk into the cafeteria and the friend next to us doesn't get any lunch because
they weren't able to find a vegetarian option. Why? Because we see them scanning through each meal, trying to figure out what doesn't have meat on it. It is almost impossible to figure out what or what is or what is what in a fast moving lunch line. These events led us to an
extremely simple conclusion. It's great that we have more inclusive lunches, but what's the use if they aren't getting to the students who need them? The simplest fix is clear and individual labels just a label on the top of the container where the type of food is stored. It could contain a name,
maybe a vegetarian or vegan symbol. A select few schools do this in its simplest form, but should be a practice held throughout all schools. This affects anyone with religious preferences, gluten or lactose intolerance or allergies. My sibling that goes to Montgomery
Blair High School witnessed a student that had a severe allergic reaction from something that was in their food. Clear labeling on ingredients could have prevented that from happening. When we realized this was a problem, we reached out. We spoke with board member Montoya and at our own school,
and we are now here today. The absence of labels prevents students from across the county from easily getting lunch. It's a simple solution and could make a huge difference. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Stein.
Good afternoon, Doctor Taylor, president Yang and members of the board. My name is David Stein. I'm president of MCE. It's nice to be here today. And I mean that literally. It really does feel nice to be here today. It's 70 degrees in here, which is quite nice. But but let me
tell you, it is not so nice in many of our classrooms. And I know you all know what I'm talking about. There are too many schools in this district that should be cool inside. When it's hot outside and warm inside when it's freezing outside. But they're not. They're sweltering when they should be cool and they're chilly when they should
be toasty. And it feels like it's getting worse. It's hard enough to teach when you're sweating through your t shirt, but can you imagine trying to keep your students attention when they're hot and uncomfortable? And it's after lunch? Now imagine doing that with 28 six year olds. All those years I taught at Blair High
School, the HVAC system never worked as promised. We always said there were only two temperatures too hot and too cold. The climate problem is not just in a few schools, but let me just say a few Loiederman middle school. They've had a promised HVAC system delayed four times. Why do we have
contractors who can't deliver on their promises? Takoma Park Middle School literally had to close school early last week for excessive heat. Takoma Park Elementary School, a kindergarten class with 89 degree classrooms. That's crazy. Westland Middle School, Watkins Mill High School, Piney Branch,
Flower Valley, the list goes on and on. This is serious. These are OSHA complaints waiting to happen. We need the board to help us get these climate crisis fixed. This needs to be a priority. I know the superintendent's budget calls for infrastructure resources, and we are all waiting for the
county council to do their job, but we can also make sure our contractors are working efficiently, and our own operations are diagnosing and pinpointing where the most serious issues are. I'll end by channeling the great governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, and reword her winning campaign
slogan. She said, fix the damn roads. I'll say fix the damn HVAC systems. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Peele. Good afternoon. I'm Rodney Peele, speaking on my own behalf today. This is my seventh out of eight consecutive
years I've had at least one kid attending Richard Montgomery High School, and my kids have participated in the IB programs in various ways, including the Middle Years program, Magnet program, Diploma program, and ala carte courses. The IB magnet program has evolved over the years at Richard Montgomery, and
it remains desirable and successful for a variety of reasons, including most of all, the commitment of the students, both local and across the county, but also our parents, community, teachers, and administrators. There may be ways to make it even better, but I'm not aware that you've discussed any of those potential
changes with our community. I do appreciate and applaud the communication efforts of Doctor Taylor over this year. Thank you for being candid, informative, and timely, but I have concerns that we need better communication from the rest of M.c.p.s, including about potential changes to the
programs and boundaries, high school program choices and choices where we live are personal, impactful, and difficult for families to make. We need more options, especially for highly able students both in and out of local schools. But I have concerns. When MCPs begins
its presentation this afternoon with a false choice of only two paths. Six years ago this month, MCPs proposed some of the same ideas, including making the RMI magnet program smaller and regional instead of countywide, which would have reduced equity
for half or three quarters of the county's highly able students to be able to access that program. Today, I worry M.c.p.s once again wants to deny access to that program for much of the county without investment, commitment or expertise to truly provide a
comparable experience. Since MCPs began centralized communications and selections for the high school choice programs, there has been consistency in content and timing, but no lack of confusion. Every year, I hear from parents who don't fully understand their options at their local schools or outside
of their local schools, and I'm. And that's going to be the same with the boundary study. That's that we've started. Increased capacity is more than just seats. Performance and outcomes matter. I'm optimistic that Doctor Taylor and the board will work hard to make sure we actually are improving the
student's programs. Let's take the time to do this right. Thank you. Next, Jamie Koppel. Good afternoon. My name is Jamie Koppel, and I'm a M.c.p.s. Parent to a seventh grader and a 10th grader. And I've spent the
last two decades working with communities across this country to improve school climate. I'm here to draw connections. Among your discussions of the code of Conduct, the staff allocations for fiscal year 2026, and school safety. In the interest of my two minutes, I will only share
the school safety portions of my testimony out loud. I understand that today you will consider a proposal that would require the superintendent to get community input from all areas of the county on these questions. How well is the current CEO program working? What, if any, are the
challenges with the program and what are the opportunities for improvement? I strongly urge you not to frame a community engagement process on school safety around such a narrow set of questions. I also urge those of you who are new to the board since 21 or 22, to look back to
the task Forces on school safety to familiarize. Familiarize yourself with the excuse me, the challenges raised in those community engagement endeavors. The NAACP played a leadership role in both task forces, even though students raised the fact that it expressed a lack of sincerity around addressing the
harms experienced most frequently by black and Brown students who research show are often criminalized for normal adolescent behavior. Any community engagement effort related to school safety should include a discussion of arrest data. What do they tell us about where M.c.p.s needs to deepen, strengthen, or alter supports
for youth? Who's being harmed, and how do we honor our commitment on paper to restorative practices in addressing those harms? The most frequent final outcome of a paper or in-person arrest of a student from 2324 was returned to school. There's so much
research about the harm of engaging young people in the criminal legal system. Consequences, collateral consequences, fines. I could go on when we consider that most students are then returning to school, what does this intervention do? Would we be not better off investing more deeply
in in-school supports? I hope that we can see the conversation in the community, address the realities of the situation. Thank you, Laura Wallace. Good
afternoon. My name is Laura Wallace. I'm the Montgomery County director for Jews United for justice. Ja'afar organizes 2000 Jews and allies from across across Montgomery County for racial, economic and social justice. I'm also an M.C.P.S. Parent with a 10th grader at Walter Johnson. So when my
daughter was in the fifth grade, she had a terrible day at school. It was so terrible that she decided she just had to leave school and walk home. As she tried to leave the building, staff stopped her and things escalated. First she got disruptive, then she got physical. There's a lot of ways
that the school could have de-escalated in that moment. As I walked into the school building, the assistant principal was on the phone with the police. So I think a lot about that day, and I can't imagine any scenario where actually a uniformed armed police officer would have helped
in that moment. And she's doing amazing. She's a straight A student. She just got a job as a lifeguard over the summer. And would that all still be true if her entire future had been based around her worst moment? So this afternoon, you're going to be
discussing the student code of conduct and a resolution to evaluate the CEO program. I appreciate the language about restorative approaches. That is in the code of conduct, but honestly, I don't see how the theory is being put into practice. Here's what I do see
each the last few years, M.C.P.S. Has reduced the number of restorative specialists and reduced the stipends for restorative coaches. Proposed changes to the Code of Conduct, take discretion away from teachers, and rely more heavily on the use of suspensions. There's no meaningful
accountability for school administrators to ensure restorative practices are implemented across M.c.p.s. I want to leave you with this. Please take a hard look at the guiding questions for the CEO program resolution. Where are the questions about early interventions? Mental health supports, restorative approaches
and positive school culture. My daughter's experience shows we need to do better than defaulting to uniformed armed police officers, so no child's future is determined by their worst day. Thank you. Thank you,
Valerie Davis. I am Valerie Davis, the convener of the Black Coalition for Excellence in Education, and I testified today at the request of a youth organization that does not want police in our schools. I decided months ago that I wouldn't enter this space again, which has
proven to be a cold and violently dismissive space for black women in the concerns of black people. But when young people call, I answer. I have one ask of the board and one impression for the public. Board members require that the CEO program evaluation plan be presented to the public for
input, and that the evaluation be fact and evidence based. As we all know, there is no clear evidence that having police in schools makes them safer. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary. So put the responsibility for putting them back in the responsibility in the hands of those who desire
it, not based on their feelings of safety, but facts to the public as we witness the enormous cost to all of us of excluding and villainizing black people worldwide, join us in shifting the narrative away from policing and toward community building led by US. Policing was
first done in this land by slave catchers. So policingck bodies is in our country's DNA. Students, immigrants and other US citizens who are considered unacceptable or useful for forced labor are now being policed. Policing takes many forms and is done by many people. Even in this space. It's
the desk against the wall reserved for the kid who's always acting out. It's the principal who engages who they want to when they want to. Based on comfort level. It's the board policies that reserve testimony for unions and advocacy groups over regular folks like you and me. It's the administrator who decides to end a meeting because
it's unproductive, or the people who are subject to no trespass orders or exclusion, like me. When we hear black folks are coming into the building, that's gatekeeping. It's pervasive, unchecked, and notoriously anti-black policing. That's why I said I wasn't coming here. But let's build community. That's
where our power lies. The code of conduct and policing will not make our schools safe. That is an unserious conversation that allows those before us to continue to fail us in failing to address the underlying conditions and gatekeeping that create unsafe spaces like this
one. Thank you. And I'm going to call the last two public commenter to come forward is
Thomas Murphy Bridget Hall. Thomas Murphy. You may proceed. Good afternoon, Madam President.
Doctor Taylor, members of the board. I'm Tom Murphy. I'm here to make two brief suggestions. First, two years ago, I was here to urge incorporating financial literacy in our curricula. I'm here today to say it's still very important. I understand the constraints and barriers, but the need remains critical. The
story is told that the goal is being incorporated in existing subject areas as appropriate, but I have no performance measures upon which to base any judgment. I just hope it's happening. It's an equity issue. It's really important that all of our students, regardless of their economic circumstances,
are savvy enough to avoid walking off the graduation stage and immediately becoming lifetime annuities for the financial services sector. My second point today is we need a formula for teaching our students how to spot misinformation. I'm providing you a copy of an article
describing how educators in Finland are testing new ways to teach students about propaganda. I hope you'll have time to read it. I don't see this as requiring anything complex or costly, just some coordination within our schools. M.C.P.S. Is already great at teaching facts
and thinking skills. We just need to ensure we're teaching our students to tie it all together as they face a digital world, often full of half truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies. So when voices like those on Truth Social insist that the Civil War was
only about states rights, that tariffs always bring prosperity, and that pigs can in fact fly, but only in a tax free environment, they'll smell the smoke right away. Our teachers and resource teachers are outstanding, and I'm confident that if we just make a point of
encouraging a focus on this, they can collaborate and develop plans they view as suitable for each school setting and make it work. Thanks very much for your time and also for your service. It's a difficult time to be in public service and we all owe
you a debt for doing so. Thank you so much. Thank you sir. You made it very hard to keep a poker face. All right, Miss Howe, good afternoon. I wanted to speak to two items on today's agenda. First, we're getting
close to the end of the school year. Thank goodness. With a lot happening with both programs and boundaries, I eagerly await the update today. I do hope that by the end of the year, each student in a cluster that's affected by the boundary study will receive something in a take home folder that shows them. That clearly explains the reasons for the study, the
potential impact on their cluster, and where to go. For more information. I am really concerned, and I've shared this concern many times, that we're two, 2 or 3 weeks away from the point of initial options and maps being shared, and there are still so many parents who don't know this is going to affect
them. I was at last night's excellent Community Engagement Advisory Committee meeting, which was very well run, and it was filled with parents who were engaged enough to step up and volunteer in. More than one parent in that room did not understand that their cluster was in the mix for these
changes, and that concerns me as the program analysis is countywide, a similar flier could go home. I would emphasize students in K through eight, as they're most likely to be impacted by any changes. We do have to build in adequate time to inform families of what is at stake. Second, regarding the
Student Code of conduct, for a long time I have talked to you all about plain language. I'm going to say it again. That document is really legalistic. It is written in very dense, very difficult to comprehend language, and it's not understood by the vast majority of our students. It's not because it's not written at
their reading level, their Lexile level. It's also confusing to many, if not most, of our parents whose first language isn't legal jargon, let alone English. While there might be a policy requirement for formal language and an official version, please invest resources to create age appropriate,
accessible, plain language versions for different grade levels. Quick story six years ago my son was in second grade. We got called to the principal's office as we discovered what rule he had broken, and he did break it. We realized that had there been a picture book version of the code in the
rules, he would not have made the mistake that he made. So students don't understand it at their level, the level they're at. And we need to be meeting students where they are. And the primary grades is the age where we lay the foundation for behavior throughout their school career. Thank you. Thank you so
much. I'm going to ask to see if any board member has any comments. In terms of today's testimony. Mr. Serv-on yes. First, I just want to thank all the students for coming out today to Charlie, in terms of referencing the school lunch
labeling, I'm just going to ask administration to follow up on that and to sort of bring that back to the board. I feel like that's a fairly simple request. Just wanted to get some more information on that as it comes back. But thank you to all the students for coming out today, Mrs. Zimmerman. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who came out and
testified and all the others who are here in the audience. I would like to see some information about our our HVAC systems and temperatures in school, specifically that disaggregated data by school, showing complaints of temperature outside of our contractually bargained
temperatures, which for reference is below 55 degrees and above 80 degrees. Specifically, recently over the last five years. And then any subsequent HVAC updates relating to that. Thank you, miss Miss
Rivera, thank you. Just quickly, many know that food and nutrition concerns me quite a lot. So I just to Charlie's point for having, you know, a
child who is celiac and has a lot of restrictions on what they can eat. This has been a concern. It's, you know, as much as I, you know, as a parent that you try to ensure that your child is okay, you are dependent
on what they're going to be exposed to schools and so on. And kids are very resilient. They, you know, they ask the right questions and so on. But if you don't know what you don't know, and I think I don't know what the current policy is on
the advertisement of the food items that we're serving them, whether we do put, you know, all the ingredients out there so people know and so on. But we do have I think, Doctor Taylor said, we serve more lunches in
M.c.p.s than Disneyland or Disney World put together a day. So it is a big it's a big undertaking to do. But we also do have a large group of young people and children who do have serious allergies in our system
as well. So if we can just look at that, that'd be great. And I know for the HVAC concern that we have been working, I know the system has been working diligently of actually doing, you know, this this has been an issue that has not been touched in decades. Right. And we have
done a lot of Band-Aid stuff about fixing things temporarily, only to learn that they're not working again the next year. So I know, Doctor Taylor, you have a great plan of implementation. And actually looking at those schools who are severe offenders and sending teams that this
doesn't happen. I know in my own district we have had to close quite a few elementary and middle schools because of the heat. We had to send kids home, which is a safety issue, and I don't know if you'd like to say a few words towards that. So. So the community knows that this is
something that you're working very hard at. Yes. This is this is the condition that we have found ourselves in after many years of neglect. And it is something that we are going to be digging out of, not just this
year, but in the next several years as we try to build up our infrastructure in HVAC. It's incredibly frustrating when we are working with partners, but I do want to reemphasize a couple of points, and I'm glad that you gave me this opportunity. Miss
Rivera oven, because the federal landscape and the tariff landscape does have an infrastructure impact to our supply chains and our ability to get replacement parts and our ability to get folks to service. Our our infrastructure is
largely dependent on business partners. We don't manufacture HVAC parts in house yet, although 3D printing, youever know. But it does put us in a difficult position. So we are absolutely understanding of the
concern. We agree with the concern. We're working as fast as we can, and we know that some of our campuses are completely untenable. And we have prioritized them. And unfortunately, I feel like we're going to be fighting this for quite some time. Miss Yang, the
Fiscal management Committee is getting update on the HVAC backlog on June 26th. Thank you to Miss Stuart for requesting that. Okay. June 26th. All right. Everyone should mark the. I just also last thing I want to say is thank you to Miss Bridget for coming last night to the
first Communications Advisory Committee. We had a perfect turnout of incredible individuals in our county. I just always in awe about how what a great group of parents. And they have these incredible
jobs. I mean, they're like scientists research. They're I mean, and they all make time to contribute to school. But I do like to say, I do echo her concern about the plain language when we do put out anything for our kids, because we cannot just
assume that everybody has legal knowledge of what something things. So the more plain and to the point that we can be, and explaining especially rules, especially to the young kids, it should be a different level to middle schoolers, should be at a
level that they understand, and then high schoolers should be the same. I think it's it benefits all. And for those parents, you know, who are not used to. Right, getting a lot of this stuff or just having those words, they don't know. They don't understand what they mean.
I think we need to do a really good job about explaining exactly what our expectations are. So thank you for your recommendations and for being involved. And all of you who came to testify, Miss Wolff, okay. I want to thank Charlie. First, you gave us a very simple
solution to solve a problem. So thank you. But I also wanted to speak to Jamie and Laura. I think that we evaluate all programs and all we're attempting to do in this resolution is to look at the CEO
program. I think people are confusing this with SRO. This is not our effort to bring back SRO. This is our effort to find out if changes are needed to that program in in hopes of helping it be successful. I also
think that we gave some guiding questions to start that didn't limit the questions that could be discussed during it. So just wanted to say that thank you, Miss Montoya. Thank you. It's good to see you again, Charlie. I had the honor of visiting with
Charlie at Waterman Middle School and seeing all of this firsthand in the lunchroom and talking to students about this issue. So I just want to echo the thoughts of my colleagues and also thank everyone for being here today. And I just want to take a moment to also publicly congratulate our 115
MCPs students who graduated from the State's Attorney's Office Truancy Prevention program last night and their families. So congratulations to all of you. We're very proud of you. Mr. A lot's already been said, so I'll make this quick. Big fan of
labels on food. So thank you for that suggestion. My son was highly allergic to sesame and in fact had an exposure the minute he left for grad school. So labels could help kids avoid
emergency rooms. Then the HVAC issue. I just want to mention that I did get an email about the issue, and really, the part.
Getting parts is not always easy. And so the more proactive we can be, the better. So then we're not having to always be waiting for parts. We can move maybe a little quicker. And I know we're working on that. On
being more proactive. And then the Richard Montgomery IB program, my son graduated from that program. It was amazing. I would love to have that level of
amazing program of that IB program done with fidelity and other schools. So that's my goal is to see the IB program be accessible to more kids throughout the county. And then
the code of conduct issue. We are committed to restorative practices, and I think you will see that as we move on, but we should continue the conversation to we can always do better. So thank you so much. Thank you
everyone. This concludes public comment. Oh excuse me. Sorry. Let me go back to this way, Miss Sylvester. Go ahead. Yes. Just wanted to say that to the comments about media literacy and financial literacy. I believe media literacy is
covered in our health curriculum. If anyone wants to correct me, please, please do. And I agree with you 100% about the importance of financial literacy for our young people. And throughout the years, the board has expanded the options that high schoolers have in
order to get financial literacy. They can get financial literacy through a fourth year math course. They can take the elective. It's now offered in every classroom. On June 24th, miss Yang introduced a resolution last year to make
online modules even in multiple languages. So while we don't have it as a graduation requirement, I feel like we have done a lot of work to expand this in our system because it is so important. And I think on June 24th, we'll hear an update on where we stand in terms of
participation for our high schoolers. But thank you for your testimony. Thank you everyone. This now concludes, oh, we will never conclude this public comment. I see how this is go. Last question. Just a further clarification from Miss Silvestre. At the elementary
level, I know my two elementary school students take media as one of their specials every week, and that's actually the type of thing they talk about what are valid sources, they do projects and various things. So even at that young of age we're trying to teach kids to how do we decide what information is
legitimate or valid or true and things like that. So rest assured. And I know she mentioned some of the financial literacy options recently. We haven't even had a chance to talk about it. But someone from Truist Bank indicated that they have some financial literacy type things that they may be able to help partner with
M.C.P.S. With. So I'll be having a conversation with Doctor Taylor about that hopefully soon, and we can see how we can integrate them. That would be great. There are large bank, and it would be wonderful to have them as a partner. Thank you everyone, this time for real. The board's next business meeting is Thursday, May 22nd.
Online sign up for public comment will open on Thursday, May 15th at 6 p.m. In addition to online sign ups, same day in-person sign ups are permitted when space allows with unallocated slots filled on a
first come, first serve basis in person. Sign up will close 15 minutes before the start of the open session, or when all slots are filled. Now. Additional information regarding upcoming meetings can be found on the board website. We are going to
move into consent items. We have a lot of items this month 21 altogether. Board members. Are there any items that you wish to pull? Mr. Thank you. I would
like to pull 5.8 and 5.1, I believe. No, not 5.1. I'm sorry, 5.10, 5.8 and 5.10. Any other items? All right. May I have a motion to move the rest in
block. So moved. May I have a second? Second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Okay, 5.8. What's your question, Mr. Yes. This is
a contract approval for masonry, waterproofing, retaining walls, and similar repairs and replacement at various facilities. There was a list of facilities, but I did not see one that I had a chance to
visit, which is New Hampshire Estates, who seemed to have a lot of waterproofing issues. So I would just like to follow up on to see why they weren't on the list. And what's the plan for that? So yeah, thank you for that question. So the New
Hampshire estates, we're looking at the overall overall school. We do have an engineering consultant out there looking at the HVAC system. We're going to try to kind of look at each problem individually and in in solving the problems. And so we're waiting for the engineer
to give us an, an assessment and a design for the HVAC system. And see we will have to, you know, kind of monitor that and see if that going to be the solution for it or not. We have not had any infiltration recently. We'll continue to
monitor that. We did have moisture issues in the building, but that's related to a lot of the HVAC troubles that we have, because there are air circulation problem in that building. So that's why we're targeting the HVAC system, the design. And we'll look at that
solution first. That's interesting that you said that there's been no infiltration recently, because I thought there was a particular wall that after large rain events, water would actually come in under the
wall. So that's just something to maybe add to the list of things to look at and to make sure we're not leaving any stone unturned. Absolutely. We can look into that. Thank you. Mr. Montoya. You have questions on this item? I do, I didn't initially, but I actually toured the school and that was
something that came up. So I just want to just double check with the principal. Let's just make sure, because there are a lot of challenges there. And we don't want to overlook something major, especially when we're in the course of approving the contracts. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Rivera-Oven. Just
a quick, quick question and no pun intended, but water's landing has had a lot of issues and we have talked about it. You guys have been very diligent about going and so on, but I don't think I saw them on the on
the list. And it seems that the issues in that school, they travel, they start in the front of the school, they get fixed and it moves down to the hallway that gets fixed, and then it moves down to the library, it gets fixed and it just kind of goes, and it's been and it gets
very disruptive, especially in the classroom, especially when they have to like close partially the library. So I just want to make sure I don't know what is the prioritization. I don't know how you guys prioritize. Again if we it's
like HVAC you have repeat offenders and you put them on a list of, you know, or what kind of leaking has to be. I'm not a water engineer, so I don't know. But I just know that it can get very disruptive for the staff and the kiddos. Okay. Well,
yeah. Thank you. So I made note we will follow up both on New Hampshire Estates and Water's Landing and find out and will report back. All right 5.1 please ask your question. Yes. So this is a contract for roof a
new roof at Wingate Elementary School. And I get questions sometimes from the community as to how the plan life. Pilar I
forget what the A stands for but replacement asset. Yes. Plan life asset replacement list is. There. Well it even says in this note that there is a list. And
then the list is evaluated when issues come up. But we have a lot of roofing issues recently that I've heard about. And so I just thought maybe could you quickly explain how that list works if that is accessible to
the public, and then maybe we can follow up later on a more complete discussion about that? Yes, sure. I'm happy to have a follow up discussion. So the roofing is a separate bucket. Then the, the pillar. We have a
separate capital funding that comes in for the roofing. And then we have we have life safety, we have restrooms. Those are separate buckets. And then you have the pillar bucket for the roofing projects. It's a combination of age number of work orders. And then we also
look at the overall, you know, the KFI data that we currently have. Obviously we're in the process of updating those, but it's a combination of looking at the age. So obviously every roof has a has its, you know, life cycle. It's somewhere between 25 and 30 years depending on, you know, which system was used. So
there is a replacement timeline. We look at that, but we also look at the work orders and make sure we're working. You know, our capital team is working together with maintenance to find out, you know, the number of work orders, the number of troubles that we have been having. And that's how the list gets prioritized. But, you know, happy to have a follow up
discussion and details about any of the projects that the pillar and then those other projects, maybe we could, you know, just talk about those lists. Because again, I do get questions why this school, not that school.
And I don't necessarily always have a great answer. So I actually need to learn. And so I would love to have that session. Thank you. Definitely. Thank yo. Thank you. So can I have if no further questions, can I have a
motion to move 5.8 and 5.1. So moved. Second. All in favor please raise your hand. That's unanimous. We're going to move
on to item number 6.10. What we are waiting for is the middle school English language arts curriculum approval. I'm going to invite the staff to come forward and introduce yourself before we start the presentation. I know this is
Doctor Taylor. This over the years we have heard a lot of public comments on our English language arts curriculum. Last year, we adopted Elementary School one and this year is a full year of implementation. So
we are very excited about the middle school one. Yes. And we have some middle school teachers who are eagerly anticipating this formal adoption. And then, of course, the game plan to talk about professional learning. So in today's presentation, we'll bring forward our recommendation for a new middle school English
language arts curriculum to be implemented this upcoming fall. We have reached the end of our agreement with our current curriculum provider, McGraw Hill. Study sync Ela. The team has engaged in a rigorous review of available open source
curricula and a comprehensive evaluation process to arrive at the recommendation that we're bringing forward today. This recommendation is informed by research around the characteristics of effective Ela curriculum, the expectations of the State of Maryland for high quality instructional materials,
and I'm glad to say that it covers both of those and the input from a wide variety of district stakeholders. And I'm thrilled to share that this covers that as well. So I would like to just take just a moment briefly to thank the folks that participated in our curriculum
review. It is essential for us to adopt a great curriculum that we involve a lot of stakeholders, both students, parents, teachers, administrators, and we had a great group that invested heavily in this, and their endorsement is the one that
we're bringing forward. So we're very excited about that. And now I'm thrilled to introduce our chief academic officer, Niki Hazel, who's going to start today's presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Taylor. Good afternoon, President Yang and members of the board and I have
with me here our secondary Ela Supervisor Jackie Lightsey, who will do the bulk of the presentation. But I do want to start just by saying that we are really excited to recommend the open source version of Core
Knowledge Language Arts for grades six through eight. And if you can, go to the next slide, please. So we are really excited about this curriculum choice because we feel that it does honor the commitment to student achievement and improving
quality of teaching through having high quality resources for our staff. We also want to share that we were very committed to having a very open and transparent process. As we selected the curriculum. If you can go to the next slide, please. Just a little bit of
background for you. We've got one one screen here that's got the background prior to 2018. Some of you may know that in M.C.P.S. We wrote all of our curriculum and we had an audit done by Johns Hopkins University
at that time to audit our Ela and math curriculum. And their recommendation was that we shift to external curricula that had a strong focus on grade level standards. And so that is what
we did. And so in 2018, we purchased the study curriculum and began a two phase implementation. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit us right as we were beginning that implementation. And so there were some challenges getting
started with in terms of the fidelity of implementation. Over the last few years, we've been working with our teachers and staff with the implementation, and in 20 2324, the Office of Shared Accountability conducted an evaluation. We know that
there are some concerns that we have, obviously, around academic achievement of our students, but also the feedback from our staff really was that there was a lot of adjustments that they needed to make for the students to be
able to access the curriculum. That became very challenging for our staff. And so only 15% of the staff who completed the survey indicated that they would prefer to keep the curriculum. The majority would would prefer for us to move to a different
resource. And so we are here now. It's kind of perfect timing for us to move to, since our contract has ended, for us to move to a different agreement. And so at this time, I'm going to turn it over to Jackie Lightsey, who will share with you why we selected this
curriculum and our timeline. Good afternoon. So to further answer the question of why a new curriculum, now we want to just highlight a few additional factors. If you could please go to the next slide. Thank you. So beyond our expiring contract
with McGraw-Hill, as miss Hazel alluded to, we have seen student performance data that really suggests we need to take a fresh approach to supporting literacy for our middle schoolers. So we carefully weighed the three paths that we had available to us. One was renewing with McGraw-Hill. Another was to find
another commercial vendor to provide curriculum through the request for proposals process. And the third option was to explore open source options. So we decided on the open source route because it really does offer something truly compelling. It's research based,
vetted materials that don't lock us into a contract with a high cost product around a proprietary product as well. And so while there will be an upfront investment in terms of professional learning and materials, open source curricula are very cost effective in the
long term while still being extremely high quality. And so it also offers us that long term sustainability. We can adapt and improve the curriculum as needed. Next slide please. So we'd now like to share how we arrived at this specific
recommendation. Starting last November, we cast a wide net in examining all of the open source curricula available and using Ed reports, as well as the Knowledge Matters campaign to narrow our focus to four options. So we then created an evaluation framework and it was aligned with the state's
criteria. As Doctor Taylor alluded to, for high quality instructional materials, or Kim. So then, after briefing our principals in January, we invited broad participation from across our community. And then February was our intensive
review period. By March, we had collected and analyzed 211 detailed evaluations. So we really aimed to take a systematic approach to ensure that our decision was based on evidence as well as diverse perspectives. Go to the next
slide, please. Okay. So the strength of our recommendation really lies in who helped to make it. We ultimately had 82 unique participants representing diverse perspectives across our community. So these perspectives represented not just central services staff, but the
classroom teachers who will implement the curriculum, administrators who will support that implementation, and caregivers whose children will experience it. The evaluation process was quite lengthy, quite detailed for our volunteer participants. So as Doctor Taylor said, we were so grateful
to them for giving their time and to have representation from across M.c.p.s and from across so many different organizations that advocate for our diverse student populations. Looking at our demographic breakdown, we see good representation across various groups, though we always
want to strive for even broader engagement and any similar processes moving forward. But what we appreciate the most is that the participants gave so much of their time and brought both their expertise as well as their diverse lived experiences, to their evaluations of our
curriculum. Next slide please. The quality of any evaluation really does depend on asking the right questions. So as mentioned earlier, our evaluation used a comprehensive rubric that was based on the state's rubric for high quality instructional materials, plus some additional items that were aligned
specifically to our own district priorities. The rubric asks our evaluators to consider how the curriculum builds knowledge with texts, vocabulary, and tasks. The text quality and complexity of the curriculum, instructional supports and usability resources to support differentiation and
scaffolding assessments, as well as cultural responsiveness and representation in the curriculum. So this rubric really allowed us to thoroughly evaluate each option against established criteria, to make sure that we were selecting the one that would truly meet the needs of our students, as well as our teachers. Next slide
please. While all four of the curriculum options were actually very strong options and were highly rated among our reviewers, Core Knowledge Language Arts, or CLA was emerged and was selected for a few really compelling reasons. First, CLA is aligned to our
state standards, and it's driven by a very strong research base. It takes a knowledge building approach that research, research shows is essential for literacy development, including in the middle grades. The intentional resources for emergent multilingual learners and students needing additional support meant that equitable
instruction is part of the design. It's not an afterthought. The seamless progression from our elementary curriculum, which is also CLA, also creates that continuity for students as they follow. They follow that intentional sequence of skills and knowledge from elementary to middle. The
diverse and rigorous texts that expose students to rich language perspectives and ideas. And then lastly, the robust support that this curriculum provides for teachers implementing the materials. Next slide please. We
wanted to share some of the qualitative feedback that we received for CLA. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. And the quotes that you see here on the screen represent larger patterns that we saw in the comments that we collected. So Eld teachers, in particular noted the thorough supports for
multilingual learners. Many of our participants noted the thoughtful selection of texts that represent diverse perspectives and genres. Several commented on the structure and organization of the curriculum, as well as the graphic organizers, explicit grammar instruction, and vocabulary
development, and those pieces benefit all learners, but especially those developing English proficiency. Several also elevated the connection to our elementary curriculum. It was seen as a significant advantage to create that coherent literacy journey for our students. So while Common
Lit 360 was actually one of the other top rated choices among the four that we reviewed, we really needed to ensure that we looked at the qualitative feedback, those written comments that we gathered from our participants. So when we looked at comments that elevated concerns about CLA, the majority
of those comments centered on the navigation of the website, the format of the materials. There are a lot of PDFs as opposed to the content of the curriculum. So these really are logistical issues that can be addressed without having to change the curriculum's core strength and the fundamental
design of the curriculum. In contrast, when we looked at the negative comments for Common Lit, the vast majority of those pointed to concerns with the instructional design. And one example of that is the lack of emphasis on novels or full length texts. That came through a lot in the feedback. So these instructional areas would
require a significant redesign if we're going to address those issues. So while both CLA and Common Lit did rate highly from a numeric standpoint, when we looked at the qualitative feedback, CLA did emerge as the strongest choice. Okay. Next
slide please. To share just a bit more about what sets us apart. I want to share about its comprehensive approach to literacy. So rather than isolated skills practice, the units are built around knowledge domains with vocabulary and
writing tasks that connect meaningfully to the texts that students read. The curriculum also recognizes that vocabulary growth happens through repeated exposure in context, not just in memorizing word lists. Writing is also treated as an integrated
daily exercise, not a separate subject, and it's scaffolded appropriately. And for students needing additional support with foundational skills, there are robust assessments available, as well as teaching resources across all the middle school grades. So we really found that every design element focused on
ensuring that all students can access rigorous content, regardless of their starting point. Next slide please. So success with any curriculum depends on thoughtful implementation. So what you see here is that our plan will span
multiple years to ensure that we're not just dropping and going with this curriculum. Our plan is to begin this spring with introductory professional learning for our Central Services team, who will be supporting schools. And then the summer will bring more intensive professional learning for our teachers, content specialists
and administrators. And throughout the 20 2526 school year, we're going to provide ongoing coaching through PLCs and classroom visits. As we move beyond that first year, we'll continue to support schools while we evaluate the effectiveness of our implementation so far and make
refinements. So this gradual, supported approach really is designed to give everyone time to develop expertise with these new materials and experience success with that support that they need. Next slide please. When it comes to costs, CLA does
represent significant savings compared to continuing with study sync or similar vendor. So we see an over $1.9 million difference in the first three years alone, with even greater differences in the years to come. So that initial investment will include implementation
support, professional learning, and purchases of the texts that we don't already currently have. A key advantage of open source curriculum is that we can actually print student readers and print teacher guides through our own M.C.P.S. Printing services. So this really is a case where the educationally
sound choice is also the financially responsible one. And we want to note that part of what we're seeking approval for today is the ability to move forward with a vendor to support us in that professional learning that we'll have to provide to hundreds of teachers who need it this summer, as well as ongoing
support during the first year of implementation. Next slide please. So in conclusion, the question okay, so we can stop now for any questions or comments. All right. Thank you
for the presentation. I know this is a topic a lot is at stake. If we look at at the data right. National Assessment of Education program, Naep data indicated that in United States,
when students graduate from secondary schools, only 37% of them are reading at a proficient level, and our M.c.p.s data is better. But we are barely over half of our students, so a lot is at stake. Today's conversation is going to be
important because curriculum is a big part of the support that we can get our students there. I'm going to turn to my board members for questions and comments. I would like this to be as tight as possible. One
comment, one question. The first round. Okay, Miss Stewart, go ahead. Actually, I'm going to let Rita go first. Okay, Miss Montoya, go ahead. Where is the Latino community in this evaluation? And if you hear me
sounding a little bit frustrated, it is because I am. Time and time again, we have advisory boards or committees or all of these things, and I feel like I could be asking the same question. There were 89 respondents. You have three
Latino. You have a group of organizations represented here. I don't see anything with the word Latino. And before you tell me that we're represented by the Black and Brown Coalition, with all due respect, that is not the same. It is not an issue of that. We don't want to be a part of it. And I say that because
I'm a Latina parent and Latina professional who works very hard, who works with a lot of people in the community who care very much about curriculum and schools and boundaries and all of those things. And time and time again, we are not invited to the table because we are
either inviting the same people over and over again, or we think that there are oh, well, the community doesn't want to be engaged. That is not true. We are here and you need to find us. This is unacceptable. We have on our rubric here that two
of the standards are affirming cultural identities and supporting multilingual learner, as those apply to Latino students, of which there are over one third in our school system of 160,000 students, at least 50,000 are Latino. How do
we know if the curriculum meets those needs? For those Latino students who are emerging multilingual learners or their cultural identities? When we're not asking, we have Latino principals, staff, teachers. I know because I see them. I know some of them. Right. They are there. Thank you. We can't know
if we don't ask them. Excuse me. If you can let me finish my sentence as I give the respect for all of you. We can't know if we don't ask them, right? And we can't. We shouldn't be allowing others to speak for particular communities. So I feel challenged in spite of all of
the things I like about the open source. And maybe we should define what open source is in a moment for the community. But, you know, I do find this to be wonderful. But then I feel hesitant because how can I know that it's actually going to work for all of our community? When we didn't ask all of the
community? To? Assess how you found. Right. So I completely agree. I think that we would have really liked to see much more well-rounded representation. One of the challenges, and this is not to
excuse it whatsoever, but, you know, we did send wide communication, reached out to our parent advocacy groups across different demographic groups, and we did have a lot of interest in participating. But what the data shows you on the slide is the outcome, all the
completed evaluations. So we weren't able to because it was an experience that people had to opt into. It was difficult to know at the end of the process whose feedback we were really going to get, because there was a firm deadline when it would close. So I think in the future, what I would like to do in this
kind of circumstance is to create, you know, a deadline, really look and assess to see if we have that representation and extend and further reach out if we don't feel that we have that. So in this why didn't we do that here, though, once you realized, why didn't we say, okay, wait a minute. We think we have a
problem here because a third of our school community is not represented here. Yeah, we recognize that. We discussed the fact that this is an area that we were seriously lacking in at the end. And so we know that
this is something that has to be improved upon with all of our areas, as we're looking for stakeholders. This is an area that we need to just continue to improve upon and use our other resources to get that feedback.
Miss Wolff, I have to say, I feel a little bit like Miss Montoya. I mean, the numbers are a little bit better for the African American respondents, but clearly we have the staff between our principals, our
parents, our administrators to get more than ten responses for African American students. I feel like she does that. We have basically the white community responding about how the black
students are going to be able to handle this curriculum. So that's that's my point. And to say that we would like to see more representation is what we always say. I mean, it's gotten to be, quite frankly, an excuse
because they are they're the only other thing I would ask is, you know, I'm I'm still troubled by writing. I where is writing in this? We're not teaching our students to write very well. I
mean, I can somewhat the elementary school students, the really younger ones, but I need to see more writing in our curriculum. That was one of the components of Carla that we really appreciated, because we
agree with you and have always tried to prioritize writing as much as possible in our previous approaches to curriculum. What we liked about this is the way that it's embedded. Often what we have is there's a writing task that kind of is set apart from the curriculum, and that does require some explicit
instruction. But the way that CLA is designed, students are writing essentially every day. And there there are instructional, you know, pathways for teachers to actually develop those skills with intentionality. Studies think did require writing on the
part of students, but I think that the design of it made it feel a little bit more separate than the way that CLA is designed, so it's more integrated into that daily experience. The lower stakes, shorter term writing experiences, and also those longer form. I'm looking at to
my left hand side. Miss Rivera offers. Thank you. So the curriculum is the one that we have in elementary school currently. Correct. This is the curriculum we had a few weeks ago where teachers came to
testify on the lack of books for special education, on the lack of books, non-existent books for ESL learners. And here you are today asking me to support this curriculum for middle school
when I'm going to echo Miss Montoya's, my colleague's comments where and Miss Wolff comments when we have such a lack and I only add up to 8081 participants, not 82. So maybe
it's not even three. Maybe there's two. But whatever it is. One of my biggest frustrations for the last two years has been the acknowledgment of the
system, saying, yes, we could do better, we should do better, we will do better. But here we are again today and May of 2025, where I'm asking you again, why
haven't you done better? Because we, you know, the representation of Latino students. And when you look at their test scores in reading and math, it is embarrassing and also very sad
because we get one chance at educating these students. So when I'm looking at, you know, the implementation of elementary school and now we're going to do the same implementation in middle school, and I'm looking at the fact that we didn't do very well in implementation for
special education kids and our ESL students, which not all of them are Latino. By the way, my concern is that now I have to take your word on it. Based on an evaluation of 81 participants
who lacked representation of the students that were supposed to be teaching, and in a system this big with 211 schools, I cannot imagine that of 211 schools, we could not have found at least ten folks, you know,
and I don't even know if they're HTML. I would like to know the breakdown of their expertise. What grades do they teach? Are they M.L. Are there special education? Right. What is it the expertise of the folks who actually responded to this survey? So I am very, very,
very, very, very hesitant in supporting this based on the lack of participation because as Miss Wolff said, right. This is something that we're going to be asked to buy in for the long term. And honestly, I am not
feeling that I can do that today. Ms. Silvestre, thank you for the presentation. I, I, I appreciate your process largely talking us through the strengths and weaknesses, but could you
talk about a little bit further about the areas for improvement that you see in this curriculum and how you will address that across the years of implementation? Sure. The curriculum is perfect, right?
No. Absolutely not. We did. We were pretty pleased in terms of the range of diverse texts. That was one of the things that came through in the feedback. But I feel that we can always do better in that regard. And we also have so many amazing texts
already in our schools that are not necessarily a part of CLA. And so our approach would be to recommend that students still have the opportunity to read all of those texts. I will say again that when you look at the texts within the curriculum, there is a very wide range in terms of
time period, genres, backgrounds. However, we don't want to limit the voices that our students interact with. So part of our process would be to take a look at the pacing. And CLA recommends that they they
overplan they over provide in terms of materials. So there is room to provide students with opportunities to have a little bit of choice. That's one of the pieces that did come through in the feedback as well, is that there really isn't any room for student choice in the way the curriculum is written, and that's something we know. Our
teachers value our community values and our students value, and we know it's key to engagement. And so we want to build a pacing guide that allows for those opportunities for literature circles and other forms of choice reading. So for both of those reasons, for the importance of choice, but also for the range of perspectives,
that was one piece that we noted. And then the other piece I highlighted a little bit was just the usability for teachers. So a lot of the comments we had were that, you know, they don't have the ability to adapt the materials. They're in PDF format. And so one of our other steps would be to take those and
reformat them. It's not overly difficult. And to make them easily accessible for teachers in our canvas platform. They are not in what format? You said they're in PDF currently, so they're not really adaptable. Teachers can't edit them or put them out to students using our current canvas platform. They're all kind of in one long
document. And so we recognize that really limits usability for teachers. So part of our plan would be to simply reformat those for teachers so that they can access them more easily. Great. Thank you. I have more questions but I'll wait. Yeah. Thank you, Miss Zimmerman. Thank you. And thank you for the
presentation and the work you brought forward. As someone that's taught CLA. Admittedly, for the littles, it is really similar even as you bring it forward. Like really for the kids third grade, if we choose to go forward with this curriculum, third grade through
eighth grade would follow really similar format. And that would, like any decision, has its affordances and challenges. So in in your evaluation that you brought forward with educators, support staff and admin like Miss Rivera-Oven, I, I can't see
you know, what who's represented in there among our staff, specifically our, our Eld teachers and our special educators. I really would want to see their thoughts specifically because we hear very often from the elementary
community that's implementing this, the challenges there. I also want to talk about your your budget projection. So we did not purchase materials for our special educators or our Eld teachers when we implemented CLA
before. Is that in your projected budget? Because if they don't have the materials, they they can't teach, and we can't continue to not serve our students that way. Yes, certainly. We want to make sure at this time that we have all of
our special education, not only our students, but all of our teachers, whether they are teacher of record or teachers who are supporting our special education and English learners, to be able to have all of the resources and training they
need, to be able to instruct the students. Perfect. Similarly related with materials and getting all of that. A criticism we hear often is that students aren't reading enough novels. Are there novels in this section of the curriculum? I can tell
you they're not in 3 to 5. So are they in six through eight? Is that still a criticism we're going to hear? Tell us more. Yes, they absolutely are. That's one of the reasons that we chose CLA. I mentioned earlier that we did have a pattern in the feedback around that was
something people were looking for. And so they noted that in some of the options, the novels were kind of downplayed. So there might be only one per grade level that students would read. And so the comments really indicated that that wasn't acceptable. And so in CLA there are five units, excuse me, eight
units available per grade level. And depending on the grade level, it's usually five that focus on a novel play or a full length informational or nonfiction text. So they definitely are present and they are the focal point of instruction. So even if you look
at the titles of the units, we're not talking about themes. The titles of the units are the text that students are reading. And then there is that knowledge base around it that's built through the study of the text. Great. Like others, I have more questions, but I know Miss Yang has let me know. My turn is over
for now. All right, Miss Silvana. Yes, I just want to echo some of the thoughts of my colleagues, especially regarding, you know, the representation that we're talking about. I'm not going to kind of rehash it because it's kind of already been said. One
thing that I kind of want to see, and it's something that, you know, as, as I try to, you know, get more information about some of these topics and the lack of literacy and reading and in math sort of literacy, just across the board, across school systems, across the country. One
thing that I was reading about was when we separate into demographics, sometimes what what we're really missing is the actual income brackets that we're that we're missing. Right. So is it just our, you know, are the ones who can afford, you know, the, the tutors at home.
Right. Who the families who can afford tutors at home, who are really seeing the benefits, right, of a school system. And we're attributing that to different parts of our curriculum. Or are we really, you know, serving our students with the curriculum in house? So nothing to say with regards to the specific curriculum, but
maybe something to think about in the future, as we're looking at evaluation metrics, is to maybe see if we can break that down in terms of what is the income scale and the associated wealth. As we look at some of those breakdowns. Thank you. Mr.
Yes. Thank you. Sorry. I'm going to go back to the diversity question. So I did some math, and 73% of the respondents were white, 12% Black or African
American, 7.4% Asian and 3.7% Hispanic Latino. And so obviously that is not very representative of our community. So. I guess I would have liked
that disclosure from the outset, saying that this is our respondents and we didn't get the diversity that we actually wanted to get, because I think we're all in agreement with that. And so, yes, we had
geographic diversity, but we did not have. Ethnic or racial diversity. Okay. So now that that's out of the way, this is a consistent problem, especially
with our Hispanic and Latino community. So we need strategies to build that pipeline. And that means continued engagement, not just when we need their input on
a curriculum. Right. So that means that we have a pool that we can pull from, and we can build that pool over the year. And so I don't know who would actually be in charge of building that pool, but I think that's something that we can do.
I know we can do it. And at least we can probably make this about, I would say, five times better. I think that's a reasonable goal. So Doctor Taylor, in the first round, I think one question really has
stuck out. Would you like to answer about the engagement piece? Well, I think that the board has already figured out one of our critical weaknesses as a school system and also endorsed one of its solutions, which is to reengage our family
and community engagement arm, which has been dormant and absolutely critical that we do it in a really meaningful way. I really like the suggestion that came from the table and our curriculum team, which is to do spot checks when we're
collecting feedback and then respond. It's a huge miss for us. And this curriculum adoption process, and under a pretty tight timeline to get it all done. But it's really no excuse for, for us not to have the
representative feedback that we're looking for. I like the suggestion. I like the proposed solution. It just needs to happen. As David mentioned in his remarks, we just got to get it done because we just got to get it done. And it really is
the reality because it's going to be reflective. I'm I'm not sure it would change the recommendation, but on the off chance that it would, that really needs to be known to the board. The board is counting on the public's feedback and from our stakeholder engagement to
make informed decisions. So it's absolutely critical that we have that that pipeline that Miss Stewart is talking about needs to be developed. And the folks that can do that really need to be our family and community engagement arm. But even that can't happen in isolation. It
really needs to be our team working well with one another internally. When I think back on comments that I heard this fall, engaging with the community as your new superintendent, this was often a criticism of
M.C.P.S. Twofold one, that we weren't really engaging in in a really direct and meaningful way with intentionality for specific communities. And the second one, which is the right hand, not really knowing what the left hand is doing. And this is
really an opportunity for us in this new fiscal year to get it right. Thank you. Now for the first round, I have a question. And I think you you probably very well aware of this issue. So at the beginning of this
school year, there's an email sitting in my inbox. It says, I couldn't believe when I heard that all middle schoolers are put into advanced English classes at the da da da da Da School open house last week. If everyone is in the advanced
classes, it's not advanced and it really doesn't, does nobody any good. Higher achievers will get bored and lower achievers will struggle to keep up. I think this is it has been a question we have heard a lot, a
lot more. So if you adopt this curriculum CLA, how is it differentiated for our students? Is it by different classes or is it just in one classroom? You're trying to do differentiated
groups. So as the email that you just shared mentioned, many of our middle schools do have most students in that advanced English course. The curriculum is grade level aligned curriculum. Right. So it's designed to work for the grade
level and to be differentiated as needed to meet students needs, whether that's greater challenge, additional supports and scaffolds. And so as part of the evaluation process, that was one thing that we specifically called out. That was actually an additional item that we put into the evaluation that was M.C.P.S.
Specific and didn't come from the state, which was to make sure that students who are performing beyond grade level have ample opportunities to have challenge, and then that there also are ample supports. And so the way that CLA is designed is
that for every lesson, there are built in support recommendations in terms of how to adjust the lesson and built in challenge recommendations. And so it's designed to be used in a differentiated classroom. In a heterogeneous classroom. It can
also be used, you know, regardless of what the format is at the particular school. But really the goal was to find a curriculum that provided thorough guidance in terms of how to make sure that the curriculum is meeting the individual student needs. And we found that this curriculum did a
good job of that. While while we can say that, we also know that part of our plan would be to continue to collaborate with our partners in Delhi of the Department of English Learners and Multilingual Education and our Office of Special Education, and our Accelerated and Enriched
Instruction team, to make sure that we are also providing the professional learning and guidance to teachers so that they are equipped to differentiate instruction. In addition to that, we're also we've been starting conversations with our middle schools around how they can build structures to make that
differentiation more effective and doable for teachers, because we know that it is challenging, but we also know that the research supports that. That's an effective model. So you can probably tell from my body language I was paying such close attention. So to unpack what you
said is it's going to be same level everywhere. And the. The pain point is how you train the teachers to feed the to meet the
needs of everybody in this classroom with what we are moving forward to do that you propose we do. Okay. All right. We're going to go for the second round of questions. I'm going to start from this side. Mr. Silvana, please go ahead. All right. Thank you. So I'm going
to expand off that question a little bit and kind of go into, you know, my initial reaction to that is that it's a really big equity issue to, to have all of the students in the same classroom and then have the teacher differentiate learning. Because what what does that mean in terms of, you know, if we
have a student who you might not think, right, you know, I don't think really the student is ready for this part of the curriculum. We're not going to let them, you know, let's have them do some more of the on paced learning. And then I also have really big concerns over how like then is the grading scale subjective. And I don't
really understand it. And again, I'll defer to the experts on this. Right. But I really I really do have some serious concerns in that area in terms of how how it would be taught as a student who has been in these classrooms, who has been, you know, in on level classrooms and
above level classrooms, like, I can tell you that it is very difficult when there when a teacher is trying to teach to a wide set of students all in one class. I mean, I've had classes where this is not really the same, but where it might be like a Spanish four and a Spanish
five class in the same room. And even that is just, again, not not linguist English language arts, but still very, very difficult experience to try and to try and learn in. And so I just really want us to take a second look to really evaluate
that, look at what are some of the equity concerns that could be could be arisen out of it? And can we do some serious just like checking in to see how is it really ending up affecting the students in our classrooms? Because if we have students who
could be be pushed, right? I mean, I think Miss Yang always likes to use the reference of a moving goalpost, right? Trying to push students a little bit further, something I definitely agree with. But how are we actually, you know, getting students to say, you know what, we're going to push you up into this class if you need to, we
can drop you down. But we're not just going to say, you know, this is your ability and we're going to try and cater to it in the middle of a heterogeneous class. So, Mrs. Zimmerman, I do want to say, if I may, our goal
and expectation is that all of our students are being taught with grade level curriculum and grade level standards. We know that not every student is reading at grade level, that we know the data tells us that, but
through studying our data, through planning, it is our responsibility as educators to figure out how our students are going to access the standards and the skills that they need
for literacy. It may mean reading a different text than their peer, but it is our goal through planning, to figure out how students are going to access those learning skills. And so we
do want to make suret we're not. Saying for our students that we're going to give some students a lower level curriculum. That's that's not what we want to do, but it is our responsibility through
training and through planning and through coaching, to make sure that we can get our students to access that content. And so that is our goal to do so as we so whatever curriculum we select, we want to make sure it
is at grade level for our students. Okay. Just very quick, I think I was I was referring to was was kind of the opposite. Right. So how are we pushing, you know, some of our students to go above and beyond grade level. But maybe I misunderstood
I apologize. Thank you. Yes, Miss Zimmerman okay. Thank you. So related to that, are there other districts, especially with respect to size and diversity that are using CLA? I mean,
really we're looking at like pre-K to eight. Are there other districts doing the same thing that are similar to ours? There are other districts that are implementing CLA, pre-K to eight. The Core Knowledge Foundation on its website has a
kind of a directory of school systems that are implementing the curriculum. So part of the review process internally was taking a look at that and trying to, you know, ascertain how it's going. And, you know, the impact we actually have in our one of our other Maryland districts,
Washington County is implementing CLA at the middle school level. So I coordinated with with them with the curriculum team over there and asked for their feedback. I had the opportunity actually last year to visit classrooms that were implementing. And so they're finding that it's been really impactful for their
students and they're receiving positive feedback. Washington County is a smaller district than ours, but they are. There are districts all over the country that are having success. Okay. Because part of what I what I wonder if we are there potentially their largest partner, as we are a very large
county in the US that, you know, we might have the opportunity to work with them more closely on making sure that their curriculum continues to align with our needs, particularly thinking about issues that we had at the elementary level with getting translated access to,
you know, the parent connection that that wasn't available. But if we are one of their largest partners for K through pre-K to eight, how can we utilize that to continue to have them be good partners with us? And if that's something that they're willing to do, I think that might be
something that the board would be more willing to consider if we're considering more seriously. I'd also like to ask about professional development. Are we? It seems like we're looking to implement CLA in the
fall, but our professional development window for required PD for the summer has already closed. So what's what's our realistic plan for PD for our educators then? Because now we can't require summer PD for them anymore. So if I'm understanding the question correctly. So we
knew we would anticipate that we were going to have a new curriculum. So when the March memo went out to invite teachers to professional learning, we had the date set so that they could have the date no matter what the curriculum was. So we've had those established. We do have teachers registered sections are full. It just depends which
curriculum we select, what that will look like. Got it. So the other potential problem with that is that those fill up very quickly. I ran into an issue st year that I was teaching summer school. So then the session I was signed up for, I
could no longer attend. And I was then told that there were no sessions, that I would have to figure out the curriculum by myself. So what then? Like, do we have enough sessions are because then the other that they're they should be then offered again in the fall. We
have plans for the fall as well. Absolutely. So when I said sections are full, I meant to say like people have signed up, we have sections that are full, but not all the sections are full. We have, I think it's eight different dates, two sections on each date, during different weeks of the summer, because we know that people have
plans that tend to span a week sometimes, so we try to spread them out. And so far we have we have room available, and we can also be flexible in terms of the capacity if we need to. We have, you know, follow up opportunities as well in the fall. But we're hoping that everybody has the chance to come
in the summer, given the wide range of dates that we've offered. Great. Thank you, Mrs. Bowman. Miss Silvestri. Yes, I wanted to request I'd like to see the curriculum if I could be sent a couple samples. Not a lot. Just to give me a taste for
what it looks like, what it feels like, and also, if you could, if I'm a teacher in middle school teaching this, let's say we adopt this today. Can you help me understand what
happens next for me as a user? And we talk a lot about grade level standards and teaching to the standards. How do you help me as central office to teach to the standards? Who holds me accountable for teaching to the standards? How do you know that
I, as a teacher in the classroom, am teaching to the grade level standards? So to go back to the first question, as a user, one of the first things that would happen. So what we've been trying to anticipate are all of the questions that we
know teachers and leaders will have. So we've been trying to think through what are the things that as teachers start to look through this curriculum, they're going to questions are going to emerge. They're going to want to know, you know, are we using all of these units? Where do I get the resources? When is my opportunity to talk
with somebody about how to improve my implementation? So we've started developing responses and resources to help teachers at the very beginning to start to feel supported. And with the professional learning. Of course, there will be an emphasis on how do you use the curriculum with integrity. And
if you do that, that's how you know you're teaching to grade level standards. And so there are components of a curriculum that we call the active ingredients or the non-negotiables. And those are the pieces that really are the research driven components that make sure that what students are receiving is at grade level. And
then there are areas where you might have a little bit more flexibility, like we talked about with giving students some choice. So that's a part of the professional learning in terms of making sure that that's happening. We do definitely want to and we're going to provide professional learning directly to our content specialists.
We've asked administrators to come to a professional learning as well. And so part of that is to provide them with tools to go into classrooms, observe instruction with us, partnering with them as much as we possibly can across our district, but going in, observing instruction, providing feedback to say, yes,
you are implementing this curriculum with fidelity or integrity versus here are some ways that you've made adjustments for students that might actually unintentionally be changing the level of challenge. And so here's what we need to see in order to make sure that students are receiving
that grade level instruction. So it's definitely a partnership between us as central services and our school based leaders to make sure that that implementation is happening. Yes. And a partnership as well with the office of the school
support side and also our delmi, our special education. So we are we're you know, they have participated with us in the selection of the curriculum. But then also we'll be working together as we go out and support schools and ensuring that what we trained on is
actually happening in schools and where there may be schools or classrooms that are struggling to work side by side for some coaching support. Great. Thank you. So critical. Important because if it's not being implemented to fidelity, then it could be the greatest curriculum in the world. But
it's not going to have the impact that we want for our students. Thank you, Miss Rivera-Oven. Can you give me an idea of how many middle school students we have that this this curriculum could affect about
33,000 or so, so significant, about 33,000, maybe a little more now. Okay. So just for comparison's sake, since I was going to ask the question about what other jurisdictions are using this curriculum, Washington County in totality
has 23,000 students for the whole county. And I was looking more for a comparison to a Fairfax County to even in the state to a Prince George's County. Like, what did they use
something that, you know, DC something that's more comparable to the student population that we reflect? Because honestly, comparing, you know, 33,000 kids to the totality of the whole county of 23 is kind of comparing apples to oranges. So
one of the things that I wanted to say is last night we had our advisory communications meeting that was such a diverse group of folks that we're hoping that this is, you know, and I know we have other committees in an
M.C.P.S. That these are great resources for. These are people already who are taking time out of their day to be able to be invested in, in our students. So maybe that's a group that you can target. But when you did the
survey, how many people were you looking for to answer? I assume it was a survey. I don't know. So we put out a request for participation. So that was something that we sent to all of
the different community organizations within M.c.p.s. To make sure that we had that broad representation and asked people to indicate their interest in participating. And then the follow up to that was all of those members were invited to an orientation conversation where we went through the options, and
then the rubric itself was sort of survey format. So a Google form that took the pieces of the rubric and put it into a form. So your target population was how many like what would you, what would you expecting to get? Like what was your magical
number? I assume? You know, honestly, I personally have never gone through this specific process in this way before. With open source, it's a little different than the request for proposals process that we usually do. I was hoping for around 100, just based on what
I've seen happen in other similar processes. So I generally the number to me was around what we were hoping to see, and it was a very detailed, long process for our participants who volunteered to do it. So we knew that it would be difficult to get, you know,
many more than that, I got you. Like Miss Sylvester can can you share that with Miss Sylvester? With the rest, with the rest of the board? Because I think that would be important to see. I still have a lot of hesitations. I really would like to see that
in the implementation. And somebody asked about the cost of how much this is going to this is how much is it going to take. And then. When I looked at the datarom Washington County, I
don't know, how long do you know how long they have this program? I think this is their second year. Okay. Because their, their, their projections are in the low 40s for reading. So that is a little bit concerning to
me, since we're going to be embarking in a whole new wave of, you know, trying to it's a new program. Like is it a new thing? I don't know how else to say, you know, like, is it new is a new product in town? I
don't, I don't know, I'm just trying I'm not an educator. So I'm trying to understand know the Core Knowledge Foundation is a long standing organization. I can't recall the exact year, but I know that I looked at studies that went back to 2004 from the Core Knowledge Foundation. So in
terms of the amplify products, we are doing the open source version, which has been around for, I want to say, until since at least I think 2018, and there's a 2023 update that they have implemented. The elementary version, I believe has been
around longer. And have you look at the comparable counties, what they use like Fairfax and other counties, and have we looked into those as well? Most of our neighboring counties that I looked at are using a vendor driven curriculum. So provided
by McGraw-Hill. Or there's wit and wisdom. There's other ones that are purchased, curricula that most of our neighboring districts use. A lot of our neighboring districts are also still using homegrown curriculum, as they're transitioning to Kim. Thank you. I'm going to turn to Miss Wolff.
The one thing about being on this board is I'm on the board with a lot of like minded people. So O'Neill asked my first question. Natalie asked my second one. Grace tapped into my third one. And so I hope this is
a different one, and I don't really think it is. I think it's a play on panels. But you mentioned grade level design curriculum. Well, in talking in my visits to the school, Carla was not working well. As Grace
said, for our kids, and the pacing is part of the problem. So I'm not sure how you handle grade level instruction for everybody that's not on the same grade level in reading. That's
the first thing. And the second thing is I'm a little bit concerned too, that you're you're looking at districts that are not demographically the same or even close to us in size. So my question is, is are we
expecting to move this along today or are we able to get more information? Well, we serve at the direction of the board. So if the board doesn't have a level of comfort then that gives us an indication. I will say
that in general, us planning and moving forward, the more time that we have, the better. We are kind of running tight in terms of where we are from. A from a curriculum standpoint, I would say that if the board has reservation, I'd give us a very
concrete direction as to what you want to see and then have us do a quick turnaround. If you wanted us to, to pause. Well, what my concern is that, you know, I visited a lot of the elementary schools that had this and heard from a lot of them that it doesn't work for our
kids. So I'm wondering, did you survey literacy teachers, you know, to get I mean, in this 82 respondents, how many of them actually teach using KLA? Data? So the evaluations that we
gathered were from current middle school Ela teachers. So they wouldn't unless I guess none of them would have taught us in elementary. But the majority of the people who provided evaluations were current ela, eld and special
education teachers. But they're not the ones that have been trying to implement it. To know about all of these problems. Correct. I will say that it has been beneficial to communicate with our elementary colleagues and find out what some of those challenges have been, so that we
can try to be proactive about that. My counterpart in the Department of English Learners and Multilingual Education, I have been in close communication and collaboration around how can we make sure that we are centering our ESL students and our Eld teachers to make sure
that they have the resources they need to make this successful? And in the feedback, it was actually one of the highlights that the Eld teachers really did feel that the resources and they're comparing to study sync, which they had previously, they felt were much more robust for MLS. And now I'm
I'm not an educator, but it would seem to me that if you had a group of the elementary school literacy teachers talking to the middle school literacy teachers, you would get a much better understanding of the challenges.
I know they're talking to you, but when you got a middle man, something might get lost in the exchange. So I'm just thinking maybe we could have some cross. Cross level groups. Thank you. I'm going to go two more, Miss
Montoya and Miss Stewart. Thank you. I'm having a hard time because of the process basically that was taken, right. In terms of the respondent data, it's challenging for me to raise my hand to things if I don't feel like I have the data I need to
rely on. Right. And so I guess my overarching concern is because if we adopt this, how will M.C.P.S. Know if this is working for our black and Latino students? So what process, what measures are you going to use? When are those, you know, observations or evaluations or
whatever you're going to do is going to occur? Because we know generally that when we adopt new curriculums, it can be amazing and we still have challenges and we're implementing it. It's new. There's change, right? There's little drop offs here and there. And so there's a natural amount
of that that occurs anyway. And how are we going to know whether it's just the natural drop or it's because. No, actually for two segments, which is most of our student population, it's not working because we see the way that things were not working historically year after year for
our black and Latino students. And I believe before I was even on the board, I heard Miss Wolff ask, is it possible that this curriculum just doesn't work for black students? And so here we are again. And that was at least a year ago that I heard her say that on a board meeting I was watching. And so how are we
going to know if we adopt this without this data that we're all asking for? How are we supposed to know that we're making the right choice, that there's a process in place to make sure this is working? And what are we going to do if we see that it's not? Are we going to leave it? Because maybe it's working for
most of the other students, and that's the majority of our respondents. I just I need you to give me something here to tell me that I can trust what you're proposing. One thing I'll share. Do you want to go first? Okay. One thing I will share is
that one of the other things that we really appreciated about KLA was how many aligned assessments there are, formal and informal, to make sure that teachers have aligned resources to see how students are doing before we get to the MCAT, before we get to, you know,
these much larger scale assessments. So that's, of course, a part of our implementation plan to make sure that teachers are using those assessments. And to the extent possible, you know, having that data shared with us so that we can see how students are doing. But one other piece that I want
to share is that by adopting a curriculum like KLA, we're shifting fundamentally the way we're approaching literacy instruction from middle school to a knowledge building approach, which we have not done before. And that's part of why KLA was adopted. At the elementary level. There is ample
research supporting that shift towledge building that it builds reading comprehension and student engagement by having that intentional sequence of content knowledge that builds over time. So it's the core knowledge sequence that students would be participating in. There is a lot of research showing
that that's an effective approach. And so we do expect to see some significant growth in terms of our students by building that content knowledge and having that ability to access complex grade level texts through the design of the curriculum. Okay. But how do you
know it's going to work for black and Latino students specifically? That's the question that I'm asking. What is the process that is going to be implemented after fall, the school year starts? How are we going to know that our black and Latino middle school students that this curriculum works for
them? Right? And I mean, I do think that the only way we know is through looking at regular, ongoing data. So in addition to whatever assessments that we have taking place 2 or 3 times
throughout the school year, we have these smaller informal assessment checks for our students. And I think that's what she's getting at that we will make sure is built into our monitoring plan with our schools. And as we collaborate
with our other offices, and we're going in to support and do those checks, we'll be looking to see how those students who are not quite on level are doing and if they're making progress so similar to elementary, where
we're developing these literacy plans for students that are not on level, we'd be doing the same thing for our middle school students. So that's a part of all of that. School improvement planning for schools. So that's that is probably more important than these 2 or 3 assessments
that we give middle and end of school year is the ongoing informal checks. Thank you. And that's what I wanted to hear that we're going to have ongoing informal data checks that we're going to have plans in place. I want to hear that we're notifying parents that we're bringing people in. Oftentimes I hear, oh, well, they're older
students or know all of our students need communication with their homes and their families so that they can support their students and provide that consistency that we all want our kids to have. Thank you. Store Mr. Okay, I want to revisit the
structure again. The all one level classes. So right now, for instance, when my child was in middle school, there were certain classes that had a co-teaching model because there
were they weren't, they were on level. And some of those kids on level were really not on level, which is why they were in that class. And so that really helped to be able to differentiate in that classroom. And so I'm not
hearing if there's going to be any metrics that you're going to follow with the different levels in the classroom to put in the additional supports, because that co-teaching model, really, I mean, I saw how impactful it
was to those students. Any thoughts? So certainly we have several different models for how we ensure our students are getting their grade level needs met. Co-teaching is one model that we use for students who may
be English learners, students who have an IEP or just might be that there's a student, maybe who doesn't even fall into either of those categories, but can benefit from additional support in the classroom. So co-teaching is certainly a model
that can be used. And we are working. I know as we support our teacher leaders that we are working on co-teaching as a strategy, but really our our bigger strategy is as we support
schools with understanding what the standards mean, understanding what the data is telling us about what students need, and then understanding as we plan, what they need and how they need to receive that instruction. Whether it's a whole group, whether it's a
smaller group, whether it's co-teaching, there are a variety of ways that we can address student's needs. And that's kind of the, the magic of, of, of planning and teaching that our teachers are delivering every day. I guess what I'm you can't
have a co-teacher in every classroom. That is true. Right? And so if there's no leveling I mean, this is just practical. Issues with that model that we should definitely think about going forward, because it does
give me a little bit of heartburn to think that where's the cutoff for the co-teaching. And then you have one classroom with lots of different levels that might not quite meet the need of the classroom next to them. It's it sounds complicated
to me, but again, I'm not the professional here. You are. So but I appreciate that that is often what our our school leaders are considering when they, when they're putting classes together, are are the needs of the students and then what staff they need to support them. So I want to thank my
colleagues for very thoughtful questions. I'm going to stop right here because even though I think today you came with the intention of seeking board approval, at this point, I think they remain a lot of questions
to be answered. Also, I do I am keenly aware of the time you would like to have summer professional development. So looking at my calendar, we have two more board meetings before the school year let out. I would
really like you to go back. Please collect. I think our staff can help you organize the notes from this session, and there are clearly a lot of questions asked, questions about engagement, questions about meeting the diverse needs here
and here, how you're going to operationalize with this curriculum. Please go back and prepared. And we are open to add this to our agenda in either our May 20th 2nd or June 10th
meetings. So I think that concludes this discussion. Let's move on to the next item okay. Thank you, Madam President. And we look forward to bringing that item back for action in the future. The next item is another
big robust topic for consideration. And I want to give a little context to this discussion, because this is not really something that the board has spent a lot of time talking about, but it is something that the board hears an awful lot about in the fall, through a
series of listening sessions across the county, a key message was emphasized to me, and it was the critical importance of relationships. I share my belief that strong, trusting relationships between students, staff, and school leaders are
our first and most powerful tool to limit dangerous behaviors and prevent safety incidents. We heard a great deal about this even today during our public comment. Investing in connection. Building at every level in the classroom, schools,
and in our community is absolutely essential in creating the kind of safe, welcoming environments where all students can thrive. Our updates to the Student Code of Conduct being discussed today are. More are about more than just discipline and student conduct. They are
about reinforcing our expectations within a culture of dignity and respect. And I want to reiterate two critical points here. First, that it's everybody's responsibility to provide a safe and welcoming learning environment for all
children and that it's everyone's responsibility for student conduct. In previous years, there have been changes to the code of conduct without any conversation with the public and without any conversation
publicly with the board. I am delighted that we get to have this conversation today, because today's updates are a part of a broader, intentional approach in raising our expectations, communicating those
expectations, building stronger partnerships not just between our students and our staff, but between our families and our staff, and reinforcing a culture of care and accountability. You're going to see a couple of things highlighted in today's presentation that I'd like to
elevate. We say we do a lot with restorative justice, and on paper we do, but we have not institutionalized that to the level that we have needed to in order for it to be effective. Having just 1 or 2 people in
every building, having some background into restorative practices is insufficient for us to have a restorative approach to problem solving. The second thing that I'd like to elevate is that any time that you go through any kind of significant
change of any kind of magnitude, it's really important for us to have some kind of robust system for monitoring. I cannot tell you with confidence that our data systems and our monitoring of student conduct has been sufficient in the past, and this
is really an opportunity for us looking forward to have more accurate systems to monitor our student conduct and to be watchful for things like disproportionate suspension rates or even interactions with
law enforcement. So I want to thank all of the students, families and staff and community members who continue to partner with us in Montgomery County and who have shared their thoughts on student conduct with me, which have been numerous, and to try to make Montgomery County
Public Schools a place where every student feels safe, connected and ready to learn. I will now turn things over to Doctor Peter Moran, our Chief of School leadership, to begin the presentation and walk you through some of our ideas. Thank you, doctor, for being here. I'm
actually delighted for Doctor Taylor for your candid comments. This is the first time in recent years that we have a open discussion on student code of conduct, and also that that for
your transparency of all the work that remain for us to do. Go ahead, Doctor Moran. Thank you, President Yang. Thank you, Doctor Taylor, members of the board, it is a pleasure to be here with you and have this, this, this conversation that that has been one that we've we've probably should have had
in previous years. But but here we are today. So I'm pleased to, to be here. If we could go to the next slide please. So before we start, I just kind of wanted to just to have a general conversation about what we what we know about our about kids, about our students. And the one
thing that we do know is that we know that our kids, our students will make mistakes, right? We know that that's part of it's part of growing up. That's part of development. Doctor Taylor had us in cabinet reflect on Staff Appreciation Week. I took
that to heart and really thought deep and hard about teachers that had an impact on me. And as I started to think about teachers and come up with their names, honestly, the teachers that I really remembered, it wasn't really always the content. It was the life lessons that I learned. And those life
lessons mostly came after I'd made a mistake. And so I think those life lessons, you know, that our teachers are providing to our students every single day are just an acknowledgment of understanding that content is critical. But, but, but teaching students, you know how to be
good people and good good citizens is equally as important. So and we know that kids at times are going to engage in behaviors that that are unsafe or inappropriate. And we have to have a standardized method of how we support students when they do make those
types of mistakes. If we could go to the next slide, please. So what we also know about our students, and this is one that I really want to drill down on. We
know that our kids thrive when there are clear expectations, expectations that are well supported and really clearly communicated to our students. We deeply believe that our students are able to attain any goal or
expectation when they have a clear understanding of it, and they are provided a system of supports to attain it. We also know that as we talk about consequences, there's also the need for incentives for positive behavior. Right there. We have,
I think, seen a increase in embracing recognition this this year, that recognition for students around academic success is critical. But that part of the recognition of student character is equally as
important. And we need to have systems in place to do that. If we could go to the next slide, please. So the goals of our student conduct are very clear. They align with Doctor Taylor's really his entry plan. Things that we've heard at the different listening sessions. And the first is maintaining
student safety not only for students but for staff, campus safety. And the second goal of our student conduct is really to teach and support self-control and behaviors that are appropriate for school, but also for future success in life. Next
slide please. So each year, as Doctor Taylor shared, the staff revisit the student code of conduct to ensure it fulfills the board's philosophy of discipline set out in the board's discipline, policy, JGR, and the state requirements upon
which the code is based. This process includes meeting with a team of administrators, teachers, and supporting services. I'm happy to share. This year we had at the, you know, request in collaboration with our unions, representatives from transportation, the bus
drivers bought a very important perspective as they, you know, really are that first classroom, that mobile classroom in the morning, that mobile classroom going home. So really just want to acknowledge them and appreciate their contributions to the collaboration that took
place. So similar to our conversation about grading and reporting, I want to draw that connection right. We believe that students thrive when expectations for academics or character and conduct are raised, however, raised expectations also require the need to adjust supports to
ensure students and staff have the tools they need to meet them. Today, we will talk about the correlation between the student Code of conduct and prioritizing the safety of schools, the need to ensure there is a strategic communication process regarding these changes. Ensuring restorative approaches remain a
key strategy and the need to enhance the partnership with parents and caregivers to ensure consequences and supports are well communicated. Again, I just want to go back and Doctor Taylor's entry plan. We were reminded that before we can reach Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning, we must first address
Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. If we go to the next slide, please. The fundamental building block for success is to ensure our learning environments are places where students and staff have a sense of safety, belonging, and
emotional well-being. Only when we have this in place will students be able to achieve at the highest levels. When students feel welcomed, included and respected, they are less likely to engage in inappropriate behavior. When students have a trusted adult, they are much more likely to
confide in the school. School environments rooted in care, equity, and trust help to prevent discipline issues. These updates to the Code of Conduct reflect that philosophy. Discipline and behavior are not separate from instruction, but foundational to ensuring students are ready and able to
engage in learning these environments where students and staff feel safe, supported, and connected are fundamental to both academic and social success. Next slide please. We have clearly heard from you, the board, the community, our
teachers, our administrators and our students with a collective voice. Our community has stated that safety must be a priority for all. One of the major themes in The voice data from Doctor Taylor's entry survey was around conduct and safe learning
environments. Specifically, we received feedback that action should be taken to manage problematic conduct through clear and consistent behavior management policies. Increased support for students with behavior challenges, and a focus on positive school climate through restorative practices.
Over the course of this school year, we conducted an array of community meetings and listening sessions with staff. Due to concerns about safety and security. The feedback from these meetings matched the district wide survey. In response to the feedback for clear and consistent
implementation, our Student Code of Conduct will reinforce our core values of safety, discipline and learning from the decisions we make. It will increase student accountability and it will elevate the use of restorative approaches. Again, restorative approaches is a key strategy in both building positive culture and as part of
the continuum of disciplinary responses. Indeed, restorative approaches and a strong code of conduct are not mutually exclusive. Next slide please. So let's step back and remember that the Student Code of Conduct is an implementation guide for
responding to student violations of M.C.P.S. Rules. And let's also recall that those rules are established in law, policy and regulation. The board's discipline policy and Maryland law emphasized dignity, equity, and support. Maryland law requires a progressive approach
to discipline, maintaining the student in the regular academic program as much as possible. In today's presentation, you will see a tiered continuum of behavioral responses aligned with the Maryland law and the MSD model of code of Conduct. One thing that we learned or
heard through this voice data was that the five level behavior intervention matrix could be revised. For clarity, you will see levels one and two show more clearly that this is what you and I just think of as good teaching, reinforcing appropriate behavior. Be in
touch with parents and guardians. And if there is a concern that something serious could be going on with a child, find out level three and four are more clearly about what the principal can do to hold the student more accountable and stress the seriousness of misconduct to the parent and guardians, enlisting their help
and stressing to the student and the family the steps needed to restore and repair harm done. I'll point this out as we go along, but one of our changes this year is specifically to level four, and the tools principals have at that level. It should be noted that inappropriate use of technology
to share, send or post private information, including fights, has been elevated to level four and the distribution of controlled controlled substances begins at level four as well. Level five is reserved for those actions reserved in the Maryland law for the superintendent's
action. These include extended suspension and expulsion. Each of these has detailed criteria and procedural requirements in law and in our regulations, and any recommendation to use level five must be very serious. These changes are not happening in isolation. Just like with our
grading and reporting updates, we are pushing for consistency, clarity and fairness across all our schools. In both cases, the focus is on transparency, developmentally appropriate practices and ensuring equity of experience for every student across the system. Student
conduct, just like student learning, is everyone's responsibility. As Doctor Taylor said, students, parents, teachers, principals and support staff all play a vital role in creating a positive school culture. Support strategies for students are built into this new framework. Interventions, mentorship, check ins and
behavior supports are no longer nice to haves, but are required elements of our response system. Some behaviors are simply too serious to resolve without time, distance, and reflection. Our updated levels acknowledge that some situations require a student to step away from the
learning environment in order to process, reflect, and return. Ready to restore and learn. Next slide please. On this slide are some examples of specific serious infractions where the levels of consequence have been
elevated. These levels remain within the guidelines. From. A common question that's asked is does a principal have to use the lowest level of intervention first? The answer is no, but the lowest level should be considered based on mitigating circumstances such as age or
developmental appropriateness. For example, M.C.P.S. Does not make it a practice to expel elementary school students from school. Conversely, principals may choose to utilize a higher level of consequence on the continuum for aggravating factors such as prior infractions, previous school
intervention, harm caused to others, or disruption to the learning environment. This just makes sense, right? And well, we'll make sure that these terms and these criteria are more clearly communicated and consistently applied, because this is what makes a progressive disciplinary approach transparent, age appropriate,
and provides discretion where discretion is needed to take into consideration mitigating and aggravating circumstances. I want to take the opportunity to point out several of the examples on this slide to just share where we were and where we're going. You'll notice that
under theft, bomb threats, bullying and harassment, attack on a student, attack on a staff member started at level one with that communicates just on paper, without any training at all, is that it's appropriate for a
teacher to intervene. Just as I explained on the previous slide. With strategies, when there's a bomb threat, it's not appropriate for a teacher, nor do they have the training to handle a situation like that. As
you can see, for bomb threats, it's moved from the span of level one through five, which leads to a great deal of variance to a level four or level five, meaning suspension or suspension for ten days with recommended expulsion. You look at attack on staff. Previously,
attack on staff was a level one through five, meaning that you're communicating to a teacher or supporting service member a bus driver that if they were to be attacked by a student, it would be appropriate for them to respond themselves.
That's not the way that our system should run and demonstrates extremely low expectations for the character that we want to see out of our students. We've elevated that to 4 to 5, and we've elevated that to 3 to 4 at the elementary
school level. I want to acknowledge even the testimony that President Powell gave from MCPs, PTA. We have differentiated things from elementary to secondary. That was a lot of the feedback that we got. And we are looking at ways for, you know, kid friendly language to ensure that it's appropriate. And students have
an understanding of the changes that we've made. Again, I want to point out also, theft of $500 or more was also a span of 1 to 5. We've elevated that from 3 to 5, meaning that level three is an in-school suspension or
in-school intervention for being a suspension, or five being a ten day suspension with recommended expulsion. So as you can see, we had a wide range of variants around these. This tool is really a communication tool.
And by making these changes we're more clearly communicating the expectations and also ensuring that our administrators and this is key. And I want to point this out when it's level one and level two. If that decision is being made, it also means that we may not get an
administrator involved because they would become involved at level three. So if I don't have it to level three to level five, it may not be reported to me as a principal or an assistant principal. And that means it also might not be communicated home effectively to. So I just
want to point that out as well. If we go to the next slide please. All right. So as we've repeatedly said, student conduct is everyone's responsibility. When expectations aren't met we must respond as a team, bringing together staff, families and students to ensure the behavior
is addressed and learning continues. We must explain the why behind our approaches. The supports outlined in the revised code behavior intervention plans, check ins, restorative circles, mentoring and counseling are not optional. These are now expected components of a school's
disciplinary response. This represents a significant shift for some schools, and we are committed to supporting their implementation. I want to point out the significance of a mandatory reentry plan and intake meeting. Again, we talk about nice to haves, and then we
talk about standardization across the school system of 211 schools. We are requiring now that all students and parents have an intake meeting, a reentry plan. One of the things we've learned through research, as we've, you know, had discussions about this is one of
the things that the Secret Service says is that by having actually a reentry plan with with students, it diminishes or decreases a repetitive behavior associated with what occurred. It also is an opportunity for us
to provide services. During that meeting. The social worker could be involved, counselor could be involved, access to external resources and partnerships could be a component to that. But it's important to bring the family in together to ensure that they have an understanding of the
rationale for the decision that was made around the consequences. And I want to I want to separate out the two things for people, because I think they're often blended together. Right. The restorative approach is, is not a consequence. Right. The restorative approaches is part
of the continuum, but the consequences within the code of conduct, right, are the consequences. You use restorative approaches as a proactive or preventative measure to create a school culture, or on the back end, to restore a situation that may have happened between two students, a student and a
teacher. So I just want to distinguish between those. I also wanted to point out, because it's been a question from the board, our interest in involving conflict resolution and peer mediation as a as a key component and getting support from some outside agencies around that. And also just I wanted to highlight the
importance we continually hear from our students that the trusted adult piece is a huge deterrent in in repetitive student behaviors in a positive school culture. So I just wanted to highlight that as well, and ensuring that they receive that support during that that one
week window. If we could go to the next slide please. So our next steps for these changes. So first of all restorative approaches is not just a practice. It's a mindset. Our updates move it from a strategy to a central component of our
disciplinary approach and the operating budget. You will see the new Office of Student Conduct and Appeals. This addition will support our system accountability by ensuring school based actions are reviewed with fidelity to policy and legal guidelines. When applied with Fidelity restorative Practices rebuild
trust, promote accountability, and repair harm in a way that punitive measures often cannot. We are investing in ongoing professional development to ensure staff are equipped to lead restorative conversations and help students take meaningful ownership of their
actions. I want to just double down on on something that Doctor Taylor said. We and it kind of goes back to teaching someone to fish in order to create a culture where restorative approaches are not a central service that is brought into a
school, you have to provide professional learning to schools and not only provide professional learning that's standardized across the system, but assess where people are on a continuum. At Argyle, they're very advanced with restorative approaches. You wouldn't do the same thing at Argyle that you
might do at another middle school. So in ensuring that we have a professional learning specialist that specializes in restorative approaches on each of our cross-functional teams that can deliver differentiated support to get us all to just a common set of excellence around restorative approaches. The
other part I want to highlight is all school based staff will receive training on the updated Student Code of conduct, including restorative practices and a tiered behavior responses as part of their required annual compliance modules. In June, all administrators will engage at
our Superintendent Leadership Summit and dedicated training focused on implementation and leadership of the updated code. We have needed to make upgrades, of course, with the code, but we also need to make upgrades in the application of the code. Our
principals have really asked for that, and that ensures that there's not that variance that we're seeing in terms of its application from school to school. Schools will embed discussions of the new behavior expectations during student orientations and through ongoing advisory or homeroom lessons, helping students understand
their rights, responsibilities, and having a clear understanding of consequences. When expectations are not met. Families will receive information through multiple platforms. We really need to move away from the archaic way of just distributing the hard copy code of conduct and sending
it home, and think that that is a method of communication that supports all of our families. We are looking at informational videos utilizing standard slides for back to school night for principals, really creating a toolkit that will roll out in
June to our principals and schools for ensuring that communication gets out in a standardized way across all of our communities. We also are looking at community info sessions to reinforce a shared understanding and partnership in student success. And I think
it's key to also just say our cross-functional teams, as they come together and are coming together, will assist schools in implementation, gathering feedback and advising on course corrections. Again, a key component is to ensure behavior interventions are aligned with with equity and restorative
practices. Next slide please. So these revisions reaffirm our commitment to safe, equitable learning environments, clear behavioral expectations and strong partnerships between schools, students and families. I now turn it back over to you, President Yang, for discussion.
Thank you, Doctor Meringue. I actually really appreciate the slide number three. When we consider how to best support our students, it's important to remember that effective learning environment requires both structure and encouragement.
Like you pointed out, that consistency of discipline to set clear expectations, which is what this code of conduct address, but also the power of positive reinforcement. You mentioned many things to motivate, to build confidence,
to celebrate growth, so one without the other is incomplete. I appreciate the presentation. I'm going to turn to my colleagues for questions or comments. Last one I start with this. Set the last discussion item. This time I'm going to start from this side. I'm trying to play fair right here. All
right, Mr. Savannah, please go ahead. All right. Perfect. First of all, I just want to thank you for this very detailed presentation and again, for, for even coming to the board with the student code of conduct. You know, speaking as a student and in my interactions with students from across the county, you
know, there is not very, not not very clear sense of expectations all the time. Right? And I think when we're talking about trying to standardize some of those expectations and then also build back some of that school culture, which is really integral to the restorative
justice approach. I think this goes a long way in terms of communication to the public, and then going to kind of reference Miss Howe's testimony earlier, making sure that we're, you know, not, you know, just speaking in legalese with our student code of conduct, but really meeting students where they are, I think is going to be
really important. I did want to highlight something that was was in the presentation that I really liked, and I kind of want to see really integrated into the student code of conduct from a student perspective, obviously, but the peer mediation, I think that is something that's big. I think it's on slide ten, but it's
something that I think that I have counterparts from all across the US that that we're in contact with through through various advocacy networks. And so one of my counterparts in new Jersey, you know, it was it was on kind of like a long thread talking about, you know, code of conduct, disciplinary matrix.
And so one of the things that they were talking about was student to student support and student representation within the disciplinary process. Right. So being able to, to use kind of like a student like mock trial or like a student council to, to
be able to say, well, you know, we're going to when you're walking through whatever disciplinary process, especially for the lower infractions, right? We're going to have a student right there next to you to support you. Right. And to say and to help you, you know, get get your point across to
make sure that your side of the story is being heard fairly and or if there's a if disciplinary actions are being taken, can we have some sort of student representation on that? I'm not saying, you know, let students make their own consequences. Right? Not at all. But I'm saying, you know, give students, let students feel like they have
had a part and a voice in the process. And so it might not look like what I just said, but I think that was something that was really big and something that I liked in here. So I just want to thank you for that. Thank you, Mrs. Zimmerman. Thank you. So one of the things that
I'm struggling with a little bit is that I, I still see a lot of opportunity for ranging and how we intervene in behavior. There's just a lot of opportunities for varied discipline. If, you know, even if we're looking at 3 to 5
instead of 1 to 5, there's still multiple opportunities for. Different disciplines. So I'm just I'm wondering, like I'm just not confident in that this change will actually help us see
uniformity and response to student behavior. So how can you make me more confident? So I think so. So first of all, if we're going to talk about uniformity. So we've shrunk down from one one through five. First off. So let's let's just the current state. Let's just consider the current state
right. So you want to talk about variance right. You got one through five. So we've shrunk it down to four through five in some cases to three through five. And I think so the training that we're going to have in June with principals and that we're going to have also with staff, is understanding that within each situation.
Right. It's not always just cut and dry, that we go to the, you know, automatically to a five. Right. And nor should it be right. We need to consider, you know, the circumstances of what occurred. We need to consider prior behaviors or infractions that that happened. We need to
consider can really consider the level of disruption that occurs at the school. And I think that's like a key one and why we moved the social, you know, posting things on social media, which was also one through five to now, 4 to 5, because the
level of disruption and unsafe behaviors that result from someone, let's say, posting a fight on social media usually results in continued things happening outside of the school building or the next day. So I think there's the training component and that's really the
application, right? Documents only as good as the training and support that's provided. There's also the directors working with principals. And then we have a new office that has a very new approach. And I think the thing that I've appreciated about the changes that we've made is the Student Code of Conduct office
will be more of an on the ground office. The way it's structured right now is things come to them, they get them on paper, and then they respond based off of what they read on a paper, without having a contextual understanding of a school, a
relationship with a principal, a relationship with an administrative team, a level of trust where I can receive a phone call of how I'm going to apply the code of conduct. That's another thing that eliminates variance. So I think having that and then also using
the cross-functional teams and having everyone receive exactly the same training and exactly the same messaging and exactly the same terminology, will ensure that we're able to apply it in a much more standardized way. And I got a part two to
that really quick. I think I can answer this pretty concisely and say, how you determine that is really at the intersection of two things severity and frequency. And so there's a there's a part two to this for principals to work on. And it's actually some, some of the work
that Doctor Moran is leading with with principals later this spring and into summer is what does the first time this happens with a student look like versus the third time that something happens, something that's worth illuminating, too, is a big
shift in our strategy. Is a shifting from an or strategy to an and strategy. And in the past, we may have had a strategy where we do this or that, and really our strategy is to try and be a little bit more
comprehensive and a little bit more inclusive. And I'll give you two examples. We are having the expectation that restorative approaches is a part of every disciplinary conversation. That has not been the expectation before the part. Another good
example of that might be is like perhaps you have a student who has a drug use issue. A suspension is not the answer for that student. But when we do have some time away from the school environment and we are welcoming a child back into the
learning environment, we need to make sure that they're connected to resources. That has not exclusively been our strategy in the past either. So having some kind of readmission practice, having some kind of opportunity where it is about connecting
resources, repairing relationships and crafting a path forward because we can acknowledge that something happened in the past. We can't go back in time. We can't fix something. But what we can do is we can lay the work for what, what the future looks like and
really try to turn everything into teachable moments. So I hope that that that helps a little bit. But it if there is a wide range on a given area, it's not because we're trying to grant discretion to a principal or to a teacher or something
like that and say, you've got all these choices, it's because we really are trying to take into consideration the unique magnitude of an individual event and acknowledge the fact that sometimes children make mistakes more than once, and sometimes
they make mistakes more than once that look very similar to previous mistakes that they've made. We hope that they learn from them the first time, but we need to create the conditions for them to have a an opportunity to learn from them a little bit better. Yeah, I think
we can all appreciate the complexity and the variance that occurs in a school building, but I think then that leads then to things like our definitions needing to be a little bit stronger and well laid out. And I, I think, be helpful for the
board to be able to see as well. Ms. Silvestre, so many questions that I don't know where to begin. First and foremost, this was much needed. So thank you, thank you, thank you. I can't agree with you more. Our
students want structure. They want expectations. They want to know what what, what is expected of them in school. So I think I'm going to begin with. How will we balance I if I'm a
principal? You mentioned this new this reconstituted office is going to help me as a principal to address some of the behaviors that maybe are repeated and suspensions, suspension, suspension is not going to work.
So can you talk a little bit about give me more detail on how if I have a principal at a high school, and I'm seeing that this student just keeps getting in trouble, the wellness team has intervened already. How is that? That new resource is going to help me as a principal. So? So
the student code of conduct is more based off of, you know, the process piece and not really like providing services around, around a particular student. I think the, the service piece comes from the fact that how we're utilizing our student
well-being teams, like you just said, access to our social workers, access to their counselor. But I also think that, again, and I know we've talked a lot about this, and it's something that I continue to be extremely excited about.
Having a cross-functional team in your building that are people who have a lot of different skill sets. We also have utilized data in a very strategic way to assign people to clusters. In years prior. Our
teams who support students to access resources when they are in crisis or need behavioral support. We have not always done that in a very strategic way. So ensuring that now, you know, the number of peas in a cluster will
be matched with the level of need that is happening in that cluster. An example, you know, just this past year, you could have more people in a in a cluster like, let's say, Whitman than you did in a cluster, like
let's say Magruder. And just looking at what's happening in those clusters and assigning those people strategically to receive the supports that they need. I think the other thing, and it's a conversation that I think we need to have down the road, is how we utilize
alternative education programs within Montgomery County Public Schools. And we've we've touched on that a little bit. But I think that that's an opportunity for us to have further dialog about. And is it true that principals have feel like, I guess I've heard urban legends that they don't want to suspend
because it they have to keep their suspension numbers low, because they want to be able to show that they are, that the behavior intervention is working, and you're not having a lot of suspensions. So I think I've heard that we're not
escalating the discipline because we don't want to suspend students. Yes, we want students in school, but that there's also this dynamic of not disciplining because it's going to look bad for your school, that you have too many suspensions or too many
discipline infractions. So I don't think that that necessarily is the case. I think the that in regards to suspension, there's a, you know, a story or a narrative behind all different things that happen at schools. You may see, you know, an escalation in behavior because of a certain incident
that involves a number of students. And that's why there's, you know, ancrease in suspension on that particular week. We do review the numbers weekly and have conversations with principals about, you know, what what what occurred. Why did we see a spike in numbers? But I
think I think that this also is a big part of why this is needed now. Because I do think that that there are principals that really need the training. It's not necessarily the paper, right, but it's the training to walk through and have an understanding of, you know,
being consistent with your practices, understanding what the expectations are, understanding, you know, when it's appropriate to suspend, when it's you know, when it's not appropriate to suspend. And the mitigating factors that are around each and every case, that makes it unique. As Miss Zimmerman, you know, raised.
Thank you. So I want to circle back really quick to Miss Silvestre's first question about the having an Office of Student conduct. I too have I'm not sure that I've heard that there's any kind of external pressure to not suspend or at least not not this
year. I haven't heard that, but I think something that you will hear from principals is if you were to ask them, when was the last time they received training on student conduct? Many of them could tell you that they have not. And I think that it is
incumbent on us that if we are going to set an expectation that we not govern by memo and that we provide supports to the adults in addition to the children, and if we're going to have a set of expectations for the children, we teach the adults how to respond. And
really great administrators know how to manage student conduct really well. And the likelihood is that they were really rock solid assistant principals who were taught by great principals. And those great principals were taught by other great principals before them. And then there were
some that came up through a system that didn't have a great principal, and that might be a gap in their learning as a professional. So this office, what we're aiming to do is really is really just a couple of things. The first one is to
kind of be the keeper of the code of conduct in terms of a policy and regulation standpoint. Number two, to provide direct training and retraining when necessary and to guide what that training might look like and, and provide some of that support. And the third
one, and I alluded to it briefly in my opening comments, and we haven't talked an awful lot about it, but it's something that I'm sensitive to, is that any time you have a really significant change that you're monitoring that change pretty consistently right now, it's up to the cluster directors and
Doctor Moran's office to just be on it week by week by week. And they still should be, and that should be really important. But looking at the whole of the district and looking at trends and making sure that we don't have disproportionate suspension rates that get exacerbated is
something that there really does need to be a singular point of contact that is accountable to Doctor Moran, that's accountable to me and accountable to the board to communicate what we're seeing in terms of managing this change. Thank you. Miss Rivera.
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for the presentation. And to you, Doctor Taylor, I think this was quite overdue. I'm really happy to hear we're going to have an office and student conduct. And I, as somebody who
who created many programs after school programs with kids, including who were very heavily gang involved and so on. I am I am a person of thinking that prevention is always the best method, right? Lamenting later
is more costly, by the way, because to actually incarcerate a young person, it costs so much more money and it's such a loss to society. So prevention is very key. I did have my issues with restorative justice, how it was being implemented. Somebody
who has done it, it was not very there was no uniformity across the system. Some schools had such a you know, and it was. So I'm happy that we're going to be looking at that. I'm to I'm looking at the revisions and the
proposed range on, you know, this code of conduct. I think it's going to be very welcome by many, many principals. But we do have a lot of new principals. Right. And I think historically, more than ever, this is a period of time where we have new
principals. So it is very timely going with the question of my colleague, Mr. Silvestre, that we do do the training. This is actually good timing to make those transitions because everything looks good. It can look so good on paper, right? We
can have the best intentions. It's very eloquent to what we want to do, but then to actually put it in practice is where I'm a little bit concerned about. So I just want to make sure that we give folks the tools, just like we're trying to implement a new
curriculum on reading, and we're trying to make sure that we have the materials for that curriculum. We need to do the same thing when we're implementing any changes in this area. So there are our expectations are clear, not just
of the students, but the expectations are also clear of the adults in those buildings. Everybody from the person who's the custodian to the person who is a security guard to the bus driver. Right. We all need to have the same high expectations
for our students. I am from that line that I believe that if we do not challenge kids to rise to high expectations, how are they supposed to rise to high expectations? And I'm really, you know, happy to see this. We
do need to talk about the alternative programs, whether they have the materials that they need, whether they have the supports that they need. You heard me said that like a blur. If there's any school that needs a wellness center, it should be a school like Blair Ewing. We
don't have wellness centers in all the schools especially, you know, like in the Damascus area, the Clarksburg area. Right. So there's that lack of services for some of these students. So we really need to assess, I think, school by school. And
then, you know, just like we would do with anything else. Right. And see where the gaps are. And just like we have these respondent teams that we're creating for different things, then they should also we should also have a priority list of where we're seeing those gaps
and keeping a very close eye on the demographics. So my question is the implementation of it. And I know this is in writing, but the implementation of it and the training and how long do you see this is going to take. Like
what's your vision. So I think one of the most advantaged that we have this school year is we've had a long runway on on things. Right? I think we've been very strategic about planning things and implementing things and having conversations that have a period of time. It
is extremely advantageous to be having this conversation at the beginning of May, so that we have the summer to do significant work with our administrators around this. So to have a standard setting at the end of June with all of the principals to then directors
being able to go out and have one on one conversations about the student code of conduct to set a communication process that is standardized across the entire system so that people are receiving information in the same way, at the same time.
Principals receiving training prior to back to school night, which we know is one of the most well attended events that we have. And then also Grace moving away from the archaic communication. So working with our comms folks to have a
strategic approach of informational videos, you know, whether it's, you know, newsletters, it's community, you know, bringing community together to have conversations and then shrinking things down. And I heard earlier, I believe it might have been you
commenting on the how significant the document is. So one of the things that we've done this time, for the first time is created an FAQ that is in an every code of conduct. It's like the second page, and it just outlines all of the changes and upgrades that we've
made. So there's a whole rebranding process I think, that needs to take place because all it really is, there hasn't been a lot of significant changes to the code of conduct. There are tweaks here and there, but the opportunity to kind of reset with people and have these conversations and have a whole,
you know, 90 days to actually launch it before the first day of school. Thank you. I'm going to go to Miss Wolff. Thank you. I want to thank you for your work on this. It was definitely needed. However, I still have some concerns. Anybody that has
watched me for seven years knows that discipline becomes a major concern for me, and I think my colleague Natalie used the term complexity and variance. I think that kind of sums up what my
concern is. And I'm really worried that there's still a lot of subjectivity in this. Now, I know this is not the training, and this is a sort of broad discussion about it. But when I see something that says excessive disruptive talking in
class, I become very concerned because that's a very subjective decision, and the subjectivity usually comes down to our little black boys. When I see something that says rude comment made with intent to harm, well, who
determines intent to harm? If I didn't specifically say, I'm going to kick your behind, you know, if I didn't say that specifically, where does intent to harm come in? But I think that from what I'm trying to say
is that any training is going to have to require a lot of discussion around these categories. And I have to say I'm going to be looking at variance between schools and within schools. And as chair of
the Strategic Planning Committee, safety being a big category, I would like to see this brought to us at least quarterly in terms of what the numbers are looking like in each school, because I remain very
concerned about impact here. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Speaking of impact, we are we're expecting more and that message won't be
out there like a light switch, right. So do you expect an increase in suspensions suspicions because of this change? Do you expect an increase? I think it's I think it's dependent. It could be
school dependent, similar to what Miss Wolfe just shared in terms of like people having a solid understanding. Again, I think that and I'm going to echo what Doctor Taylor said. I, I was a principal for eight years. I was been a been in, you know,
a director and associate for, for six. I don't recall ever receiving a training on the code of conduct. That's kind of embarrassing to put that out there. It was left up to my interpretation or the support
that I received from my director, which there can be variance around if you don't standard set and have tight processes and structures on that. So I just want to say that I think that really what happens this summer is a determinant around what the result of its implementation is in the fall. So I wouldn't I wouldn't want to
say either way, I think I think it's about being implemented with with fidelity, you could see an increase in some schools and you might see a decrease in some schools as a result of people having a better understanding and having a, you know, a toolkit and communicating with parents. I mean, I think we really need to
like Doctor Taylor and I have said, we're really working with our parent community to have an understanding of what the expectations are and what the consequences are when you don't meet an expectation. And those being, you know, conversations that just don't aren't limited to classrooms but are happen at,
you know, kitchen tables and in living rooms as well. I just have two more quick questions. So let's come back. So. Doctor Moran, the board's role is oversight and governance. You say we are rebranding the
student code of conduct. So can you illuminate moving forward, what data are we collecting on disciplinary actions and how is it going to be analyzed and share with the public, and how
often would that be so similar to what you know, Miss Wolfe just shared around quarterly? I think there's a there's a lot of different data. There's of course the suspension data, there's suspension disproportionality data. There is also the success rate. One of
the things that we take a strong look at is the in in certain schools. And this is something that we need to make as a, as a, as a practice where there is a very low repetitive rate of repeat suspensions in some of
our schools. And what are those practices that they're doing. So I think there's the kind of the case study approach as well of highlighting like specific schools, having them present and talk with other principals about the work that they're doing. I think that, you know, and this has not been decided yet, but I
think, you know, a quarterly is appropriate. I mean, you know, Doctor Taylor has had us really looking at it at, at it quarterly and even breaking it down to the point we're looking at it in our office, you know, weekly. It's produced for us weekly. So I don't I wouldn't I'm not I don't think I'm ready
to answer that. But I think it's something that needs to be, you know, discussed and determined collaboratively. I'm glad that you will be thinking about this to exactly what data and how it's analyzed. How do you share? How often do you share? Okay, so I'm going to go to the second
round. I'm going to start from the right hand side. I think we have a lot of comments. Can we can call it just go straight to questions. If you go straight to questions you can ask two questions. If you have a comment then you only have one question. Go Mr. We haven't talked about
mitigating learning loss. When there's a suspension, can you is there any new plans on that or is just what are how do you mitigate learning loss? So I think one of the keys to mitigating learning loss is having a reentry and intake
meeting and ensuring that the parents have access to the materials that were, you know, were covered while the student was out of school. And sometimes those are front loaded, you know, as much as can can be possibly done by a school. And sometimes they're provided as an opportunity for make up work. So I think, I think that intake and
making that a standard component to every school's, you know, the expectations is key. That's that's a good answer. The mentoring piece, do you have a good mentoring program today? The reason I ask is because
someone asked me about being a mentor, and I started looking, and some older programs don't seem to be in operation. I don't know what's happening. Are you ready for that? I think that that is, is a school by school
where. So overall, I wouldn't I wouldn't feel comfortable saying yes to that question. I think there's a lot of work to be done around mentoring. Okay. Thank you, Miss Stewart. How does it feel to ask two questions? Better. Okay. All right, Miss Wolff, go ahead. Well, you said
as long as she had no comments. Yeah, that's right, that's right. This is a good thing. I think you probably hit on this a little bit, but I'm not quite clear on it. So how are we integrating mental health equity? I know you talked a little bit about restorative
justice into this. How is this, you know, like a big picture type of thing. Well, I think you can take an example of what the experience is for a young person right now when they have an adverse consequence. And let's
say that they get suspended, suspended from school, they are out of the building for three days. And then what happens? They just show up. There's no follow up, there's no introduction, there's no review
of what happened. They go away and then they come back. And the missed opportunity right there is the connection between services and addressing the needs so that you don't have a repeat event and that there's
not just learning from an event, but also the adults learning from a circumstance, because what precipitated an event may not necessarily be clear in the moment. And there's some missed opportunity to connect kids to
resources. I think the hope here is that with with not just the student and school administrators, but school staff and also the parents being involved in a conversation of, okay, so where do we go from here? And what makes the most
sense is really where the opportunity is moving forward. The idea here is to maintain and teach self-discipline, not to punish bad behavior. And there's a big difference. And so in
order to teach and maintain self-discipline, that usually requires help and some support. And so I think that the secret sauce in this or at least our stab at this, our attempt at getting to this, is by
introducing readmission conferences and readmission conversations as a as an integral part in what we do next. Thank you. I just want to reiterate that we should definitely be monitoring for unintended consequences. Thank you, Miss Wolff, for
highlighting that part, Miss Silvestri. Yeah, mostly. Comments I really like the idea of disseminating the information through various media, videos, whatever, you know, slides and making sure that people are actually processing the information. Not just signing
off or checking a box. I think that you addressed already, but I want to reiterate, because there's a lot of confusion in the community. Restorative justice does not replace consequences. So if I get in a fight and I harm someone, I will face the consequences as as
outlined in the code of conduct. And there has been restorative justice in my school, and there will be restorative justice after the incident. And I think there needs to be continued classroom management training for our teachers, because not
everybody has that natural skill set. And that's the first line of intervention to prevent things from escalating. A lot of this is based on relationships, so it helps be fully staffed so that our students can build good relationships with our teachers
and have that caring adult to prevent things from from getting worse. And I guess my only question is, oh, and I read the FAQs and there is a question about can special education students be subject to the code
of conduct? And the answer is absolutely yes. So could you my question is about teacher feedback. What are teachers saying about the code of conduct as you have done your work to prepare this? The changes so fa.
So I think there's strong sentiments that around two things from our, from our teachers is, is one that our, our code of conduct is very vast and not strong enough in many
cases. As, as I as I showed you the idea that, you know, a student can make a, you know, a bomb threat or a student can attack a staff member. And there's a consideration that it might be a level one or a level two is a demonstration that of a
need for us to change. I think that communicates to staff not feeling safe just by looking at the paper itself. What are they saying about the changes, their positive feedback about the about the changes? I mean, it's been a similar conversation to the grading and reporting conversation. You know, we've
talked we talked with teachers a little bit about the history of the of the code of conduct, the idea of showing, you know, grace as students came out of the pandemic, whether it was academic or character. But we're out of the pandemic and, you
know, students will will rise to high expectations if they're communicated well and they're they're they're in a supportive environment where they receive access to the resources they need when, when they do or if they do make a mistake. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs.
Zimmerman. Thank you. I just wanted to circle back to a conversation that Miss Wolff kind of started as well, that especially with strategic planning and looking at safety
and talking about, you know, our suspension data and kind of when are we sounding the alarms and the reporting and that Miss Yang commented on as well. I just also wanted to make the point that I understand that with greater information, that some
things might change. I, I understand that, but it's also disheartening to hear that we could see a suspension increase, because that's just not what we want for our students. But my question relates to, again, coming back to uniformity, and
I'm wondering about what kind of referral forms we're using and if that's something that we could look at being uniform across our schools. Yeah, we certainly could. You know, and I think that a key thing for us that that's an outcome of just
this conversation is the need for, you know, a lot of the questions are, yes questions. If it's a high school, right, if it's all high schools. But when you say all schools, you get you get into a lot of discrepancies. I think that it would be important for us to have an
maybe an elementary school code of conduct in a secondary code of conduct. You asked a question. Someone asked a question about mentoring. We have mentoring in all of our high schools. But when the question is all schools, the answer is no. We don't have mentoring in all of our elementary schools and all of our middle schools. When there
was a question about, you know, support social supports with suspensions, you know, we do have a process where we review all of our suspensions at the conclusion of the school year and examine what social supports were provided, and we should share that data back out with,
with schools, right, so that they see and have an understanding of what's available and also how we're tracking it. But I think, you know, from the very get go of your first question, I it's not developmentally appropriate to have the same exact tools at every single level. So there
needs to be differentiation across, you know, elementary, middle and high school. I don't think we can we should lump secondary just all together either. Right. So then speaking to that, I think it would be something worthwhile looking into that we could have some
more uniform referral form or process for, you know, elementary and then middle and high school. I think that could also really help with the inevitable. As we're looking at ranges here, the inevitable bias that we're trying to eliminate.
That's great feedback. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, Mr. Savona. Yes, I'll try to make this relatively short again. Just want to thank you one more time. I want to say like as we kind of look into some getting some more of the specifics down on paper, I'd love to see some
some like really solid community engagement, especially, you know, with students and parents and, and teachers just to really kind of better understand maybe some data that might be may or may not be presented back to the board. You know, we would always love to see more data, but just
just kind of just kind of wanted to throw that out there. And then I also wanted to mention I skipped my mind, but if I if I have it, I'll come back later. But, you know, I think I just again, I think this testament to the work. Oh here's what it is.
Right. Student code of conduct is usually referenced as like student rights and responsibilities. Right. So we talked a lot about the responsibilities part. Right. What are the responsibilities of the student the expectations of the student. But I think a really big part should also be what are the rights of a student. Right. Like the student
has the opportunity to explain themselves. The student has an opportunity. Like what? What do you get as a function of being a student within our school system? And what is the due process that we give you? Right. And so really making sure that students understand that, you know, we're not here to just come out and punish you. We're
ready to hear your side of the story. But, you know, if you make a mistake, you're going to have consequences for it. But, you know, it's not going to be like one person levying these consequences on you. Like you will have your your fair say your like your ability to say what your what happened on your side of the things and then
really having an autopsy of that at a central level to be able to see where consequences levied fairly. Can we look at all sides and then then we can kind of get into some of the biases that, that we're talking about later on, and really analyzing and deconstructing some of those things. Thank you. Thank you. My
final question and actually it's a suggestion, is related to many of my colleagues. So student code of conduct is updated frequently. It has been yearly each year each year. So what I would like to see if you already
have a plan you can share. But what would like to see is how do you gather ongoing feedback from students and parents of how the code is working in practice? Okay, because it's a new thing.
We're setting new expectations. We have a new process. We're going to collect all. So how is it working in practice? Staff feedback, student feedback, parents feedback we should have approached to collect them. So
welcome to the uncharted territory of where we are is that that has not necessarily been a mechanism that M.C.P.S. Has has explored. And I will say that if there's a criticism to Levy, it's that past changes in
the code of conduct were made in a vacuum, and they were made largely about what we thought we needed to do one way or another, or on the recommendation of school administrators, and did
not really have that feedback loop. One of the reasons that we were really excited about even bringing this forward is because it's not a topic that the board has really entertained or really that has has gotten a lot of public attention, but it gets a lot of public attention in terms
of feedback from the community, in terms of what we hear from public testimony, what we hear when we engage the community. But it doesn't show up in the form of a formal presentation. This, I think, should be an annual discussion of the board, and it should be an annual
discussion of the board in the context of feedback that we're collecting from regular reports that the board presents in terms of data. I will say this. I've I've shared this with a couple of board members already. I'm happy to share this publicly that I'm actually comfortable
with a more frequent data reporting of the number of incidents that we have in schools. I think that that's actually been a weakness of ours. We've been scared to do it because we're scared to talk about it. We it might even surprise some people to know that we are actually a district
that does not suspend very much relative to other school districts. That being said, we shouldn't be afraid to put that information out there. We really need to own this information. We need to put it out there. We need to talk about this in the context of not just consequences
and punishment, but how we maintain safety, how we maintain self-discipline, and what our strategies are and what makes sense to tweak over time. Because how it is right now, it it has the look of being very arbitrary, and it has the look of being a decision making in a
vacuum. And like many things that we've done this year, we're hoping to bring light to things that have been kind of shrouded. And so we welcome this opportunity, even if it means that we are opening ourselves up to possibly some public criticism. We see that public
criticism and feedback as an opportunity to get better. Thank you, Doctor Taylor. Now, colleagues and staff and TV viewers, we have been at this for three hours and eight minutes, so I will call for a short recess because we still
have very two big topics coming up boundary and program analysis and legislative session wrap up. So let's take a five minute break and then reconvene. Miss Yang, president Yang, can I
motion for a five minute recess? Please do. Second. All in favor?
All right.
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the second and even more exciting part of our May 8th, 2025 Board of Education business meeting. Now, before we go on to the next item, I want to do this
item justice is our secondary program analysis, overview and boundary study community Engagement Plan update. So I would like to table some items. Can I have a motion to table some items on our agenda for
future meetings? Move to table which items? The legislative affairs, the legislative. Some update to a later board meeting. Okay, so there's a motion off table item 9.1 Legislative
Session overview. Do I get a second? Second? All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous with those present. Now, to make things official, we earlier decided not to approve
the KLA middle school Ela curriculum. I just want to be on the record to say table the curriculum approval to the next board meeting. May I have a motion? Move to table our curriculum approval till the next board meeting. Second. All
in favor, please raise your hand. Thank you everyone. That's unanimous. With those present. And I think later on, Miss Montoya will join us online. So let's start our next presentation. Doctor Taylor. Thank you, Madam President. My
printed remarks say that I'm excited to bring forward today's presentation. I will say that my excitement was waning, but it's picking back up again because we've we've tabled some items, we're moving things along. And it is a really important topic. And this is becoming a regular
update for the board on, on this critical topic. And something that the board has mentioned is that you want this to be so pervasive that you get stopped everywhere and asked about this. And we also want people to understand that this will impact a very wide majority of the
students and families in our community. And so it's important that we give regular updates about our secondary program analysis and boundary study community engagement plan, which is really the focus for today, though this presentation is primarily about our community
engagement plan revisions tied to the boundary study. Today's presentation will first look at the at a critical decision point tied to our program analysis. The boundary study is designed to make recommendations to determine attendance zones for students. Home school in
selected areas of the county. While the program analysis is a district wide and focused, and while the program analysis is district wide and focused on providing equitable program access, these two parallel studies directly are connected.
Because program capacities in each building will inform the capacity within each school attendance boundary. Essentially, we need to consider which programs each school has and the size or capacity of each
program at the same time as we determine the capacity of each attendance boundary zone. So there's a lot of moving parts here. Consequently, as a as we conduct this boundary study conversation, frequent questions are raised about programs. And that's why we're we're doing
these things together. The goal of the secondary program analysis is to ensure that all students have access to high quality programs that meet their interests, meet the interests of the community, reflect the needs of our of industry in the region, and optimize our
resources. As a school system, we know that we have high interest programs with barriers to access, including limited capacity and geographic location. One of the most significant barriers to access is often student transportation.
Its availability, the time of travel, and of course, the distance. The hard reality that we're facing today is that we do not have capacity to expand transportation services for our current portfolio of programs
without making significant changes to the programs themselves. Similarly, providing enough program capacity to meet the level of our students interests will require more than expanding our current offerings. With those things in mind, we
are at an important juncture in our program analysis and boundary study journey. We will need to consider options and adopt a model for programs that will synchronize with our capacity for each attendance zone or or high school home
attendance boundary. One option would be to maintain our current structure with some minor adjustments, and to provide limited transportation services. As we're doing right now. This has some advantages, namely that we can manage the change easily
with this approach, and this approach does not get us, although this approach does not get us the level of equitable access that comports with our school system values or that the community is really seeking. So that's one of the limitations.
Another option that we're exploring is to establish regions across the district. And that was even mentioned earlier today to create parallel program options across all areas of the county. This approach allows us to increase access to program opportunities while also
reducing the distance to programs and expanding program capacity in more schools. With this option, we could provide both transportation and similar program access throughout the entire county. Looking through the equity lens, this appears to
be more aligned with the goals, with our goals, and a more favorable option. That being said, these are big decisions ahead for us and for our community. It is an exciting time to be in Montgomery County for sure. So let's dive right in. It's my pleasure to
introduce our Chief Academic Officer, Niki Hazel, who will begin the presentation and kick it off from there. All right. Good afternoon. I'm excited to be here as well, to talk about our work with the program
analysis. And our partners will also talk about the boundary community engagement plan. If you can go to the next slide please. Just a reminder that as we look at program analysis, we are really focusing on ensuring equitable access. And we want to
make sure that access is happening across our district. And so our analysis is for the entire district. And the boundary studies again is focused on particular areas. And they are focused mostly today on the community engagement plan.
If you go to the next slide, as Doctor Taylor outlined in his opening, this is just a visual representing what he just shared. First option is really to take a look at our current existing programs and make some
slight enhancements to what we currently have, but we would still run into some issues around transportation and likely issues around equitable programing across the district.
The second option is represents the other option that he shared, which is having regions within our school district. And in this model to option number two shows
six regions. And you can see there that there are schools within each region. And the idea behind this concept is that each region would have similar programs. So for example, we could have health sciences if
that was something that elevated as a program of interest that there could be health science sciences programs in each region. They may not be exact, but they would be very similar. And that would allow students to
have easy access to that program within their region. So we this is a concept that we are really exploring. If you go to the next slide, you can see just a reminder of our goals. We've
been working with a cross office stakeholder group. I say cross office. We have some folks from offices, but community, mostly of about 70 individuals who are representing all areas of our school district. And when we
meet with them, we are really making sure that we outline these goals each time. We want to ensure that all of our local schools are strong. We want to ensure that there's equitable programing happening in each
school. We want to make sure that we are hearing from our students in terms of what they feel is important for programing. So we're looking at the data and we're also going out and talking to students. We want to hear from our community
members about what they believe are really strong programs for the future. And then we're also looking at industry needs, industry demand. So that's an area that is really critical as we do this work. And then of course, we're looking at our resources, transportation. What
are our what buildings do we have. So we're looking at all of those components as well. So those are the things we're keeping in mind as our group is thinking about programs. So if you go to the next slide, we
meet with a group weekly. And we have shared with them those two options. And we've gotten a lot of really good feedback from that from our group around the second option of the regions. But they also have a lot of really good questions that
they've been asking. And you can see some of the questions that are listed there. But the theme is really around how do we make sure that each region is equal in terms of resources, in terms of high quality instruction? How do we make sure that there's
diversity across the district as we put the regions together? So those are just some of the questions. But they have been wonderful about really great questions that we need to think through as we do this work. I do want to say it is not the work
of this group to determine what the regions are going to be. We are really just focused on what the programs will be for each of the regions. If you go to the next slide. Again, I shared that we are meeting with the group
weekly, and we do appreciate their commitment to this work. They're very much engaged, and we also have been going out to students. So we've been going to Blake High School, Damascus Kennedy, Richard Montgomery,
Gaithersburg, Springbrook, and we are also meeting with students in the Identity After School program at Watkins Mill High School. And we've been getting a lot of really great feedback from students about what they would like to see from programs. And then finally, we
are doing a survey that we've put have put out to the community. We've gotten some great responses, but we are continuing to work with our family engagement office to get more feedback, working with schools, working with principals so that we can hear from all of
our families at different levels elementary, middle and high about what they are interested in. And then we will expect the survey to close on the 15th of this month, and we will be back to the board meeting on May 22nd
to share our initial thinking around programs based on their feedback. So at this time, I'm going to hand it over to the boundary. Good afternoon. So next slide please. So we are here to talk about the main key
points from our community engagement plan. But before we do we wanted to kind of point out some of the recurring questions that we have been getting in our initial meetings that we have had. And throughout our feedback process that we have from the community, and
wanted to talk a few about some of these questions to answer them here. Before we dive, dove into the community engagement plan itself, I want to give a plug to our website for the boundary study. These questions are now updated onto the Boundary study web page. There
is a section for Frequently asked questions, so we would expect everybody and request everybody to visit that page often. Because these questions these are, you know, some of the questions that we have received. But we continue to receive more questions. And those will be updated throughout throughout
the boundary study process. So I want to talk about some of the questions we are receiving. So one of the first ones that we have heard over and over is why are so many middle and high schools included in each boundary study scope, especially those that aren't close to the new high schools? So the
reopening of the Woodward High School, as well as the new Crown High School and the expansion of Damascus High School, was set up to help alleviate several overcrowded high schools in the study areas, the boundary study is necessary to populate these schools and to help relieve overcrowding, and so at the
middle school level, it is going to be necessary for us to identify feeder schools to the Woodward and Crown and a better balance utilization in the middle school level, which is why we have 19 of our high schools involved in this study, as well as 31 more middle schools. So a total of 50
schools are involved. Another question we received is how did the boundary study impact families with young children? Even the elementary schools are not included in the scope of the boundary study, which is a great question, and we want to make sure that the families do understand that families that
have children in the elementary school during this study, we're not going to be looking at the boundaries for the elementary schools themselves. However, the assignments and articulation for these students that are in the elementary school could change
as as a result of this study. So the middle schools they're going to attend in the future, as well as the high school could change. So this is how the families are going to be impacted. We want to make sure this is clear to the families. So all the families that have schools in the elementary school are also paying attention to the boundary
study progress. We're getting questions about any of the factors in the board policy weighted more heavily than the others. Just a quick reminder the board has for policy factors that are in listed in policy FAA, and these are demographic
characteristics of the student populations, geography, stability of school assignment over time. And. Facility utilization. And then we want to reiterate that these factors are
weighed equally. And not one of them takes precedence over the others. So when we do develop a recommendation to the board, we will provide a rationale for each recommendation that demonstrates the extent to which any of the recommendation advances. Each of the four
factors. The other question we received is how can we give feedback on the boundary study options, and how does my feedback factor into the decision making progress? So this is one of the very important questions. We want to make sure that the, you know, people are aware of the many different ways that they can
engage. Obviously, the public information meetings, we're going to share a little bit of information about that later in this presentation is a great way for people to engage their. Forms on our website, where they can put in their comments, as
well as there will be opportunities during the board's presentation and workshop later in the year in the study process, where they can provide input. And we're going to be capturing all these through the survey results as well as the comments that we get. And we'll be providing that on a periodic
basis to both the superintendent and the Board of Education. That's going to be factored into the decision making process. When will the new boundaries go into effect, and which grades will Crown High School and Woodward High School open with? So that's a question we're getting as well. The boundary
study is going into effect in August of 2027. That's when the new high schools will open. It's been standard practice that new high schools open with ninth and 10th grade. That would be the recommendation made to the board. And same thing with the middle school. If any changes in the boundary affect sixth and
seventh grade will be the affected changes, with the eighth grades allowed to remain in their current school. Just want to remind everybody that ultimately the decision about, you know, which grades we start with as well as which grades
remain depends. You know, obviously that's a board decision. What our school zones and how do they factor into the boundary studies, which is also another question we've been getting developed for middle and high schools will be developed in coordination with our
transportation department. We're working closely hand in hand with them. The Department of Transportation analyzes safety and walkability conditions to recommend appropriate walk zones and routes to schools in alignment with board policy. Typically, the. According to the board's policy, a two mile walk
zone is established for high schools and 1.5 mile walk zone is established for middle schools. The next slide please. So the during our last board meeting with the when we were
talking with the board members, we you know some of the key points that was highlighted and identified by the board members are purpose and goals. And the you know, we want to make sure
for all our meetings that the stakeholders that we're presenting them with an opportunity to review the initial boundary options and provide feedback. So this is we're focusing this discussion on the upcoming meetings, which we'll talk about a little bit more. But we want to make sure that we provide the stakeholders
with an opportunity to review the options and give us feedback based on the options that are presented. Timeline and milestones. We will. We have identified the dates and times and locations. We'll go over that a little bit later in the presentation and locations for
these initial options sessions, and then we'll provide information to the community about the accompanying survey, how they can take it, accessibility of information and resources. So language and other accessibility services will be available to allow for greater
participation, as well as in-person and virtual sessions for flexibility and scheduling, giving people as many opportunities as possible to engage with us. Outreach and community representation. The visibility and expectation for participation in these phases will expand greatly compared to
the information session we had, which we had last month, and stakeholders will get an opportunity to review the options in this process, and they will get a chance to explore the initial options for both the boundary studies and provide feedback, and it will be
important for the information about these sessions to be shared widely. So we're going to try to reach out to as many people as possible through many different ways. We'll talk about those in a second as well. And then we will be continuously monitoring and for any upgrades and modifications need needed,
based on the feedback that we receive from the board members as well as the community members, to allow us to ensure that we're maximizing meaningful participation and engagement throughout this process. The next slide, please. Just a quick
reminder about our board policy, FAA facilities planning, demographic characteristics of students is one of the factors. So the goal is to create diverse student body in each of the affected schools in alignment with board policy, geography is
the other factor taking into account the geographic proximity of the communities to schools, as well as articulation and traffic patterns and transportation patterns. Stability of school assignment make sure the assignments stay stable over a long period of time as possible, so we're not
moving students frequently, and then facility utilization is the remaining factor, with the goal of utilizing 80 to 100%. Utilization for all of our middle schools and high schools
as much as possible. And obviously, being fiscally responsible to minimize capital and operating costs whenever possible. I'm going to now pass it over to Miss Molchany to talk us about the resources as well as upcoming meetings. Thank you.
Next slide please. Okay, so we just wanted to take a second. Adnan had mentioned this earlier that we've been really trying to update the website. We've been listening to people and saying, why is this down here? Can you move this? Can you find this? So
every day I think I'm sending emails saying, can we fix this? And so a couple of the highlights. We just wanted to remind you that there is the ask a question, as Adnan pointed out, that really has informed our first round of FAQs. The questions that were asked that
are more specific to the actual initial options, like is my neighborhood going to be impacted? Obviously, we can't answer those yet because those are very specific, but you can see that the first round of FAQs are up. We read them very fast because we want to get to the
discussion part, but they are there and you can spend some time looking at them. Our policies and regulations are available and now we have the upcoming engagement opportunities for the initial rounds, which we'll talk about in a second. We are going to post the initial survey results.
We will share them with you. And then in two slides I'm going to talk about the interactive tool. Next slide please. Okay. So we are in the May or June initial options phase which is about to
start. So we have meetings scheduled in schools that are included in the scope for each of the two boundary studies. What we decided to do was to start with virtual sessions so
that people could join, listen, participate, get information, and then from there determine whether or not they would want to participate in an in-person session. I can tell you from the rsvp's that we have been getting that the majority of people are
selecting the virtual sessions, and so for us, that's really helpful to know, because we were hesitant to do that because it felt more impersonal. However, we're seeing, at least from the initial, that that is really what people are interested in. The other thing that we did
based on feedback is we have the sessions running as hour long sessions, and you can see the agenda is listed that shows people exactly what's going to happen in that hour. That was another piece of feedback that we got that people felt like in the information around, Will you talk to us for two hours? That's
not interesting. It's not engaging. And you took a lot of my time, which is fair. So you can see in terms of locations, we met with our community project team. They looked at the maps and so on the map. We're
trying to start close to the impacted areas where the new schools will be and kind of spread out from there. And so you'll see that also what's available in May and June. Sometimes it's a little tricky to get access to our buildings, but they've been wonderful and very accommodating. I'm going to
talk as well about sort of this idea of the additional hybrid and virtual sessions, because this is something that we have felt strongly about, and I have heard in the other presentations today has really been something that's been lacking. And so we
just want to, as we've given a big shout out to our comms department for constantly updating and making changes based on all the feedback, we would also like to give a big shout out to Miss Elba Garcia, who is going to be the Deputy Chief for the Division of
Family, Community and Engagement and we are so excited to partner with her because I've been working with her for several years, and now we really get to have access to her full office, which is currently called Parent Community Coordinators who work
in schools and who have relationships with families and who have the ability to communicate with families in ways that we just may not be as able to. And so she has come up with a plan where they're coming to all of our meetings to really
sort of wrap their heads around the content. And then they're also doing sort of smaller versions of these meetings in their communities. And we're so excited, so thankful and excited about that, because it's really the idea of how do you do this?
Well, this is what we're going to do. We're going to have them in our spaces so they get a sense of what the content is. We're working with her to come up with sort of a shortened version of it that can be translated well, not just Google translated, but translated well, so that there's understanding.
And then our colleagues will go out into those spaces and be able to have those sessions and give us that feedback. So we're super excited about that part of it. And we just want to give a really big shout out to her and to some of our other partners who are also have offered and
who are willing to do that. Work with us as well. Next slide please. Okay. And this was the big thing, I started to talk about this at our last meeting, and I brought my phone this time so you could see. So in addition to in-person meetings and some
of these sort of more creative versions that we're talking about, there are people who will not be able to engage in these ways. I have to leave right after this to go drive to Baltimore for cheer tryouts for worlds teams. And I will be sitting in my car. And so I have
my phone. So what we are designing for the interactive piece of this, which will be available to everyone, everyone, regardless of whether or not you RSVP to a session or attend a session, is a tool where you'll be able to see. Let's say there
are three options for the Charles Woodward Reopening Boundary study. I can click on a video that will show me highlights of that option related to the factors. I can click on map and see my little interactive map as well as some
static maps. And then I can click on the data and see the accompanying data tables that some people are very interested in looking at in terms of each option. And then at the bottom you see that little blue hand. You click on the survey and you fill out the survey. And so what
this allows us to do is to reach people in person, reach people online, reach people in places where they are more comfortable with people they are more comfortable with, and reach people who have to go sit in the car for two hours and really want to participate, but maybe
not in the way that's always been thought of as a traditional way to participate. And so again, this is our best thinking for our initial round. We are actually coming back before we do this, so if we have any other great ideas, we'll be very excited to share those as well.
But we really wanted to use this opportunity to say we have thought long and hard about a lot of the feedback we've gotten, and have really tried to come up with ways to meet people where they are and give them everything they need to participate in any way that is
comfortable to them, just like any other person who would be potentially impacted by this next slide, please. Thank you so much. We'll turn it over to discussion. Yes. All right. Wonderful colleagues. We are
going to structure our questioning into two parts. First, we will solely focus on the program analysis. And then when that's wrapped up we'll move on to the boundary study community engagement. All right. So we are going to go for the
secondary program analysis I'm going to start this slide with Miss Stewart. Go ahead Miss Stewart okay. Simple question. The website by the way. It looks great. Yay. But I actually
haven't checked the program website yet. But can we please link to the program website on our boundary website and on our boundary website. You know, vice versa? I believe the messaging
that's going out tonight, if I'm correct, has that information so that it will link back and forth. Okay. Because on the website itself, I just looked at the boundary website. I don't see a link to the program because to tell you the truth, like a lot of people, because
we're doing them at the same time, they are kind of inter related. They're not going to realize, oh yes, that's where the survey is over there, because we have the survey for the programs and I think it's still open. Correct? Yes, absolutely. Programs are still
open until the 15th, until the 15th. And so there is a message going out that will combine. Awesome. Okay. So anyway, simple question. I'll come back with more. Thank you. Now colleagues, the same incentive if no comment
you ask two questions. If you have a long comment, maybe a very short question. All right, Miss Wolff, I want to just tack on to what Laura said. I in my community, they don't seem to understand where they are in any
of this process. So I would like to see information going out specifically to them in the Northeast Consortium, Rockville High School, Magruder. And there was a third one that was in it.
Was it which one was it? It was a third one. That's not a part of the boundary study, but they need to know that they are a part of something. And what that exactly is because they're not sure. So just the idea of linking the two will help,
because if you're talking about going to possibly a regional, you know, regional models, they need to know that they ought to pay attention to everything, not just the program analysis. And I think right now when I'm talking
to them, I'm telling them that part of it because we haven't gotten any further, but they're not sure where they are in this, this whole process. Thank you for that comment. I'm looking at this site, Miss Silvestre. Yeah,
just I think we heard testimony about the programs and I think I think everybody wants equity of programs throughout the county. The question is, how are you going to ensure that they're all well resourced? We know that the
school community contributes greatly to, you know, add ons to the core program. So I think that's the resourcing is the question that we need to be able to answer. And what do you tell people when they ask that
question? I, I t is a part of the discussion that is happening when we meet with our community. That's probably one of the biggest areas that they want to ensure. Like, this sounds great, but we want to make sure that
it's well resourced and that we have strong teachers in all of those programs. And so as we after we get through this first phase of identifying what those programs will be, then the next phase really is and how do we make this happen? And we need to
build that out and really talk about, you know, what is what are the non-negotiables and what is a must in terms of those programs being very strong and building that out. So that's really becomes phase two. Yeah. So maybe for now, just getting more feedback on what would you
like to see to rest assured that there will these programs will be well resourced regardless of what part of the county they will be in. Yes. Thank you, thank you. All right, Miss Rivera, thank you. So for the
secondary program analysis, when I go in the website, I see the boundary study link. And most people live on their phones these days, like many of us do. So if the survey is closing on
May 15th, I was trying to look for the for the link to just push on it. Yes, we have a message, a new message coming out. Okay, okay. That would be that would be great because we're already at what is today
the eighth and ninth. It might be the ninth by the time we're done. I. I just think, you know, and our communications committee last night, it was very clear
that people's spam of, of attention is very short and, and I think, you know, Mr. Graham actually should be sitting at this table because, you know, he knows what I'm talking about. You like, literally don't have even a minute. You have seconds
to capture people's attention. Right. And if it's too cumbersome or too long, you lose them. So unfortunately, that's the society we live in. But I think if the message is very clear how important it is that this can affect not only personally your child, but it
can affect your community as a whole and how important the input is to be able to change. And look at some of the inequities that we are seeing and that we have heard for years about the access to certain programs. Right, because people
want to understand, well, if I want my kid to do this, they have to be picked up in Takoma Park, and they have to be driven all the way to Poolesville. If I want my kid to do such and such, they have to go to, you know, they have to be picked up from Poolesville, go to go to Blair.
Like, why? Why is that? Right? So explaining some of these options and how that would affect them I think is really important. And I feel for you. Let me just say that because this is heavy lifting, right?
Because communities don't like to take surveys. I don't care how well you speak English or whatever language, just surveys are not just a thing that we like to do. So I guess the messaging for me has to kind of
be be clear. And thank you so much for, you know, for having this as part of this, because that is, I think, very key because she works with a very, very diverse group of folks, not just, you know, the Spanish community, but she works for like a very, you know, just
folks who get information in a different way. And, and then they respond, maybe not through service, but a different way. So I'm just wondering if you once you, you come back to us and maybe you didn't get a good response. Instead of starting
over, maybe now with the survey, maybe if there's other options where people can give feedback to you guys. Besides, besides the survey, I don't know. You guys are doing the work, but I guess for me, it's also making
sure that we hear voices that we usually don't don't hear. And maybe a survey might not be the most you know, I know it's the easiest, but it might not might not be the best way. So if you have other, have you been thinking about maybe other, you
know, avenues in order to capture that information? Thank you. We're still on the program evaluation. Yeah. So from the program's perspective, we have we started off strong with participation. And then we kind
of got a little bit of a lull. So yes. So we are we've regrouped and working with Elba and Chris Cram to rethink our communications. So we have something new coming out today.
And we also are going to be working with, like I said, our principals to get things out, newsletters, going to some parent meetings. We're also going to be doing some work in some of our communities. So we definitely know that there's a
we've talked about it earlier, certain populations of our community that we want to hear from more that we're going out specifically to, to hear from. So yes, we're trying to and but I will say the survey is not cumbersome. It's to address
that. It's very simple. And it gets immediately to the point it just and it then lists different types of interests that families may have. But it is short. It gets to some of the demographic
information that we want to have from our parents. It asks about transportation in terms of distance. And it's very simple for families to fill out quickly, very quickly. One thing we heard from the community last night from the different groups
demographically, geographically, they said it's so important to have the principals buy into this because they are very trusted adults, right? In a sense, among the families and the students. So if they see that as a priority from the principal and the principal
says, please fill, fill this, this out for us, you, you can actually get a better return for your money. Maybe I know there's light from Mr. Savona and Miss Montoya is online. I actually
see Mr. Cram in the audience. Maybe he can come up. Since principals names have been mentioned a few times. I know he has a plan about how to and Miss Elva to push this to. And then I
was going to save Miss Albert for the later on the PCC discussion for the boundary. So I want her to sit tight. She will have a chance to share later on. Okay, miss cram, please go ahead. So yes, in fact, some of the updates that
you wanted to the website, Miss Stewart, I was doing from the back of the room just now. Yes, the program study does have the boundary study web page connected there, and as of a moment ago, the boundary study page has the link to the program study page. So in real time oh my goodness, thank you. But as
member Grace Rivera-Oven has pointed out that our meeting last night with the Board of Education Communications Advisory Committee pointed out many, many great and important ways that are not surprising to us for how we can engage with our community. We fully understand how important
communications for both of these programs, both of these projects is, and we're going to be doing that very thoroughly. I'm Ms. Garcia is still sitting in the audience, but we're working very closely together, even though we're not close at the moment. Please come to the table. And
now she's at the other end of the table, but we're working very closely together to make sure that this communication, this outreach, this engagement is going to be very thorough. One part that is something that you know very deeply is that we can write, we can post, we can
be in social media, we can do all the things that we typically do in simple ways. But until we truly engage in our face to face, often in the other languages that are spoken in our community, have we really engaged? You know, one of the quotes I like to use often is that one of the greatest
illusions in communications is that it has occurred. You can't presume that it has occurred. So you must be very thorough. You must saturate. You must measure against what you've done. Have you been successful as your discussion about the survey, with the program analysis, and how can we make sure that we're getting to audiences that maybe
it hasn't reached yet? So we've got to pause and do that analysis so that we do a better job throughout the project. Can you specifically talk about principal? I ask you to come forward to talk about how to engage our principal, to engage the community. So the last two
weekends I've sent templated messages and requested that they use those messages in their weekend updates. The curriculum office has prepared and done the very same thing, and I'm going to repeat that message tomorrow so they'll get it both from me and from Miss Hazel's office.
And I think we're using ever more emphatic tones to encourage them to put it in their weekend messages. But as we all know, the principals are some of our most trusted communicators. And when families hear from them, they very often listen more
closely than when they hear from Montgomery County Public Schools. So they're one of our networks and trusted partners in this. So you are pushing it out to the principals, and we'll be doing again this weekend. Thank you so much, Miss Garcia. You will have a chance later on. All
right, Mr. Savona, please go ahead. Yes. I just wanted to, you know, thank the ever expanding table for all the work that they've done, you know, as, as a student, particularly pertaining to programs who's gone to multiple programs,
schools actually my freshman year, for those of you who don't know, I went to Richmond. Montgomery. I had an hour bus ride and then I, I at the end of the year, I was like, I can't I can't continue to do this. And so then I transferred back to my home school. So that's one thing
I want to be very, very, very clear. I think we need to keep keep the things that we're very good at doing and just expand them. Right. I think, you know, looking at some of our models, I think we have great models and I, I really hesitate to I just
want to make sure that we're not trading one type of equity for another. Right. And so that when, when we're looking at this program evaluation, that we're really making sure it's being done with fidelity, like and I know that's going to be, you know, the central theme, the central topic to all of this, but maintaining, you know, the high level of excellence that
some of our programs are known for expanding some of our other programs and really figuring out what students want out of their school and how to make their school environment a lot more interesting. Right? I mean, the big reason why I chose to go to Montgomery is because I wanted to be really engaged in, in a
school community, on an academic side. Right. And then when it came down to my extracurriculars and being able to do that alongside my academics, it wasn't able to work for me because, again, because I had a very difficult time with with the bus ride and, and all of that, and especially because I was doing some unconventional
extracurriculars at the time. So again, that's speaking for a little bit more for me. But I know a lot of students who are in the same boat, especially when we think about some of our schools that are a little bit more out of the way, like Poolesville. Right. And some of the bus rides there. I have
friends who are on an hour and a half bus rides from Poolesville. And those are those are always really, really tough. So I just want to it's not really a question, right. But I just want to be very clear when whenever we're looking at this program evaluation, let's I want there
to be very consistent communication with students and outreach to see what what do you want out of a program? What are you trying to gain out of this program? Why did you choose to come here? Why would you choose to come here? Right. And what were some deciding factors in this decision? Right. And I
think part of that outreach should really be, you know, because we don't want to assume that a student wants one program for one thing and another program for another thing, when we might just be missing the point altogether. Right? I'm not here to say what that point is or isn't, but to say we really
need to kind of figure out as a community what what our students are looking for, and then do our best to provide that. Thank you, thank you, thank you for always advocating for our student voice, Miss Montoya. Hi. I don't
have any comments or questions. Not at the moment. All right. Miss. No thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to also make sure that our staff is included in this too, when that's going out to them, particularly as there
are two choices. And as Mr. Cervano is talking about student commute, there's also the staff commute element of it. And if their program is changing schools and all that, like, I think we could also all from the table, speak to the educators that we know that really
advocate for the programs that they love. And I think this would be a great avenue for them to do that as well. Thank you. All right. I have a question. Very simple ones. Some of our high schools have signature programs that's specific to the
school. Walter Johnson has apex. One school might have Academy of Finance. That's their signature program. Does this include count that as our offerings or does does not count that in our program analysis. So that's a
good question. We want to make sure as we're doing this program analysis and looking at the regions that if there are individual schools that have those signature programs and they're running well, that we may just leave them to be a part
of that local school program. But in some cases, it may be if we find that from the students and from our community and our survey, that it's something that more want, that it may be something that we have in all of
our regions. So we are really keeping things open at this time to look at the data. But if there are those signature programs in local schools that are special and unique to that school, and they're working very well, we want to honor that and keep that. Now then my second
very short question is special education programs. We have a lot of different kind of special education programs. Some has a some is very largely needed,
like autism program, but others is more tailored to very for example, we have some programs that are smaller for people who have severe like Longview or whatever. So when we look at this program analysis, are we
thinking about geographic parities for special education programs, or are we taking a special approach to special education programs? We will be taking a special approach. We are not looking at special education at this time. We are
specifically looking at the second high school programs. But special education is a part of this larger program analysis as well as our pre-K programs, because we want to ensure that
we have programs, again, equitably placed that there's transportation. But we also know with changing leadership, with special education, we wanted to make sure that that they were a part of this, this analysis as
well. So there there will be joining the programs analysis, but not at this time. This time it's just secondary high school academic programs, not including. And so there's some very good reasons as to why we would do that beyond just leadership changes as well.
These are the things that are going to be massive drivers to capacity. And so the reason that this is such an important decision point or inflection point is because in order for us to draw attendance zones, we really do need to have a good idea of how much program
capacity to allow for in each school. I usually reserve adverse comments or bad news for miss McGuire to deliver. But. But I'll make an exception for today and say it will not
surprise you to learn that, you know, we our distribution of special education programs is not equitable. It is something that we have to include in this process, although it can be part of the process. That's much later because the capacity impacts are are less
significant. And that's really what it's about is how do we have a numbers management component to this that can can free up the boundary work to, to occur without us locking us into too many decisions too early on in the process in general. And
something else that we could, we could improve upon with our special education program is that we really do need to do a better job of serving more of our students closer to their attendance zone. Absolutely. And the two hour bus ride and the lengthy bus rides are not a good solution for our students with
disabilities. They're not a good solution, really, for any of our students. So if we have that sensitivity, that needs to be something that's included in our planning, it is. But right now, our program decision inflection point is really about how we can can draw the boundary lines and
make the boundary line process work a little faster. Okay. And then I go, Mr. And Miss Savannah. Then we'll move on to the second part. Mr. This is a really important question, and it might be complicated to
answer, but please do your best. Consortium versus regions. This is a hot topic. Yeah I see Doctor Taylor is jumping on it. Sure, sure. Well like like all things, you know, I don't think that we're locked into one
option or another, but it is an opportunity for us to revisit. And, you know, the perfect thing that we have that works to our favor, which it's wonderful that we actually have something working to our favor, at least from a program lens. Maybe not from a boundary lens, is that we
have a two year runway, so a lot can be ironed out and a lot can can make sense. I think one of the challenges that we've experienced with the consortia is that not all of the program opportunities within the consortia have the level of
access that we, we really think reflects our values and the volume and quality of programing may be not representative of what we want as well. So I think whether you call it a consortium or whether you call it a region or we're doing what we're doing
in other parts of the county, this is just wholesale an opportunity to say, is this really working for us? And if it's not, this is an opportunity for us to make a turn. If there are elements that we like that are working for us, we would
want to preserve those things. So maybe let we're going to try to not get caught up in the words per se, so much as the ideas, and try to land the idea that makes the most sense for, for folks in the community to help in that, though, as we move forward, I think it would be
really good to get some of that data on the consortia of who actually gets to go to what school and what choice, etc. Anyway, just so we can level set before we move on, because I
think some people might be surprised at that data, but I haven't seen it yet. So thank you, Mr. Savona, and I'll keep this one short, but I just want to ask our extracurriculars and, you know, some other, you know, academic offerings that might
not be at every school considered in, you know, some of this program management or program planning. We have not talked about extracurriculars, okay. Only some of the unique
school, local programs that we want to hold dear to those schools, but not anything beyond that, but certainly can be a part of this discussion in a later phase. Yeah, I don't want to expand the scope or anything right now. I know, I know, you
all are already doing amazing work, but I just wanted to kind of, you know, put that idea, which can be put a pin into to talk about, to be talked about later. All right. Let's move on to the second portion, which is the boundary study community engagement. Miss Garcia, any new
anythings you want to add on to the presentation that has just been shared? Well, first of all, hi. Good afternoon, everyone. I want you to know that even though I sit in the back, I do hear you loud and clear that the key priority of the board and
the plan is to improve our outreach and to engage the communities that we haven't heard in the past. So what you heard a little bit about what Cao was saying and what is in your engagement plan is how do we best utilize our resources? And, you know, we have resources
within our people, our PCC, our very resourceful in their engagement with their communities that they serve. And I think part of the plan is to leverage what they bring to the table, create opportunities for them to meet with their constituents at a time and a place, and with the information
that has been curated or has been scaffolded, so that it is understandable by the populations that we're trying to reach. So part of the plan includes them adding supplemental meetings to the meetings. I mean, you still, if you are linguistically and culturally diverse, staff member
or a parent that wants to engage in the larger meetings, of course, by all means we will still have interpretation and anything else that you need to be able to participate in that meeting. But for the families that we're really trying to reach, the PCC will be able to take a chunk of the information,
share with them, take notes so that you're able to then share information, feedback that is not a survey. I am not a survey fan either, and that will be able to inform. And the hope is that this is the beginning of establishing something that is
more current, that happens on a on a regular basis, so that any other service, any other engagement that we need, we don't have to be reaching out to people. We will actually come to an existing group. And I got to tell you yesterday I was super
blown away by the engagement and the community advisory group. I think that is a great example of how you involve community to engage community. So I'm really looking forward to see if we can put to practice some of the ideas that they share that were really, really out of the box.
As we continue to develop this engagement plan. Miss Garcia, just for clarification. Yes. Does all our schools have a PCC? Do our secondary schools have a PCC? Do you even envision this cluster, multiple school
meetings or single school meetings? So for this particular engagement, which is happening this current school year, what we're talking about is using the PCC s that are language specific. So it's using the one that is the Korean speaker, the Chinese speaker, the Spanish
speakers to reach out to those language groups at this moment. Then, depending on how we evolve in the next year and how those PCC are assigned, and we'll have a couple strategies that we can use depending on the outcome. Thank you. Thank you colleagues.
Any questions? Mr. I just want to ask so the community project team, the one that's meeting once a week, is someone from either community engagement and community engagement and.
Communications attending those as well. Okay. Great. Because I think, you know, being that they are meeting weekly and they're also out in the community, they I'm sure have a lot of good input. And again, the goal is
that no one is caught by surprise about what this is. And get those questions coming in, because I know there should. The FAQ is probably going to grow as this keeps growing out into the
community, because I've heard some things that already that I'm like, yeah, that's not right. But that's just because there's very little really hard information out there yet. So as this goes, as it grows, I'm sure
we'll get lots of more, more questions and also find out where the holes are and use our these meetings to fill in those gaps. So thank you. Thank you, Miss Rivera-Oven. Thank you so
much. I know there's a lot going on. And again, this is heavy lifting for you guys. But one of the things that I. As as somebody who has so much going on and I can just imagine, you
know, when I had kids just multitasking so many things. I was boundary three times and I had the same address. So I still have the scars from the last meeting in Germantown. It was
not it was not pretty. So with that being said, I really appreciate all these sessions. I just want them to be very clear on the times that they're one hour and people just can come in and come out, that they can actually access them later. I just want to make sure that they
they understand that access is, you know, on their side. One of the things we heard and I thought it was brilliant was. Is there a way when you were talking about going in there and
looking at these different, different options to just kind of like I go in there, I put my address right? And then when I put my address, it pops up and says, these would be your
options. So this is how would you be affected by this boundary change. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Why yes, we were actually playing with it earlier this week and putting our addresses in and testing it. We've heard that from everyone. And so we actually are planning
on having that, because what we heard loud and clear, especially from our community project team, was that some people are literally like, what about me? How does this impact me? I want to type my address in, look, vote, you know, give feedback
and carry on with my life. And we are okay with people wanting that information before engaging. If that's how we can get them to engage. And so we're acknowledging that for some people that is the reality of it. Yeah. And that just to me
makes so much sense because then I can tell another parent, oh, by the way, because some parents don't know, some parents don't think this is going to affect them. Right? Because we're looking at the middle school and high schools. But then, right, if you put your address, then you'll know if you have an
elementary school kid that this is a possibility, then that this is going to affect you down the road. So that is to me, so, just so important when I'm looking at your schedule. I see Wheaton, John F Kennedy, Northwest, and
Richard Montgomery. Are you going to have a session at Clarksburg or Seneca or Damascus or Poolesville? Yes. So what we did is for the map, we started
really close to the area that, you know, sort of would contain the schools, and then we're going out from there. And then given the dates and the times we reached out to the schools to ask for space based on sort of the priority of proximity, and then we're growing out from
there. And so I have my map where I am keeping track of the big locations where we are, and then we'll be adding in the smaller ones so that we can really see. It's almost like a heat map of where we're going. And because our survey for this round, our RSVP, everything will
be tagged with location demographics. We'll be able to see so much more of who we're reaching and how. And you did mention Watkins Mill earlier on that I misheard you. So the schools included in the scope and on our map we're matching it
and we're going from there. And I have a very intricate spreadsheet where we're tracking all of that because math major. And my last question is, how are you going to handle the challenge of, yes, these people are going to, you know, this is for boundary studies, but you're
still going to have people who who are going to want to share about the programs, right? They're still going to be like, you know, I know the survey is over. You can I just say, oh, yeah, the survey is over. So we don't care. So how you're going to balance that when people want to talk about both and take that
feedback during this process. So I can answer a little bit and then I will probably turn it over to Nikki. But together. Together, because the work is so connected that we spend a lot of time together, we plan together,
we're going to have to work together to make sure that information that's shared with us is shared with that team. If it is directly related to the work that they're doing, and vice versa. And we're also in many spaces together so that we can hear what is going on and be
aware of it, so that we're also getting that feedback as we're going through our process. But like you said, it is very challenging. Thank you. No, I, I agree I mean, we are doing a lot of this together. I do think that at some point, I mean,
we're we're kind of working this way parallel. And at some point we, we have to intersect and, and probably take our, our work together out into the communities. But right now we're trying to keep some of this
separate in terms of being very clear about and I understand that. But I don't think sometimes the community will understand that. So you're going to you're going to have them, you know, you're going to have them there and they're going to want to tell you their piece about the programing before they even tell you about the boundary. And I'm just want to
make sure that I guess both teams are, are there because I this is what I, this is my concern. It shouldn't be one or the other. Right. It should be. Well, today we just, you know going to talk just about the boundary thing because I think
then you turn people off and you make them angry. Okay. So this is already an unpleasant thing for a lot of people because of previous experiences, right? So I think part of it is to ensure that people are able to, to share what they need to share,
but for you to take that information and see how it's going to be valuable to making decisions, whether it's programing or boundary, because I think right now there's a little even folks who are very involved, they're not seeing that difference. They're kind of
seeing this as something that is together. And I just want to make sure that as a system, we're able to take both and then digest it, if that makes sense. Miss Silvestre. So have you
shared a communications plan for the boundary study with the board? Where could I find that? I'm hearing I'm hearing principal message, but in order to saturate the community, this
is a campaign, right? I need to see. Could you just remind me where that communications plan is? So we have shared the draft communication plan with the board via email, and we will send it in your bulletin tomorrow as well. We wanted to have this conversation so that
we could more fully bring the feedback into that plan before we publish it more broadly. So we'll be happy to be sure you have that draft. But we're also going to be, again, continuing to expand it based on this conversation. And how will you handle the summer? Because we always say that the summer
people check out principles aren't shooting emails to the to the community. So that's a that's a critical couple months. We don't want people to get left behind because the decisions are this is an iterative process. Right. So how do you how do you plan to handle the summer. So
yeah, I think we will continue our work in reminding the folks, because the survey is going to be on for several weeks into the summer, because our meetings don't end till first week in June, which means, you know, we're going to keep the survey open. So we'll have to, you know, work with our
communications team to keep, you know, sending that message out to the community. And, you know, also, you know, continually reminding the principals for because that even though the survey might have a time window, the opportunity to, you know,
that ask a question that's going to remain on our website throughout this whole process. We want to constantly get that feedback. So that is a great point. We need to constantly send that messages out to our principals and our regular channels on a weekly basis to remind folks to that, you know,
folks that who, you know, haven't been caught up, go back to the website. They can still watch the video, look at the options again, and then that option to provide feedback is not going to be just with the public information meetings that is going to continue. So we will have to continuously remind the
folks throughout the summer, because at the end of that summer period, when the school restarts in September, we're going to be, you know, going back with refined options. So that is a great point. We will continue to send the send out those reminders throughout the summer. Thank you, Mrs.
Zimmerman. Thank you. I just want to bring up in the plan, I've noticed a lot of really wonderful virtual and online resources. I think that's fantastic. But just like Miss Howe said, I think it would be great if there could be
something that goes in a take home folder. Just as we talk a lot about how, you know, we want to make sure there's lots of different access points, I think that's one that we're missing. Similarly, I think about the other place that parents spend a
lot of time, and that's in that car rider loop, or, you know, in the parking lot waiting. If there's something that we can do, if there's a QR code that you can scan while you wait, I think we could catch a lot of people that way. Thank you. If I may. Yeah. Summertime is
absolutely a time to communicate. And one of the wonderful things that will be able to do is to react to how well we've done for as we perform these most of these upcoming communication and engagement sessions. And then last night during the Board of Education Communications
Advisory Committee meeting, there was a vigorous discussion about QR codes. And I think the predominant feedback was that they're valuable. And because they're simple, in fact, we got great use with QR code because it provides easy access. During
our most recent teacher of the year announcement at that gala type event, we provided a way for people to download the photos and it's gotten great use. Those photos are being downloaded significantly, so they are valuable. I know we're talking about something different, but we will provide
other ways and paper, as you just mentioned, the Carla paper is just different. It's not old and unvaluable, but having something at schools that people can hand out, especially if a question arises, I think, you
know, is still a valuable tool. Yeah. Thank you. And if I may add, Carla. I heard you talking about like, this should be blasted everywhere. We, we had conversations about even having lawn signs and posters in the
libraries and leverage our community partners so that, you know, put it in, in the insert in the Latino newspaper and the grocery store. So I think there is an opportunity for all of that to be thought a little bit more carefully as to where we're going to put our investment. Some of those ideas were also
brought up like, you know, how do you involve the our houses of worship and getting the information out and posting information. So I think we haven't put all that in the plan, but I think this will be a good opportunity for us to include some of that. And if I may, that's an important point.
The plan represents what we know and intend to do and what we know right now. The website will be the place where the most updated information will be, including reminders where you can get information as we develop those materials and get them in place, as we can report where those places are, such as
public libraries, for example. Mr. Savona. All right. Perfect. I just want to start out by thanking you guys for all the work that you guys have done on the communication side of this, I know both Miss Melchert and you, Mr. Mamoon, have been
incredibly receptive. You know, when I said, you know, can we get some more students on here? The conversation was excellent in terms of getting those students and really having some of that diverse outreach. That was really, really great. So I just want to say thank you for that. As someone who who has
been through a boundary change, right, has, has gone to, to six different M.c.p.s schools, some of which were from boundaries, some of which were, you know, my own personal choice. I just want to say this is obviously a very difficult time and you guys have
done a great job with that. And then kind of going back to the idea, one specific question I asked I did have was if we could report the data of the number of website clicks in addition to the survey data. I think that would just be, you know, a great, great way to kind of do a
quick, broad range look at what we what the engagement that we've had, Miss Montoya. Hi. Thank you so much. So I am a current parent of two elementary school kids and things are
always feeling wild, right? We're all over the place. We're in the car line. We're in the walkers line. So all of these comments like, I don't think we could do enough communication, right? There's no such thing as too much in this instance. The lawn signs with the QR codes at libraries are in front of the
schools. For parents who are walking in or waiting to get your kids. If you've ever taken a call with me at 330, I'm probably in the car line. So I think having things that maybe can be passed out, I know sometimes in the especially in the lower elementary car lines, their staff out there. So there is a staff member actually
bringing your child to the car. Maybe the staff can hand out a quarter sheet of paper with a QR code, things like that. Remind is also an app that I find to be really helpful. I know a lot of schools use that to send out messages. When my principal sends a message with a link, I'm jumping on the zoom. They
usually. Sometimes they'll send them out 5 or 10 minutes before the meeting. It's really great, but we want to make sure we're also providing these materials for our principals. We're at the end of the year. I'm not sure what our supplies budgets are looking like, how much paper is left. So just to the extent that
we are going to hand out paper items or lawn signs, can we make sure that we're providing that to the schools rather than expecting them to use what may actually not be left of their budget at this point in the year? But yes, I think any of those ways and as frequently as
you can would be really wonderful. All right. Mr. Because everyone has such great ideas. I just wanted to put out the civic associations and to use some of our partners. I even
talked to a regional service manager, like the Silver Spring Regional Service, and they would also help us get information of six regional centers in Montgomery County. So but these
are all great ideas. The one thing I would like to see in the draft plan is. What kind of engagement are you going to do when. So more of a timeline
maybe like every it doesn't have to necessarily be week by week, but maybe a monthly or every two week like this is where we're going to go to launch. We're going to put out the lawn signs here. This is when we're going to do the libraries. This is
when we're going to send emails to civic, whatever it is. Just so we as board members can kind of track and ticking off some of these great ideas. So otherwise we just kind of look at each other and shrug. Thank you, Miss
Yang. Just one community engagement. We love community engagement. So we could talk for hours. But just plain language. Plain language, plain language, right? I looked at the text that I received as a parent about the meetings that we've had, and, you know, save the day, upcoming
public information meetings on public schools, boundary studies. What does that have to do with me? You know, so the text is critical for me as a parent, I don't know. I'm sure you all have data on what parents prefer, but, you know,
just just re-emphasizing what does this have to do with me? Why should I click on this link? Why do I need to explore more? So just thank you for indulging me. Know all great points, great questions from the colleagues.
This is something that we have to get right. So thank you so much. I would like to move to item 10.1. That's for information. Is construction progress report. No action is required of the board at the moment. Oh we're done with them.
We're done. We're done with that. Yeah. All right. Thank you for the staff. Then there's item 11 which is Board of Education item. May I have a motion to approve item 11.1 and 11.2 in
block. So moved second. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Okay. Thank you. Now I'm turning to item 11.3 is previous new business.
And so, Miss Wolff, I think you have some something to introduce. Thank you. Meeting before last, we brought forward the community engagement and school safety resolution. And so
today we're bringing it back. It was laid on the table at that time. And because I went home sick the last meeting, it didn't move forward. So today we want to bring that back to the table for resolution and for a vote. The resolution came to the table
on March the 18th. Today will take our final consideration. As I have said, as a board, we are committed to a safe learning environment where teachers and students feel secure and are able to focus on the critical mission of teaching and learning. We know that safety
and security requires ongoing communication and collaboration between the school system and the community. So I will read this resolve and call for the vote. Resolved, that the Superintendent of Schools will solicit students, staff, parent,
and community input on the current CEO program within the context of school safety. And be it further resolved, the Superintendent of Schools will solicit students, staff, parent, and community input from each of
the regions of the county on the following questions. How well is the current program working? What, if any, are the challenges with the CEO program and what are the opportunities for improvement? And be it further resolved that the Superintendent
of Schools provides an update to the board on matters delineated aboard above by November 2025? Now, we heard a lot of conversation and in public testimony about the resolution. Those questions were designed to
get people talking. The discussion does not have to be solely limited to those questions. However, it's not really about the SRO program. I understand that may come up, but what we're really trying to do
here is to evaluate the effectiveness of our CEO program and whether or not any changes could be made. So there's a resolution on the table. Can I get a motion to miss? Move, move it. Can I get a second? I'll
second. All in favor or any discussion. Seeing none. Are we going to vote? All in favor, please raise your hand. And that's unanimous with this present and one online. Thank
you everyone. We're going to move to item 11.4. Are there any new business items for the board to consider this afternoon? Yes. President Yang, so I would like to introduce a resolution about student access to procurement opportunities. So whereas
M.C.P.S. Has an annual budget that exceeds $3.6 billion, a portion of which is spent on products necessary for the operation of the school system, which range from physical products such as textbooks and curricular materials, to various technologies that improve operational efficiency, alongside various services such
as DJs and decorators. And Whereas, student perspective and lived experience can provide valuable insight into the school system's needs and areas for improvement. And Whereas, students who have developed products that will benefit the school community should have an avenue to share their ingenuity
and initiative through the procurement process. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Superintendent of Schools will ensure that M.C.P.S. Students are aware of the process used by the school system to procure items needed and used by the school system throughout the course of the year. And be it further resolved that the student that the
Superintendent of Schools will develop a process by which students can submit their proposals for areas of need in their schools and the solutions the students have developed to address those needs. And be it further resolved, that students be given an equal opportunity to compete for open procurement items, and be it further
resolved that the Superintendent of Schools provides an update to the board on the matters delineated above by January 2026. So, Mr. Savona just introduced a resolution, and I'm turning to my colleagues to see if anyone have any questions or
comments. Miss Silvestre Mr. Savona, can you help me understand what is the problem we're trying to solve here? So it's not necessarily a problem that we're trying to solve as much as we're trying to, you know, be able to leverage the ingenuity of our of our students
and give them an opportunity to get some real world experience and interest them into the idea of problem solving and how they can really benefit our school system. Right. So if a student has an idea for something that they think that could be, can make their school a better
place, right? Whether that be through a specific technology or through something that they want to pitch to M.C.P.S. Giving them the opportunity and a process by which they can kind of walk that walk through those steps and, you know, really be heard by the school system. So again, they would have to follow the same
standards as everyone else, but giving them a process to do so. Okay. And they can't currently engage with the system. So the problem is not that they can't engage, is that there's no clear process by which they can engage. Right. So it's to make
that a little bit more clear. Like there are there are avenues by which you can engage the school system, but without a clear dedicated process. Right. Students are often especially if they're trying to pitch something that is not, you know, necessarily an open procurement item. It's very difficult to
kind of walk through the steps, right, to, to try and get in contact. So this is even if we're not procuring it. So, so one one part of this is a process by which students can submit proposals for areas of need in their school, and the solutions the students have developed to address those
needs. So if there's a problem and they come up with a solution, right M.C.P.S. Will create a process by which they can submit their proposal. It doesn't mean that the proposals will be utilized right then and there, right? It doesn't mean that the students will will be paid out for their proposals, but it means that, you know, the
school system says, wow, this is kind of a good idea. Can we maybe look to incorporate this, or is this something that maybe we want to put out an RFP for and ask to compete on, on a larger procurement scale? Okay, I understand, thank you. I saw Miss Montoya's light came on
second. Go ahead, Miss Montoya. Thank you. I guess I'm concerned about a cost to this. Initially, I understood it to be kind of an avenue into the procurement process. But then, based on Miss Silvestri's question, or rather,
the answer to her question, I'm also understanding that it contains perhaps establishing an entirely new process. Given we have 160,000 students and quite frankly, I mean, you guys really have really, you know, lots of ideas, lots of conversations,
groups. And so I anticipate there would be a lot of students that might have something to propose, and we wouldn't want to be, you know, picking and choosing who gets to propose. And so I'm just wondering how we as a school system manage that. Are we then establishing a new office? Do we have is one FTE
going to be necessary or more? Do we have to have one per high school or cluster? And in times where we're really struggling to stretch every dollar that we have for our students, I'm wondering why the current procurement system wouldn't be
adequate with perhaps an, you know, I don't want to say an education outreach campaign, but just making sure that our students know how they can access that, and then reminding our staff that our students should be treated as any other vendor would, going through the procurement process in the sense of taking them seriously. Yeah.
So the idea behind developing a process by which students can submit proposals doesn't necessarily mean that you have to take every single proposal, right? What it means is that you set a series of standards that students have to rise to meet. Right? So it doesn't mean that, you know, student says, well,
you know, I have a problem with, you know, some very specific thing in my school and I just want to fix it. Doing this right doesn't necessarily mean that that is the entirety of their proposal versus a proposal that
very clearly outlines a large, wide scale problem. Right. And they're clear, detailed steps and solutions by which M.C.P.S. Has created a set of standards. As far as I know. I don't think that would take up any more resources than than we currently
use within our current current procurement system. I'll ask administration if they believe that it would take any more resources, and if it does, then maybe we would have to alter. But I don't I don't think well I guess but but I guess that's part of my question. Right. So
if we're now allowing additional, let's just say, paperwork, right, because there's going to be some sort of submission of something, whether it's online or through paper, someone has to receive those, look through them to see, well, who has, you know, like a full fledged proposal with, you know,
different parts versus maybe my fifth grader has an idea and him and his friends read a couple sentences and send it in. Right. Someone has to at least receive that to look at it and go, okay. And then honestly, you have to also respond to the fifth grader, right? Are we just going to ignore them? So I'm not sure
how this wouldn't require additional staffing and resources. And at the end of the day, money. Thank you for your comment, Miss Montoya. I'm going to move to Miss Rivera-Oven. So I, I really appreciate and I
think this is was was this in response to the Poolesville group of kids who had that a great idea about the app? I think it's in response to. So I'll give some of the background context. I posted on my on my social media students. Let me
know if you have any interest or or any ideas for things that you might want to pitch to the school system. Right. So I received a number of emails and Instagram DMs from students with with tremendous amounts of work and time and effort put in.
Right, a lot of these, which were passion projects that they were like, how can we foray this into a legitimate, you know, contract or some sort of operating agreement with the school system? You know, and, and I guess I appreciate that. And we should be treating our
students who if we have an RFP for an a mobile app or for transportation app, and, and they have a great idea, we should be treating them like any other vendor, right, with the same with the same care. And they might need a little bit more guidance than others. But so some some new businesses,
some new vendors, they needed as well. So I feel I'm just trying to understand how is the process different, different than what we have right now, which we should be doing that anyway for, for anybody versus versus this process. Because I'm hearing two
things. I'm hearing about ideas, which I think is great, but I'm also hearing procurement. So I'm having a little bit of a hard time making the difference among those two. All right. Thank you, colleagues, for your comments and questions to Mr. Savona. So
today he's introducing it in order for this to sit on the table for consideration for the next meeting, I will need a second from the colleagues. Is there a second? Second. Thank you. So this will sit on the table and you will come back to
the board on May 22nd. Thank you everyone. I'm going to move on. Oh, before I go on, are there any other new business to introduce? All right. 12.1 item is informational summary. And
there's no action required of the board at this time. Item 13 we do need some actions. It's adjournment. May I have a motion? I will gratefully and gladly move for adjournment at
548 second. We did actually really good. It's only 15 minutes difference. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's unanimous. Thank you
everybody. Good night.