you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to today's session of the Education and Culture Committee. It is Friday, March 14th. We're here for a very, very important topic related to student success as we've been working our way through here for the last several months. And this could, you could argue this about everyone, but I think this one's probably among the most important. Ensuring the safe and secure environments for our students, our faculty, our staff, and everyone who's in our schools and around our schools. Students and educators cannot focus on learning and teaching if they don't feel safe. And while MCPS has worked diligently with local and regional law enforcement To protect students and staff Recent events remind us that there's more we can and that we must do to protect our school communities The recent lockdown it Bethesda Chevy Chase high school a few weeks ago as well as ongoing safety concerns at Kennedy high school Among others serve as a sobering reminder of how quickly a school environment can feel unsafe and highlight the importance of having reliable responsive security measures in place to protect our students and staff. I also want to highlight, however, that along with this, in the concept of safety are things like the disturbing racist incident at Wooten High School. And there are deeper systemic issues within our schools that must be a part of this larger safety conversation. We've also had, of course, anti-hate and bias incidents against our Jewish community and other communities or Muslim community. No one has been immune our LGBTQ plus community. And so if anyone feels unsafe, we've got work to do. And I know that's why we're here today. Our families have been clear. I've been clear as a parent and as the chair of this committee is a dad who has four kids and four different MCPS schools. Any threat of violence, racism, or serious incident in schools that fuels anxiety, disrupts learning, and impacts mental health is unacceptable, and we aren't okay with it. So here, we're going to talk about some of the progress system and some of the plans that are going forward. We'll hear about the MCPS district-wide safety and security plan that Chief Jones and the MCPS team have been putting in place. Last night, we had our first budget form. Dr. Taylor, this was a main component of the conversation, how this budget reflects investments in safety and security that now we have. It's in our hands today from the County Executive. So we'll talk about emergency preparedness, security infrastructure, staff training, and of course, people that can help us become more safe. We'll also talk about the vape sensors and these student ID programs and training for the security staff and all of this is important. Another thing we'll talk about, which you talk about in every MCPS session, is communication to parents and families about what's going on, how they, when things are happening. Just this morning we had, we had, we were joined by Councilmember Fannie Gonzalez today. Einstein had an issue with HVAC going down that people were smelling smoke. They thought there was a fire. Thankfully it wasn't a fire. It was, when it's, it was cleared by 830, but just underscores the importance of how safety and security is intertwined with a whole lot of issues and Make it in communication being at the heart of those. So I'm looking forward to the conversation. I want to thank school board member, Rita Montoya for joining us. It might be your first one as a school board member here. Okay, so congratulations to you. I'm joined by my colleagues, council member Aronaz and Council Member Mink on the committee. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Proudi to TSUP and then we'll get into the conversation. Thank you, Council Member's President Juwando and Council Member Mink, Aboranos and Fennigen Zalas. I'm Doug Proudi, Senior Legislative Analyst for the Council. Committee most recently heard an update on it, discussed safe school environments and joint meeting with the Public Safety Committee on October 24th, 2024. Board of Education has heard updates recently on this topic on August 20th, 2024, and January 9th of this year. Today's discussion is timely as the council begins consideration that kind of exec's proposed budget. The committee has just as council vice president you want to mention, considered different aspects of MCPS over the past few months. The particular focus is on services and opportunities for traditionally underserved students. And in response to community outreach on areas of concern as noted in number of recent forums, this has been a topic which has been a great interest to the community. You've already gone over what we're going to hear today, so I just want to finally thank Dr. Moran, Mr. Jones, for being here as well as those who help them prepare. And thank you for your work on the half of the students from CPS and our community. And I will queue up your slide, so. So how many slides do you have just so I can not have any? Okay, thank you. All right. So we'll hold questions until after. If there's any questions on the data on the slide, we can stop. Just let me know. So, good afternoon. Marcus Jones, the Chief of Security, Safety and Security, Security, and compliance with MCPS. It's a pleasure for us to be here today to present to you our Safety and Security update. And to talk about many of these issues, which we know are very, very important to our counsel, our elected officials, as well as our particularly among Montgomery County community, parents, and students, and our staff members. And we have, you know, with the largeness of our system, having a system of over 211 schools and many different dynamics, I've learned quite a bit in my 10 months of being on a job, really seeing the different dynamics that we all must, and the challenges that we have with the uniqueness of our school buildings. Many of the issues that surround our schools, the different safety concerns that you have in different communities, you know, depending upon the layout of the school, whether it's in an urban environment, whether it's just simply in a residential environment or a rural environment. There are significant challenges at every level of our school system. And we have been working my staff along with Dr. Moran's staff of really trying to put together a comprehensive safety plans and looking at many of the needs that we have surrounding our schools. Some of them are technological, some of them are replacing outdated equipment that we've had such as cameras that we've had for quite some time, 15 years plus that are really working on very older systems and it requires us to be at a different place in today's environment and the needs that we have in order to be able to resolve situations in a very quick manner. And so we've been pursuing and have pursued and been successful in grant acquisitions to be able to support that. We've been addressing many of these issues through our capital improvement budget as well. that we had funding that was able to really look at some of the overdue items of things that needed to be addressed when it came to I'm sorry automated card readers as an example at some of our schools which did not have we are still really addressing many of those those outstanding items as we speak as we look at again the safety and security of our buildings and one of the things I'll talk about much later in our presentation is to talk about what we have found in our assessment process that I we begin with going to all of our high schools. We are about 98% complete. We have two remaining high schools that we need to assess. Then we will be forwarding a report on our high school assessments. And in the midst of that, we will then begin to start addressing our middle schools so that we can also support them for many of the needs they have. So from our standpoint again, we really have taken a collaborative approach to work with our principals, the administrators at the schools, the staff, and the security teams that I think is always sometimes left out because they're vitally important members in our school schools on a daily basis that have relationships with our kids. They are pretty much well versed in the emergency management issues and procedures in which you need to be implemented and execute it on a daily basis. And these are always ever evolving. And it's a massive task to be able to always, to stay on top of that, to make sure our staff, our teachers, our trained, our students are trained. So they know what to do in emergency situations, whether it's a lockdown, whether it's a shelter in place, and there's a lot of uniqueness to that because of the situation, but being situationally aware and helping people to navigate those things, because we understand how traumatic in many cases those can be. They can be for not only the students and the staff, but they can be for the parents when they don't know. And we definitely want to get into where we are from that standpoint. So I'll pass it off to Dr. Moran until I'll him to chime in and then we can proceed through the slide deck. Good afternoon. Peter Moran, Chief of Schools, I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. Certainly something that we are working very hard on, but something we need to work, I think, even harder on. As Councilmember Jowanda pointed out, we've had several incidents in the past three weeks that have elevated the anxiety of our communities around safety and security, not only within the school, but within the surrounding community and how those things extend into the school house. And a lot of what you're going to hear from us today and the dialogue that I hope we have is around the communication piece. I think the communication piece and ensuring that we're providing accurate, timely information, following up accordingly with our parents, with our staff. One reflection that we've had over the past with these incidents is how there are elements of disinformation with some incidents, malinformation with some incidents, and how we need to work more tightly with internally as a system, but also with our partners outside of the system to get information to families in a timely manner. That is accurate and not ambiguous because I believe that sometimes our communication exasperates problems as opposed to brings the temperature down, which is what the intention of our communication always is. So if we could just go to the next slide, Mr. Proudi. So again, we look at this, again, the approach is multi-layer in a sense that we are embedding more than just, you know, instead of living in a silo per se, we want to bring all members of our MCPS staff together to be able to best address how we work through all of our security challenges. And I'll give you a downward approach. The emphasis that we've had in speaking with our principals to have our teachers, for example, at a high school level during the midst of a class change to, to have our teachers more visible, right? To be, it's more than just that we have security assistance, that we have some schools not many. So there's many hallways that cover their bathrooms. There's these doors that need to be covered, but that everybody plays a role, right? It's my job, it's your job, it's everybody. It's job is really the mantra that we really kind of worked on. And again, we're working at, again, trying to find those things that are helping us to decrease incidents from a current because we feel like an adult presence will, a lot of times, we'll that activity, right? Having our security assistance actually checking bathrooms often, right? Where we have many incidents that are occurring, right? That are in because it's out of sight of a camera, right? It is sort of the meetup place, right? We hear often that you have some of our students will say, I won't go into the restroom because there's 20 people in there that aren't necessarily utilizing the restroom right for its purpose so that that provides and I'm going to talk a little bit about how the vape sensors are going to help us in that regard as well but But again, this is that additional work that we are working with our security teams that many of them already do. But again, we're enhancing that and really challenging them to really, again, when they're having really good relationships with our children, they're able to really kind of move them along and provide that safe space for people to be able to use that. So again, we want to be, you know, as effective as possible, but also providing that safe environment for our students. So next slide. So we're going to talk a little bit about serious incident reporting, things that are requirements that our staff that helps us to again capture data. And that's always an interesting title when we talk about serious incidents because it covers a wide variety of things that are sometimes even outside of the IE, the security and safety norm that most people would just expect to be reported out. So there's the requirements that I know Dr. Moran can speak more specifically about. And again, providing how we actually proceed with that process, the reporting process, and how we share that data, a school year data at the end of the year. And now we have gotten to the point where now I'm trying to keep that information out there from a transparency standpoint. So people can see real time data that actually that are events that are happening at all of our schools at every level, OK? We're also going to talk about the vape census, of course, as it was noted, the student IDs. And we're going to talk about training, particularly the training that goes on in the world of safety and security. And as we look at the student expectations, code of conduct, suspensions, and or end, talk briefly about our assessments. Next slide. So again, one of the things I just share, we're real briefly on the slide, I won't speak to the whole slide, but these are the types of bullets that we talk about that are being reported out that relate to safety and health. We also talk about security and discipline. These are things that we will be noted about, for example, when was the incident a requirement to notify the police as it relates to our MOU, right? Did this particular incident that had occurred? Did it require police involvement? Yes or no? Because we know we've already set those parameters in place. So there's times like if there's a fight, right? That occurs. It doesn't necessarily require a police response, right? That occurs within the school. So yes, it's noted, it may be noted as a serious incident, but it doesn't necessarily note that police were involved, and there was more from a criminal investigation. We have our parameters about what that looks like, when it is a required police response, and they need to be brought into the fall for reporting purposes. But again there's other parts such as the example that Mr. Joondo, Mr. Joondo brought up this one. Yeah it's all good. So brought up just a little while ago about the incident and Einstein. That would be reported out as a serious incident, right? Because it was an incident that equated to the malfunction of equipment. But at first, it was believed it could have been a fire, right? So there was a types of things that we speak of. Okay, next slide. Again, the process really is about the principal or the principal's designate making the proper notification in regards to what is exactly what occurred, right? Who needs to be notified, right? They, it is often that they will notify our office, they will notify Dr. Moran's office. And should they need additional support for whatever incident that might have occurred, whether it might be a mental health type of a situation, those incidents are then tracked and we look at follow up about where do we need to go from a standpoint of providing additional support and services in regards to what has occurred. Many times, whether parents are notified, it may be a disciplinary track issue, it may not be. It may be just something that there's need some other outlying resources that may come from Dr. and the's shop in the Office of School Support and Improvement. Okay, next slide. Yeah, would you please? So what we're looking at here is just to compare, and it goes back to what Chief Jones shared around serious incidents. So there are incidents, and then there are serious incidents. An example of an incident could be as simple as a student being tardy to class, and it's reported via through synergy. So there are a number of incidents, as you can imagine, that occur within a community, occur within a school, and are required to be reported by our schools to ensure that we are one aware of it to are able to provide the support it serves as a communication function. So if it's a maintenance issue that's reported as an issue, it is circulated immediately as it's called in. People are deployed to the school to repair something to respond in real time. And then there are of course the serious incidents. And serious incidents, did you want to? Just explained a difference between the yes and no. I think the green is not a serious incident. Yes. And that's year to year for, yeah, that's last year versus this year. To date? To date. So when we did this January, January 9th, this was our data from January 9th, that is presented to our Board of Education, yeah. So you see that there's an increase in incidents from January 9th, 2000 and 23 to January 9th, 2024. I do wanna say that we have tightened our expectations on reporting serious incidents and made it very clear what the responsibilities are not only in the school, but in the office of school support improvement around what you do with that information. They are also required to close it out in terms of what type of intervention was implemented to address the serious incident. Our close out rate is much higher than it has been in the previous three months as well. So the accuracy around the numbers, I'm much more confident in the accuracy of the numbers than I had been in previous years. I would say that our team would agree with that. But I think the important thing also to point out about this is that when we get into the serious incident data and we just reviewed this as a team with principles the other day. So our serious incidents around fighting is down 10% this year from last year. Certainly not where we want it to be, but it's trending in the right direction. Our suspension rates, which is not, of course, can be connected to serious incidents is down 1.5% overall from this time last year. year and this is actually data as of today. So we're moving in the right direction. I think some improvements that need to be made around our serious incident data is being more specific with these numbers, right? So there are inside of a 7,603, I would say we need to be changing our policy to disaggregating them in a more transparent way so that they're reported out because the numbers vary deceiving. Back to what you said, it could be something as a maintenance issue that falls within a serious incident. It could be, and really the majority of our serious incidents across all of our schools are health emergencies, where a student suffers a seizure or if something happens with a staff member in injury, like all of those are in that number. So staff included, right? So we're talking about staff, we're talking about community. So for instance, if there's something that happens on your school property, building service manager comes in the morning, something has occurred, somebody's on the property, it's reported as a serious incident. I think moving forward, and we talked about this with our Board of Education, is disseminating these numbers, ensuring that they're categorized when we report out, so people have an understanding of, you know, okay, so this many are around maintenance issues, this many are around health and emergency issues, this many are actually, you know, fights, this many are weapons, and being more transparent with those numbers as opposed to just providing this, you know, holistic, large number which can be left up to significant interpretation. Yeah. Agreed. And you're going to break down the relationship of the next slide to this slide. Just before we move on, I think it's helpful. And colleagues have questions on this. Let me know we can, we can, I want you to finish, but this is just an important point. So the red is serious incidents. And the blue is incidents. So we're down serious incidents from last year. Correct. But overall incidents. Overall incidents are up. But like I said, when you don't have the disaggregation of the green, you don't really know if that's a, what that means fully, right? But you have the data, but is the system not capable at this point of disaggregating it appropriately or is it an entry thing? It has to be coded in a specific way. So people need training on how to enter a thing in so it can be coded appropriately. But do the categories exist right now? Okay. And are they doing that already or not? Yeah. It's more also about like ensuring that they close the mouth, right? So if they don't close it out, it remains open. It's not reported as a serious incident until it's actually closed out by the school. So there's a lot of monitoring that goes into this. I do think that moving forward, systems can be much more effective in ensuring that what we're reporting out is just, I think it would lower actually if people were able to see out of those serious incidents what they were, it would make things actually, it would improve the perspective of safety and security as opposed to make it, you know, wow, there's this many incidents. So the sooner you, I think there would be, you know, I don't know what the board has asked for, but whatever you're going to deliver to them, send to us, but it seems like it would be value in just even breaking down this current data. Right. And just knowing, for instance, this January to January to know what this is, so we can have something to base it on going forward. Okay. Please continue. Yes, we can go to the next slide. So this does somewhat break it down in terms of just the number of incidents and just to point out a couple of things, you're going to see a minor decrease in weapons found in schools. You're going to see an increase from, you know, 30, that number of incidents are on the left percentage of them are on the right. I do want to point out in terms of our incidents when you're looking at, you know, those numbers, I mean, we're in the single digits. And that's what goes back to the previous slide around why it's important to share out specifically what are, what are these other incidents in tailing? an attack on others we've decreased and now it's actually at 10%, so we've decreased further since January 2 to March 14th of as of today, because I've actually looked at that data this morning, and you see that our drug and controlled substances is actually up by a percentage point, and actually is actually up by 3% as of this morning when I looked at it. So, it's actually, there's been an increase in drugs and control some of this versus last year versus this year. We could go to the next slide. And could, sorry. Going back to the last slide. I just wanted to make it two quick points. So when we look at the trespassing, this needs to be included because this involves not only students, but it also involves sometimes our parents or other adult members of the community. Okay. And then when we look at, for example, the numbers and false alarm bomb threats, one thing I know from my past life in my previous job, we had a significant issue last year with false bomb threats. But I'm pleased to report that this year I think we've turned that corner. So, though we might get some false alarms, which is the vast majority of those numbers for this particular school year, the bomb threats have definitely declined. So that's a really good sign for us, yes. If we go to the next slide. Oh, it's up. Okay, there are more sensors. You're quick, Doug. You want me to go there? Yeah. So, again, going back, vape sensors, of course, we are in motion. In fact, we are getting very close to going live. So at this very moment, we are about midway of getting all of our schools with the installation of cable and the technology that's technological support that's needed for the vape sensors to operate. Those are actually being installed by our vendors down. All of our high schools will be our first target. I am anticipating an April 1st go live date. I'm here to report that we don't, as much as I would like it to be, I don't think every high school is going to be online because we've got some technological barriers and some of the schools that we've got to do a little bit more work than we originally thought. But Divinter has even promised me that, even those schools that are giving us that, creating that, will be by the end of April, will be up and running. So all of our vape sensors are being installed in bathrooms, right? All of the student bathrooms in our high schools from that. So every bathroom at the high school will have a vape sensor, that's correct. I just wanted to add and learn this from Chief Jones. So the vape sensors also act as a sensor for a large gathering of students. So it's not just simply a vape sensor. It communicates to administrators, to security when there's a large number of students in a bathroom so that they can yeah interview. Yeah, it's a noise. It has like a noise sensor. So it can almost pick up the fact that there's multiple voices, you know, in things and they date it has that capability to alert and the alerts will are going to be silent, but the alerts will be going directly to the principal administrators that he has designated for those notifications and to the security teams so that they can pinpoint directly where that sensor is going off and they will be getting notification whether it's a vaping incident or whether it is a noise disturbance type of an incident. You want to talk about student IDs? So this is the student identification implementation is something that we officially rolled out in November. We, you know, different schools work different places through the first marking period period. A lot of that had to do with wanting to give folks the time to one, when you have freshmen come in, make sure that they all have IDs. Two is the process, and this is something that is a significant variance around. So we have some schools that actually have the ability to scan in students, right? So they have their ID, they scan it, makes it a much more efficient process. We have other schools that don't have that technology as of right now, making it a process that where it needs more staff to as students come through a one-way entrance and they bring their IDs in or they have their IDs in. It just makes it a much more strenuous, slow process for students to get into the building. Because what we've really tried to set as an expectation for all of our schools is a one-way entrance into the school building, all other doors being locked so you have to come through one spot. So having the ability to be able to scan in is a significant feature that if we were able to provide that resource to all 25 of our high schools, I think we'd see some significant upgrades. There's a lot of work to be done around our student identification implementation. I actually met with students to talk about their experiences with this. There are some schools and just to recognize them. Both Rockville and Richard Montgomery have been models for doing this. Their students will tell you around just the consistency. And it goes back to the theme like we can have all the infrastructure in the world. But what really makes schools safe is having a culture where everybody knows what the expectations are. Everyone is committed to, you know, being in the same place at the same time on the same day, asking students for their ID if it's not displayed. And we actually had an incident in one of those two schools where we had a student that was, it was not a student. I'd take that. It was trust-passing and was gotten access to the building. And and a student. I take that. It was trust passing and was gotten access to the building. And a administrative notice that they didn't have their badge visible, asked them, and ended up contacting the police and going through the process with law enforcement. So that just shows you that it does work when it's done with fidelity. And it's just a habitual process you have in place. We need to get to the place where all 25 schools are operating the same way. This has been a part of our assessments that we've done at all of our high schools, which have been a great learning experience around us assessing and knowing exactly what the needs are at all of our high schools. The expectations around this, we need to get to a place where all of our principals are doing this in exactly the same way. I'll use Kennedy as an example, met with the Kennedy community to hear about the student ID implementation. They have students come in, they check them on the way in, then students put them in their backpack and they move around the building and they're in their backpack. If you're asked for it, they bring it out, but they're not required to wear it the entire time. Students gave us feedback around things like, you know, the lanyards that were provided are, you know, not high quality. When I, that's not the word that's used yet. When they lose their ID, then they are, they are, in schools required to pay for a replacement, which can be $10, or they're given a paper ID, and that is clearly not the intention behind the implementation process. So it is being implemented. I would say the effectiveness is strong in some places, decent in others and weak in some places. In those schools that we found them to be weak, we've sent out and had them actually even visit other schools to see what it looks like in process. But I think the ability to scan in, and we've even had conversations about it moving to it using a phone as a way, but then that also creates a lot of, I mean, there's equity components that are in that. There's also the ability to screenshot something and use somebody else's ID. So I don't want to, you know, this is not at a place where it's successful. There's a significant of work that needs to go on this and we're doing that work now. But things, I think the speed at which things happen, we need to pick up the pace. The student expectation modules. So the last time actually we spoke about the student expectation modules, we have gotten to a place where we're over 80% of our students that have completed the expectation modules. And I know, so when you hear that number, when I heard it at first, I was like, we need to be at 100%. So the students complete these, like you have to like coach them through completing these modules and going through it and participating in the process to actually go through a module that we provide to our staff. So we were actually last year around, I believe we were at like 42%, we're at 80% right now. They do go home to parents. I do, so this is the first year that we've done them in our advisory periods requiring all of our schools to utilize an advisory period to go through them. The thing that I've appreciated, and really the most important time to do the student expectation modules, is at the start of the second semester, it's not at the start of the school year. So when you start the school year, people are pretty tuned into expectations and things. Of course, the things start to tail off, especially as the weather starts to get a little bit warmer. The time to remind students and use the advisory period is actually around February, March. We sent out that reminder and directors are out ensuring that those things are being done during advisory period. I think that great idea, I think there's been positives to this. The question I have is around that we need to answer is around how to get access to parents to be able to be on the same page around the student code of conduct and ensure that that communication is that they have access to the same type of module, which they do, but how do you incentivize our parents and families participating in that process to ensure that there's a mutual understanding around the expectations for student character. If we could go to the next slide. Okay. So with this, this is, goes into our suspension data, which I referred to earlier. You do see a, again, a decrease in the aggregate suspensions. You see a decrease in the suspensions of our Black or African American students. You do see a slight increase in our Hispanic and Latino students. I want to recognize our restorative justice folks. If you look at the places where they are stationed or working with staffs, you see a much lower suspension rate. And I know people like to think that that number has to do with not implementing consequences, but it actually has to do with not having repeat behaviors. And that's the critical thing to point out about that. So when you look at suspensions, you're often looking at repeat suspensions within those numbers. And at particular schools, you know, our Guile Middle School, we've seen a significant decrease in suspension. I think that's also lends itself to the vision of the principal as well, to use alternative ways to not only consequent, but more importantly, teach students. But the trajectory on this is moving in the right way. You do see, again, the frankly unacceptable disparities between our black and African American students, Hispanic and Latino students, our Asian students, and our white students. It is something that on Monday mornings, we send out a report, we actually track suspensions weekly, go out to schools and have conversations where we've seen a rise in suspensions specifically around race and even socioeconomic status and have conversations about exactly what transpired, why it increased, and what we're going to do about it. I think the accountability piece of that has decreased suspension rates in some schools that we've specifically targeted where we've we've seen higher numbers of suspensions in comparison to their colleagues or similar schools. We're going to generally hold to the end, but Councilmember Fannie Gonzalez has a question about one of the aspects of the data on the slide. Yeah, that way we don't have to come back. When I see this number, 313 for example, is that number of suspensions, but does it include the same Individual let's say that I've been suspended three times throughout a whole year So I will say is three Suspensions among 313, but it's one person. Is that what it is? Yes, it's one person that could have been suspended three different times. And do you have that data of how many kids? We can also highlight and share that with you because it is insightful. And again, going back to this serious incident slide, when you look at numbers like this, you can take these numbers and make a story out of them or you can provide additional details to provide a counter narrative to whatever. It just provides more transparency and honesty around what's happening in our school system. And even in specific schools, we've had conversations with principals where we've gone out and said, you know, what in the world is going on? And it's been more of a conversation about sometimes even just an individual student. and so this is what occurred and it wasn't you know it wasn't five students it was it was one student or it was two students so yeah thank you yep and I have questions on this but I'll wait to I'll wait to know that's a good question that's an important question so please So please continue. We go to the next slide. So again, as I noted earlier, that as we began the school year, we really looked at this from a collaborative approach to, for safety and security, as well as OSSI, to work together to really go out to each of the high schools and have really face-to-face with our principals, with our key administrators as well as our security teams that really talk to talk through what some of their challenges are to hear from them, but also to provide some insight and to look at best practices as Dr. Moran talked about with the ID policy. Much of that has been centered around about our trespassers that we have students who have been trespassing in our buildings are adults that don't go to school but they've come to school and to create conflict or, you know, therefore other purposes. And so this is many of the things that we've talked about, what are some of the building facility challenges that are centered around safety and security, right? Some of the technology, things, the blind spots that they have issues with cameras and what are some of the things that we could support from central office to provide for better environment. And so this has been very fruitful from, I think from everyone's sides that we've been able to really have great dialogue, produce reports, show photographs, work with our facilities management to create plans to move forward, right? Some things have already been addressed. Some things are in the process of being addressed and some things, some of the items we still have to work on. But some of that also works about, for example, what is our staffing capacity. We look at some of our schools and we talk about how many security assistance do they have. right? And when they, when their assignments, you know, as Dr. Moran talked about, you know, you have schools that have door entrances for the morning, right? And when students are coming in, what some of our high schools have, you know, they have multiple or three or four doors, right, of entryways because of the structure of their buildings and parking lots and parent drop-offs versus the bus drop-off versus walkers. There's a lot of dynamics. So those are really important for us to help to provide them with when we see what those needs are to really then work around our staffing to be able to help provide them with any additional support when we can. And again, we'll talk a lot about that a little bit later. So I just wanted to go back to the, like, so when I look at these things, these are all cultural things. These are school culture things. And I just want to use an example for you to just like, and you probably remember, like three years ago, we were hearing a lot of incidents at Seneca Valley High School. Seneca Valley High School, Ricardo Hernandez, is the principal there. The culture that he has created in that school has resulted in a much safer environment where things are organized, controlled, students are moving through the hallways, getting to class, and it's all because of presence, visibility, accessibility, and I'll just tell you an experience I had there the other day. I was walking into the building and a parent held open the door for another parent. And the other parent said to the parent, no, I need to buzz in and they're gonna need to ask me why I'm here. And that is just an example of what needs to be created, not only in our school but in our community. And so we need to get on the same page together around what are all of our responsibilities. And it was just an example to me of what Mr. Hernandez has done to create that. Like that didn't just happen. That is communication that's come from him. He's placing expectations on the parents about how you can help us and they're responding. And so these assessments have been very insightful. But again, you can put all the infrastructure, all the technology you want, but it's not going to change that person making the decision to tell the other person, no, I need to buzz in. They need to ask me why I'm here, who I am. Culture of expectation is so important. And I often tell that's the largest school in the state of Maryland. Physically, that Sunnker Valley has the biggest space of any high school in the state. And the fact that you can secure it, you can do it, but you just have to have the right plan and the right culture. That's a good point. Shout out to Principal Hernandez. And again, I'll just note one of the clear and I think major items that many, that most of the principals have brought to our attention, that they have challenges with are the unauthorized use of doors that aren't your normal entry ways in to your buildings, right? And that a lot of times, you know, it may be as innocent as people think it is okay to be, for example, you know, students allowing other students to come through the back door, for example, but it's not, right? And so we're trying to come up with some assistance for them with door sensors right to make sure that these doors you know can't be open you know you can put signs up but making sure that people know that there's consequences of opening doors for unauthorized individuals to enter our buildings right and we found cases that those are the things that have actually created some events in our schools and incidents that didn't go well and so making sure people understand the why of why we want to make sure we are emphasizing that as an important safety feature to protect everybody. So in the end I think this is again this is our presentation and I think at this point we're ready to talk about let's be the one to speak of anything else but that's I think we're good to answer your questions so thank you. You've got plenty of time for questions so that's that's awesome so I'll start and kick it off to my committee colleagues and I'll go to Councilmember Feinning and Zalas. So I'm gonna pick up where you left off. I was gonna ask about the door sensors and you got it in right at the end That's something that we often when you're talking about the unauthorized entry or even authorized entry But at a wrong at the wrong door at the wrong time at the wrong point, right? It could be a student who is a student who's authorized to be in the building, but they should go through the door they're supposed to go through, right, and create that culture. So where are we with what's the current process with the door sensors at high schools? I know priority, but to the extent, and what are they capable? How many do we have? What's the process of getting them all up? And then what's the process of what they can recognize and then what are the consequences? kind kind of like walk me through that process. So we are actually beginning an RFP process to find the right vendor because we got a lot of other sort of balls in the air from the technological standpoint. But we are we actually are working. We found some really good products out there that I think are going to be very beneficial for us. And so yes, we're starting at the high schools. We've already done the assessment of the doors that have been identified that need to be, to have door sensors attached to them. We are tying those into again a notification process that it goes directly to, again, you know, to our administrators, our security teams, so that they can go with address that issue, and our cameras are alerted, and are basically identifying who was, you know, since it goes off the camera. That's it, it will go activation mode, right? And we'll be able to capture that off our video as well that's been captured. So that's something, again, that we're in that process of really of, of, of, of, of, I think a great feature that's going to be beneficial. And like I said, all of our principles are really just begging for this feature because they know this is one of their main concerns around security. And what's the timeline you think for the RFP and the... Oh, the RFP, we should be preparing that. In fact, I just talked to my director yesterday. We should have that prepared within the next couple of weeks. And we think that is going to go out, hopefully to get something out within the next month. And so... Yeah, I mean, probably next school year. My hope is absolutely, we will be targeting the beginning of next school year. So that all of these will be installed and ready to go live. Absolutely. One other, so one other thing I wanted to raise was so we had the decrease in reported serious incidences, which is great, but you mentioned the control substance increase. And I know we're all obviously super concerned about that. Can you tell us more about the nature of that? Break that out a little bit. What types of control of substance is? And are you noticing a pattern of anywhere or anything more you can provide about that? So it's commonly connected to vapes. And so that even makes the vapes sensors I think more critical. Some of our students use the bathroom to do that. In terms of the type of drug, we've had incidences where we've had incidents where it's a percussette, we've had incidences where, you know, it's another controlled substance. I think, and just, I got the, in example, I think of why we haven't seen as much of an increase that many other communities have is because of the partnerships that we've had with people like Laura Mitchell and the different scene students the other weekend at the Senate actually at Gatorsburg High School. I was there and just we are doing a good job in that area. I feel like partnering with external agencies and providing supports through our RAP program to students that need it. But certainly it's something that I think we're all extremely anxious about. I have conversations with principals all the time around bathrooms, bathroom access. Why is this bathroom at this certain time over by the theater locked? And it's always around the reason why I'm concerned about that bathroom is that it's off the beaten path in our school and I'm worried that something will happen in that bathroom and so it's all administrators minds every day. I appreciate that I was going to bring up the vapes and I'll ask just one more and then I'll go to councilor Albinar's make and then, if I think it's Alistair. The, you know, there's the VAPE Center sensors that there's been some, back and forth about okay, how effective are they? And if they are, they definitely improve perceptions of restroom, you know, because I could see on its face, if you know more people are in there, you could decrease the usage of bathrooms with congregating spots for vaping or fights or anything else, any activity we don't want to see. How are we thinking about measuring the long-term effectiveness of these given the cost and deployment? So, yeah, I think that, well, when we've been talking to our vendor and there is some analytics involved that allows for capturing data, right? The amount of times that the actual sensors are going off and that is a, that's able to, they have it, what they call the halo cloud that will be able to look at real-time data to kind of see what's you know what is some of the impact of you know vapes and then having them kind of mirror that with our response what did we find right as a result of our responding to a vape sensor going off that said it was vaping or you know allowed noise disturbance was effective or exactly. So I think we're going to have to really start to do some analysis centered around that. And we're going to be focused on that, because I think that's important for us to really dive into the sea. And to measure that against about the number of, you know, when we look at, we can capture now, for example, and even in some of the control danger substance, though we probably have to peel it off a little bit. Well, we're actually, you know, actually administrators are finding students who have vapes, instruments on their person, or they've actually been caught actually vaping in the schools, And then to look at that, whether we're seeing those numbers be, see those numbers decrease, whether we're seeing what is the impact of that too. Because as a deterrent tool, right, because I think at some point when students really realize that I can't really do it here, right, is it going to be that important for me to really, you know, bring it to school and utilize it at all, right? So that's going to be very important. And you'll find out, or do they try to move to another place or something? Which is right. Exactly. I was going to just say exactly. So it's the correlation between the vape sensors and the door sensors. So essentially students are going to learn, can't do it here. So if I'm trying to exit the building to, you know, they kind of go hand in hand. Last one I have for now, and I'll put myself back in the queue, the discretionary suspensions and connected to, well real're quick before I ask that, there was another category for serious incidents that had almost 80% of the serious incidents. What is in the other category? So that's where you have your health emergencies. Okay. That's a large percentage. Like the majority of the others are health emergencies. So the majority of shelters that you see reported in Montgomery County Public Schools are health emergencies of either students or staff where an ambulance comes to school and the principal calls a shelter so that no one sees the individual having to be taken out and wants to protect their privacy. Yeah, I just think, I know you understand this, but I got to underscore just how we have to fix the data. I mean, it just making the data look so much worse than it is. I mean, again, we're not trying to hide anything, but we just have to be transparent about what is actually happening so people can use the data, you know, so you can use the data. The discretionary suspensions are down, which is good. You know, a customer friend of Gonzalez asked a point about that. But as you mentioned, there are still serious disparities here, you know, even though the overall numbers are down. So what's the criteria or the decision making framework for discretionary suspension and like how are we monitoring that and training against that and when we see the disparities in a particular school building and how are we addressing that? So one of the things that we've changed is the decision to suspend was often made an isolation by one person. So people are always coming to situations with their own bias, their own lack of information about a student, the lack of contextual understanding they have about, you know, that students, you know, experiences, what previous things have or haven't occurred. So we've created a structure where they have to actually make it a decision that we're a team of people weigh in on suspensions. I think that process should lead to further decrease in suspensions. It's not a, you know, looking at like 15 less suspensions, that's not what we're looking for. I mean, we're looking more for, you know, 215 less suspensions in our Black or African American or in Latino category. I think the other piece is... interventions in our Black or African American, or in Latino category. I think the other piece is understanding preventative, like so, we have these student wellbeing teams, I think again, they've been a mechanism that have supported preventative measures being put in place. I can't stress enough. I feel like I continue to just talk about very basic things. Really the most basic things are the biggest impact. A student having a very significant relationship with an adult in a building is where you, if you go to schools and talk to the principal, your suspensions have gone down, you know, over the last three years by 40% in this category, what is the answer? They will tell you that is the answer. It is a connection with another human being. And that also is the same, they get the same answer for attendance as well. Why are you coming to school? I come to school to see Mr. Jawando. Like that is the answer that kids will give you. So I can't stress enough and we can do all these shiny things, but it really boils down to people investing in kids before there's an incident so that they can provide the strategies and supports where something doesn't happen. I think that's why you see the success with the restorative schools where you don't see the recidivism and the repeat incidences. All right, council member Alvinov. Thank you. I'll ask a few questions and then get back in the queue because and I know we're trying to end by three o'clock today and thank God it's Friday. So I know that connecting a couple of dots. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had an extended session to talking about mental health, behavioral health, our wellness centers, the implementation of those. And the issue of security and safety came up often because the two issues are inextricably linked. And one of the questions that I posed and the answer was yes, that in the environment surveys that are administered to students, one of the questions that is asked is whether or not students feel safe within their schools. And we didn't get a report out on what the outcomes of that are. But I just want to ask specifically, when you do see situations where, for whatever reason, some schools and students report not feeling as safe as other schools what are the interventions that are in place how are you nimbly addressing those issues and assessing them on the ground and it's hard to believe it's been ten months chief Jones but time flies when you're having fun right but can you talk chief Jones about now that you're ten months in, you know, school environment leadership varies. Every principle of the administration brings different strengths, weaknesses, priorities. How are you connecting those two dots when students are reporting not feeling as safe in a specific school and how are you addressing that? That's a great question. Councilmember Albinas, because I will tell you, you know, we have received the feedback from some of the schools that, and we talked to our student member on the board and we have that dialogue often about, and some of the student leadership about the things that are important to them that they look at, whether it's making them feel safe or not feel safe. And much of what we described earlier about incidents that occur in our bathrooms, how those things make them not feel safe because they feel like I can't utilize the restroom because there's 20 people in here right and knowing that their intentions aren't to use the restroom and then you also have incidents that that the students will share with us about you know we know that there's sometimes unauthorized people that come into our schools that, you know, we don't know what their intentions are, right? And it doesn't necessarily make us feel safe. And I think it's really about dissecting and engaging with our staff members and our security staff as an example to make sure they're doing the things that will prevent those issues from happening, right? So if I have security staff that, you know, in the principle, and we work with them in their security plans about the roles that their security team members are playing at all times during the day. So for example, during the middle of a class break, that not only does the security team members have a post, but part of that post responsibility may be that you're watching the bathroom, right? That's on your hall, and you're maintaining, making sure that type of gathering isn't happening. I was at Einstein just a couple of weeks ago. I was watching the same scenario, a class break, and I watched the security team members monitor a bathroom real time, and they basically, you know, just basically kept moving the students and reminding them, hey guys, it's time to get to class, right? And knowing there wasn't a lot of people in the bathroom, but it's still for those that were there in their area, they were providing those reminders about Baygishore, they get to class on time, not being tardy. And those again, once you kind of, you can kind of sense, and I've had this, where you go in some schools, and it does, you can feel a much different environment, right? In certain schools versus others when those things are being implemented and I look at them as being effective measures. And I will be quite frank, I think with Dr. Moran said it's so true. Many of those that really are, I call them really, you know, the top tier and really this type of work is because many of those team members have relationships with the kids. They're not having a number of incidents that are involving and because you can watch the security team members, the other staff, teachers and the light principals who walk around and just as they're casual stroll down the stroll down the hallway or having a conversation with somebody about, and can tell, and I've had principles as I'm standing next to them say, uh, I gotta go talk to this kid because it's not having a good day. Just they, they are picking up on that just because of their engagement. And I think that, that, that, that goes, uh, that goes really far when you look at preventative measures about what's going on in our schools. I would just say one of the things that we've learned over the past few weeks is, again, just to go back to it's the communication piece. So being nimble after something occurs, what the students, parents, and staff, they all say the same thing. After something happens, please just sit down and talk to us, make sure that we have accurate information. Allow us the opportunity to ask questions to share how we felt about it. The expectation after a lockdown like occurs is that you have actually use your advisory period and use a psychoeducational lesson that is prepared by central office or in partnership with the school, deliver that in the same way in each of the advisories. sure that they have correct you know, by central office or in partnership with the school, deliver that in this, you know, in the same way in each of the advisories, ensure that they have correct, you know, information. I think with the communication gap only makes things more traumatic for people. And so I keep saying to principals, you know, say it early, say it often, and a great example of an incident that we all know about. It was at Walt Whitman High School. And Greg Miller didn't take the route of just the written word and putting it out to the community. He literally met with every single family that wanted to sit down with him and have a conversation about safety and security at Walt Whitman High School. So understanding that you're not going solve problems by a letter. And I think like we need to get out of this kind of idea that a letter suffices in terms of restoring safety. Most people don't even read the letters, right? They check little pieces here and there, but like taking the time to sit down with people and restore their safety, hear them, listen to them, allow them to express their concerns. I think that that's one of the things that we need to do uniformly across all of our schools when we're trying to be nimble and certain that people are feeling are restored. You know, they're feeling safe the next day that they come to school. I appreciate that. So I guess it sounds like, and you mentioned this in your presentation, you're looking for consistency, makes perfect sense. And it sounds like, chief Jones, you're going school by school to help evaluate, assess, review, which all makes perfect sense. But if there is a way that that can be quantified in some way, moving forward, because we do have now hard data that you all are collecting on, and it connects to truancy, it connects to a lot of different things, and just overlaying that information with what the specific response was from the administration would be helpful for, obviously, our body to know, but parents as well. Because I know there's a lot of strategy, I think we've made a lot of headway in a lot of ways, but that I think would be good moving forward. Two other questions, then I'll get back in the queue. We had talked last year. I think we were all unpleasantly surprised, and I know you all would, if you could wave your magic lines, you would change this. But the salary and compensation of our security personnel is not commensurate with the level of responsibilities that these folks are given, particularly as we transition from the SRO model a few years ago to the one that we have now. Even more responsibilities are given to these very important folks within our schools. And I know Chief Jones, the United Cup of Conversations about this, and understandably you had to get your bearing straight and figure out what was happening. I know you can't go too deep into this because this is a labor negotiated issue, but at a higher level can you talk about salary and compensation of security personnel, what you're finding, how it compares to other jurisdictions, and what if any changes are going to be made moving forward? So I will say this is like on my to-do list, but I have had conversations with my security teams and it is something that Dave flag and talk about often. When I look at the size of our district and compare that to like size districts and the pay and compensation, it does not, we don't meet the mustard. And I think this is something that like I believe that is a priority for us to have to really take a deeper dive into this, to really kind of do pay compensation analysis for these important roles as you know. And I will tell you, I have been pleasantly I'm not surprised but I've been it makes my heart feel warm when I watch these folks work and they care about what they do they care about their relationship with kids they care about kids they take their jobs very seriously I you know, some of them who have unique roles, they do a lot of work without compensation. And it's a little bit baffling to me, but it's conversation that we're having, talking to the unions to try to rectify this in so many ways. But I think MCPS, we have to recognize that, we've got some great employees in those roles and we need to value them because it is undoubtedly said in the world which we live in now, you're finding security, and this is a very competitive profession to be quite frank. And these folks, Montgomery County is a great place to work but they will talk about this often that they know that there's other opportunities and it's hard to maintain a good core of people when these types of conditions exist. So I have, I've had this conversation with Dr. Taylor and we've got some work to do to kind of show, put in the paper about what this looks like, comparatively to many of the other districts nearby. Well, I appreciate that. We adjusted the salary and compensation as you know of frontline law enforcement officials through Montgomery County Police to be in line with other jurisdictions because you're right. It is a competitive environment, both in the private sector as well. So it just has to remain a very high priority. And obviously budget is going to be really challenging to say the least, but this is one of those areas where I do believe you get a lot of bang for your buck. And I think will be important. I do have several other questions, but I'm going to yield for now and then put myself back in the queue. Appreciate that line of questioning. Council member Make. Thank you. I will continue similarly in that space to ask about the budget request for security for next year. If you could just speak a little bit about that, I understand that Superintendent Taylor has included in that some additional security staff, which is obviously important to the schools and the community. If you could talk a bit about that as well as on the restorative justice side. So I will speak to the security piece. I'll let Dr. Tick Moran speak about restorative justice. And yes, the Dr. Taylor requested an additional 52 positions for security assistance to be included in this, which is included in this year's budget request. It is when we look at collectively across the district. Again, you look at 211 schools. The vast majority of our security assistants are in our high schools. We have for our middle schools on average you have two security assistance per middle school and for our elementary schools we had there were 12 specialists that are now being repurposed in Dr. Taylor's upcoming reorganization but we are still going gonna have focus on elementary schools. If we are to achieve these 52 positions to be able to provide coverage for our elementary schools, now we still have, even in our current state, we have cluster security coordinators who do an extremely amount of work in working with our clusters of our high schools that spend down all the way to our elementary schools and they provide support for those elementary schools as well. But we want to have a more expansive footprint in our elementary schools to provide them with some additional. We see some schools again that are more needy than you know I have more needs than others right and we want to be able to provide a very efficient plan that we think that would be that would be important but I want to make this important notation. our current setup for the allocated positions that we have, we don't have extra security personnel. So for example, should a school, if a security assistant is out on long term leave maybe due to an injury or a health issue, I don't have supplemental staff to be able able to fill the void and I think that's a that's a challenge for us because Then that's that opening right that's that that high knee particularly at our high schools, right? But at any place that can be impactful and so this is one of those reasons why we We want to come up with a plan to have supplemental support and be able to move people a little bit more freely, you might say, and have them accessible should that need a rise. Or you may have situations such as we had at our two high schools recently with incidents that require a little bit more, you know, of attention, right, support. Because in helping the community feel safer, right, to parents, that they've got that additional support because we can provide that for them during that, so-called if we want to call it a crisis. So those are some of the highlights I will point out as to why because because I would phrase this, we're at a baseline level of security with our teams, right? We look at some of our schools, and we talk about like Seneca Valley, where we probably have the most, but the question would really be, is that even enough? For the footprint, the size of that school, right? and the amount of students they go there it begs the question right and again they do a fabulous job under the leadership of their principal but but that those are those are challenges that we can't necessarily don't we should forget so I'll pass the yeah thank you council Mick. The around restorative justice, I'm excited to actually talk about the vision for cross functional teams, which I know you've heard about. The philosophy around restorative justice for next year is that this professional learning specialist, many of them who were formerly or currently, I'm sorry, are operating as restorative justice specialists, will be in those roles and I think the philosophy is around teaching someone to fish, as opposed to the alternative. And so having a smaller caseload on those 13 teams and providing professional learning that's not on a district-wide level, but on a level that is needed for that particular cluster. I think we need to change the philosophy on how we're trying to build the capacity of our schools around restorative justice. Some of them are far advanced and need support in different ways. And some of them are honestly at a more of a foundational level and need someone to provide them with professional learning on restorative justice in their cluster in a much more intense way. The restorative justice piece being tied to the director and all those other positions on a cross-functional team will not only increase accountability because they'll be working in the field with the director, which is not the structure right now, but they'll also be working on a team. And I think we all know that the social accountability components of being on a team are significant. So you have accountability, you know, vertically and horizontally on these teams. And so that's how we're going to be moving with restorative justice. I think we've been talking a lot about the impact of it. And I think it is something that we need to continue to be laser focused on and expanding it across our schools. And the, you know, this is so foundational to kind of the plan when we move the SROs out of schools, we have to make sure that we are able to point parents and students to, here's what we're doing. And that's broad, that's not just one thing, that's multiple things, we need to make sure that we have enough to really make sure that we're doing that job. So I wanted to make sure to have an opportunity to highlight that. And I'll note on the question of elementary schools and the need for security assistance there, that that's something that I have seen firsthand of the value there and that I've heard from community members and from principals. And I appreciate Chief Jones because we actually, we had one of the schools and elementary schools in my district who had funding that was running out temporary funding, that was running out that was being used by the principal optionally for a security assistant. And as that was, that clock was taking down and she came to me and said, I'm concerned about this. We're gonna lose this person who has relationships with students and who is part of what is helping to keep our school running smoothly. And I know conversations were had and you were able to find a way to fill that gap for the school year and we're hopefully going to have the funding now for that next year to be able to rely on. So I appreciate that. And on the restorative justice side, I really appreciate this Moran that, you know, the confirmation that, again, those restorative justice specialists are being moved into those positions on the cross-functional team. I know there were a lot of questions about that, so I appreciate you all resolving those questions so that everybody can kind of understand the plan in the vision. And then wanted to check in also that there, I think there were three of those positions also that were going to be filled by the equity specialists. Is that still the plan? I would have to follow up with you on that question. I didn't, we still have our equity unit intact with those specialists, so I'd have to fall up with you. OK. That would be great. That was part of the conversation that was had with Dr. Taylor previously that there was the eight RJ specialists and then three equity instructional or equity training specialists who were not being moved to operating, that they were also going to be placed in those professional learning specialist roles. So I just want to make sure that obviously that they know that so we don't lose them to somewhere else. Absolutely. And I'll follow up. Yeah, I just want to make sure that I'm entirely accurate on what I share. Yep, absolutely. On the, let's say, on the VATE detectors, there was a pilot, right? And if I recalling right, there were false positives and there was difficulty seeing quantitative substantiation that the sensors did actually lead to a reduction in student vaping. And so I know that we have, you know know intentions to continue looking at data but you know noting Chief Jones's point about how we do know that security staff being present like definitely does reduce the behavior as well as having other benefits there so how are you considering the balance between funding for VAPE versus funding for security personnel? Is that a balance that's being weighed? So the funding mechanism for our vape detectors came from the jewel settlement. And so that is solely, that is the funding that solely came from that, yes. Okay. Right. So that's separate in the part from in our budgetary request about the personnel. Okay, great. Great. Okay. Appreciate that. And then we'll be interested to follow up on that and how we're going to hopefully use that technology or shift these of technology to improve the results from what we saw with the pilot data. Let's see. Wanted to check in also around what's being done at schools where fights are still happening frequently. I still consistently hear from families at certain schools about the frequency of fights and of bullying. So those schools where those numbers are consistently high, what's the protocol for intervention there? So, I think first off is that, and we're currently in the process of rewriting our code of conduct. And so I'm referring to that because I think we all probably could agree and have had conversations even around the academics and the character that our expectations, whether you are a student or an adult, have not been as high as they have been in previous years. And we need to raise the expectations for conduct in our schools. And I'll go back to the conversations around the, you know, repeat suspensions. What we're seeing a lot of and need to make sure that we're providing services to students that get in repeated fights is that they have access to, you know, therapeutic services, social workers. And so looking at our alternative two programs right now is something that we're doing. That's also in the, going to be in the budget request, is around the staffing and support that is there, so that when a student does go to alternative programs, that they receive, not only the only the academics that they need to remain on track towards high school graduation, but they also receive the therapeutic supports that might not be readily available in a comprehensive school setting. So that is something that Dr. Taylor has talked a lot about is ensuring that our students are able to access what they need. I think that while there's one social worker in each of our high schools, and I'll tell you right now that our high school principals, if they were here, would say the significant impact that the social worker makes, but they're just one person. And so if they're repeatedly meeting or trying to support five students, they're not getting to the other 50 that really desperately need them. So there's a resource component around that that we're focused on, but it is something that, you know, we're working very hard with our principles around providing the supports. And then if they're not internal, ensuring that the external supports are accessible. I do want to bring up one external support that we have. One of the piece of county infrastructure, so it doesn't need to come out of the NCPS budget. And it is one of the components that we really rely on in the county when it comes to, you know, some, our youth issues, youth fights, et cetera, gangs, and that is the street outreach network. And so, you know, we've talked a lot today about the need for establishing consistency across schools and I would highlight this again as a huge component of that where there could be a lot more consistency One of the one of the benefits actually of one we had SROs in the schools is that they were making a lot of referrals to the street outreach Network and there's no reason that administrators of course should not be able to do that We don't need to, you know, use police staffing to be able to make referrals, but that just means we need somebody else to do it. And we're not seeing that. It's very, very inconsistent. And, you know, it's hard for me to answer to parents when they're saying, look, we're having these fights, we're having these issues come up again and again and again at the same schools are the schools using all of their resources. And when I know that this is not a tool in the toolkit that's necessarily being used, and I'm not blaming individual principles here, this is a protocol that has not been set, you know, and I think clarity from administration about, from central office, about here are different types of, you know, situations for which the street outreach network should be called in would be very helpful. I do think that there is some stigma at this point around, you know, if the street outreach network is being tapped in, that it must mean that there's a crisis at your school. Well, that's because they're not being called in until there's a crisis. We would much prefer that they're called in much earlier. A lot of times where the communities, where the issues are popping up, at even at a relatively low level, are some of the same kids that Street Art Rich Network is working with on the outside. And so it would make a lot of sense for that coordination to be happening much earlier, and we can reduce that stigma with clarity around schools that the expectation again is to engage and start having those communications at a low level. So it's putting... much earlier and we can reduce that stigma with clarity around schools that the expectation again is to engage and start having those communications at a low level. So is putting together some kind of protocol that establishes that as an expectation, something that MCPS would be willing to do? Yes, and actually you'll be happy to hear that we last, I believe it was last Thursday, met with the leadership from the street outreach network to have this very conversation, which so we had received feedback and it may have been from a previous meeting with the county council around this that we took and immediately reached out to them to have conversations about that exact protocol. And I will say just to, so as an elementary school principal, I had a partnership with the street outreach network. And I do agree with you around the stigma part of ensuring that it was a great resource for my school. And that was at an elementary school. I think what our principles and our communities need to do together is understand what that resource is and what that resource you know isn't. It's more of a preventative resource than it is you know always reactive. So I think our principles need to also understand that it's not always about reaching out after an incident about reaching out before an incident. that connection was made after our last discussion about this. And I just want to make sure that it's not just kind of like an opportunity for the street outreach network to present like here's who we are. And when we do, obviously that's an important part of rolling out protocol. But that's not an establishing expectations and protocol, which I really think is what for like over a decade has been has been the missing component here. Yeah, and just so you know that's not what the conversation wasn't about, you know, them then presenting to us or us understanding what it is that they offer was more about the systems that we have in place to ensure that we're we're we're we have a you know effective partnership.ek, if I could also comment on that. But I would also like to highlight on the other side. I know we're focusing on what, in a situation where it hasn't been done. I can tell you there are situations where it has been done. It's just not, it hasn't been publicized. But there's incidents of where we've had some gang activity that are occurring in some of our schools and you know it's been more on a preventative end where we are not waiting for anything to happen. We brought street outreach in at the early stages of the information being shared and we're working with them to help to navigate and they've been been brought into those schools to be, to provide those intervention techniques in order to tap it down what is occurring at those schools and they've been successful. So there's some successes there. One of the things I have often, and when I brought in law enforcement, partners as well as street outreach when I first took over was for us to have these dialogues and continuous information sharing amongst all of the groups in order to be able to understand what's happening in our community can also happen in our schools, and vice versa, right? So we want to make sure we maintain and we have done our very best, you know, can we be better? I think we all can be better, right? I think it's something we have to stress to all of our folks who are boots on the ground that when they have information about incidents that are occurring that we share that quickly and we come and come up with strategies in order to prevent those actions from happening. But I'll also say this, there are incidents that happen in our schools that I don't think we will prevent them because they're real time. I think any of us that have gone to school noted that sometimes they're just spontaneous incidents that will occur that sometimes are happening. And we don't know about it, right? There's a lot of these things that happen that technology is one of those things that we watched that there are planned fights because of some, again, spontaneous conflict that our Our students sometimes will have think, you know, again, the more we talk about these issues about doing a preventive in and become better at that, we'll be more successful. I have seen it too in times that I wouldn't, you know't have not, wouldn't talk about publicly necessarily. And I think that is important to note, because when we see that it can work in some schools, that's why we know that we need to have a protocol for everybody to do that. And I'm excited to have you in this position, because I know that you have been a champion for that, both in your previous role and in this one. So glad to have you helping to facilitate that. I'm going to jump back into Q. When I come back, I've got some questions about the Intendance Policy and look forward to that conversation as well. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad to have you helping to facilitate that. I'm gonna jump back into queue. When I come back, I've got some questions about the attendance policy and look forward to that conversation as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Mac. Our guest, Council Member Fahne Gazelle. I promise. I'm gonna be, oh. Not like that. Yeah, not like that. I promise I'm gonna be straight to a point. You have answered so of my questions in your detailed responses. So thank you for that. I love that Dr. Morayam, you mentioned principles and you highlighted the principle in our bio. People don't just respect him. They love him. Love him. And he makes such a huge difference. And we've seen it through the data that you both have presented. Senna Cavali, another great one. And I'm just going to say it, we have a great now, another great opportunity of looking for that visionary, amazing leader in that particular high school that you're not thinking of, but I will not mention, we need somebody who can embrace the community and it's interactive, that engages with people, and really, it's steps up to the plate. I know there are a lot of challenges there, but if we work together, there are going to be solutions. And as you mentioned, Dr. Moran, it's not about just sending an email with a letter. It's about communicating and engaging everybody and building that trust that we need to have in that community, not just within the high school, but also within the neighborhood. That's another very important thing. And then Clarksburg High School, for example, has this amazing mentoring program where the staff is actually working together and working with one kid per staff member, something like that. You know what I'm talking about. What can we have that in every single school? The issue about absenteeism, you know, sometimes we need to make sure that we have programs that really encourage students to one and to be in school, you know. And it is difficult to have nonprofits in a witness, have a work inside the schools. I have a really bad experience with MCPS and Ken Mill Elementary School when I was trying to have that farmer work at Ken Mill, that MOU talk over a year to get it done. The bureaucracy really needs to stop. You need to streamline your services. It was ridiculous. And that's just an elementary school. Imagine for me, it all has schools. And that has to do with public safety, because you want to change the culture, and you want to have students wanting to be there. And also something that you probably should look into, the amount of clubs that we have in schools. And sometimes I see how successful certain schools are and I see the level of engagement through the number of activities, especially the ones led by school. Versus the schools that have a lot of challenges and you can see that the students are not participating in that much. That has to be part of the culture and the whole process that you have on this. And then I look forward to your data breaking down the number of students who are committing those serious incidents and see what is it that they're doing. And how are we doing as a school to intervene ASCP? If I see a kid who's doing something crazy, and that's a, you know, he's not in suspension, what can I do to ensure that he doesn't happen again to that kid? What is happening to that particular kid? I don't think we're fast enough, and it's not even a money question here. It's not about money. It's about being more intentional and it takes a great principle really to connect those dots. And without my friends, thank you so much for having me. That's all. You're welcome and I'm glad you mentioned the all the things you mentioned but the clubs too. So last session had, we talked about the availability of sports and clubs and things and how that's just so connected to attendance. And as you brought up, and speaking of resources, something comes from our MIG brought up. So I did a ride along yesterday with our MCOT team, our mobile crisis outreach team, one of them. And we had two incidents, and one was a response to a school. And I won't divulge any information about the student, but the situation was related. It's another resource that I was really happy that the school used it, right? Because it was an example of to the point of the street outreach teams, the MCOT teams, like that's a resource where you had a therapist, a peer support specialist, and a council member in this instance, who was just observing, report to a school to deal with the student and family that were in crisis. And I just think there's a lot of resources that we have that we need to make sure. And was just happy that the school You know, whatever however it got utilized they probably called the crisis center But that could have gone another way it could have could have gone a way that ended up being resolved and it or at least on the pathway to Was being resolved and so I think it speaks to the the resources we have I just want to say one or two things, and then I'll go back into the queue, and we're good. We've got some time here. And thank you for joining us. You're welcome to stay. OK, you got to go. I just want to thank, I want to really double down on something that Council Member Auburn has said. And I'm chief Jones. I really appreciate you bringing it up. I almost got a little misty when you were talking about the security officials and how hard they work and how dedicated they are to the students. And I think all of many people in our school buildings in our community feel that way. But like you said, it's different when sometimes it's even stronger in different relationship because a lot of times a teacher or somebody is expecting something from you. Like you got to turn something in or you know there's something do. Whereas the security officials, you know they're just there to kind of like be counselor. How are you doing? Sometimes you're the first person someone sees and they're doing a lot of duties as assigned and also getting involved with fights and getting injured and doing other things. So I just think we need to, I'm glad you're going to, you know, we've talked about this before. I'm glad you're going to look into the conversation and study and obviously the nine month versus 12 month issue as a part of that. And it's a lot of collective bargaining. But safety, if you ask our residents and our students, safety and security is going to be top amongst the list for both in our community. And these are folks, they are not the only piece, but a significant piece of that pie. And I just think we have to invest in them both on a numbers scale, but also in the professional development and the quality of candidate we can get and retain and all that. So I just want to double down on that. I did want to ask one other question so the the the not this was in the packet that Mr. Proudi included around the nonviolent crisis prevention training. Did you talk about that? Did you guys mention that? No. Okay. What's going on with that? How are you evaluating that? And what's the problem? Where are we at with that? Yeah. So one of the things that I discovered upon my arrival at MCPS was really looking at sort of our training schedule and our modules about when we onboard our Security team members and what does that look like? There's no academy, right? There's you know there's sort of what I call a field training program when someone is assigned to a experienced team member. But again, it's like, are we giving our team members the tools necessary? And there is this requirement that our team members must attend a training that is sponsored and put on by the Maryland Center for School Safety that our SROs are CEOs now. They are required to attend as well and it addresses some deescalation components in that training but I felt as if they're we could do more and I'm feeling as if we can do more. And we, and this is so our, so we are planning on having a course called the management of aggressive behaviors. They're really sensors around deescalation techniques to assist our security assistance to, again, you know, give them techniques that, you know, hopefully will help to prevent injuries as an example, right? But also to help them address crowd control, right? Because they've not been giving a lot of that type of training and that's what I see as lacking. And it also gives them the confidence that we've given them some tools on their tool belt that's going to assist them and give them the confidence that they understand exactly what is the role and what are the things that they're allowed to do versus the things they're not. Right? And sometimes, and we've found that, you know, sometimes again, you can train people in certain aspects on the sort of that on the job concept, but there's needs to be a larger commitment and I've had this conversation with Dr. Taylor about expanding that. It's a challenge when you have 10 month employees, right? And it goes all and all this connectivity goes in with my discussion about when you pull these securities, this is away from their schools. Their leaves avoid, right? While they're in training, and if we had those extra personnel, we could supplement that and then allowing them to get the training that they need. So yeah, but this is high. We anticipate that we're going to train our trainers in June so that's going to be moving forward. And then we will begin to train the entire security teams as we begin the next school year. Awesome. I really appreciate that. That's why I asked those together because it's connected to, like, whether you can have the time to do the training, if you're paying them enough to do the extra training, it's a connected question. Elementary school assessments. What's the timeline? That's something we hear about. Yeah. So, what we've done, and we've done a lot of this work already. So when I was on boarded back in July, I discovered that that was one of the main tasks that was given to our office that we had our security specialists go out and work with the principals at the elementary schools to do assessments, you know, and to provide some input. We received a lot of good information centered around like automated card readers, like, you know, for example, a back door near the playground, right, that doesn't have a lockable door from that's easy accessible. And therefore, when you're utilized, the teachers are utilized in the playground. With the students, they have to prop the door open. And that creates some safety concerns, right? As anybody who's away from that particular door and monitoring students on the playground, that creates them. So those some of the things that we, that were identified and we are addressing. But yeah, so but again, we, for kind of like the timeline for, there's 146 elementary students. Oh yes. How many have been assessed and are we doing? I would say the vast majority have been assessed. But again, you know,'re going to look at a plan to go back and make sure we've covered all of our bases for all of the 146 that we've already looked at to make sure we're not missing anything that's of significance. That's something. Just as you move through that, I think I'd be curious. Just the timeline assessment of like, I know you said the high school and middles where you are but just like where we just the plan I know you can't get all of that. I would probably project this to probably start again this summer because we'll probably finish the middle schools by the end of this school year then that'll allow my team to start the redirect there their focus on elementary schools. And the last thing I'll say for now is just a suggestion in line with something similar to what Councilmember Minkler is bringing up about connections. And when we had the SRO CEO conversation, and you and I have been talking about that for a long time, and multiple roles, and I often remind our public that our CEOs, the MOU, is in a place where there are police officers in the building and they have space in our high schools. They're interactive. I've seen them interacted. And I know you've been working on making that more consistent and what that interaction looks like consistent with the MOU. But one of the things I've always said since day one, and I want to charge you to, and if you have a comment now, is on the programmatic engagement of police in schools. And I know there are some that, you know, like whether they're teaching a class on controlled substance or doing a, you know, a session career, you know, I was in one of the career days. I, you know, they're involved in that. But I think when you minimize the potential enforcement side and I was in one of the career days. They're involved in that. But I think when you minimize the potential enforcement side and focus on the programmatic and community-based side, those are positive things for interaction. Just like anyone else we would want to be interacting with our students in a positive way. And so I do think there can be more consistency and intentionality, and you probably the perfect person to help do this around what the programmatic engagement looks like for police officers in schools. And I think it would give our community some, you know, make them feel better about it because I know there is stuff happening. I don't think we talk about it a lot. I don't think it's, I know it's not standardized. So I want to just say that I would be supportive and very open to programmatic engagement of police officers in schools in a way that we talk about publicly about as engagement of our community. Well I will say this there is some programs that are actually happening I'll say one program in particularly and it's there and that before I ended my tenures chief, in fact, I think it's probably at least a couple years before, that one of the things that I was very impressed was that the amount of the CEOs that were very interested and obtained their certification. Now, we think about there going back to many moons ago, not when I was in school, but And I would say, you know, when my kids went through, right, I'm, you know, where there was simply focused on primarily about drugs, right, and about the use of drugs. And it still has that component, but dare has evolved. And I've been very impressed with their curriculum to see, you know, it goes to much of what we talked about, you know, good character and understanding, you know, you know, you going in schools about not fighting and, you know, conflict management. And many of the CEOs have the certification and there are some who are actually engaged in some of our schools and actually going in and teaching some of that curriculum. I want to have more conversations with the police department because I wanted to see that they understand that they have the ability and we would hope that we can make those connections with the principals who they see that as a great knee, right? Today would take advantage of that opportunity because I will tell you some of the officers who do it, they absolutely love it. They love that engagement. I've had those conversations with them. My previous and current role and they still are very actively engaged in that. So, you know, when we talk about, you know, still this impact of drugs in our schools and, you know, we, in vaping and things of that nature, to me, those things still mirror. And then we need to merge them and really get them engaged. And to have that very proactive and, you know, of a approach of a different, of bringing the program and bringing that relationship building component into the schools. And so like I said, the school system obviously can work on that, but I think there's more to do this stuff happening, but I think there's more we can do around sports and clubs too. And there's other ways to intertwine it in a way that minimizes the potential disproportionate contact aspects of it and lifts up the positive community building aspects of it. I am good until 315 and then I have to pick up one of my MCPS children. So to my colleagues, I'm not going to speak again, but I'm happy to stay until 315 for either one of you. Council member Alvindas. Yeah, that works. And I may have some follow-up questions that I can send to you directly. This should be a recurring conversation because it continues to be the most correspondence we get regarding MCPS, at least in our office, is about safety and security, for sure. So a couple of things, this one's a little random, but I don't like to model just about anything off of Florida these days, but they did enact legislation a couple of years ago, they were the one of the first dates in the country that eliminated cell phones. And they now actually have data based on that policy change change and they have seen that it has led to fewer fights, negative interactions in schools and they're actually about to go even more aggressive in that policy and outright ban them from schools almost entirely. So I just be curious as to you may not have this now, but in the data that we do have, we have piloted a no-cell phone policy in some schools. I'd be curious if there is any correlation between seeing fewer suspensions, fewer incidences with that policy, because I do think that, you know, there are still these instances in which students will stream live fights that are occurring. And sometimes that's part of the point is the shock and the awe. And so when you eliminate that tool, at least during the school day, after school, out of school time, all bets are off, but at least within the school and that's something that we can control, I think that could help. Just would love your thoughts and reactions to that. So I don't have any statistical data that I can share, but anecdotally, I'll just tell you. So Silver Spring International Middle School is a school that has been through a lot of challenges with the construction and the principal who not really knew any more Patrick Bilal came in and instituted the away all day policy that he weren't going to have cell phones. Interestingly enough recently I talked to him and I said his math scores have gone up tremendously. And so I thought he was going to give me this incredible instructional strategy and this plan and I said, well so what was the, what was you attributed to? And he said getting rid of cell phones. So in terms of the academic achievement component, I mean, just the direct correlation between cell phones and academic achievement, I mean, that is an anecdotal story, but that's a principle who points directly to implementing that. And he's one of those schools. So I think that we're moving in the direction specifically elementary and middle school and then providing at least some opportunity for our high school students to have access to their cell phone at certain times, but not in the classroom at all. I appreciate that. Just a few other questions. I'll try to get these in in seven minutes or left to leave whatever time we've got left to Council Member Mink. So while I agree with the comment you made earlier, Dr. Moran, that the letters by themselves are not the most effective tool in not just communicating with families, but also helping to deal with the ripple effects when there is a fight or there is a very serious incident. But they are helpful. So there was an incident at my son's school. We always give real life examples because we live them in real life in which there was a fight. At a bus stop, a knife was involved. A letter went out the same day. I thought it was very appropriately handled. And I appreciated the transparency that, you know, Dr. Ocker and her team used. It was great. I don't need to know exactly what happened with that student after that incident. But a follow-up letter with lessons learned. This is, you know, what we learned in this incident. These are the actions we're going to take as a result moving forward. This work, this didn't work, would be helpful as a parent because it's out there. We know you all are addressing it in some way, but sometimes when it's out of sight, out of mind, you assume that it's not being handled as well as it could or should be, or maybe at all. So any sort of follow-up correspondence when an incident does occur to the degree to which you can protecting confidentiality would be appreciated, even if it's on a policy level. Absolutely, great suggestion and really should be applied in all of the situations. And I should say, you know, letters absolutely should go out. But I think one of the things that we do a lot is a one and done. Yeah. And when there needs to be a cycle of communication, like it isn't like these incidents are over in 24 hours. We all know that they, the repercussions of them carry on sometimes for weeks. So providing, you know, continued information about, what you're doing to address it in the school, like those things lessons learned, it's a great suggestion and absolutely should be one that we you know uniformly do. That'd be great. So maybe as a follow-up the next time we have this session we can find out what the status of absolutely is that would be great. Last two questions for now so I know at the end of each year, MCPS staff meet with our colleagues in Montgomery County Police to review what went well, what didn't go well, and that will dictate any changes to MOU's moving forward. I just want to continue to underscore the faith that I have and the folks that are on the ground doing this work. And I think you all should be the ones working with the information that you have on the ground with your subject matter expertise in making any adjustments or changes to the community engagement office or model to what you need within your schools. We've heard loud and clear, this continues to be a very polarizing issue for legitimate reasons. But at the sessions that were held after the two incidences at BCC it was almost unanimous that parents from multi-ethnic backgrounds from across the BCC districts wanted to see more law enforcement present at the school. And so now that's responding to very serious incidences that have occurred. So I don't want to, you know, it should not be a one-size-fits-all. But I believe we need to continue to give you all the runway necessary for you to make these decisions on the ground with feedback from all stakeholders. That's critical. And I'll use an example. I thought my colleagues have done a fantastic job as we implemented the drone program in downtown Silver Spring. A lot of community engagement, authentic community engagement was involved in that process. And so I think we're going to need more of that because sadly the conditions, the issues, the social constructs that are leading the kids to feel like they have to have an outlet, sometimes violence being an outlet are going to get worse. And so we have to continue to do what we can to support these kids from all angles. You Jones, I don't don't know if you want to call on that. And I would share this. I think what's important for everyone to know is that there is a continuous conversation between MCPS, our security teams and the police department. And not just Montgomery County Police, but all of the agencies that are engaged in the CEO program. And we are having biweekly conversations with the leadership teams in order to discuss lots of what are some of our daily challenges that also sometimes go towards what we can see what are some some of the some what the barriers when we don't have certain things in place. And communication is a key amongst all of us, right? Whenever these incidents occur and whether these are the ones that the community knows all about and it's in the media, or whether they're certain incidents that occur, that, you know, that happen, whether they happen in the school or they happen in the community, but it has impact. And so, and we have to find these ways of working together. And it's a very collaborative approach. I think it works well, but it could be expanded, right? There'd be more, I think, preventative in nature and help to provide clarity. I think some of the issues that are always here is about, I feel like we have to explain the program to people and we've had it in place now for nearly three years. And so we're still even the people sometimes you participate in the program. They're sometimes they're not clear about sort of, but yet we have these conversations often. And we encourage the relationship building between the CEOs and their cluster principles, particularly at the high school level, because that's where they are. They are needed probably the most, but we don't want to ignore anybody else, right, from that standpoint. And so, and that's a constant conversation I have with the police leadership teams and again, that are associated with this. And I think, you know, we need to continue to have these discussions. And I, in fact, I have an upcoming meeting with the new community engagement director Captain Estrada, right? Because she's new in her role and we want to, again, we want to continue to have that open dialogue that everybody understands, you know, that we're functioning collectively for the common good. So. Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm standing ready to support and help. In any way, I'm sure all my colleagues feel the same way. Last question for now. Richard Montgomery is their second shout out in this presentation. So they are wonderful, principal, when we were talking about restorative justice practices and had a great session and moving forward. I say this all the time, but it would be great to have school representatives in addition to this incredible leadership team so that we can hear more direct experiences of what's happening on the ground, because that often leads to fruitful conversations and thoughts and ideas and policy decision making. But she mentioned that on her own, she had established a parent group to focus on safety security, almost like a consulting group, a resource group. I think I can't think of the name right now, just a support group that was recommending policy ideas and she found it immensely helpful where they could discuss, test some of these conversations. So I'm not surprised that they're also administering the student ID program extraordinarily well, in part because they got that feedback both from the students but parents as well. So that is the best practice that I think we can and should be implementing as many schools as we can. It's another thing I know, but in her instance, she reported it was really productive and more of the upstream work that prevents some of the issues that you all deal with downstream. So I will yield back. Thank you very much. Council member make, you have the last 10 minutes. All right, thank you. My night even need all 10. I'll give you nine. Yes. I wanted to first just loop back and clarify on the street outreach network question the meeting there. I just want to confirm that that was an internal meeting, right, which would be great. I was just looking back at my nose and I was saying that they had a meeting about VCC last week. And the meeting I was thinking about with the principals is next week. So I just wanted to confirm that this was an internal meeting and you all are figuring out potential policies and protocols for engagement. Yes, so the conversation around, we met with them to talk about the street outreach network and the connection or lack thereof with Bethesda, Chevy Chase High School. And that was the catalyst for understanding that we need to have a protocol in place. And I think one of the things that we have talked a lot about, but we need to be very mindful of this, is the average years of experience of our high school principals right now is just right around three. And so as you bring in new administrators, the way that people will have a protocol in place, a lot of those people who had a very strong protocol in place are no longer in that seat. So at Central Office, we need to take ownership of ensuring that folks know how and what are the expectations around that. So yes, is the short answer, council member Mick. And I think that the expectations component is really important. And the fact that our principles are so green, just overall, is a good point too. It's also an opportunity because there has never been a clear set of expectations or protocols from central to have established consistency in terms of engagement. And so this provides a real, this moment drives a real opportunity. So I'm glad that you all are sorting that out. And that'll definitely be something that I would like to loop back on, you know, as soon as possible to just understand what are those protocols and policies going to be for, you know, for letting principles know when to make referrals and making sure that we're starting that earlier. Let's remove the stigma and let's make sure that we're able to tell parents and community members and students that we are really tapping every resource that the county has available to make sure that we are on the front end of, you know, preventing new violence. Appreciate that. Okay, so the question that I wanted to ask about the attendance policy. I hear about this from a lot of MCPS staff, as well as from some parents and community members, that the current attendance policy is problematic. It communicates low expectations to our students and the old attendance policy, which I remember from when I was a student in which we actually lost credit for missing class and for being late if it worked. It incentivized students to be there, had flexibility built in for students who had serious issues, at home or needed other support, etc. We don't want to be unintentionally punitive. But the current policy that we're just seeing on the ground, and I'm sure you're seeing as well, that some of those effects is just causing chaos at certain schools. The Kennedy is one of them, right? Students just coming in going before and after lunch, wondering around the building. And there's just not consequences to be able to have some accountability. So I think Councilmember Feeney can also make a great point about having programming that attracts students to be in class. But we also need to make sure that we have a way to enforce high expectations. Could you talk about that? Yeah, so that is directly linked to our gradient and reporting policy, which I'm sure you've heard, you know, lots of different feedback about. We have over the past year been engaged with an authentic engagement with MCEA, with our principles, with SEIU, with parents, about the grading and reporting policy. Attendance is directly linked to grading and reporting. So the attendance policy is essentially embedded into the grading and reporting policy. At our April Board of Education meeting, we're bringing a new regulation forward to our Board of Education for consideration. Embedded into that is expectations around the attendance and how it's connected not only to grades but then how that would correlate into our revisions to the student code of conduct. So we are making that shift that I think will be really beneficial for all, but it also will be an opportunity for us to communicate some changes in expectations that we're going to need our community and parents to not only understand but also support. It's clear and understanding that so the April meeting you'll have a regulation that is going to bring back some form of policy that links attendance to grades. Yes, so yes, it it it it'll be very very clear and and carry some similarities to previous policies that you just you. And I think both of our experiences as students. Great, all right. It's gonna be very popular. We can forward to hearing more about that. Thank you. And are you? Thank you, yet we always wanna, we always wait with Bated Breath after you present something to the board. And then we can come ask questions about it. And so obviously they will talk about that that policy but it is something we brought up before you hear about a lot you know if a student comes to a class if they miss you know half the class or 25% of the class or of multiple classes they could technically be marked at present but miss the whole but miss half the day and that's obviously not something we want and not and this disruptive it's not good for students so yeah I look forward to hearing more about that. I agree there's some follow-up items we had which are great and we will and board member Montero has Montoya has a whole bunch on her index card that she's going to take back to the board to us. She's been writing so really appreciate you Chief Jones. You managed to keep the same title, Chief across multiple years. Yeah, you just added the beard, which I'm used to now, it's I like. Dr. Moran, thank you so much and thank you to my colleagues and with that we are adjourned. Great. 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