Board of Education Meeting Recap: October 6, 2020
- David King
- Oct 9, 2020
- 8 min read
by David King
On Tuesday, October 6th, the Board met for a few hours to approve a new policy on student transfers, discuss updates to virtual learning, amend the calendar for the 2020-21 school year, and take up an investigation into the renaming of several MCPS schools.
Public Comments
Sixteen people testified to the Board this week, a deviation from the usual limit of fifteen. Various different topics were discussed, generally pertaining to the themes of health and inequity for MCPS students. Brigid Howe, who served on the committee to rename Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School, voiced her concerns about the process and expressed which of the proposed names she supported and which she did not, giving various racially and community driven explanations for each. Mauricio Quintero-Aviles, who works with MoCo STEPS, testified about the need to remove SRO officers from MCPS schools. This testimony, coming just a day after the Board’s work session on student discipline, student arrest data and the SRO program, argued that school resource officers arrest black students at disproportionately high rates and have no place in our schools. This same spirit of inequity manifested itself in several other testimonies, all pertaining to virtual learning. Byron Johns, chair of the NAACP Education and Parents Council and cofounder of the Black and Brown Coalition, argued that low income students cannot engage with virtual learning properly due to factors outside of their control. He asked for the Board’s support in expanding the educational equity and enrichment hub program, piloted at a few MCPS elementary schools and wildly successful in other school districts. Kimberly Rusnak of the Children’s Opportunity Fund asked MCPS to consider giving them extra money so that they could continue to help better the education of low income students. Leah Bradley of Empowering the Ages asked for the support of MCPS in creating a large, multigenerational tutoring program to aid students and families both now and in their eventual return to in-person learning.
Several people expressed their concerns with virtual learning. Brad Shear argued that online learning is a failure with classes that have unrealistic expectations. He argued that the grading system needs to change, echoing the concerns of some students who have testified previously. He also called for universal virtual zoom backgrounds to prevent MCPS employees from seeing into the living situations of students, a question brought up at previous board meetings that was taken away since the chromebooks MCPS has provided to some 130,000 students cannot run virtual backgrounds at all. Theodora Scarato of the Environmental Health Trust and Lena Steckler, who appears to be an MCPS student, both voiced concerns about the dangers of WiFi radiation. Citing insurance claims and a few resolutions in Europe that restrict the prevalence of WiFi in elementary schools, each demanded that the board “listen to the science” and provide ethernet cords to all students. SMOB Nick Asante asked the Superintendent’s office to look into these claims.
Three students - Calvin Tobias of Montgomery Blair, Valerie Graham of Paint Branch and David King of Walter Johnson - joined forces to express their concerns with the online MyMCPS Canvas platform in its current state. Tobias and Graham each spoke of their concerns with a disorganized website, expressing frustration with being unable to find zoom links or assignments and becoming overwhelmed by the number of emails and the different layouts between classes. King presented a proposal to the Board, arguing that the standardized layout employed in all classes at Hallie Wells Middle School is accessible and prepared to be rolled out to all MCPS schools with minimal effort at the Board’s directive. Patricia O’Neill (District 3) asked the Superintendent to look into this possibility as it seemed time-sensitive and ready to go, and Dr. Smith confirmed that they are investigating it and will “aggressively pursue” these changes. Christina Hartman, a parent of a child with special needs, admonished the Board for failing to provide adequate resources to these children and called for them to do better in providing special therapies to the students.
Kevin Dougherty and Jason Levine both called for MCPS to reopen in person immediately. Dougherty, who has testified on the topic at five straight Board meetings, proposed that they remove their plans for hybrid learning and instead send some students back full time while leaving others entirely virtual. This way, he argued, the families at risk could avoid the exposure while the families who do not have at-risk parents at home could let their students be exposed to the same environment five days a week instead of splitting time between school and a daycare. Levine called the fear of reopening in person “irrational” and argued that a Brown University dashboard, reflecting data from some 700 schools, has proven that a return to in-person school has not caused COVID outbreaks. Muncha Leah Rodriguez, a special education teacher for MCPS, made the point to the Board that upon reopening, special education teachers will be at heightened risk due to the nature of their jobs. She asked the Board to provide special education teachers with the best possible PPE. Finally, Brent Berger, the chair of the Montgomery County Immunization Task Force, asked that MCPS make the influenza vaccine mandatory for and accessible to all students and staff, except for religious and medical exemptions.
For more information on public testimony, go to:
Update to Policy JEE, Student Transfers
The culmination of two years of work, the Board briefly discussed an amendment to their policy on student transfers and Change of School Assignments (COSAs). After receiving hundreds of comments from the community and deliberating upon how best to incorporate them into the policy, the Policy Management Committee submitted a proposal to the Board that make the requirements for requesting a COSA less specific and therefore open some of the gates that had previously barred students from this request. Rebecca Smondrowski (District 2) proposed and approved an amendment that requires data to be tracked regarding who is requesting COSAs, why they are doing so, and whether they were granted. After the amendment, the Board unanimously approved the new policy.
For more information, go to:
Opening Schools in Recovery of Education - Update
As has been the case since March, discussions about virtual learning took up the bulk of the Board meeting. For the first time since August, the Board briefly discussed plans for reopening in person. Although there are still no public plans to reopen before the start of the second semester, the Superintendent will return an updated recommendation to the Board by the end of the first marking period on November 9th. Already, he and associate superintendents noted, we have seen a few people return to school buildings with severe health-restrictive protocols in place. Through self-screening, PPE, and check-in/check-out systems, there have yet been no outbreaks at any MCPS schools and only 0.27% of all staff have reported a positive COVID test so far. There is, however, a system in place for contact tracing should an outbreak occur. MCPS is required by the CDC to improve heating, ventilation and filters in our school buildings and although they are seeking additional funding from the County Council to make it happen, the changes are non-optional and the funding will have to come from other places in the budget if they can’t convince the Council to give them more money.
Although Governor Larry Hogan recently afforded Maryland schools the ability to restart athletics in person, Director of Systemwide Athletics Jeff Sullivan noted that MCPS has not met the low-transmission requirements that would make a return to sports safe and recommended that MCPS stick to the two semester plan - virtual in the fall, and then all three seasons starting in February (COVID permitting). He did note, however, that the next step is to get people together for small-group conditioning and skills workouts, although no timeframe or regulations were set for that. Judith Docca (District 1) asked why athletics has been such a priority, and President Shebra Evans (District 4), who is the parent of two athletes, responded that it is an outlet for many students as well as a way to engage them.
Jeanette Dixon (At-Large) asked about how college applications have been going. Area Associate Superintendent James Koutsos spoke of an effective SAT administration the prior two weekends and noted that many school offices have been checking in with students. When asked, SMOB Nick Asante noted that at Richard Montgomery High School counselors have been joining English classes to speak to students but that generally they are somewhat inaccessible and students must seek them out. Dr. Smith suggested that they should poll all 25 high schools to find out how college applications are going, although for many students with Early Decision or Early Action deadlines falling on November 1st it may well be too late for any necessary intervention.
Sean McGee, Director II of Learning, Achievement, and Administration, presented the Board with new data about student enrollment. As of September 30th, the deadline for students to file paperwork to withdraw, 161,500 students remained enrolled in MCPS. This was a drop of over 1000 students from only two weeks earlier and a far cry from last year’s official enrollment of 165,267. Patricia O’Neill (District 3) voiced her concerns about this number, since Maryland gives schools funding on a per-pupil basis and this drop is likely to correct itself next year, leaving MCPS drastically underfunded by some 4-5000 students. Associate Superintendent of Technology and Innovation Peter Cevenini provided data on the students not connecting with MCPS on a daily basis. Though the number has dropped recently and is now less than 1% of the MCPS enrolled student body, it is still disproportionately Hispanic - 52.6% of the students - and FARMS - 42% of these students - who are not logging in. For reference, as of last year Hispanic students made up 32.4% of the MCPS student body and FARMS students were 33.8%. Dr. Smith did note that of the 1,561 students who did not connect in the last week, it’s possible that some had moved away without informing the school system. In general, the lowest attendance rates have been at elementary schools and the highest at middle schools, although a low attendance rate still means about 96% of students are regularly engaging through Zoom and Canvas.
For more information, go to:
2020-2021 Instructional School Year Calendar: Second Marking Period
The Board has been hearing many concerns from teachers about a need for more professional days. With this in mind, they proposed adding a professional day to the calendar on Wednesday, November 4th, the day after the Election. In addition, there have historically been two half days in November that are used for parent-teacher conferences. In order to avoid disrupting education as much, they proposed moving these dates from November 11th and 12th to November 23rd and 24th, the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week. By doing this instead of combining the half days into one, the MCPS calendar stays at 181 instructional days, just above the state’s minimum requirement of 180. The proposal passed unanimously.
For more information, go to:
New Business - Proposal to Rename Several MCPS Schools
The Board received a report from the Superintendent in June 2019, investigating the names of all of MCPS schools and whether there might be any reason to change them. After they received recommendations, Patricia O’Neill (District 3) brought forward a proposal at Tuesday’s meeting to have the Superintendent work through the Office of Teaching, Learning, and Schools and collaborate with principals and communities to investigate whether the community has a vested interest in the renaming of these schools: Montgomery Blair High School, Colonel Zadok Magruder High School, Francis Scott Key Middle School, Richard Montgomery High School, John Poole Middle School, and Thomas Wootton High School. The reason given was that the namesakes of all of these schools either owned slaves or supported slavery. After an amendment to set the time frame to provide an update in the summer of 2021, the proposal was adopted unanimously.
It’s worth pointing out that this proposal does not say the schools listed will be renamed. It merely gives the Board the power to rename them should they choose to do so, and directs the Superintendent to begin engaging with the community of students, residents, and alumni of each of these schools in order to decide whether changes are desired.
For more information, go to:
The Board will conduct their next business meeting on Tuesday, October 27th. Signups for public testimony will open on Wednesday, October 21st at 9am and run through noon on Friday, October 23rd.
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