Good morning. It is Wednesday, April 23rd, and we are here at the Education and Culture Committee and to continue our review of operating budgets. Today we have the great pleasure of having first up and invite them to come down our colleagues from Montgomery College. We're going to go over their operating budget. Then we will deal with Montgomery Coalition for Adult English Literacy, McKayle, their NDA, and then we will continue and have our second session on the MCPS operating budget. So we've got a lot to do and a lot of great folks. So looking forward to diving in. I will turn it over to Mr. Proudi for any, to just to cover the topics that we're gonna go over and then to you, Dr. Williams to start off. Sure. Thank you, Doug Proudi, Senior Legislative Analyst. So today from Montgomery College, we'll be looking over the operating budget, looking at revenues expenditures. There's a number of details there in the packet. There's details in terms of their racial and social equity and social justice program and how that fits in with the programs of the college. And then the items for discussion today will be enrollment and how that is increasing over time and the trend continues. At Proposal for the Collective Impact Institute at Montgomery College, and there are two letters in the packet about that proposal. We'll talk about the shift in pension costs, which was sent down by the state as part of the final budget package and Finally the budget the fund balance for MC and how that is being used and its history and then finally Decision and recommendation from the committee about the Montgomery College budget Awesome. Thank you so much. Dr. Williams welcome anything you want to say before we jump in? Yes, please and thank you, by share. Thank you. Thank you very much and it's always. Welcome. Anything you want to say before we jump in? Yes, please. And thank you, Vice Chair. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's always a pleasure to see you. I could always have taken opportunity to thank you. Thank you, Mr. Prattie, and just share a little bit about our budget. I know we've discussed, but I'll just dive right in. And the budget is very straightforward and utilizing existing resources, trying to maximize what we have to offer and contribute. So what that said, it is a maintenance of effort budget. That maintenance of effort budget does keep tuition flat, which I think we all know is extremely important in these ever evolving times, especially sometimes that have impacted so many displaced federal workers and others in our community. And thirdly, it also provides a fair reasonable compensation for our faculty and staff, our excellent faculty and staff who make the dreams of our more than 45,000 students come true, come to life at all of our campuses and our East County Education Center. So it is, while a maintenance of effort budget, it is an impactful budget that really helps keep, helps to keep Montgomery College thriving so that we know that our students can have those experiences of economic, social, and community impact. So they can actually have a role, a profession, where they receive a family sustaining wage and experience individual upward economic and social mobility that portends to intergenerational mobility. And on that note, before I just close, I did want to share just an appreciation for all the considerations and decisions that you have to make. Also, I wanted to share that we do hope that we'll find a way to be able to account for the pension costs for faculty. You heard Mr. Proudi talk about that cost that is being shifted to the county and seeing that as similar to the pay as you go or the OPEB costs. So it is our hope that the council will be able to find a way to move forward with that and making that happen and making us whole. With that, to close, I would say thank you again. Thank you for helping to keep not only Montgomery College, but Montgomery County thriving. your communities college has a return on investment of 1.4 billion dollars a year one of the most if not the most diverse community colleges in in the country and whether it's from Holy Cross Health or Charles River laboratories or or Henley or anywhere in. As you heard from the testimonies from our employer partners, Montgomery College continues, continues and we are in a precipice of 80 years. We continue to create the educated and trained workforce that really fuels our economy and our community. So thank you, Vice Chair, thank you, Council members for everything you do and for the opportunity to share a few words today thank you so much mr. Prattie do you want to go through the decision points here I know we it's a pretty I'll just say at the beginning we're always happy when it's a tuition is flat and it's not a big ask so thank you we've got we've got a lot to deal with but I know the the pension shift is something we've dealt with in a multiple context so I know we'll talk about that but I'm just proud do you want to walk us through here? So the budget discussion items began on page eight of the packet. There's details in terms of enrollment here. There isn't expected increase in terms of President Credit Hour from 2025. A couple of notes that the committee might want to consider. MC's draw rate in terms of recent MCPS high school graduates is continuing to increase and is returning to the pre-pandemic rate. Credit hours are also growing and they're going faster than enrollment so the credit-loaded per student has increased slightly from fall 2022 to fall 2024 that trends expected to continue as well and then MC's projecting enrollment will continue increasing for the next few years by 1 to 2 from FY27 through FY30 so we can anticipate that in terms of out your budgets. There's some notes in terms of trends of enrollment and I'll turn it back to you if you want to. I have some discussion there. Awesome. Kelsumar Albinas. Thank you. This sadly is going to be a theme as we go through pretty much all line items, but the impacts on our federal government and the investments being made through Department of Education. Obviously, they're of deep concern with the radical adjustments that are happening in real time. We're just to hear your thoughts at least initially. We're all bracing ourselves. We are all somewhat disoriented, but But what if anything you anticipate within the upcoming year is at risk of potentially losing federal funds? So thank you, thank you council member Abernasse. It is again an ever-evolving situation, I appreciate the chair and vice president with a budget conversation we had as we received those questions as well. And it was kind of as of this moment, like this date, this minute, you remember vice president? We were like nothing is as changed in terms of federal funds. And I will say that is the same council member, Albinaz, as it applies to grants, I mean, speaking of Pell grants specifically, and our Pell grants fuel more than 5,000 students approximately a year and really provide for their lifeline at Montgomery College. When it speaks to other grants, we have done a robust review and we have had and we can send some more detail, some grants that have been impacted where we we've had to make some serious decisions about what will occur with those grants, but when we talk about the lifeline for our students, which is a Pell Federal Work Study SCOG, those grants have not been impacted. These federal funds have not been impacted at this time, and that's where we are right now. I appreciate that. One follow-up question. So, we have a junior in high school who is beginning her journey and looking at the collegiate process, a little overwhelming. I got to say as a parent, but we're getting through it. But last year, the disruption to FAFSA led to a number of students deferring their decisions on which colleges to move forward with. fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fafs fa such a fantastic option for so many different families. But did you see a boost in enrollment, potentially as a result of that? And once again, it's in disarray because of all of the confusing information being set forth by the federal government. Is that something that we could anticipate just as we're discussing enrollment moving forward as well? I think we will, and I appreciate the question our students and families were kind of traversing through the same, I was gonna say the buckle, but I'll say it, since I've said it the same situation I was going on with the free application for federal student aid. We do think help with our enrollment are really kind of digging deeper into our Raptor Ready Scholarship. We started calling applicants who had been admitted and really asking them if we could help them through the admission process. So we think there have been some adjustments made to our matriculation process that have helped. I do think that we'll see an increase in dual enrollment students. That is something that we are leveraging and partnership with our superintendent and our awesome school district. We want to see more students who are duly enrolled. One of the other pieces, I think there's a lot of conversation based on the position of you as council members and your peers and our state where we live. We may see more students who want to stay in Maryland to pursue post-secondary education as opposed to transitioning to other states. So those are some variables Council Member Albinas that are just kind of in the atmosphere and there are others and can definitely share more details if you like. Great, no, that thank you. That's very helpful. Councilor McNeill. Thanks. Along along some more lines, and this is something that we have touched on a little bit, but as you've noted, things move quickly. So, you know, with the what's happening with the federal workforce, I know that MC is doing a lot to pivot and to and to serve those who are being impacted. Could you talk a little bit about that and about how that might impact enrollment, perhaps by members of the federal workforce and or by their kids who may have had other plans, just how this transition may impact enrollment? Absolutely, thank you, Council Member Mank. So when I think about one of the pieces, well there's several pieces and I actually can make sure that we send an article to the council members was posted in Vice President and you're familiar with Community College Daily run by a CC which actually was a fantastic way to uplift all the things that Montgomery College in concert with council members with so many other partners I've been doing for for our community one of the pieces I would say council member M, are the strategic job fairs that we've been having. One of them was specifically dedicated to displaced federal workers in the sciences, right? And where we had more than 100 individuals who were there with hundreds of individuals who we need to have reached out to additionally because it was packed. It was at capacity. The reason why I was at capacity. We also complemented that with having several employers there. So there was on, you know, on-site interviews. We offered headshots, resume review. So those are some of the pieces after those employers provided presentations and talked about what it is that they did and how individuals could help to create the impact that those companies seek they transition to again information and interview sessions. We've also, we did also pivot our job fairs that were already planned to really have a focus on displaced federal workers. One of the other pieces I'll say is that we've taken a lot of the information and information that we've created and centralized it onto one site that we have been that we've been pushing out that we have been sharing at events that council members have been having and other events We've really been focusing on on that site among other items it focuses on the free of charge career services that we offer which help helps to identify certain careers, help to look at resumes, career coaching. It helps to identify also what we call prior learning assessment, or you might have our reference as credit for prior learning. So that is essentially saying, let's look at your work experience and see how your work experience translates to actually college credits And how that can really kind of elevate amplify Fast track the attainment of a credential and the last thing I'll say is the the credential piece We've also we've highlighted how we have kind of shorter term credentials that can lead to immediate employment while simultaneously being employed and then gaining those kind of a longer term credentials to advance in that profession, whether it is a new profession. So when we think about it, it really is kind of wrapped around this idea of upskilling, re-skilling, and what we frame as new skilling. We've often heard that kind of this career changing, but let's just go with the skilling. So up skilling, we skilling and new skilling. But I can share any more details that you'd like I could share more. Councilor. I mean, that's great. And we can really see how all of that is applicable to the federal workforce population that we're talking about, but also to numerous other kind of buckets of high need populations and transitional populations folks are entering the area. Some of our immigrant populations who are coming in with particular skills and maybe looking to apply and to shift and so that that's great thank you. Absolutely. Awesome. Mr. Pratt, do you want to continue through the packet? Sure. So I will ask you to return to the page one for a moment. I do go or some key highlights here. I can go back to do that earlier. Some important pieces to note is that the increase in state aid as of the final day of the legislature, which it resulted in $1.9 million more of the current fund free of flight 26. The cause made some adjustments along those lines and adjusted the use of the fund balance. We're talking about that in a moment as we work through the packet. And that also incorporated the pension cost shift. One note I should have mentioned earlier is that the county executive indicated and a memo will be sent over and is not arrived yet. We got a message yesterday about the overarching changes that the county executive might recommend but the specific amendments have not arrived with the council yet. So we should have those in a few days recommendation from council staff about that will come later. So let's move along in the packet then to page nine. And just on that point, Mr. Variety, just since we have OMB, it's your understanding that that amendment is forthcoming to cover the pension cost shift. That's the right. Yeah. It's for the college's portion. It's a little bit over a million dollars that will be added to the current fund in the updated council executive recommended budget. Well once we receive it I you know I'll speak for myself but I think my colleagues probably would agree that we would accept that as part of a budget that is same services. So here's Pratt. Thank you. So on page nine of the packet there is a proposal Councilmember Aborna's and Joando in terms of the collective impact institute from Montgomery College The proposal is to allocate $550,000 as start-up for this institute. It would be a partnership to Montgomery College and other organization. And there's detail in the packet and the attachments pages 65 through 68 so that might be an item for discussion right now. Yeah, I was happy to support this last year. And again, with Councilor Arminis, I think we have significant challenges in our community, also significant opportunities, and collective impact is a proven strategy to address them, but I will not steal the thunder of my colleague and let him talk about it, Councilor Morawanai. Thank you. I'll try to be brief because we have so many things to get through, but so, you know, this is going to be my 20th year in county government, and I had a cup of coffee in the private sector, and then I worked six years in the nonprofit sector. So I've worked in all three sectors. And what I have found to be undeniably true is no one sector can address systemic issues that are facing our community. And we have to address those issues collaboratively if we're going to even have a chance, a chance to make the kinds of changes that all of us would like to see. And what I've also learned over these years is that there are just not enough times and spaces for us to collaborate among those three very important entities in a way that's authentic and strategic, leverages information, resources, everything imaginable. And I have also learned that during especially difficult times, such as the ones we are in now, true innovation is often born, whether it's programs or when situations force us to look in the mirror and out the window, in ways that we haven't before, things can really move. And that's what we are facing right now. So every budget is difficult. This one is no different. This one has unusual, unusual layers to it that we're all very aware of. But I think this is a time for us to be bold and to think strategically about intentionally creating such a time and space. And one of my favorite organizations, I say this all the time in Montgomery County is Montgomery moving forward, which has done a fantastic job over now more than one generation to bring us together in a way that's truly meaningful. And so last year I was excited to have fantastic conversations with Dr. Williams and his team about this exciting concept of having a collective impact institute, a literal brick and mortar space for us to be able to continue MMF's work, but do it in a way that is more sustainable and structurally sound while also taking advantage of the college's tremendous resources, incredible talent, and their own information that they bring to the table through conversations such as this. And the cherry on top was having it be hosted in the East County at the new campus. To get something like this off the ground, MMF and stakeholders have been raising private funds, which is super important, but if we're going to authentically make this a public private partnership, the public needs to step up. And so, I'm once again, thank you colleagues who supported this unanimously out of committee, proposing that we offer seed funds that are critical to be able to do the strategic planning necessary to have a more full recommendation moving forward, but put the college in a position to be able to have the resources it needs to do this well. So we have been discussing sort of on the fly here. The request is for $550,000, which mirrors originally what we had requested last year. That was brought down to $350,000 to reflect last year's budget reality, which is even more challenging this year. And so I would like to move that we once again consider $350, in this year's operating budget to mirror our request from last year and put this in an even better position to be able to survive what we know will be a difficult reconciliation process as we go through. But that's the background in context. A lot of the information remains the same, but the issues that this collective impact institute can tackle have become even more profound. We have a motion. Second. There's a second. Dr. Williams, do you have anything you'd like to say? I know you were sent a letter as well saying you like the idea, but want to give you an opportunity. Just to really affirm the letter of support that was sent last year we remain steadfast in regard to the potential of this partnership. See Montgomery College as being a fantastic place to really bring us together and look towards the future of collective impact for Montgomery County and just I think it's want to illustrate so that other folks know that we have already dedicated resources by way of having the conversations and ideating about what it could look like. So Montgomery College has been supportive of advancing this effort. So I just want to share that. If you want to go fast go alone. If you want I don't want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. As an African proverb that was made into a very good song in Mufasa, if you haven't seen it, I have kids that have seen it. And I enjoyed it as well. Sure. I enjoyed it as well. So we have a motion in a second and again agree and it's going to be a tough budget year. But I think this is a great investment when we're trying to tackle the opportunities and challenges before us. So without objection, we'll add that to the reconciliation list from the committee. And thank you for me moving forward folks who are here and also a big shout out to you and all the work that you continue to do in our communities. Okay. Mr. Bren. Thank you. The last item for discussion today before the committee considers a recommendation. Is the fund balance or details here and the packet on pages 10 and 11. A couple of notes for the committee. The use of the fund balance to fund the current operating budget or the proposed operating budget was decreased on the basis of state aid, which leaves a larger project available balance. If you look at the chart, you'll see that the balance is actually projected to decrease from last year to this year for FY 25 and 26. And that's in part due to a much larger use of the fund balance to help fund the operating budget. Thank you. Any comment on that? It's okay if you don't. I had just one question in if colleagues have any other questions before we wrap up and make a final Recommendation I noticed that the AUP agreement Was been has been finalized with the SCI you and asked me contracts had not been finalized as of the writing here Is there any potential fiscal what do you expect the potential fiscal impact of that to be if any? I'm assuming it would be contained within your budget request. Yes, thank you, Mr. Vice President. The short answer is yes, it is contained and within our budget request, it's calculated for us. So those will be done at some point in the year. Yes, and we have one, we just have one remaining. We had a board meeting on Monday where they were able to approve a second and Mr. Collette, if you want to find any more details about. Yeah, and we expect to have the final agreement ratified with Ask Me by the end of the month. Great. Awesome. Anything from you, Cal? Yeah, okay. So I think Mr. Prattie, are we ready for recommendation on the overall budget? Indeed, we. Thank you. So thank you again for all your work. I think without objection, we will move your full budget forward and with the addition and then pending the adjustment on the transfer pension shift. All right. Thank you all very much. Thank you Mr. Vice President. Thank you councilmembers. Have a great day. All right. Thank you all very much. Thank you Mr. Vice President. Thank you Councilmembers. I have a great day. All right. So our next item we have Montgomery Coalition for Adult English Literacy. Come on down. Good to see you. We've got some alumni from that organization in the audience too. As you're getting your seat, I'll just say I really, really enjoyed the spelling bee this year. It was as as as always but it was really awesome and Just a great event, community event. Miss Cummings, are you leading us off here? OK. And there were playing musical chairs. We could do a little spelling bee, too. When we start, can everyone just introduce themselves when we start with that? Because there's some new, slightly new face. Start, yeah, just hit your mic there. Oh, sorry, thanks. Emma Star and the Communications and Content Director from Kale. Awesome. I'm Gerard ATM, the incoming Executive director. It's home calling. I'm manager of administration grants. Sean Klein, I chair the board of directors of the Cal. I'm Deborah Lambert with the Office of Management and Budget. I'm Rudy John. I'm the director of programs at the Cal. Awesome. What's going on? Kristen Cummings, legislative analyst with county council. Today we have the Montgomery County Coalition for Adult English Literacy NDA. This is a same services budget for the NDA this year with a 3% inflationary increase in the amount of $75,361. I know that our partners with McEl brought some slides to share with us today. I just want to take a moment to know that we're excited to welcome Mr. ATN, the new executive director of McEl today with us. He'll be starting in May. And with that, I may turn it over to our partners here to share a little bit more information. Great. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to update you on Mikhail's work. I'm going to make a brief statement. Then I'm going to ask Gerard to say a few words and then Rudy will go over some of the most recent data on learners and classes. As you know, Mikael was founded to coordinate the network of adult ESOL classes and programs in Montgomery County. We continue to build an efficient cost-effective and connected network of English language programs. Through our continuous improvement model, we see year-over-year progress among even the well-established programs and work to nurture new and emerging programs. We have made significant progress on our 2024 to 2026 strategic plan, focusing on addressing the gaps in areas with limited English learning opportunities, promoting learner-centered instruction and building learner perspectives into our programming. The need for adult eSAL services in the county continues to grow. An estimated 139,000 adults in Montgomery County speak English less than very well according to the latest American community survey data. This is up from 134,000 the previous year. While the coalition serves more learners each year, the population in need is growing faster than the coalition concurrently support. Mikhail's recommended budget from the county executive for fiscal year 2026 represents a 3% or $75,000 increase to its fiscal year 2025 contract. McHale welcomes this increase, particularly given the difficult nature of this year's budget. It will allow us to award more in grant funding to reach more learners and enhance our outreach in programming capacity. Our core work continues to be building and strengthening adult eSAL programs through grant funding and professional development for instructors and program administrators. The packet you have includes an update on this work as well as some other program highlights, such as the Learner Leadership Group, a training course in development, and a recent instructor survey. As I mentioned earlier, we are very excited to have Gerard at the end join Mikhail as its next executive director. Gerard comes to us after a robust search process that began at the end of last year. It brings a deep personal connection to Mikhail's mission and is the ideal choice to lead Mikhail into its next chapter. So with that, I'll turn it over to Gerard to share a little bit about himself. Thank you Sean and good morning. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Gerard ATN and I am the incoming Executive Director and it is quite an honor to have been selected for this role. McKell's mission is very personal to me. I'm an immigrant myself. I came to the United States when I was 13. My first language is French, and I didn't speak English. I went directly into the American school system. So I experienced firsthand the challenges of what it means to learn English, to go to school, and to be able to just manage daily things as an immigrant. Professionally, I started off in the for-profit sector. I was trained as an engineer. I went to the University of Maryland. I earned my MBA at the University of Maryland as well. I went into management consulting. But it wasn't until I started volunteering for an organization called Interfaith Works, which I'm sure you're well familiar with, in their vocational services program. I volunteered for IW for seven years. I joined their board of directorsctors for two years. And when I had the opportunity to join their staff as the Director of the Vocational Services program, I did so. And after Interfaith Works, I went to the George Council for the Aging or JCA as their Chief Program and Innovation Officer where I oversaw 11 different programs and funny enough my last day at JCA was yesterday. I am a long time Montgomery County resident. I have lived here for I haven't done the math but it's probably close to 40 years at this point. I got married here. I have two kids that were born here then went went to school here. So I'm deeply committed to Montgomery County. I'm deeply committed to McCale's mission. I look forward to meeting you all, hopefully under less formal circumstances. And I certainly look to collaborating with you and to collaborating with other organizations to continue McCale's incredibly important mission. Thank you. Well, welcome, Mr. H. T. A. And it shows how committed you are. You ended one job and then you showed up the next day before you're even getting paid to advocate for your budget. So welcome. So is there a presentation here that you want to go through? Yeah, I'll turn it over to Ruby for that. Right. Yes, hi. Good. So we thought we'd just share a few data points on our grant partners. Currently, we are supporting 24 organizations for 29 adult ESOL programs. So this represents the most recent data from mid-year reports for the period July to December. And you can see on the bar chart on the far right is our current most current figures for the end of 2024. We have 3,500 plus unique learners. And 43, 66 duplicated learners. That means the total enrollment. So if a learner goes into a class in the summer and they continue into the fall, they're counted twice. So that's how we get that number. We wanted to show the year over year comparison because you can see there's a strong increase from the year before for the same period. And we especially like to see that unique learners figure keep growing. On the next slide here, we just wanted to show how classes are delivered. So in 2024, sorry from December, sorry July to December 2024, you can see 146 in-person classes offered. Those are the red as featured on the bottom in the red and that's a good increase from the year before. We're particularly pleased to see the growth of in-person classes, especially at beginning levels, because beginning level learners just learned so much better in-person. And so this chart also shows the progress from the pandemic year, where everything was online. And you can see also the growth of hybrid classes, more organizations are able to provide classes where you have learners some at home and some in the classroom at the same time. The slight decrease for 2024 is because one of the organizations that was offering this, we're not, was not funded this year by McAle. And finally, a breakdown of learners by region. So you can see on the far right for this fiscal year, I do need to point out a discrepancy. Unfortunately, I would love to see that East County had 16% of the learner population served. served. Unfortunately, we found a discrepancy there and it's because of the way we do it in terms of zip codes and how they fit into the regional service center areas. It's more like 8%, but anyway, this gives you an idea that it is still increasing just slower than the underneath. I just clarify. Thank you for that. Is that discrepancy? So that's only for 2025. So apples to apples. It's 2024 and 25 with showing there. Okay. So that makes more like 8%. And so the mid-county figure is higher and the East County figure is lower. I'm sorry about that. Well, I look forward to working with you to get those numbers up to even higher than 17%. Yes. And as you know, we're working very with our community learning groups to have more starter classes in East County and encouraging our grant partners also to have more classes in East County. So that's just a brief overview. I'm happy to leave it there and welcome any questions that you may have. Well, thank you. I really appreciate you doing that. And again, welcome. We will certainly, you know, have you back. We've got a busy day today. So I don't think we'll dive deep into the data today, but we'll have you back as we do at the ENC committee to go even deeper into it. Once you get rolling up, we'll be curious to hear about your strategic plan and how you want to grow and continue the great work that's happening. But I think today before us, we have a pretty straightforward recommendation, right, Ms. Cum miscommings from the count executive Yes, some council staff Recommends approval as submitted by the executive pending council action on the 3% inflationary Adjustment which will be approved as a separate item Yeah Absolutely before we take action councilman Raubner. Thank you. Just very very brief One acknowledged Kathy Stevens who's in the audience, the former Executive Director of MacKale. And welcome, Mr. ITN. I have heard about you, and I'm a turp myself, so you've already gotten off to a good start there. But really look forward to the collaboration and partnership. One of the great things that MacKale has done under Kathy's leadership, and before that as before that as well is the cross section of work with our Department of Health and Human Services. And what I would like to emphasize moving forward is particularly in the area of behavioral health and mental health. I think there's a lot of programming and partnership and collaboration to mine there. And I'd love to at a later session possibly possibly even as early as this fall, talk about some sort of a joint session to talk about our immigrant community in particular, who as we know is under siege right now, and being impacted in every way imaginable. So you all are at the forefront of that work, and that's why investments like this continue to be so wise and why we think our former colleague, Councilmember Tom Perez, for helping to establish McCale and get this incredible program off the start. So look forward to the collaboration moving forward. As do I, thank you very much. Councilmember May. Thank you again, I appreciate the point. And I'll that I I have seen that you all are active and working to expand the body of work That's happening in East County and I appreciate that Really really critical obviously we have it really in influx of folks who speak other languages Just in the last few years even spiking in the east side of the county and so I appreciate you all jumping on that. And obviously the more we can continue to lean into that and to accelerate that work, there's a tremendous benefit that just touches really every sector that we fund here at the county. So thank you for that work. And I just wanted to welcome you as well, Mr. Etienne. And I'll say that your story is, it's like almost making me a little emotional because in these times this is exactly like I was happening at the federal levels, obviously, repugnant on so many levels in regards to the way that immigrants are spoken of and the way that they are being treated when we know here in Montgomery County and we live it every day on the ground and it's part of my family story and it's really part of almost everybody's family story. That immigrants are a huge, huge contributor in every way on the ground in our community and so I just I'm excited about the opportunity always but especially now to lift up the reality of those stories and we need to continue to do that badly and proudly. Thank you for the tremendous contributions that you have chosen to bring here to our community. We are so glad to have you and really grateful for the work that you're doing. Here here I want to thank both my colleagues for their comments and let's formally make sure we do an ECHHS committee in the fall following up on the work that you all are doing around and then connecting that with the mental health work. Literally this committee wouldn't be sitting here if Montgomery County didn't accept some immigrants about 60 years ago. So all three of us are the product of immigrants who came here for a better life. So thank you, welcome. So without objection, we will approve the $75,000 of 3% in context of the larger 3% adjustments and welcome you again and look forward to working with you. Thanks to the board and the team. Thank you. All right. last but certainly not least, turn to our MCPS colleagues for round number two here. And we are going to dig a little deeper into the cross-functional teams, that reorganization and how that's what that means in special education. Apply given our last item in emergent multilingual students For services and needs there so I'll turn it over to Mr. Proudi to T. S. Up and then to the superintendent and I want to acknowledge I think I see two board members here Rita Montoya and Laura Stewart in the back and to anyone else who's watching. Thank you and the millions watching at home and saying, we see I see Mr. Stein here from MCEA, so thank you to all the folks that have joined us. Mr. Prattie. Thank you very much. So as you mentioned, Councillor Prattie and to Wondo, we will be going over a number of items today, some connected to each other, an addition to special education and emerging multilingual learners, be looking at the CREA Academy and additions to the budget proposed for that, the blended learning options, and then also the newly constituted cost-functional teams and the reorganization of the central office and how those have an impact in terms of the budget. So the first discussion item is special education. The proposed FY26 budget has an increase of 688 FTEs which translates to 46.6 million dollars in additional funding. This is intended to address shortfalls in the provision of services to students with IEPs and 504 plans. The superintendent and the board have noted that there is a significant shortfall in terms of these services at the moment due to staffing levels and so the intended addition is intent it will help to address those shortfalls. There's a number of items of information on the tables on pages three and four. And final note here on page four, it will be a challenge to fill all the new positions that are proposed, but MCPS is confident they will do so through expanded recruitment. Additional note that of the 500 pair educator positions that are proposed in the budget, 366 of those would be filled by a transition of some current parent educators from temporary part time positions to full time positions, which will enhance recruitment and retainment of these people as well by providing them a permanent job with benefits. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, big topic, special education. So I'll take them, like, it's take these one by one and I'll start if there's whoever's super intended Taylor. If you wanna say anything, I just want to get started. Good morning, everybody. And thank you for having us again. I normally don't roll this deep with a thick posse, but it's not really my style. But I'm delighted to have several colleagues here today and one special colleague that I'm excited to introduce to you today. And I'd actually like for her to say a few words. It's my pleasure to introduce our new Chief Student Support Services Officer and that is Dr. Margaret Cage Dr. Cage comes to us from the New Mexico Department of Education where she was the deputy secretary of education who supervised special education for the entire state of New Mexico. She brings a rich history of serving as a principal all the way up through higher levels of school district administration and even state administration and that wealth of experience she's bringing to Montgomery County because we have some significant issues that we need to address in special education and I'll say of introductions for our other distinguished teammates later but I did want to offer Margaret a few moments to say a few words about some of her thoughts as a very recent add to our team. She's really only been with us a couple weeks, so she probably is not going to answer a ton of questions. We can handle that, I think, on our side and mainly their logistical questions and answers tied to the budget so that that's really something that we can handle. But we did want to offer Margaret market of chance to speak. So if you'll turn on your microphone and welcome. Welcome, Dr. Cage. Welcome to Montgomery County. A good morning and thank you so much for having me here today, first and foremost, I would like to say that I am honored to step into the chief role here at Montgomery County under the great visionary leadership of Dr. Thomas. I have followed him for quite some time and I'm very honored to be able to work with him. As a long-term educator, I'm definitely committed to ensuring that all students receive a kick-glove education because I myself struggled through my educational experience. My parents both were very, very strict and stern about ensuring that we had an education and I am the sixth child, the baby of course, the spalled one. And when I came along, they were really, really serious. And for good reason, my father had a third grade education at the time that is as far as they allowed African-American males to go. So believe it or not, he graduated from the third grade. And my mother had an eighth grade education. She struggled with severe dyslexia undiagnosed, of course, because at that time technology was not great in the school system. And she dropped out in the eighth grade. So one of the things that she made sure to in still in us was that education was important. And I can also say that I am the only one out of my siblings with an advanced degree. Being the baby, I'm the lawyer, I'm the teacher, I'm everything that everybody comes to. So I am definitely grateful to be here. I can tell you this work is not easy. Almost 30 years as an educator, I have been on every level as Dr. Taylor, so shared with you earlier. And every level has its own unique challenges, but across the board, very similar challenges in education today. I can tell you, we have a clear, unwavering vision here in Montgomery County Public Schools and Dr. Taylor and his staff that he has chosen. Definitely, we have a big job to do. You know, we have a lot of things that we have to correct. I am coming to you from Louisiana that is where where I was born and raised, and spent most of my educational career taught every grade except second grade, why I don't know, taught every subject. Special education certified went through every single level of leadership, and I had the utmost pleasure of being able to start the inaugural office for New Mexico Public Education Department. There wasn't an office, a special education there. So after a national search, I was hired to create one. And I did, and it is successfully thriving at this point. And I am now here and happy to serve and lead with Montgomery County and next to you guys and all of our stakeholders in the community. So thank you so much for having me today. Thank you for joining us and sharing some of your story. And it's a big job and an important job and definitely can hear through your comments that you're committed to it. So, Dr. Taylor, back to you. Oh, and I will say congrats on all your reorganizations and appointments. You've been doing a new year, I've been churning those out. You've taken a lot of good people from a lot of good places. I've noticed. Tis the season, Mr. Chairman. Tis the season. We're here to answer questions that the council has and would like to thank council staff for the very detailed report that you put together in particular as it pertains to special education. We have one critical issue that we're trying to address this year. I'm disappointed to tell you that we are not solving any problems with special education. Nor are we expanding our special education footprint, even though it may look that way on paper that adding 688 positions looks like it's expanding our footprint. It is really just fulfilling what we say we are supposed to be doing in terms of our staffing guidelines and what we know we should be doing in terms of service to our kids. The biggest part of that footprint is 500 pair professional positions. This really came to a crisis point for us at the start of this school year when we discovered very early on, primarily in our elementary classrooms, that we were understaffed in paraprofessionals, particularly in critical staffing positions in our highest-need classrooms with stable paraprofessional support. The primary personnel that are fulfilling that role in our critical staffed classrooms, our highest needs classrooms, our temporary part-time employees. They're not full-time benefited employees, and as I'm sure you can imagine, these are positions that have a high churn rate. As a matter of fact, they are the highest churn rate in the entire district in terms of our positions. What is the rate, just a few good? I'm off the top of my head, I'm not certain, but it's double digits, which is higher than really. in terms of our positions. What is the rate, just a few good? Off the top of my head, I'm not certain, but it's double digits, which is higher than really any other thing that we have in the district. We can absolutely provide that to you, because you're going to see us a lot this week. Yep. And you'll see us next week too. We'll make sure that we get through that churn rate and maybe even some comparison to some of the other positions that we have In terms of special education staffing We are very pleased and I'm glad that you mentioned that we poached from other places because that is our pretty successful recruitment strategy is that Montgomery County is a great place to live work and learn and As a consequence of, we are a very attractive school system to work for. And we are very successful at having really talented educators from across the state and from across the region to join us from other areas and to join team MCPS. Unfortunately, it comes at a great cost to public education as a whole. We are not seeing the steady stream of bachelors with zero years of experience, or even masters, with zero years of experience entering the career of public education, like they used to. It's not as an attractive field. There are some significant barriers to public education being an attractive field. So our primary recruiting ground happens to be other districts. I'm proud to say that we started the school year this year with 99 and a half percent of our special education positions filled. That's a very high rate. It is high for any position that we have. So we have a pretty high level of confidence that we can fill the vacancies that we have, that were proposed in this budget. And we know that this is a gap that we need to fill. And it's absolutely critical for the students that we serve our highest needs students. Yeah, I appreciate that and I'll turn to colleagues. I think one thing I want to make sure that gets understood is you've talked a little bit here today and a lot in the past about this is just getting us these 688 positions, which are broken to 500 of which are for pair educator positions. And then what's the subset of that that are shipped from part time to full time that's 360. So that's all encapsulated in the 688. That's correct. Sure, that's clear. It's not an addition to it. So it's 688, but 360 of those people are already working as temporary part time. Yeah. Otherwise, that number would be like twice what the budget had requested. It would be much more significant. So so we're using the funds that were already committed to that to offset. Exactly. Yeah. That's what makes sure that's clear. So that half of these people are, these people exist. And they're, but they just aren't benefited and they aren't paid. It's hard to believe with such a big number that that's the discount number. Right. Just, yeah, I just think it's important to note that. Yeah. And then you said, this is to just meet what we say we are doing. said that phrase. I think we should talk a little bit about what we say we're doing. And what does that actually mean? Like how are we staffing these, how are we supposed to be staffing these classes and what's not happening and what this would change? So we have staffing guidelines that govern how we allocate staffing to each school. And this was something that was featured prominently in budget discussions last year when the Board of Education was short, requisite funds, and as a result, one of their budget decisions was to raise class size by one. That was really a mathematical formula that took the average of class sizes from across the district. It didn't actually add one child to every classroom, but rather took the mathematical average and adjusted the formula. Similarly, in general education, we also have a formula for special education and our EML or emergent multilingual learner classrooms, where we are supporting students by staffing ratios. And depending on student needs, that staffing ratio may be different based on different disability categories and services that are provided to a group of students. And I'll give you some examples. If you have a student who is accessing the general curriculum, but still requires some accommodations, still has a resource class, we may be staffing students that fit that characteristic at a ratio closer to 20 to 1 or 25 to 1, which makes a lot of sense. But you may also have a student that has severe medical needs and requires constant and direct supervision. And they may be staffed in a classroom that's as small as 8 to 1 and maybe even 8 to 1 with a teacher and a parent educator in that classroom because they may have toileting issues or feeding tubes or other medical needs where we need to provide something that is a little bit closer of a ratio of one to one or two to one in terms of adults to children. And so when we are fulfilling that staffing guideline and when we're fulfilling that need, our classrooms were meeting the needs of our students, or we're getting closer to meeting the needs of our students. Unfortunately, where we have been the last couple of years is that we've done a staffing projection, based on numbers earlier on in this school year, we've issued that projection, and then as more students come or more students change throughout the year, we haven't updated the special education classrooms like we have been maintaining the general education classrooms. So as a consequence, something that may have been projected at a classroom that was 8 to 1 or 7 to 1 may end up actually being 10 to 1, 11 to 1, 12 to 1, 14 to 1, in an environment that is candidly unsafe or unproductive to meeting the educational goals of the students that are in that classroom. Really severe. That's where we're seeing the biggest uptick and the biggest challenges. It's not necessarily in every case our students that are accessing the general curriculum, although that is still somewhat the case, but it is some of our more higher needs classrooms that haven't gotten that updated adjustment. You may recall in a previous budget presentation that we're relatively flat in terms of enrollment But we have two really significant enrollment changes over the last five years actually three really significant Enrollment changes the first really significant enrollment changes our farm trade has skyrocketed up 14 percent I mean going from the 30s to the 40s in terms of our farm trade that's that's significant. Another big adjustment, and we'll talk about it later, is the rapid increase in our emergent multilingual learners. The third and most significant one is despite the fact that we're relatively flat and total population, our students with disabilities have gone up significantly. And the disability needs and services tied to those students have gone up significantly. What a lot of people don't connect the dots is even though our overall population being flat, the students that we are adding or better yet the students that we're replacing in the district have dynamic, complex and way more significant needs than the students that are already housed within the school system. And so if we're not adjusting to meet those service needs and that level of care, we're going to start to see those gaps. Another dot that's difficult, I think, for some people to connect, is the performance gap. And how meeting the needs of our students with disabilities also impacts what happens for all educators and all classrooms. When we're able to meet the needs of our students with disabilities, we're able to make sure that resources are going to the right places and that means that there's capacity that's freed up in other places for supervision. Right now, when there's not adequate supervision in a classroom for students with severe disabilities, the assistant principal or the principal or the instructional specialist or the reading specialist comes into backfill because it's a safety issue. Well, that means that they are not doing their assigned roles and that there's another gap that needs to be filled. So, yeah. And so general education suffers when special education is not attended to as well. I appreciate the context. I know a long answer, but I think it's important to understand what's going on. One, that where these positions will go, half of them are already existing people that need to be retained and professionalized in what the real needs are. I mean, I will tell you as the parent of a special education student in MCPS in middle school, I have seen this firsthand. I've visited hundreds of schools. The number one thing you hear from special educators and general ed teachers that have to bet is that to the max on this issue. You know, you hear a lot of things, but I think if I had to pick one, this would be the one I hear the most. That it's just an unsustainable, untenable thing. And with the growth we've seen, as you said, we've got to address this in a significant way. So I want to ask one more question then I'll turn to colleagues. It was mentioned in the by Mr. Proudy that, you know, so you'd have to hire, I'm doing math here, so you test my education here. So it was 360? That are the switch, that are the current. Okay. So you'd have to hire another 328, right? I think that's right. Ish. About half paraprofessional staff classroom teachers so how do you and we just could you talk about the plan if this is allocated because you know this obviously we're going through this budget process through every committee one of the questions will come up and it always comes up in the budget context and Mr. Guarrett knows this is will you be able to bring these people on? So if we allocate this money, will you be able to bring these people on within the fiscal year? Which would be obviously within the school year? It's difficult to speak in certainties, but I can tell you that there's a high probability of yes and I can give you a couple of artifacts as to why. It looks like a big number of people, but this is well within the bounds of what we hire on a normal year anyway. We hire well over a thousand educators throughout an entire scope of a year, every year. This is part of what we do. It's hard for people to conceptualize because we're an entity that has over 30,000 employees, 25 of which are full-time employees, but we do a significant amount of hiring each year. Hiring for special education professionals, it's a high needs area. We definitely would be targeting a lot of our recruitment strategies around targeting specifically special educators. And there are going to be some positions that we will have difficulty trying to find folks for. I've had a great amount of fun at Councilmember Katz's wife's expense trying to draw her out of retirement to be a speech language pathologist, and the reality is, I'm only half joking because that is a high needs position that we will have trouble fulfilling. And it will be harder for us to fill the speech language pathologist positions than it will be for us to hire for some of the classroom positions. I think that we're in a place right now that as dire and challenging as our economic times are, it actually presents favorably for us in the labor market. It also presents favorably for us that we are a school system that has a positive reputation and that we're a great place to work especially when we are investing in our employees and we're investing in creating the working conditions that communicate to our employees that they're valued. So there's a couple of things that I think are important in our recruitment strategy. Every budget is a great tool for communication. The council is communicating what it values when it is funding different things in the budget just like the Board of Education and the superintendent are communicating the things that they value when we make a proposed budget for consideration. Special education, making sure that we are fulfilling our commitments to special education is a signal to other special educators that Montgomery County cares about students with disabilities. It's also a signal to general educators that we care about their working conditions and that we care about their environment as well. Just like fulfilling our contractual obligations and just like fulfilling our salary promises to making sure that our staff can have a life and still live and work in Montgomery County. I appreciate that. I'll pause there to my colleagues council member Alvin us. So I'm not going to bury the lead. I support this very much because of all the reasons you articulated what I've experienced, what I've seen, you know, information I've received on the ground from families as well as educators, you know, this is obviously long overdue. But my question is more, so we're adding these positions, critical front line, totally get it. But what systemically are we doing, Dr. Taylor, because adding these positions is obviously not just the, it's not a first step, but how systemically are we doing Dr. Taylor because adding these positions is obviously not just the, it's not a first step, but how systemically are we going to have them be absorbed into a system that has not always been as prepared as it needs to be to address the period of needs. And there's wide ranges of needs of these children. You've been mentioned some of the more significant examples, but there are other students who don't have quite the same level of need, but still have need. Could you talk just more broadly about how you envision these new positions absorbing into that system and what adjustments you're going to be able to make on the ground? Absolutely. I've got a short term strategy and a long term thing for us to think about. The long term approach is that we really do need to reconsive special education from the bottom up. Entireity. All programs, all services, all approaches, and really We reconceive it from every angle. Where we transport students, how we transport students, what services we provide, where we provide those services, all of that needs to be re-evaluated. And it's going to be a bumpy road. It's also not an overnight fix. I think that our students, when they are served as close as possible to their home community and they see children, students with disabilities when they see children that are in their same neighborhood and their same school that there's a benefit. That is not the case right now in Montgomery County that services are not offered as close to home as they probably should be. And we have a myriad of reasons behind that, but we also have a lot of opportunity. While we're re-evaluating boundaries, that also gives us an opportunity to evaluate programs, not just our magnet and exciting academic programs, but also our special education programs as well. So I think that there's a bigger picture in a long-term prospect of us really reshaping and thinking about this a little bit more holistically about from beginning to end, from a service delivery mindset, not from a disability mindset, but from a service delivery mindset. How can we serve the needs of our students with disabilities differently? That's a big lift. I think I got the right person with a very compelling backstory to lead that effort. I'm very, very excited about that in the short term. I think that we can expect some pretty significant gains very early on by making a couple of tweaks. And we're going to talk a little bit about this later on in your agenda, but about how we deploy centralized services to actually help in the classroom, and how we deploy the folks that are assigned to the central office, so to speak, in a service mindset to actually providing instructional support, approaches, professional training, boots on the ground, job embedded in the moment. Right now we're not doing that or we're not doing that at scale. So I think that that's actually an intermediate step that's actually going to help us a lot. One of the bigger things that we're also looking at as an intermediate step is our placement practices. Are we placing students appropriately at a level that can meet their educational needs and also provide the services that they need to feel supported and grow in an educational environment right now? I'm not sure that we are, or at least not at scale. I think that there's pockets of excellence throughout the district. I think that there's things that we can be proud of. But I think that there's also an equal measure, maybe even more so, of things that we really do need to address. I'm not proud to tell you that, but it is one of those things that if we could substantively address the needs of our students with disabilities, performance in the district would soar both in the general education space and the special education space. That's really helpful. So, and I really want to acknowledge the board that, you know, I've had the opportunity to work with now for six years and a number of members. And I have seen the evolution and I really appreciate the efforts that they've made. Because Montgomery Taxpayers League every year makes a similar recommendation, which is that we should be tying any additional funds to MCPS to benchmarks so that we know in their words, not mine, we're getting the most bang for our buck. I think that's a bridge too far. I don't think that's appropriate. We're not the subject matter experts, but I understand the sentiment from which they are coming because we have made significant investments, especially over the last three years, that are not sustainable. You know, $280 million is more than half of the entire operating budget of the Department of Health and Human Services. We cannot keep doing this. But we also need to acknowledge the reality and the emergency, and the urgency that all of us are feeling right now. And Vice President Chwando and I have had this conversation many times over many years, that it does feel like, if we don't get in front of this, we're really going to be even more trouble than we are now. Especially, none of us could have anticipated what's happening at the federal level, which is going to make our work even harder. So, it does make sense for us to make these investments, but I appreciate you, especially in the way that you discussed this just now, talking more definitively about how these investments will lead to those benchmarks, those gains that all of us want to see, all of us want to see. And then empower our incredible Board of Education to ensure that on an everyday basis, they're helping to follow through and be a partner along with the Council, but in particular, the Board who's in a better position to be able to track the everyday. So I think that I am going to look forward to regular check-ins as we have under the leadership of Chair Joando over these last two years where we asked tough questions and expect transparency as you have delivered Dr. Taylor in your short time here. That gives me more confidence than in years past, because I'll be candid. We have appropriated funds for specific line items that I can't say with a hundred percent degree of certainty went to what they were appropriated for. I feel more confident now than I have in the past that that will be the case, and that's why I'm more comfortable with this very large request, makes me queasy and again not sustainable we can't come back here again next year with even something close to what we're you all are asking for now it's not gonna work but but I do think that this line item in particular is important to highlight because it does represent getting us back to more solid ground. So with that I yield back to you Mr. Chair. Thank you appreciate it Councillor Romain. Not a lot to add to that actually so appreciate that and I am important to note as is noted in the packet and has been noted in conversations that the cost of not making this investment is significant and so we always have to be weighing weighing that and I think the importance of the spirit with which You and your team and the board have come to these conversations with kind of a radical transparency We have to we have to just be open about all the things that are not working It does not work to try to paper over it because the students and the parents, the families, the teachers, the staff, they all know the realities on the ground anyway. And we cannot solve the problems if we're not open and honest about them. And that's exactly what MCPS is doing, what this board is doing. And that's what's allowing us to have these conversations and allowing us to have the kind of confidence and allowing the public to have the confidence that the dollars are gonna go to where they say that they're going to go and to where you say they're gonna go. So I also look forward to hearing more about how this is gonna be rolled out. Dr. Cage really excited to have you, to have somebody coming in with systems experience who can bring that perspective is very exciting and the work here is massive so it is a large-scale investment but if we don't make it I just don't see how we pull MCPS to where it needs to be and where the public expects it to be. Really appreciate the comments of my colleagues and just want to emphasize I think the packet notes we're projecting 23,000 students with disabilities next year 23,200 just how significant of a number that is and how fast it's risen and how multilayered and diverse the needs are and the impact on general education. I'm really glad you made that point. So I think I had one other question related, especially education, then we can move on. In Dr. Cage, I'll just mention it reminds of me, my mom is the youngest of six. So those are some extraordinary people that are the youngest of six. So I'm, so you're, and she does everything for everybody else too. So I really resonated with that point. The, some of the state data showed that Montgomery County is still exceeding the target for students in highly restrictive environments. Could you talk about the relationship of these positions to that? What I would say is not a good statistic. It's a terrible statistic and I think it accentuates this point precisely. And it's difficult to for us and I wish I'd mentioned this earlier. 600 positions feels like a lot, 688 feels like a lot but divided amongst 200 campuses. About three positions per campus, that's not how they'll be allocated. They'll be allocated based on where the students are and where the needs are. But three FTEs is this is not solving any problems. And I want to be very clear about that, that this is just bringing us up to even. It is not by any means a panacea nor is it correcting a longstanding issue. and I too want praise the the Board of Education for seeing this as a critical issue. This has been at the forefront of every conversation about academic performance that the board has had from the time that I've been here to many years prior to that. So making sure that that we bring that target below range and that we are meeting state expectations is a minimum expectation. That's not the goal. That's the minimum expectation. We are not meeting the minimum expectation. This puts us on the path. It doesn't solve that problem, but it puts us on the path. I appreciate it. All right, let's move on to the next item. So the next item is emerging multilingual learners. They propose budget would have an increase of 47 FTEs, which translates to $4.2 additional million to higher teachers for the EML program chart on page five. So the growth in terms of enrollment for emerging multi-lingual learners over the past several years. The projected enrollment for next year is up almost 1,000 from the prior year. And if you continue the pack, you'll see on the top of page six, the ratios in terms of each level. And the jury of hiring for FY26 proposed would be at the secondary level, middle school and high school, but also some additional teachers at elementary school as well. Middle of page six notes, the use of these additional personnel to enhance code teaching Contidary contidere classrooms to revamp the provision of in language development in terms of course, structure resources and to help evaluate the program for students with limited interrupted formal education and to also growing in number. There's an additional note here on page 6 and 7 about a position called the Emmerging Multilingual Learners Therapy to Counselor. This has come up at a number of different forms. So we want to be sure to include information for the committee about that position. Thank you very much. And just as a reminder, we're going through the items that cost money. And that's what we're doing in Buds Session. And that's people in most of our budget, particularly in MCPS. 900 percent. Exactly. So we did the, I think the, obviously the contracts which have, are being jointly, have been jointly reviewed as a part of the Government Operations Committee, which looks at all of the contracts and then obviously will be concurrently reviewed here in the context of the overall recommendation we make on April 30th is the biggest number, but these other additions are big pieces and that's why we're going through them just to remind folks of that context. So the EML context, it looks like there's 47 ELD teachers being added here So I just wanted to offer you the Any context you want to make about the importance here or any any other points and any from you or your team same story different title And the interest of time I'll share that the narrative around our students with disabilities could be replicated for our emergent multilingual learners. It is the fastest growing student population in Montgomery County Public Schools. Their needs are dynamic. They are assigned levels based on performance on English proficiency, examination, and weda. And services are aligned based on their level of English proficiency. The lower the English proficiency, the lower the level, the higher the proficiency, the higher the level, and the fewer services. So if we have more level one students, that means that there is intensive support and services that are needed to be provided versus more level four students, which means that they're about to exit the program and will receive less services and monitor and consult services. This is a group of students that too has fallen short of meeting our staffing guidelines of what we have already been doing and what we say that we're doing and keeping pace with this. I really like what Council Member Albinaz had said about getting ahead of an issue. This is not getting ahead of the issue. This is just trying to keep up with the issue. We do not have a generous staffing ratio to serve our EML students. We have a barely adequate staffing ratio. And this is to meet that barely adequate staffing ratio. And it was mentioned 1,000. If you look at the chart, obviously this has gone up every year. But the projection for next year is to be over almost 3,000, 3,000, 4,000 looks like. Yeah. And I can add one more dimension to this. It's not just that we're adding 1,000 students, but it's 1,000 students at various levels of English proficiency. And I will say that the services required to meet the needs of a newcomer level 1 EML student at the high school level are going to be very different than the services needed to meet a level 1 EML student at the elementary level. The probability of English proficiency for the elementary student who is a newcomer is a lot greater than the probability of English proficiency by the time they graduate from high school if they're a newcomer in high school. And that also brings up another budget topic, which I'm sure you're gonna get into in a minute, which is Krea. So we have some dots to connect with this, but the narrative is very similar to special education and just trying to allocate staff that's gonna better meet the needs of our students. So, Councilmember Mank this time? Thank you. Appreciate that. Obviously the staff. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. key languages. Obviously there's a huge difference between having a person who can connect with students who can speak the same language, who comes from a recognizable cultural background as opposed to losing a language line. Can you talk about efforts to retain those folks and how we're going to try to make sure that those students are still able to be served in a comparable fashion? Absolutely, and I gotta tell you, this is a talented group of teammates that provide a tremendous service to this community of learners. And our goal would be to hang on to everybody and in different capacities and different roles. How they're tagged right now with this particular job description does have a tremendous amount of overlap with other job descriptions that we have in other parts of the school system. Social workers, P.P.W.'s, parent, community coordinators, We have a lot of overlap in some of those positions and we are in the process of kind of evaluating and assessing how we might come up with a mechanism to kind of sus that out a little bit and have a more streamlined and efficient allocation of resources that match a specific job description for a specific role. The language piece is a bonus. It's not a prerequisite. Just because you speak a certain language doesn't mean that that's the only group of students that you're going to work with, that you're going to be able to serve. And I would caution people from making that association that there's that assumption, that because you speak this language, that you're only working with this group of kids, you're actually working with a much, much broader group of kids. And truthfully, a large group of our ATCs actually speak multiple languages, not just one or two. And so they're high value to us and us trying to find the right seed at the right table is really one of the challenges. We're also trying to right size the district right now. In terms of what is a deployed resource that should be in a school versus what needs to be tagged as a central office staff employee. Right now our ETCs are actually central office employees. They're not school based employees. So a lot of our push too is like what resources can we actually deployed to a school where it makes sense. That all makes sense and you know noting that this is a particular situation where they're tagged as central, but they spend, of course, most of their time in the schools. And certainly agree that, of course, these folks are highly skilled, and they work with lots of different kids. Also noting that we do have certain populations that are growing rapidly who speak particular languages, and very few staff members across the district, who speak some of those languages as well. And so we have got to retain, you know, we have some of these folks already within our, within our, the MCPS system, we have to hold onto them. They are, they have relationships with families and students, some of these families are not easy to break into in the social emotional sense as someone who's working with some of those families also through my office. And you know, the work to build that trust is so key to what is eventually resulting in learning outcomes, you know, for those students. And so I recognize of course, this is a tough balancing act and I appreciate the work that you all are doing there and I look forward to further conversations But just want to really make sure that I put in a strong plug because a lot of these kids who are impacted do live in my District and so I see a lot of that on the ground and You know that the necessity to well, yes all of these folks Can and do serve many students, including whether they're not they speak, you know, a certain language that's hard to hire for. We also, those students have to be served. They have to, I know I'm telling you something, you already know, but I'm saying it anyway. Students have to have somebody available who's there who can speak that language and that that's our top priority for, you know, for every student as well. And so as you walk that line that's certainly figuring out how you all are making that magic happen will be interested to hear about them. Thanks. Yeah, and I just want to double tap for Attorney and Council Member Alvin Nas. Obviously we heard at our budget forums and in other forums from a lot of these great ETCs who are extremely talented. And any superintendent is understanding we're going to come in and do a reorganization and address challenges and opportunities and we're going to talk about the cross-functional teams in a moment as an example. I just want to impart and we have two board members here too, just that this is something we're gonna have to make sure, we wanna keep these folks, make sure the students that they're serving get served, and that everyone understands how the new models are gonna work. I mean, the change is always hard in the sense that people don't know exactly what it's gonna look like. And so I think the communication throughout the process is gonna be really important. I know you know that, but wanted to make that point. Go ahead, Councillor, make. And I'll just note also that I think those folks themselves, who's, you know, lots of... You know that, but wanted to make that point. Go ahead, Councillor, make. And I'll just note also that I think those folks themselves who's, you know, lost their positions, but are you going to hopefully gain another position that's going to help everything work even better? That obviously their voices in the conversation of how they can make sure that they stay in touch with those families who most need them. I'm sure, again, I know you already know what I'm saying Anyway, are going to be really critical here because they know a lot of the families really well and where they are and what kind of time I'm sure again, I know you already know what I'm saying anyway. Are going to be really critical here because they know, they know a lot of those families really well and where they are. And what kind of time and interaction and all of that. And so, want to make sure that they're not out there looking for other jobs. We need them and we need their advice here. So, thank you again for that work. Councilor Ravodot. Thank you. Thank you. So I think well first of all what an asset it is to have so many multilingual learners in our system. Just Thank you. So, I think, well, first of all, what an asset it is to have so many multilingual learners in our system, just professionally moving forward and it is a tremendous asset. I guess, similar to my question of special education, I know we're going to discuss this in different ways throughout the course of these conversations over the next few days and into the new fiscal year as well, but dramatic changes are going to be made need to be made in this area because we have not been fully meeting the needs of students for a long time now. I appreciate you acknowledging and completely agree that we need to be concentrating on the middle and high school years because there's layers of needs beyond the multilingual capacity and learning. There's a lot of social and emotional needs that come with these students who have very complex backgrounds and very complex family dynamics. But could you discuss briefly similar in the way that you did with special education, with some of those short and long-term benchmarks you anticipate being, with an investment like this that will put you in a better position to be able to achieve those short and long-term strategies. Well, fortunately, I already have a playbook from which to work from. There was a very comprehensive report that was done, the Cal Report, and you've actually received a briefing on it in the past. That was done, I want to say a couple of years ago, for the district in terms of improvements that we need to make to our EML program. And it's a great playbook. And we need to start making progress on that in a more substantive way than we have. There's a lot of room for us to improve our approach in terms of a couple of things. One is solidifying our classroom strategy in terms of how we are serving the needs of our EML students. Right now, we have a portfolio approach where it's different in every school and that one approach may be very successful in one school and not successful in another school. I got to tell you the team that our Delmi team that is working behind this has done tremendous work in the past year that I've seen in terms of professional learning and enhancing that space. They really have done a great job of trying to elevate that work, but there's so much to do. Having a consistent approach, having consistent guidelines, having something that's actually followed and some accountability behind that I think will go a long way. Similar to special education, these are two fastest growing student populations, but also are to lowest performing student groups. That's it. That's where the investment needs to be. That needs to be not just in dollars, but also time and people and energy. What we're looking at, what the council holds us accountable to, what the Board of Education holds us accountable to, needs to be viewed through these two lenses. Because that's where our challenges are. We address these adequately and the district is moving in the right direction because it frees up capacity for us to do other things as well. So, and we can talk about Craya 2, we kind of didn't spend a whole lot of time on that. But one of the things that landed in this budget has been a pain point for the district for the past couple of years, because it's this wonderful program that serves the needs of students who quite literally run out of time and cannot meet the requirements for graduation to earn a diploma. And so we provide a supplemental service that is not required by law, but it is absolutely the right thing to do for our community by providing GED services and industry certifications to students who run out of time because of English language developmental skill deficits. Fantastic. And the General Assembly helping us out a little bit this year with Maryland being the last state to adopt changes to its GED, where the English language section, we were the only state in the union out of 50 states that required the literacy portion to be in English only versus in Spanish or in other languages. That is something that the General Assembly helped us correct under the guidance of the legislative program from the Board of Education. That will help tremendously. That will also set our kids on a path to be successful when maybe the traditional pathway isn't going to be so successful. One of the things that we did in this budget was to establish a consistent, stable line item for Craya and to expand Craya so that we can have more student capacity. And this may even include students who are not having English language deficiencies, but maybe need an industry certification and GED support. But this is the primary focus of that program. It's a way for us to close a significant community gap. And I think to Councilmember Minks point point the consequences of not supporting this program are really disastrous for the community in terms of making sure that our kids have something that they can look forward to and fruitful life in a career. That's really helpful and then it goes without saying I'm pretty sure to require but having multilingual staff not just in the classroom but in the administration of a school and a central office of a school so that we're engaging parents in a way that's holistic that they're able to process and absorb information is very important as well not a specific line item but I know there has been an emphasis and there will continue to be an emphasis on making sure our staff reflect the diversities of the communities we are serving. That's particularly true, needs to be true in schools with higher percentages of EML learners. I know that something your administration has taken to heart and I've been very impressed with some of our recent principal placements that acknowledge that, but we have to keep that going. And just acknowledge the reality on the ground because that's the only way we're gonna make a dent in this area is in addition to serving the direct needs of the students but holistically serving their families as well. Thank you. I appreciate that and thank you for bringing up Kray. You check something off of our list as we went. I want to just say this because I think again, it's a lot of numbers, a lot of things been thrown around. Our average EML to teacher ratio is 38 to 1. The report that you cited the CAUR report, or the Center for Applied Linguistics Commission released a couple years ago, said that the U.S. Department of Education's ratio for ELB teachers should be 1 to 12 to 1. And so obviously got a ways to go. What would this 47 FTEs do to those numbers? It would actually bring us up to the 38 to 1. Right, I just want to be... Yeah, so I appreciate that. It does not move us any closer to 12 to one. It actually brings us up to what we tell people that our ratio is not what it actually is. And it helps us keep pace with our growing student population. It does not actually improve our standing. Yeah, which is a disappointment candidly. No, it is. And I also, you know, my good friend and fellow father or four, often say we've got 10 kids represented here on this committee. We have to, you know, not just, this is a treading water, you know, getting your head above water budget. But we're gonna have to have a long term plan. I think the point that's which just made, and I appreciate Council of Robinus, asking the question that elicited the answer, as well as Council of the Make, if we make progress in these two populations, we're gonna dramatically improve student achievement in MCPS, and not just for these students, but for general ed students. Absolutely. It's like a high yield pressure relieving, not only right thing to do, legally mandated, how many descriptors do you need that of how important this is, but also not where we need to be. You know, and just kind of, so I just think we will have to, while we can never do anything all in one year, and I know you're aware of that, we're gonna have to still even put ourselves on a path over multi years to get better here. But I think that will become easier when people see progress. You know, and I am confident that with these investments that we will start to see that progress. Mr. Proudi, next item. Sure. So just one additional note about Korea that the budget request is 14 positions and $1.7 million. The following item is the blended online virtual and distance learning options. The proposed budget would request 22 additional FTEs for this program, which travels to $2.1 million. Similarly to CREA, it would take folks who are currently staffing it as a temporary part-time employees, make the staff more permanent. On page eight of the packet, there's a list of where these people will, the kind of work they will do and how they will provide instruction. The blended learning is intended to help students who are long-term medically impact students. We have both synchronous and asynchronous instruction in a virtual environment. There's a number of folks at the budget hearings and other budget forums who've spoken about this. Important to note that these students were getting individual small group and one-on-one lessons and that high school students enrolled here are also able to access AP and dual enrollment opportunities. These students remain enrolled at their homeschools while they're participating in blended learning. And there is a chart here on page number nine which details the different positions which would be added. I really appreciate that. And obviously this was a topic of a lot of conversation over the last couple years and continues to be a topic. I've said and I don't think superintendent disagrees, but you can certainly say if you do that we need an online learning tool that can be used by any parent or student who wants to use it, and but particularly for our students that have severe disabilities and restricted environments. Could you talk about what this will do and what it won't do and what your plan is for going forward? So short term and I guess long term again. Well, this is actually really exciting, because there is no future for public education or really MCPS or really any school district in the country that does not have a virtual component of some manner or form. What makes this exciting is the potential for us to do a great number of things. Online learning is not great for every kid. Just asked for it out of my five. Didn't work. And it wasn't great for a lot of our kids during the pandemic, but it is great for some kids. And it is a great option for a lot of kids and families. It is actually a necessity for some of our kids. And although we're not able to fully accommodate every request and every need right now, it is important that we take care of the things that we need to do. I very much wanted to bring forward to the Board of Education. And I think the Board of Education saw this and adopted a budget that was reflective of what we need to do. And what we need to do is make sure that every kid can access our great course offerings and make sure that they have a fulfilled free and appropriate public education. Well, this is a big component of that. If you're on a transplant list, it makes it really hard to come to school. If you have a chronic illness where you're access to social interactions, you're access to course content is limited. It makes it really hard for you to come to school. We need to have an environment where you can thrive. And so although there was a reduction that eliminated the MVA program in the previous budget year and a tough choice that the board made, given the difficult financial times, we created a program that really was a bandaid to get us from last year to this moment right now. And I don't think that it's reflective of our intentions of what we'd like to do moving forward because we really cobbled this together from several different funding sources to make sure that we were minimally meeting as many needs as we possibly could. And I think that that's a good way of saying that we really did not do as well as we would like to have done in terms of meeting both social needs as well as academic needs and create a sense of fulfillment and belonging that our kids really enjoyed with our previous virtual program, as well as that academic fulfillment. So I think that with this expansion, we're doing a couple of things. One, we're creating a stable line item in the budget that's predictable from year to year to year. And that can either go up or down based on student enrollments. And I think that we're creating that mechanism for that to happen. So that's one thing that we're doing. With this, I think we're also going to be able to provide some stability and some programmatic expectations where there can be some social interactions as well as some academic robust programming. The additional thing that I think will be a huge boon for us as a district is giving us the ability to leverage some future distance learning opportunities. And I'm going to give you an example. One of the things that makes MCPS great is that we have this course adoption process where students and educators can propose courses that are discrete courses offered in secondary schools. But typically it's usually just that one teacher who can teach it in that one school. And it's not something that's offered throughout the district unless that it kind of catches fire and it gains grass roots, but yet every student in the district can see that course description and that course title in our course catalog, but access to that specialty program is a real issue for us. For me, that's a huge equity concern because if you're a student at Damascus High School and you see a course at paint branch that you'd really like to take, how on earth are you going to be able to access it? Well, we have a mechanism to support that. And I think that we can spend this year fleshing out some of the logistics on how we can make that distance learning connection a little more seamless so that kids from across the district really can have access to our full course catalog of offerings and not just limited to the things that are in their campus. So I think that there's really a multifaceted approach that our virtual footprint needs to look like. And it's tagged as the blended learning program, because yes, that's primarily what we're looking at. But I'd like for council to start thinking about it in the context of like what is our virtual portfolio look like and how are we providing a variety of services to students, not just in that one narrow scope for that one group of kids that can access the general education space. Appreciate that. Council Member Mac. Thanks, yeah. I really appreciate that perspective and that's an exciting opportunity that you point out. And as you know, and as anybody who's got kids, of course, can tell you, everybody's got different learning styles and for some, virtual learning is going to not work at all, as you noted, I have one of those as well. And for others, there are some kids who really, really thrive. And we now have relatively late breaking data that shows that from our own MBA as well. So I appreciate the approach to really think through this in a full some way. There's a lot of opportunities here that we can leverage. And I also appreciate you starting off with per the trend here being very transparent about the fact that the blended learning program and what was provided for these students was not adequate. It really fell short of where everyone wanted it to be. Yes, it was a tough budget year. It was a band-aid. It was cobbled together. And that, unfortunately, that was the experience for the kids who ended up there. And given the fact that the program was limited to students who had a medical condition that prevented them from being able to attend school, what we ended up with was a group of kids, specifically with chronic and serious medical conditions who they specifically got a just wildly inadequate academic and social emotional experience. And so there is a necessity to make sure that that does not happen again. This is something that we need to provide and it has to be equitable. I'm nervous, honestly, about the scores that we're going to be getting back because I know that there were kids who did not have science or social studies or some of the baseline classes until late in the school year there, we have kids who are receiving half the amount of, you know, English and math instruction synchronously than other kids are receiving in school. But, you know, I say synchronously, but that implies that they're really getting something valuable asynchronously and that's just not the case. And so, you know, the recognition of that, just like the recognition of some of our other deficiencies is important and the determination to make improvements. And I think, you know, to hear our home, some of the points that you made, like the social emotional component, as we've all talked about, that component is not a nice to have when it comes to learning outcomes. That's a must have. And so having a classroom a home base for kids who are accessing school virtually, where they log in in the morning and they have a morning meeting to get just like kids who are in person school, where they can see their classmates. I was really surprised to see it on the website about the BLP that in the BLP the kids are supposed to have their Zoom screens on for the portions of the lesson for which that's required. But the teachers are the ones who see them and the kids don't see each other unless there's a particular reason for that and the teacher's supposed to tell the parents in advance. But that just felt very dystopian for me. You'd have these kids who are probably hungering for social interaction. And there's maybe another kid or two because these classes are not large. And that's another thing where I think expanding the eligibility here makes a lot of sense. Fiscally, we're going to have teachers who are leading these classes. There should be more than one or two kids in it. That's also a social emotional benefit for those kids. But again, as we saw with the NVA, there are kids who don't have necessarily that medical necessity who do thrive there. And so again, I think from a fiscal perspective, that's as well, That's something that's important. You know, but just thinking about those kids logging on and those kids over there and they're not even seeing them, it's just really heartbreaking. And so having, I see that we've got full-time positions that are coming on is that can you talk a little bit about how you're going to use those FTEs? And I know that there's a lot of TBD in here. But can you talk a little bit about how you're going to use those FTEs to give those kids that social emotional experience and that feeling of grounding and of community? Yeah. So a lot of the reason why it's TBDs, because it's enrollment-based. And the target objective here is to provide a comprehensive K through 12 experience and to be able to provide courses across that bridge. So for example, we may have an English teacher who is virtually teaching English 7, 8, and 12. Just like we may have a social studies teacher who is teaching the middle school history curriculum, as well as part of the high school history curriculum. So that explains some of the TBD components, but I think that there's an opportunity for us to assess student interest and to see what the kids are interested in in terms of what makes sense from their social engagements and the things that might interest them. One of the things that has thrived in our previous virtual program are some of the clubs and activities. Those things can be revived. And they're just precisely the things that can lift a spirit especially for students who may be medically fragile to have that social interaction that's non-academic and have that connectedness and that sense of belonging, which is really critically important. I think you bring up a really interesting point, which is maybe the lesson of today. And all of the things that the E&C Committee has selected for discussion today really kind of fit into this one category, whether it's CREA or the blended learning program or EML or special education or even how we serve schools through cross-functional teams or how we're going to serve schools. It's to the extent that we can personalize the experience for our students. And to the extent that we become more bespoke is to the extent that we are going to be successful and getting the outcomes that we're looking for. It's when we overly generalize, when we overly average, when we go to the bigger picture, it's not successful. And Vice President Juwondo said there's 10 children represented on the dius. So does that mean a third, a third, and a third in terms of resources? No, of course not, because you each have different children and different needs and different supports and different numbers of children. So we need to take that approach versus what we have been doing, which is to look at the world through averages. Just like what we look at through our programming and blended learning too. It's like, how do we create a more bespoke or personalized experience? I think that's right. And I think that we also have to make sure that those kids, you know, for some of them that might mean that what they need is not a one-on-one. What they need is a classroom experience. You know, I had a scary moment earlier this week with one of my kids. There was like a nerve-wracking lump that was found and we were getting mostly good news. It's all going to be good news tomorrow. I'm not too concerned anymore, but it was interesting because in preparing for this session, I know I kind of foreshadowed that I wanted to talk more about this, about the online learning at our last session. I've been doing a lot of research, as I know all of you have as well. And when I just had this flash of like, oh my gosh, what if my kid is going to be one of these kids who needs to be in this program? And it just totally broke my heart as my heart has broken for other kids who are in the program now because here I have this very social kid who's you know loves learning and a big part of that for her is she loves helping other kids. She loves working. She loves the group work aspect of it. And what's that? Future teacher. Future teacher. Just like. You know, I was a, I was a previous teacher. It'd be very proud of her. But, you know, we're going to try. We're going to try. I'm just imagining her now having to log in and maybe there's one other kid in the class, you know, maybe. And maybe she doesn't even see their face. And she's totally capable academically, right? But she's having going through a thing that where she can't go in person to school. But she's wanting to learn all this. And then not only that, she's not getting a full day of interaction. She's getting a quote unquote a synchronous, which is really mounting to homework assignments. It's just not a fit for most kids. Even really well done asynchronous is going to be a fit for far fewer kids than a synchronous experience. And so very limited, limited hours. And I'm like, oh gosh, in the synchronous hours, when they're there are going to make me sometimes be outside of the regular school day. And that's when she would actually be able to see her friends who are getting out of school. And I'm just playing out in my mind all of these different, really feeling emotionally what I have been hearing now from parents who went through this type of transition. And we just should not have any parents and kids who are feeling like the option before them at MCPS is like an oh no, this is gonna be, this is gonna be really, really painful for my kid. And so this is an opportunity to move us into a place that we need to be. But part of that, I think a big part of that is you have to have the ability to have classes, classrooms of kids, not just, it's not just about having the menu of course offerings, or even the menu of clubs, although I think that's a super important point and component that you raise. To be able to, you know, when you think about it and elementary school kid going into insurance school classroom, there's a reason that they go in and that that's their home base. And they see that teacher and they see their friends and they have a morning meeting, maybe they use some social emotional stuff. They're grounded for the day. We do that. We spend valuable class time during the course of a relatively small school day when we're thinking about all we're trying to do with these kids. And we dedicate that time to that when we're not teaching math, we're not teaching literacy, because we know that that's important to set them on the course for the day and These kids need that you know There are kids who maybe have one other student in their class and they want to have a play date with that one kid right now And they don't know how to get in touch with that family It's just it's really it's it's not good and so I just want to make sure that that's a big part of the conversation. And I don't think you're going to get to the numbers. I know you're not going to get to the numbers that you need for classrooms of these kids, which would provide for an equitable learning environment for those kids who need it medically, that it's necessary. You're not going to get to the classroom size that they need and deserve if we don't expand the eligibility. Now, obviously we're not going to be able to, we don't have the funding to prepare for everybody. But I think there has to be some expanding of eligibility and then you let people water in to fill in some of those seats. There are other priorities here, obviously, are academic outcomes. And we've got a fiscal note that we have to be concerned about. Both of those can work with that plan. Both of those can work. So, you know, academically, we saw that there were some, again, late breaking, but we've got them now, really positive outcomes that came out of the NBA, and they certainly don't show that it's, you put every kid in that setting and they're going to have those outcomes as we know as parents from personal experience. It's just not the case. Most kids need to be in a brick and mortar school building and that's a setting where they're going to thrive best. But we also now know and we have the data to show, not surprising because kids are a diverse bunch, that there are kids who are going to learn better with that virtual option. And so, for example, we saw from the MBA that their 2024 DIVA assessments showed MBA students were did dramatically outperform target scores. They also outperformed the DIVA scores for black and Hispanic students compared to MCPS broadly, which I think is super important again given our goals. We are always looking for our tools. So when we see a tool where we're seeing the DIVILs rates for black and Hispanic students are moving up faster there than in another place, it doesn't obviously, again, it doesn't mean all the students should be there, but it means for some students, and in this case, students whose families self-select them in because they're saying for whatever reason, virtual learning is going to be a better option for our kids. We saw those parents were right, those families were right, it was. And then to be clear, when we look at those scores, and there was math scores that showed similar things, about the population that we're talking about. There was a higher percentage of MBA students on farms assistance compared to with an MCPS broadly. There were more than twice as many special education students and students with 504s within MBA compared to MCPS broadly. And so with that, we were still seeing these really excellent scores. So we have to use that data and be, you know, we've got to use that data. We're seeing an opportunity here. We're looking to make scores go up. This is a tool. This is a tool. We have to, we should not be limiting it arbitrarily. We should limit it fiscally because that's what we have to do for all of this. But that's where the limit should be. And right now, again, if we have a teacher who's teaching a class of one or two students, that does not make sense from a fiscal perspective. You can have another student who's zooming in to that classroom. And if they're gonna do better, that is what we should be allowing. And that's going to help those one or two students who are there thrive as well. I also note that there was a higher percentage of students in the MVA compared to the MCPS more broadly population who are non-white as well. So it was really diverse in many different ways and still seeing a lot of success. We are constricted by many things and we are moving around a lot of things. We're going to be seeing, I think, some really dramatic improvements in a lot of ways within the brick and mortar buildings that we have in terms of social, emotional, academic, all kinds of things. But I think these two really, we have seen they don't need to be in competition. There is room, there is room from a physical perspective and there are and for many other perspectives to have both and that is going to make us an even more impressive school system. So I would just really urge you as you're looking into the next year knowing we have to have this option, we must because it's medically necessary for some kids that are part of making it equitable and making it a full-sum experience is to have a classroom of multiple students, which means we're gonna need to, I don't see how you do that without expanding eligibility and I think again, in terms of the fiscal perspective and the academic outcomes, that's something that we know how to do. Thank you, Councillor McKenzie, we're out of us. Thank you, I appreciate those very comprehensive comments by Councillor Memor, I guess just two thoughts and then two questions. The first is, I like all of us was deeply moved by the families who came and testified before the council to talk about the loss for their family and their children. when we eliminated the virtual academy, they were also deeply concerned about how rapidly that decision was made and not having felt any opportunity to weigh in in the process was equally as hurtful as the loss of the program itself. So Dr. Taylor, again, I'm giving you lots of kudos, so I always try to because I think you're doing a great job. One of the first things you did when taking this position was meet with those families that meant a lot to them it meant a lot to this body appreciate that leadership. But to Councilmember Migs Point we need to meet every student where they are regardless of where they are and sometimes that's a little bit more difficult in certain circumstances. So I do once again support this line item as well because it makes sense for us to have viable option for students that are in unique circumstances like the one you've described. But it also prepares us if God forbid, God forbid. We have to go back for whatever reason. There were a lot of lessons learned that we can't go back to before, but there may be circumstances that require us as a system to think about virtual learning for our students under certain circumstances. And what's happening at HHS right now scares the heck out of me. And so we just have to be thoughtful and mindful of that. So their implications directly for the families who are served through this program. But I think it also helps with muscle memory and helps prepare the school system as a whole if necessary to take things to scale. So I just wanted to make those comments. One question though is can you talk briefly about the criteria that will be used moving forward to provide this opportunity to students and what that looks like and how that may evolve moving forward? At this time, I really can't because a lot of this is budget dependent. So we have to be very selective about the time investment that we're making in terms of what we're focusing our energies on based on where the budget's gonna land. And candidly, I don't wanna do an entire programmatic workup for something if there aren't the funds to support it. Gotcha, appreciate that. You get a sense of where it lands on your priority know Priority list you could you could almost say that about every item in the budget. That's correct just to be clear so Obviously it's something that the board requested that you requested you have ideas about it Can you give a sense of Where it lies in your priority list? Absolutely. The budget summary table 1A that we presented to the Board of Education and the Board of Education made some adjustments and actually made some reductions before it's sent to the County Council for consideration is our priority list. and it's broken up into a handful of categories, non-discretionary expenditures. Those are the things either by law, statute, or contract. We have some requirements tied to our performance like, I don't know, give you an example. It's not like we're not going to pay our electric bill. We're not going to not honor contracts that we've engaged in. The next section is our blueprint for Maryland's future and then the last section is our discretionary funds. There's no legal requirement in state law that compels us to have a virtual or blended program. And so that is a discretionary expenditure and the discretionary items are at the end of our list. Right. So you've answered the question that it's at the bottom of the priority list in the way you structured it. In the sense that you wanted to happen, but it's funding dependent. Absolutely. Would not have made the cut if we didn't see it as an absolute necessity and something that was necessary for us to move forward to provide that bespoke education, but at the same time, I'm also cognizant of the fiscal realities that we're experiencing, and it's my job to communicate to the Board of Education and our job as a governance team between the Board of Education and the superintendent to communicate to council what our priorities are, and this made the list because it is a priority. I appreciate that. I, briefly Councillor Meade. Just starting, I don't know what I would cut from the budget either at this point. And so I would, any of my, so I think that it's incumbent upon all of us you have provided the spreadsheet. And so if we're going to decide to not give MCPS the full request, I think we need to be transparent also about where, where we would make the cut. And I don't know the answer to that because to me, cutting this line item is just not acceptable in the same way that cutting from the, you know, the special education budget, et cetera. Because again, we are providing, we have a responsibility, we have a legal responsibility to provide an equitable education. What we have right now is, I mean, it is separate and unequal. Like, that's what it, I don't know, I don't know how else to say it. We have kids who are only in this program because it is medically necessary for them to be in this program as we all acknowledge and we have provided them with a completely unacceptable experience. And we are, I think it's a very positive that we're all acknowledging that to be frank. It was not what anybody wanted, right? And we are asking and wanting the investment to change that. So this is not putting, you know, putting employment. This is just the reality. And so it's just really hammers home that this is a bare bones budget. And I do think that whatever can be done, this just got to be mandatory. It's just this is got to be necessary to provide an equitable education. And so I'm just putting that out there for not just for you, but also for us on the council. Thanks. For the millions watching at home. Yeah, and just as we before we move on here, we're landing the plane here, don't worry. The need for individualized and differentiated instruction, obviously they're related, but different. One related to individual student, other groups of students, and I know we do both. But I've said this many times, you can't, it's almost impossible to do that, which is what we all say is the goal. We've all said it in different ways up here and you said it yourself, unless you have the people and the resources to do it. You cannot do it. You can't do it in a class of 30 with kids with special ed and EML and low income students. All these kids can learn, but you just it requires the resource to do it. You just can't do it. And I just need to for the public and you know we don't often give testimony back when we hear from people, we let them speak to us because it's not time-efficient and there's 11 of us and we like to talk as you just saw from Councilmember Mac and it was all great stuff but and but you know I want to say back to people like you can't you're not going to get the outcomes you want by you know whether it's robbing Peter to pay Paul whatever idiom you want to use it's not going to work unless you provide the resources and the resources and education have and will always be. And even when AI takes over, it will still be a sentient being that is people. And whatever form that connection takes with its virtual online and groups, and if you want to differentiate and give a student what they need and give that human connection that we all need to live, it's going to take people. And I just, I just, and so it's just, I think we have to remember that. And we can't, you know, ask for individual eyes with differentiated instruction without people. You just can't do it. And this is an example of that. Let's move on to the next item. I think we have two more items. So the next item is the cross-functional teams. And this is on page nine of the package. The cross-functional teams are a new concept in terms of providing more direct support and efficiently to schools. There's some new positions created, some changes in job titles and descriptions and reduction to their positions, but because it's not a distinct line in the budget, the costs are found in a number of places, therefore it's not possible to zero in on a number in terms of the ask. There's commentary from MCPS on pages nine and 10 in terms of how these teams will be assembled, how they will be structured and then implemented, how their work plans will move forward based on the individual needs of a school, working with those schools individually to be able to determine what their needs are, and then how these teams will interact with school leadership and staff. I think this is a key component of how the cross-functional teams will be successful are these interactions. And then there is also a note at the end there in terms of which schools will be prioritized on what basis. And you can see there's three elements at the bottom there. So this is a change in terms of how MCPS is intending to provide support to schools, therefore, it will be interesting to the committee. Yes, the often discussed and anticipated cross-functional teams. So if you want to give some context on how they're going to work, I will ask a couple of questions just to get the juices flowing, relate as one of the things we've heard, whether it's in the context of the ETCs, we talked about earlier, or in the autism program, and there are other ways that this is, people have expressed some concern about, well, how is this going to work? Am I going to lose my resources that I've had, that are helping students in various ways? And if you could just address with some specific examples, how you see these teams, obviously, you don't think that will happen, because you wouldn't have proposed it, but how you see them working and addressing some of the maybe concerns that have been raised. Does that make sense? Before I kick things off to my much better looking colleagues down the table here. I was hoping they'd get involved here. I do want, yeah, because that thanks for coming, for just hanging out. It's one thing just sit there and look pretty, you know, you get a work here for for for And that's really why they're here to talk about this topic, but I'll add a couple of things. New to MCPS, not new. This is not a new concept or a new idea. This is something that a lot of other large school districts and large organizations in general try to leverage. And it really represents a couple of fundamental philosophical shifts. The first fundamental and philosophical shift is where do central service or central office employees belong in terms of doing their work? And the philosophical shift is that I believe that they primarily need to be in the field in the schools providing direct support. That's the first philosophical shift. And so that doesn't mean that our central services employees were all at central office all the time in the past that's not the case as a matter of fact they're routinely in schools. But having a strategy assigned to their school placement and to their school assignment and to the role that they have is different. And to having continuity behind that direction is different. Having purpose behind that direction is different. The second philosophical shift is deciding what is most important, not deciding what's important because the list of things that's important is a very, very long list, deciding what is most important and being laser focused on how we might address those critical areas. And I'd say if there's a third one, it's to tap into what we've already discussed today, which is how do we meet the specific needs of a specific group or a specific target audience of students and schools. What I can tell you is that I have learned something new coming to MCPS. I have always favored a level-like system in terms of how I've served schools and other districts that when grouped together, elementary schools seem to thrive, middle schools seem to thrive, high schools seem to thrive, and yes, there's a lot of benefits that come from that. But I have seen the wisdom in the cluster model and the cluster approach that MCPS takes to servicing the needs of carved out communities within our district. And so to that extent, to the sense that we can shrink the district for those communities, target resources to specific areas that have specific functional targets, and I'll outline what those are, is really the genesis behind this. Right now, a central services employee might have a caseload of 40 schools. And the probability of them visiting all of those 40 schools on a regular basis is zero. Zero. But if their focus caseload of schools is nine or twelve or fifteen, the probability of them having regular interactions with those school communities, knowing the teachers by name, knowing the principals by name, knowing the school staff by name, and being able to provide direct support and embedded job coaching. I like our odds. I like our odds. So this is really not just about cross-functional teams, but really about central office reorganization, and the cross-functional teams just happen to be the centerpiece of that reorganization. And how we might take our existing resources and reallocate them differently to deploy them into a school environment. So with that, I've talked enough for this morning and our fabulous team of Chief of Staff, S. E. McGuire, Chief of School Leadership, Peter Moran, and our Chief Academic Officer, Nikki Hazel. I'd love for them to share some thoughts and answer some questions on behalf of the district. And let's combine these last two topics, which you've already done, which is the office restructuring, how it relates to cross-functional teams so we can wrap that up together. Well, and on that note, exactly, when the building on what Dr. Taylor was saying there. The purpose of the restructuring and reorganization of central services really is summed up in some ways around the philosophy of the cross-functional teams as well as the structure of the cross-functional teams. The level of movement that you're seeing and that our colleagues and teammates are experiencing in central office is in service of really having central office be as front facing as possible, as school facing as possible, and bringing those resources that schools and communities are used to directly into the school environment. And so as you said, Mr. Joando, this is not so much that folks are losing a central office resource, but that the central office resource will be more present and more available to them. And so the position changes that we see in the central office reorganization, again, a number of them are direct realignments to the cross-functional teams. Others are central office realignments to support the functions of the cross-functional teams and also will help us at central office achieve that integrated and cross-functional office relationships, get us out of what can become natural silos and really deeper embed that cross-functional collaboration across central offices and the folks that we are able to have, again, directly facing and supporting the schools. So that ties both of those items together. Appreciate that. Anything to add? I would just add that we've talked many times in the past few years about the equal distribution of resources and the equitable distribution of resources. The cross-functional teams are a mechanism to provide equitable distribution of resources to schools. One example just on an organizational level is that we're going to have three standalone clusters that will have their own cross-functional team. And it will only be between eight and nine schools. Kennedy, Walkins, Mill, and Gathersburg. So those schools and those clusters will have increased access and consistent support from experts in the field. And I think the other component in Dr. Taylor talked about, you know, having 40 schools. When you have 40 schools, you don't have the relationships or the trust for people to want to receive, you know, the supports that they need from you. You also don't have the contextual understanding of what is happening in that school or in that community. So by shrinking things down, I don't have to go into a school and go through this continual assessment of what's needed. I have relationships with people that they're coming to me. I'm modeling things. So one of the ways that I've talked with our teams about this is to not look at yourself as a central services instructional specialist, but look at yourself as a school-based instructional specialist who will model teaching practices in classrooms side by side with teachers and have a very clear understanding of what the experience is of not only the teacher but the students on the grounds that we're providing relevant meaningful supports every day. Yes, I think we're... And it would just highlight two other aspects of our expectations for the team members. We were very deliberate in the job descriptions to emphasize that 80% of the time is in schools. Of course, they will need some home base time to work both together as a cross functional team and with their home office, if you will, of their subject matter expert office. And we're being very deliberate in setting up systems and processes around those team coming together times as well to be sure we're communicating again with a level of consistency. But the expectation clearly is that folks are in schools. I think the other other piece that we wanted to be very clear about is actually I'm so I apologize it left my head so the main I want to just leave it at that place. No problem. So just to the basics and I'll turn to colleagues 84 central office FTEs being reallocated that's where you get the $8.1 million movement from central office into schools. It'll have a senior director of school leadership as a team lead for how many teams do you expect to have total? 13. 13, okay. And everyone will have a learning specialist, literacy specialist, math, eML, special education, a staff person, a cluster, a security coordinator a PPPW or PPPW's. So if you think about the things that we've talked about today and the pressing issues facing the district, safety and security, special education, EML, literacy, mathematics, those are the things that we've identified as being most important, not the exhaustive list of the things that are important but the things that are most important. Not the exhaustive list of the things that are important, but the things that are most important, where we need to focus our attention and our energy. And so that's what comprises the team this year. This year could change depending on how things go. Likely will change. We should be fixing some things. So yes, it should change. And then there'll be cluster align based on our current clusters. You mentioned three clusters will have a dedicated team. Right? Yeah, others I guess would just be the other third. So there's 26 clusters now? 26, so we've shrunk down the caseload for these teams from between eight schools and 19 schools. So the highest you'd have is 19, and we strategically group clusters together so that those with an intensive need, we tried to keep things regional so that you have access and can get there quickly, but also just matching one that has intense needs with one that might not have as intensive needs so that you can differentiate your resources more appropriately. Appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, again, it's something you're, the board has signed off, you, this is something you want to implement as a superintendent, I think it makes a ton of sense. It conceptually, obviously, there's always bumps in the road when you roll something out. So I think it'll be important for the board and us as the NC committee to come back and get us at a sub date on like how you think, what do you think this is going, what the metrics are that you're using to determine success. What can I talk about that briefly? Sure. There are clear metrics for each member of each cross-functional team and they are largely tied to student performance. So as the schools in your cluster perform well, that is a reflection of your cross-functional team's performance. So we are tying central services performance to school performance directly. That's great. I don't think you have any disagreement from anyone up here on that. All right, I'll turn to my colleagues, Councillor Alvin Oz and then Councillor McNeil. Thanks, I'm a bit of a re-or geek. We did five of them while I was at the Department of Recreation, not because we wanted to, but mostly because of the reductions that we had to make at the time of personnel. we just had to be more nimble. So I appreciate respect what you're doing here. I just wanted to give you an, we talked about this privately Dr. Hale, I want to give you an opportunity to up list publicly. You sought feedback directly from school administrators and that also helped inform the development of this structure as well. Could you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah, thank you. I am not a reorganization geek. As a matter of fact, I cannot stand them. I tend to think that, well, first things first. It's an emotional experience. And you're talking about people's lives, their careers, their commitment to the school system. It's not something that should be entered into lightly. There really needs to be intentionality and structures that are put in place to preserve what you're really trying to accomplish. And I think that there's two things that really need to drive any kind of reorganization effort. One is your values as a district, making sure that we're holding true to our values. And the second is making sure that we have clear goals of what we want to accomplish and our clear goals are really simple to improve performance in the district to increase some operational efficiency through better system structures and processes and to make sure that our schools are receiving a level of support and care that is reflective of our values. Well, candidly they haven't been. And when we have a central services that's as large as our central services are, we have to ask some really hard questions of where are the pain points in terms of their service delivery and the things that are most important to them. And are we viewing things through the lens of their user experience? Well, I'm going to tell you that we historically as a district have not been great about that because we have been viewing things through the lens of what is quote-unquote good for MCPS as the entity, not what the school's experiences or the teacher's experiences or the students' experiences. And so this is a bit of a shift in philosophy and a bit of a shift in our approach in terms of putting the value back on what's happening in the schoolhouse versus what's happening at the central office? That makes sense. And yeah, just to elaborate what I said earlier, it was the circumstances that absolutely required re-organization, which is what we see here before us today, which is what I experienced. And you're right, it is challenging, it is emotional. And I know you don't want to do it more than any times that you have to. I guess just two final questions or thoughts slash questions. One of the things that it's a very large system. People move in and out of positions, they have new titles, but it's still a relationship business. It's you know, you establish relationship with people, you develop trust, you have navigators within this really complex system, within the schools, and then they change. And then you got to start all over again. And that's true of outside providers and stakeholders as well. So can you talk or anybody in the team, can you talk about from your perspective why you think this will help maintain a better level of consistency moving forward so that you are, you know, people retire, life happens, but to the degree to which we can keep people in positions longer, it will help the system as a whole. So I would go back to, you know, so Dr. Taylor has had us, you know, go through the socialization process of cross-functional teams, seek feedback from principles. There's no one more excited about cross-functional teams than the principle. And I'll tell you why, because the principle should only have to make one phone call. They shouldn't have to try to navigate this complex system of trying to search out and find the right person to help them, help the teacher, help the child, help the family. It should just be a one-to-one. And so we've created an organizational structure now where they know exactly who that person is across all these different fields, special education, whether it's compliance or instruction, you know, EML support, elementary literacy, math support, they have that one-to-one connection. So the social accountability structure that's embedded when you are not only accountable to a team of people, but you know exactly who the person is that you're reporting to in the quality of service that you're delivering. I think that that makes a significant difference. And I think we are right now being very intentional around the relationship process and developing the teams to ensure that there's a match, whether it's pre-existing relationships that they've had with people that they've worked with and demonstrated success, whether it's familiarity of working as a former teacher or leader in a specific cluster, whether it's the impact that you've had in, let's say, the Gathers're going in the Gathersburg cluster, and you've made significant gain, supporting emergent multi-lingual learners. We're really making those investments to ensure that people are not only in the right place, but then onboarding them to develop very meaningful relationships and go through the team building process. I'm not a big believer in the idea of an icebreaker, creates a team, but I'll tell you what creates a great team is doing work together. And we're going to do great work together. Starting before July 1, we have a nice long run wave since we've been able to plan this out for several months. So very excited. And it's a very relationship centric structure that I think will really create great results for children. several months. So very excited and it's a very relationship centric structure that I think will really create great results for children. I think it makes a heck of a lot of sense. I'll just make one more observation. It's very similar to the Kennedy cluster concept that Dr. Weast began to implement before the recession hit in 2009. So, and by extension, and potentially the evolution of this, once it's implemented with fidelity and you've got a track record, and is expanding this concept to include outside stakeholders for support for the entire family. So then these clusters don't just include MCPS staff, but then by extension, the nonprofits that are in these schools serving these children, or the other key stakeholders who are in the community, the sports associations, everybody's got a role to play, and it just helps better strategically align and manage all of that, which can be a little overwhelming. So I think it's exciting. I think this is long overdue. Wholeheartedly supported and I appreciate the very thoughtful approach that you've taken to making this recommendation. Thank you, Council member Mink. Thanks, I wanted to touch on a couple aspects, parts of the NCPS infrastructure that you have folded in to the cross-functional teams where there have been some community confusion and some concerns about what that's going to look like and wanting to make sure that they can understand that it's going to be a gain and not a loss. And so that's in terms of restorative justice and in terms of the equity work. So we now have each of the cross-functional teams, a professional learning specialist, which I understand that's really gonna be their focus is restorative justice work and equity work. And that is so needed. And I'm glad to see that that's a priority. I wanted to give you the opportunity to speak a little about that. Yeah, so a big change for us is does central office serve the function of swooping into solve a problem or are we participant in helping people to solve their own problems? The analogy that I used in describing this with our Board of Education was, are we the ones that do the fishing? Or are we teaching others to fish? Well, as a learning organization, we should be in the teaching people to fish business, not in the fishing business. And so this is a pretty substantive shift for us. And I would say that that is one of the focus of the professional learning specialist is to focus on restorative justice. Another focus is on broad based equity training. Another focus might be on tier one instructional strategies. But absolutely critical, we actually put it in the job description that that person's qualified for that position needed to have a background and training in restorative justice because we see it as a high yield approach that when shared broadly can be really effective and I will say that for as much of a commitment as we've made to restorative justice we haven't seen much of the needle move and part of the rationale behind that is because of our strategy. When you have one person or two people or three people trained in restorative justice in a school setting, it's not comprehensive enough to have the kind of dent that you want to make in terms of making that strategy pervasive in the school as an actual tool in the toolkit for the school to use to solving difficult situations. So part of the role of this individual would be as part of their mandate is to help move the needle in schools to make it a part of the school's culture and climate. And in many schools it is, but in many schools it's not. And so it was important for us that we shift the focus from our restorative justice personnel being part trainer, part superhero with a red cape to being full-time trainer and less superhero with a red cape. Great. And then you've also noted that the eight were sort of justice specialists and the three equity instructional, equity training specialists whose positions were eliminated that the intention, obviously budget, etc., etc., but the intention is to place them into those professional learning specialist roles given that as you said, is that so? That's all the plan. Yeah, that's all the plan out. Okay, great. And obviously there's HR blah, blah, blah. Leave that to you off, but that's great to hear because as you said, the importance of them coming in with that background is really essential if we are actually going to be standing behind that this is what they're going to be doing. And then to clarify, the tier one instruction is part of the job description because equity and RJ are relevant in tier one instruction. Is that absolutely accurate? Great, I just wanna make sure that we are, again, that we're not losing any of that. We have RJ positions and equity positions who were full-time dedicated and I just want to make sure that we're not losing any of that. Yeah, so again you bring up something that's really important and I think it's important for people to know and understand is that we have really talented people on our team. And we have really talented people that can still perform a great service to the district. Although our strategy is shifting, that doesn't diminish how talented our teammates are and how we can better leverage them in a different space doing something a little bit different or slightly different than that what they were doing before or doing this plus something else or doing something a little bit different. It does provide us an opportunity to retain great people but also to shift our strategy at the same time and that really was our objective and because we do have great folks and how we deploy them a little bit differently we are changing their mandate, we are changing their focus and we are providing a different set of directions. When you say change there and agree with all of that and we all know that as noted we are just part of what's happening but making sure that we have the restorative justice rollout that we need and the equity improvements that we need that is still their mandate right in the core to their core to their function It's just being accomplished in a different way. So much so it's literally written into the job description. But I think it's important too to articulate our shift in strategy. Right. Because I think that that is fundamental to this is our expectation. And this is one of the key tenants to restore to justice. I'm a huge proponent of restorative justice work, is that it's predicated on a prior relationship. Having outside personnel drive restorative circles is not productive because there is not a prior relationship. Shifting the strategy to having school personnel develop this skill set leverages that prior relationship. And I think we're gonna get better results as a consequence. I think that makes a lot of sense. And I know we've had this conversation, so I know where your heads are. I'm asking because I know that these are the questions that I'm hearing from the public. and I want to make sure that they have the same clarity that you have given me on this, and so when we come back and circle back on some of the details of what this rollout looks like, that they want to know how are the aspects of RJ that we're working, how are they still working, how are they working better? They're not being dropped, they're going to hear those things. And another piece of this where I think that there's a great, great opportunity to see that, that increase in performance in terms of the goal and what we're looking to do. The equity unit, which there's still is an intention to be inequity unit, but we've got people from there who are going to be placed now onto these teams within these spaces. One of the issues that they had previously was as and as was noted, it important to making changes, making positive changes in a school is having the relationship. And having somebody who's going to be there, regularly working with the administration in partnership. And the equity unit did not, when they came in to do their equity audits, they just was not a framework for that. And so some could say they had no teeth for getting a school to make changes. We could also say that there wasn't a framework for providing the expectations, the accountability, and really importantly, the support that you need for that to really be a partnership process there. And so by having members of the equity unit where that's their focus and their expertise and everybody knows that what this team, what these teams are doing is going around and helping schools with the things that they need in the areas of finding areas of opportunity to make improvements that that is the role that that framework is going to be there. I do think that there's a real opportunity there and I wanted to double check and again this is something that we've talked about, but wanted to give you a chance to voice this, that there is going to be collaboration between those folks and the equity unit who we understand. They're going to be kind of designing the equity anti-racism strategy, moving forward, system-wide training and support, all those sorts of things. Obviously makes a lot of sense for them to be having time and space in some kind of way of making sure that during that 20% right that there's opportunities for them to touch base with these PLS folks to make sure that those, that the system-wide plans are aligning with what's being rolled out on the ground. Could you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, sure. And I'll even add one more dimension to this. A major pain point that I've observed is it makes it very hard to move the needle in terms of some of the equity work that we would like to see accomplished when you have to be invited to a school. The schools that are inviting you are already further ahead in that equity work. The schools that need the help are not necessarily the ones that are first in line to invite somebody to have additional support. Part of this framework is that that invitation is now a mandate and a requirement, not something that can be passively done. So much of this is shifting from a passive arrangement to the equity work to an active arrangement of the equity work. We are not abandoning our approach to equity. We will still have a central-based equity unit that will still perform a lot of the functions that our equity unit is currently doing right now, but we will be deploying many of those folks into the field on the cross-functional teams as a result as well. And I think that that's another prerequisite that has made part of this so exciting and so fun is that these are shared values and shared beliefs on these teams, that this is the work that they want to see get done and that they are moving from a passive state to an active state. That's great. Love that framing. Look forward to coming back and having the more full-scent conversation about the programmatic details and noting that, you know, there are there are families who have been burned by promises made and promises not kept and by you know It's not really being up to the standards that we need to be in doing this exact type of work in establishing a culture of restorative justice in really approaching equity in a proactive way that's going to create meaningful change and we've some of that of that has hit the news, and some of it has not. But there's been a lot of pain, and there is a lot of concern and distrust about whether there's going to be a gap between what we say and what we do. And I know that that's the space that you are coming into and you're working hard. All of you here in our board is working hard, working hard, not just in this area, but in many areas to overcome that. This is a big one where we have to earn the trust of folks back. And so I appreciate everything you just said. And... working hard, not just in this area, but in many areas to overcome that. This is a big one where we have to earn the trust of folks back and so I appreciate everything you just said and to circling back on what the programmatic details look like. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor McKee. We will certainly continue. We've had sessions on sort of justice in equity unit. We will do those once we get through budget to get those, see how this stuff is working. Obviously, there's still a ton of work to do around implementation of the anti-racist audit, and we've talked about that earlier in the year, and obviously that, the teams and the equity unit are going to need to be focused on that. I always like to give a shout out to Julius West to lift up your point where restorative justice is working and they've seen major, they were part of our panel when we talked about it. To your point, it's because it's more embedded and in relied upon by everyone in the building. And so to the extent that we can filter that down and the cross-functional teams can be a part of helping to do that, that's going to be a good thing. I did, I think we're done with the items we need to cover. I just wanted to mention we got a memo yesterday from the County Executive. One of the changing his approach, she intends to notifying us to sending some budget amendments that directly impact MCPS. I want to mention it today. There is obviously a 3.5% tax, property tax increase included specifically for education that with the income tax offset credit would have given additional $56 million to fund the MCPS budget. That he's suggesting that that's no longer needed. As you remember, there were a lot of other puts and takes at the state level. We didn't know how much pinching we were gonna get, all the other things. So thankfully things worked out for us in this context. I think it's a good thing, in the probably the best scenario that it could have, given what we were looking at. And so he's instead recommended an increase of the income tax by 0.01 to 3.3, which would allow us to fund the MCPS budget and other items in his budget. Obviously, there are going to be put in takes across all the committees that's happening right now. But I think this is good news. I was not excited about having to potentially raise property taxes on folks. It's a very regressive flat tax that hits people not in a great way if you're a senior in your home that isn't working. It hits you just as much as someone who is working, whereas income tax is a little different. So we're going to bait all that and go through all that, but I wanted to make sure, as I know you all probably are aware, that that's impacting, it will impact this committee's decision I think in their level of Rec funding recommendation we sent to the full council so thank you this was a really good discussion today we will see you all again Friday later this week to have our third session and that one is in morning. And I think we're starting at 9 a.m. just to make sure the public is clear we've adjusted that up a little bit. So look forward to seeing you there and thank you and Miss Hazel, I know you didn't get to say anything but good to see you as always. Thank you good to see you. I'm Cheryl Huffman. Much to say. Yeah, we're gonna put you on spot. All right with that we are adjourned.