schools

Q&A with New State School Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury

July 12, 2021 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

On July 1, Mohammed Choudhury began his new job as the state superintendent of Maryland. Choudhury arrived in Maryland two weeks ago from Texas, where he was known for his innovative initiatives when it came to poverty and race in the San Antonio and Dallas school districts.

Maryland lawmakers and education leaders have said they are looking forward to a reinvigoration of the state’s public school system with his arrival, but also warn that he is undertaking a difficult job, especially coming from out-of-state and with a multi-billion-dollar, decade-long education reform plan that starts this year.

In an interview with Maryland Matters reporter Elizabeth Shwe, Choudhury talked about how he is settling in Maryland and how he plans to lead the state school system.

This is a transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.

Maryland Matters: What do you think of Maryland so far and what are you most looking forward to doing in this state?

Choudhury: Maryland is known as America in Miniature, so I am excited to live that experience out. I’m excited to taste all kinds of crab cakes in Maryland, which sets the standard for what a good crab cake is. I recently tried Jerry’s Seafood in Prince George’s County and G&M Restaurant, and both have been really great. I have a list that is like 20 deep and counting, and so I plan to form my own opinion on what the best crab cake is.

I feel the diversity in Maryland, whether I’m just getting coffee or at the gas station or walking here in downtown Baltimore or figuring out where I’m going to do my dry cleaning — Maryland is very diverse and it reminds me of my upbringing in the Hollywood region. I went to school with Korean Americans, Latinos and Blacks, and I was the only Bengali kid. But it also reminds me of what the future face of this country will be.

I’m also looking forward to putting down roots and expanding my family here. Right now, it’s just me and my wife. I’m looking forward to having children here — how exciting would it be to have children go through an education system during the Blueprint era? That should be fun and exciting.

MM: How has your first week as a state superintendent been so far?

Choudhury: It’s been very exciting. It is what I hoped it would be, which is a lot of positive energy and a feeling of what’s possible in the next decade to bring high-quality education to every child. I want to be able to channel that energy into the next phase of educational progress here with our local school systems.

Right now my goal is to look, listen and learn, so I am talking with every subdivision here at the Maryland State Department of Education. I’d like to meet the entire team. I am a high-energy person, I like to stay busy, I like to have purpose in what I’m doing. My interactions so far have reinforced all of those things about myself.

MM: How do you plan to foster good relationships with local school systems and teachers? What do you want them to know about you?

Choudhury: I am very much an experiential learner, so I’m looking forward to spending a lot of time in our local school systems, visiting schools, and hosting roundtables with groups of students and families throughout every county.

I’m looking forward to shadowing students — that is something that I especially like to do … just hang out with this student and take classes and do assignments with them for a couple of hours or half the day. I did that a lot in San Antonio and within a school year, I would end up shadowing between 45 to 60 students across the pre-K to 12 spectrum.

I usually ask the school principal to choose a student for me to shadow, and the only thing I want beforehand is a profile of who the student is. But then for the next student, I put some general guidance — I would ask to shadow an English language learner, or a student who is having behavioral challenges or a student who is performing at an advanced level or two levels behind. My goal is to experience that day as that student, and then I meet with the principal and I just share what I experienced.

For me, it informs what’s happening in our school systems because what happens each and every day in the classroom is what we’re all here to do, from all the way up from the state board on down. It helps me become a much more informed and smarter person when I come to think about what we need to do to enhance that experience of that child or to continue to reinforce it.

I’ve been making calls to introduce myself to the school superintendents of our local school system. I’m not all the way through all 24 yet, but one of the things I’ve been asking them is if I have permission just to shadow students, and so far, they have all said yes.

I want teachers to know that I am obsessive about uncovering best practices, and my job is to channel the energy of best practices and push that up and down and across our state so it reaches more kids with urgency.

I want teachers to know that my calendar will have sacred time, in which I will be out of downtown Baltimore on a bi-weekly basis. During those times, I do not want meetings other than what I am doing out in the community: shadowing a student, walking with a superintendent, or meeting an advocacy organization to better understand their needs.

MM: How do you feel about going from leading a school district of around 50,000 students to an entire state education system? How do you feel about holding a job that will require working with lawmakers and the governor?

Choudhury: Scale to me is not scary. I come from Los Angeles, California, where I was groomed as an educator and served about 700,000 students, and I worked also in the nonprofit community as well as with the district school system there.

Then I worked in Dallas, as their Chief of Transformation and Innovation, and they have about 160,000 students. And then in San Antonio I held a similar role with expanded responsibilities and they have around 50,000 students.

But one of the things I would hope people would see is the work that I do — I’m constantly thinking about scale. A lot of my work shaped legislation at the state level in Texas, and Texas serves 5.5 million children. Texas adopted a different way to measure poverty and respond to poverty, and that is touching every single school system, including charter schools, in Texas.

Texas has a very different legislative body, but at the end of the day, it requires sharing the research on why this matters and working with leaders of the legislative body, as well as within the community to help come to the best idea.

I feel like, in Maryland, I will get to do that more frequently, but this is not a foreign concept to me. The work that I have done — it has resonated nationally. So, I am looking forward to being able to shape the educational landscape in Maryland with the Blueprint as a very strong guide towards what comes next.

I left the classroom because I was frustrated with the central office messing things up for educators. The schools I taught at — we would do great things for students, and they would go off to the next school. But then somewhere across that pre-K to 12 spectrum, some of the kids would fall off. They would get lost in the system or that success would get set back, and I told myself — I need to be in the rooms where these decisions are being made to get it right for kids and educators. That’s the path I set myself on when I left the classrooms and here I am today.

MM: What are you most looking forward to with the Blueprint?

Choudhury: There’s so many great things in the Blueprint. It really is a super bill and roadmap towards building a great education system for our state, which can mean many, many things for our country.

I really do call it a true guide that came about as a result of an adequacy study. You normally don’t see states opt into adequacy studies on their own — usually they have to get forced into an adequacy study, or be pushed for by advocates to really truly uncover what it costs to provide a high quality education.

The famous Rodriguez vs. San Antonio case — at the end of the day what that case came down to was: what was the cost to provide a high quality education to children living in abject poverty in that school district? Because the other school districts that were not that far away in a highly segregated setting were getting a completely different educational experience.

The Blueprint is a long bill, but I read through it and I will continue to read through it multiple times. I am excited about the fact that it is focusing on expanding early childhood education — it all starts there. I am looking forward to the Blueprint expanding how we prepare educators in the state, the career ladders of educators, and raising the pay for educators, because that is long overdue.

I am also excited about looking at the funding disparities across different school systems and making sure that targeted funding is differentiated based on the depth of poverty. Given my background, that is something that’s going to tug at my heartstrings … it’s just an obsession about getting that right, given my background in that area.

This Blueprint is a once-in-a-generation moment to build a high-quality education system and I don’t not want to miss this opportunity to get it right with all of our stakeholders. Everyone is fully engaged right now. I bet other state education superintendents are jealous of me.

MM: In San Antonio, you didn’t always see eye-to-eye with the teachers union — can you tell me more about that relationship? And what kind of relationship do you hope to forge with the teachers unions here?

Choudhury: I have always had working relationships with every stakeholder, including our professional associations and unions. That is the relationship our administration had in San Antonio — we had something written into our policy that is very unique for a school system in a right-to-work state like Texas, where we met with our union once a month to talk about various issues.

That relationship was always a working relationship and collaboration for specific initiatives. Did we always agree? No, we did not always agree. I would like for anyone to point me to something where everyone is in universal agreement with something. People debate over the color of a wall. But at the end of the day, my decisions will be guided by what’s best for kids and what the research says is best for kids.

I will respect the views of everyone, and that doesn’t mean we will always agree when it comes to strategy and direction. But we will listen to one another, and so I’m looking forward to meeting with the Maryland State Education Association, to be able to share ideas and find points of collaboration. There might be moments where we won’t always agree. And that’s not just with the union, that can be other stakeholder groups as well too.

MM: What have you evaluated as strengths and weaknesses of Maryland’s education system so far?

Choudhury: I can’t answer that yet because I’m in the learning phase, but the only thing I could share is the findings from the Kirwan report, as well as what the data shows. Maryland has a reputation of high quality education, no doubt, but gaps exist, both in opportunity and learning, so there is work to be done.

The growth area is that excellence needs to be true for every child, regardless of their background, especially for our historically disadvantaged subgroups.

By Elizabeth Shwe

Hogan Announces End of COVID-19 State of Emergency in Maryland

June 16, 2021 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) announced the forthcoming end of the Maryland public health emergency on Tuesday — one year, 3 months and 10 days since the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed have reached the state.

“With all of this amazing progress and thanks, in large part, to the hard work, sacrifices and the vigilance of the people in Maryland, we have finally reached the light at the end of that long tunnel,” Hogan said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

On March 5, 2020, Hogan announced three positive cases of COVID-19, initiating the beginning of the state of emergency.

After 461,392 positive cases, 9,742 deaths and 18 executive renewals, the state of emergency will officially end July 1, doing away with suspended state regulations and mask mandates.

Private business owners and other facilities reserve the right to require patrons to be masked inside of their establishments.

“But there will not be any legal mandate from the state for wearing masks at any location anywhere in the state,” said Hogan, who added that masking will not be required at public schools, summer camps and childcare facilities.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether local school systems will be able to maintain stricter mask requirements.

The governor also announced Tuesday that the state will be extending a 45-day grace period for residents to update documents, like driver’s licenses, and the eviction moratorium.

Both of these grace periods will end on Aug. 15.

“Every single day since that day, last March, together, we have faced immense and unprecedented challenges,” Hogan said. “We’ve been through so much over the past 15 months. But just look at how far we’ve come together to reach this hopeful point.”

Hogan reflected on the state’s success in creating an infrastructure to fight the virus, from reopening closed hospitals to standing up a network of thousands of contact tracers to slow the virus’ spread.

According to the Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard, more than 3.1 million Marylanders have been fully vaccinated.

More than 6.5 million doses have been administered, “not only meeting but exceeding our goal of reaching 70% of all adults [at least partially] vaccinated by Memorial Day,” Hogan said.

While he announced the end of the state of emergency, Hogan implored unvaccinated Marylanders to get the vaccine, stressing that as things return to normal people are still at risk of contracting the virus and its variants.

“At this point, there’s simply no excuse for not getting vaccinated,” he said. “Vaccines are safe, they’re effective and they’re readily available everywhere.”

By Hannah Gaskill

Md. Board of Education Declares All Schools Should Return to Full In-Person Learning This Fall

April 28, 2021 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

Maryland’s State Board of Education passed a resolution Tuesday directing all schools to return to in-person learning for a full 180-day school year starting this fall.

Any exemptions would require state board approval. And the board would be able to revisit the resolution if the COVID-19 pandemic worsens, said Clarence Crawford, the state school board’s president.

According to State Superintendent Karen B. Salmon, 11 school systems are open for 70% of their students for more than three days per week and five school systems are open for less than 40% of their students, for mostly two days a week.

In the largest five school districts — Anne Arundel, Charles, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties and Baltimore City — which account for 65% of Maryland students, only about 32% are receiving in-person instruction, Salmon added.

“That’s way too many students who have not had, or don’t have currently, access to a normal classroom learning experience now for more than a year,” Salmon told board members. “It may be a very long time before we know the true impact of the pandemic on public education.”

Board members agreed that requiring teachers to teach both in-person and virtually was unsustainable. Teachers should not have a continued expectation to teach in a hybrid model next year, board member Susan Getty said. “Our teachers are fatigued, frustrated and looking for the end that’s in sight,” Getty said.

Lori Morrow, the parent representative to the board, said she worried that the resolution was worded with a “negative tone” that “is almost a threat” to certain school districts over others.

Additionally, the resolution was not on the board’s published agenda, which board member Rachel McCusker, the teacher member of the board, raised as a concern. “I believe that we are a public board who should have full transparency in anything that we discuss in our meetings,” she said. “I do believe things like they should have been put out to the public prior [to meetings].

Morrow said board members received the resolution only one day prior to the meeting. The resolution was uploaded to MSDE’s website late Tuesday afternoon.

However, Jean Halle, vice president of the board, said public comment was not necessary because requiring schools to reopen to in-person learning is simply reinstating existing policy and responds to the local school systems’ request for clearer guidance.

“This is really about equity. To have some students have access to an in-classroom experience and to have others not have access makes a huge difference in terms of … their academic outcomes,” Halle said.

Unlike a mandate, the resolution “is a formal statement of the Board reaffirming existing state law and regulation,” said Lora Rakowski, spokeswoman for the Maryland State Department of Education.

None of the 24 local school systems were consulted about developing the resolution, said Mary Pat Fannon, executive director of the Public School Superintendents’ Association of Maryland.

Cheryl Bost, president of Maryland State Education Association, the largest teacher union in the state, said she thought the resolution was unnecessary.

“I found it grandstanding on the part of the state superintendent,” Bost said. “All of our schools are working hard to open up schools in full in the fall.”

The state school board also approved a motion to request a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education to postpone federally mandated English and math assessments until fall and to not require science assessments.

Baltimore, Frederick and Howard counties school systems provided written comment that they supported the waiver.

If approved, students will take shorter diagnostic tests, with the English section lasting 2 hours and 20 minutes and the math section lasting 1 hour and 20 minutes. MSDE had initially proposed standardized tests in the spring that could take up to more than seven hours, but changed course when concerns arose that standardized testing this spring would take too much instructional time that students have lost during the pandemic.

The board was also briefed on the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, a sweeping education reform bill that was enacted without the signature of Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) earlier this month.

“It is a very time intensive process,” Salmon said of the 10-year Blueprint implementation timeline. “We’re working very hard every day to plan and try to have the structure to get this work done but it is very, very burdensome.”

Presiding officers of the General Assembly and Hogan have yet to select people for a nominating committee that will be responsible for selecting seven members of a new Accountability and Implementation Board. The board is responsible for developing the Blueprint implementation plan and has authority over the Maryland State Department of Education, if they come into conflict.

Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) is finalizing appointees and will announce them “soon,” said his chief of staff, Yaakov “Jake” Weissmann. House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County) and Hogan did not respond for comment.

While the state school board is figuring out how to implement the Blueprint with fidelity, it should also “begin to figure out how [they] will develop a working relationship with the [Accountability and Implementation Board],” Crawford said. “The better off both boards will be and … the children and the taxpayers of Maryland will be better served.”

It will also be important for MSDE to engage the community to ensure that families know what to expect from the Blueprint and to give local school systems the opportunity to participate in the implementation plan, said Shamoyia Gardiner, executive director of Strong Schools Maryland, a grassroots organization advocating for the Blueprint.

By Elizabeth Shwe

Report: Incarceration Destabilizes Neighborhood Economies, Doesn’t Increase Safety

November 22, 2020 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

A report released by the Maryland Center for Economic Policy suggests decreasing the state’s prison budget will lead to a healthier economy and increased public safety.

The report, released Wednesday, found that Black Marylanders are 4 1/2 times more likely to serve prison sentences than any other racial or ethnic group. Indigenous Maryland residents are twice as likely to be incarcerated than any other racial or ethnic group.

“None of what we’re doing is making any of us safer and it’s most certainly not making those Black communities that are being robbed of human capital ― it’s not making them any safer,” Tara Huffman, director of the criminal and juvenile justice program at the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, said during the Maryland Center for Economic Policy’s third annual policy summit Thursday afternoon.

“It’s destabilizing them even more and you cannot contain destabilization; it will eventually spread.”

Christopher Meyer, research analyst for the Maryland Center for Economic Policy, a liberal think tank, said at the summit that the state currently spends about $1 billion of its budget on incarceration.

“We’re spending all of that money locking up all of those Black folk, and we’re not any safer for it,” Huffman asserted. “We’re not any safer for it.”

Maryland has the highest rate of incarceration for Black men among the 50 states. Despite making up just 31% of the state’s total population, 70% of the prison population is Black.

According to Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spokesman Mark Vernarelli, there were 18,300 sentenced individuals in the custody of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services at the end of October.

The agency also runs Baltimore City’s pre-trial facilities, which, according to Vernarelli, has population changes “very often.” At the end of October, those facilities held about 2,000 people.

According to a February 2015 Justice Policy Institute report, the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spent $288,304,000 of its $1 billion budget incarcerating Baltimore City residents, alone.

Huffman said that one-third of the state’s incarcerated population comes from the city. According to a 2019 estimate conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, almost 63% of the city’s population is Black.

“What we know is that taxpayers in the state of Maryland are paying a lot of money from year to year to lock up a whole lot of Black folk,” she said. “Period.”

The report from the Maryland Center for Economic Policy said that there is “scant evidence” that heavy-handed sentencing policy leads to healthy economies and safer communities.

Instead, their report points to cutbacks in housing, healthcare, public transportation and economic opportunities and the criminalization of underground economy jobs, like sex work and the sale of illicit drugs, as factors that lead to increased incarceration and declining public safety.

For example, Marylanders who live in the 50 zip codes with the highest unemployment rates are five times more prone to being incarcerated than those living in other areas of the state.

The Maryland Center for Economic Policy recommends legalizing jobs in the underground economy, abolishing policies in the criminal justice system that criminalize poverty, and implementing comprehensive sentencing reform to decrease the state’s prison population.

Additionally, the findings of the report suggest that investment in public schools, public spaces and adequate drug treatment is the pathway towards a healthy economy and public safety.

“Then thinking about how we ensure that those investments are benefiting … communities,” said Meyers. “Again that comes back to measuring equity as part of the budget-making process [and] making sure that our investments are distributed geographically in an equitable way because we know housing discrimination makes geography really kind of a fulcrum of racial justice and injustice.”

By Hannah Gaskill

QA’s School Board Names Janet Pauls as Acting Superintendent

October 31, 2020 by Spy Desk 1 Comment

Janet Pauls, a retired longtime Queen Anne’s County educator, has been named acting superintendent of Queen Anne’s County Public Schools.

The Queen Anne’s County Board of Education made the announcement during its Oct. 28 work session.

Janet Pauls

Pauls will serve as acting superintendent until Dr. Andrea Kane returns from sick leave.

Pauls began her 43-year career in Queen Anne’s schools as a teacher at Stevensville Middle School in 1977 teaching 5th, 7th, and 8th grade.

Since then she has served as interim assistant superintendent, as well as teacher specialist, supervisor of instruction, principal at two schools, and program director of teacher leadership development.

She retired from QACPS in June 2020.

Pauls will attend her first school board meeting on Nov. 4.

Report: QA’s Schools Chief Out on Sick Leave

October 28, 2020 by Spy Desk 1 Comment

According to The Baltimore Sun:

“The reason Queen Anne’s County schools superintendent Andrea M. Kane has been absent from her job since Oct. 9 is that she has been on sick leave, a spokesman for the county superintendent’s office said Tuesday.

“’The Queen Anne’s County Board of Education has Dr. Kane’s doctor’s notes for sick leave,’ the spokesman, John White, said in an email Tuesday to The Baltimore Sun.”

The school board is holding a work session at 5 p.m. today, which includes an update on the school system’s recovery plan. The meeting will be broadcast live at qac.org/live.

Tonight’s work session agenda also lists a closed session to discuss personnel issues, negotiations, an administrative function, and to get legal advice.

The board’s next regular meeting is set for Nov. 4.

On Untraditional First Day of School, Hogan Still Hopes For More In-Person Instruction

September 10, 2020 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. visited three schools in Caroline County as they opened for limited in-person instruction on Tuesday, marking the start of a less-than-traditional school year for thousands of Maryland students.

Hogan, along with State Superintendent of Schools Karen B. Salmon, visited North Caroline High School, Lockerman Middle School, and Denton Elementary School on Tuesday. Caroline County is one of 16 jurisdictions that plans to slowly phase in limited in-person instruction this fall.

Plans for in-person instruction vary by jurisdiction, with most counties planning a phased return to masked, socially distanced instruction for certain students. Students with special needs, and those who may not have access to the internet at home, are among those being brought back for in-person instruction, Caroline County Public Schools Superintendent Patricia Saelens said.

Hogan said eight jurisdictions declined to open for any in-person instruction for fall semester, but said he hopes those school systems reconsider and offer some in-person instruction to students who need it.

“We asked them to go back and take another look at that by the end of the first quarter to see if there weren’t some special needs kids and some folks that are really going to suffer by not having in person instruction,” Hogan said of the jurisdictions that decided not to reopen. He noted that the decision ultimately rests with local school boards.

Salmon said local boards of education will be tracking COVID-19 cases in their districts throughout the year. She said she’s hopeful that limited in-person instruction won’t pose a huge threat of infection for students, and pointed out that Worcester and Calvert counties held in-person summer school with no reported cases.

Hogan and Salmon’s visits to Caroline County schools came a week after the State Board of Education mandated school systems across the state to have an average of 3.5 hours a day of live virtual learning by the end of 2020.

The 3.5 hours of live learning was criticized by local school boards and teachers’ unions, with some saying schools weren’t given enough time to meet the new standards.

Some, including Democratic Maryland Comptroller and 2022 gubernatorial candidate Peter Franchot, have warned that in-person instruction could lead to the spread of COVID-19. In a Board of Public Works meeting last Wednesday, Franchot called in-person instruction a “huge medical experiment.”

“I want to applaud the majority of county school boards that have chosen to heed the advice of experts and follow science, and not cave in under pressure from folks down the road in Washington who want to downplay the gravity of this disease,” Franchot said.

By Bennett Leckrone

Franchot: In-Person Instruction Is a ‘Huge Medical Experiment’

September 4, 2020 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

With a new academic year starting, and local school systems wrestling with how best to educate children amid a public health crisis, Comptroller Peter V.R. Franchot (D) came out this week squarely for remote instruction, urging county leaders not to give in to “pressure” to bring students back to the classroom.

In urging caution, Franchot, an announced candidate for governor in 2022, is aligning himself with the state’s powerful teachers’ unions. His views are in stark contrast with those held by Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R), a frequent ally.

“I happen to have very strong concerns about in-person K-thru-12 and even higher ed institutions,” Franchot said on Wednesday, during the freewheeling opening moments of the Board of Public Works’ twice-monthly meeting.

“Let’s be honest about what young people do. They get together in groups,” he added. “I just think we’re being prematurely rushed — I hope we’re not — in the face of a virus which is far from contained nationally.”

Over the last two weeks, Hogan has pushed local school systems to incorporate at least some in-person instruction into their fall calendars, saying Maryland’s COVID-19 metrics have sufficiently improved for them to do so. Some local leaders and the Maryland State Education Association said his statements would have had more value weeks earlier, when plans for the 2020-21 school year were being formulated.

And as if to buttress Franchot’s argument, the University of Maryland College Park announced this week that it was canceling all fall athletics.

Franchot didn’t accuse Hogan of applying untoward pressure, instead blaming national leaders. “I want to applaud the majority of county school boards that have chosen to heed the advice of experts and follow science, and not cave in under pressure from folks down the road in Washington who want to downplay the gravity of this disease,” he said.

Observers suggested that Franchot is positioning himself to be a contender for the coveted teachers’ union endorsement two years from now when he seeks the seat Hogan will vacate because of term limits.

“He’s got a platform and he’s trying to use it to form as much of an alliance as he can with folks he thinks he’s going to want supporting him down the road,” said former Prince George’s County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D), who ran for governor in 2018.

Franchot has clashed repeatedly with Democrats in the General Assembly on a wide range of issues during his lengthy tenure as comptroller. Baker, a former state delegate, sees repair work taking place.

“The relationship between Franchot and the Democratic Party has been strained,” he said. “So now he’s looking for an opportunity to walk back some of those things or make up for it.”

Another Democrat who ran for governor suspects Franchot and his team have glimpsed polling on the ongoing debate about in-person instruction.

“He must have done polling in Montgomery, for sure, and maybe Prince George’s, where parents want their kids home,” said the Democrat, who declined to be quoted by name. “So he must have access to information — polling information and that kind of data — that totally supports what he’s saying.”

Franchot’s discourse on the perils of bringing students back to the classroom went on for several moments, as a stone-faced Hogan and Treasurer Nancy K. Kopp (D), the other members of the Board of Public Works, listened.

Franchot said any school that opens its doors now is engaging in a “huge medical experiment.”

“I would be very concerned if a family member of mine was forced to teach in-person, given the widespread existence of the virus as we head particularly into the flu season,” he said.

Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, the state’s largest school districts, have said it will be January at the earliest before traditional teaching resumes.

“I for one would not be personally comfortable sending my kids to school in this environment,” Franchot said. “I would wait and try to do it virtually until January when the picture will be clearer as far as what the virus’s impacts on young people is.”

Senate President Emeritus Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) said each county is “very much unique” and therefore entitled to make its own decisions. He believes a “hybrid” approach — a mix of in-person and virtual instruction — “is probably the best we can hope for” given the current state of the pandemic.

Because local superintendents and boards have been working with their teachers and PTA’s for weeks in preparation for the start of school, Miller said it’s “way too late” for Franchot, or other state leaders, to offer meaningful advice.

“For him to opine at this point in time is as bad as what the governor did two weeks ago,” he said. “The plans are in place. School has started. And we need to move forward and let each board of education and each county move forward at its own pace.”

By Bruce DePuyt

State Ed. Board Mandates Average of 3.5 Hours of Live Learning a Day by Year’s End

September 2, 2020 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

The Maryland State Board of Education Tuesday approved a measure to require all school systems to have an average of 3.5 hours a day of live virtual learning by the end of 2020.

State Superintendent of Schools Karen B. Salmon emphasized that this standard is to ensure equity and consistency for all students across the state, especially those in school districts that were “planning last minute to go virtual for a whole half of the school year, which is 90 days,” she said.

The board also asked school systems that have indicated that they were not returning students to in-person learning until the second half of the school year to reevaluate their reopening plans by the end of the first quarter — or after nine weeks — and to submit their new plans to the Maryland State Department of Education.

Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, the two largest school districts in the state, have announced that they are remaining virtual for most of the first semester.

Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) applauded MSDE for its decision.

“I want to thank the State Board of Education for their vote today, which calls on those counties to at least go back and reevaluate their modes of instruction before the end of the year,” he said during a late afternoon news conference Tuesday.

Late last week, Hogan announced that every local school system is allowed to begin safely reopening their buildings for in-person learning due to low COVID-19 case numbers. He urged the eight districts that planned to remain virtual for most of the first semester to reconsider their plans to include for at least some face-to-face learning.

Many local school boards, elected officials and the teachers’ union pushed back last week, saying that local schools were not given enough time to change their schedule to meet these newly established standards, especially with only a week left before the first day of school.

“I’m still really disappointed in the timing and manner at which this has played out,” Lori Morrow of Prince George’s County, the parent member of the state school board, said during Tuesday’s board meeting. The board only received these new recommendations Friday evening and the presentation slides were not posted publicly to MSDE’s website until Saturday morning, she said.

In response, the state board revised the requirement to an average of 3.5 hours of synchronous learning across all grades (K through 12) every day, instead of a minimum, to give schools more flexibility. Half-day pre-K school days must include a minimum of 1.5 hours of live learning spread out over the half day, according to the new regulations.

A school district can offer more hours of synchronous learning one day and less on other days, as long as the average is 3.5 hours, school board member Gail H. Bates said.

The deadline to meet these standards was deferred to the end of the calendar year, instead of the end of this month.

The Maryland State Education Association hailed the more than 20,000 Marylanders who signed an online petition in recent days that called for no mandated schedule changes until after the first quarter of the school year.

“We appreciate that the State Board of Education rejected Superintendent Salmon’s last-minute proposal to rip up local school schedules in a matter of weeks without thought for the confusion, stress, and chaos that would ensue,” Cheryl Bost, the president of Maryland State Education Association, said in a statement during the board meeting.

This conversation would have been useful months earlier, Bost said. “The poor communication and sudden changes coming from the State Department of Education and state leadership are deeply concerning and in dire need of improvement.”

School superintendents similarly expressed their frustration with the late timing of these new standards.

Kelly Griffith, superintendent, Talbot County Public Schools

“These untimely requirements after our plans have been approved are a powerful departure from the traditional cooperation between the LEAs (local education agency) and the Board. These recommendations are rigid, lack basis in any specific academic research, and are extremely severe in what to date, has been a partnership during this crisis,” Kelly Griffith, the president of the Public School Superintendents’ Association of Maryland, wrote Monday in a letter to Salmon and Clarence Crawford, the president of the state Board of Education.

Superintendents said they appreciate statewide standards and the goal to ensure equity, but believe these decisions should have been made collaboratively with local superintendents, Griffith continued.

‘You can’t have a blanket number for all students’

Some educators doubt that mandating a set amount of live learning would achieve more equity.

There are hundreds of students who do not have resources at home where they can sit quietly and log on for class, Kevin Shindel, a social studies teacher at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, said in an interview. Children of working class families, who cannot help younger children as much, will especially will be at a disadvantage

“That’s [mandated average of 3.5 hours of live learning], not equality, it actually further diminishes their capacity to keep up,” Shindel said.

Rose Li, a school board member from Montgomery County, asked multiple times how Salmon decided on 3.5 hours as the optimal synchronous learning allotment. If the requirement was 3 hours rather than 3.5 hours, 16 of the 24 districts would not need to change their schedules, Li said.

“We believe an average of 3.5 hours of synchronous instruction daily across all grades allows students to remain connected to their teachers and is the best solution for replicating a level of beneficial interaction in a physical classroom with the synchronous time spread out throughout the day more like a real instructional situation when not virtual,” said Lora Rakowski, a spokeswoman for MSDE.

Henry Smith, an assistant professor at John Hopkins School of Education, said he thinks these new standards are not going to help anyone except the school board and superintendents to use as metrics and to be able to record the total hours of live learning they have offered to students.

“You can’t have a blanket number for all children,” he said in an interview. “Especially younger students, special needs students and ESL students cannot have the same metric as a high school student whose first language is English.”

Having a qualitative metric, instead of a quantitative one, that thoroughly assess the quality of synchronous learning, no matter how long they are, would be much more effective, he said.

“The debates about the amount of time of synchronous learning are so off target from what we should be talking about,” Shindel said. “If you really wanted to enhance student engagement, you have to give teachers training and time to plan, not just make them put students in a Zoom [meeting] more often.”

“Quantity is not the same as the quality of instruction.”

By Elizabeth Shwe

Hogan, Md. School Head Press Schools to Reopen for In-Person Learning This Fall

August 28, 2020 by Maryland Matters Leave a Comment

With the first day of school less than a week away, top state officials are pressuring all local school systems to reopen for at least some in-person instruction this fall.

Every local school system is allowed to begin safely reopening their buildings for in-person learning, Gov. Lawrence J. Hogan Jr. (R) announced during a news conference Thursday afternoon. COVID-19 cases are declining across the state, with a positivity rate currently at 3.3%, according to the Maryland Department of Health.

“Nearly everyone agrees that there is no substitute for in-person instruction,” Hogan said.

All 24 Maryland school districts are beginning the year virtually, with some planning to bring in small groups of students for face-to-face learning as early as Sept. 8. However, eight school districts, including the two biggest, Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, have indicated that they are remaining virtual for most of the first semester.

It is “simply not acceptable” that some school boards have “not even attempted to develop any safe reopening plans” that would bring students back into school buildings, Hogan said.

Health metrics have drastically improved since these schools made their original decision to shutter schools for half the school year, Hogan said. “I don’t really want to wait until the second quarter.”

“That’s 90 days, that’s a long time to have virtual instruction when we know that virtual instruction is very difficult for parents and very difficult for children, especially young children,” state Superintendent of Schools Karen B. Salmon said at the news conference.

Hogan asked local school systems to reconsider their plans.

“It’s easier to say we are not going to bring any kids back for the rest of the year, as opposed to sitting down and doing the hard work of trying to figure out how could we get kids back for safe instruction,” Hogan said.

The authority to change reopening plans lies with each county board of education, but their decisions must be based on new statewide benchmarks, Hogan said. “We are going to put pressure on them.”

Hogan’s fellow Republicans are already starting to apply pressure.

Earlier Thursday, Del. Michael J. Griffith (R-Harford) and Senate Minority Leader J.B. Jennings (R-Harford) penned a letter to the Harford County schools superintendent and Board of Education, urging them to consider a hybrid re-opening plan.

“With a population of 255,441 residents, we have only seen 2,344 [COVID] cases in Harford County since March. That translates into a .01% infection rate,” they wrote. “HCPS must take full advantage of this low infection rate, adopt reasonable measures to protect teachers, students, and parents, and greatly expand opportunities for in-school learning.”

Salmon also said she is “strongly encouraging” local schools to reevaluate their mode of instruction by the end of the first quarter of the school year, which is in November.

At least 3 1/2 hours a day should be dedicated to live learning to ensure that all Maryland children are receiving an equal education, Salmon said. The state board will decide whether that should be a new requirement for all school systems early next week.

Dr. Jinlene Chan, Maryland’s acting deputy secretary of public health services, announced new metrics Thursday for school systems to use to evaluate whether it is safe to reopen for at least some face-to-face instruction.

If a school jurisdiction has below 5% test positivity, or five cases per 100,000 people over a seven-day period, it should have the ability to hold in-person instruction, as long as students, teachers and staff follow physical distancing and mask-wearing guidance, Chan said.

Even schools with positivity rates above 5% should still be able to open for at least some in-person learning in a hybrid model, she continued.

The decision is not a political issue, Hogan said, but very much the opposite. He noted that “national Democratic leaders” such as Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy similarly encouraged all schools in their states to reopen for in-person instruction in the upcoming school year.

Teachers expressed dissatisfaction with the newly announced guidelines.

“Today, [the governor and superintendent] chose to ambush and second guess the hard decisions that local boards of education, parents, and educators have made to keep students and schools safe. In the continued absence of adequate state and federal funds to help schools open safely — to include measures such as rapid testing, certified ventilation systems, and needed PPE — this is a recipe for chaos, confusion, distrust, and deepening the inequities that too many of our students face,” Cheryl Bost, the president of the Maryland State Education Association, said in a statement after the news conference.

Montgomery County Public Schools, which starts virtually on Monday, quickly responded to the new state guidelines, with officials saying they were “deeply disappointed by the last-minute announcement of this critical information for school systems.”

Prince George schools also start virtually on Monday and are planning to stay virtual until January.

“While I respect Governor Hogan’s desire to move back to in-person learning as soon as possible, we cannot responsibly do so at this time, especially since his reopening announcement today occurs just four days before the first day of school,” Prince George’s County Council Member Mel Franklin (D) said in a statement.

“Our school system has spent months planning this fall’s virtual session. It would be irresponsible to haphazardly discard those plans and throw our school semester into disarray.”

Earlier this month, Sen. Paul G. Pinsky (D-Prince George’s) and Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore City) held a public roundtable discussion with three school superintendents and agreed that there needed to be clear, uniform statewide metrics for each school district to follow as they work on their reopening plans — ideally made by Chan and Salmon.

Yet these state lawmakers still do not think the newly-unveiled benchmarks are enough.

“MD gov just offered leadership through lip-service to school reopening, offering: minimal metric guidelines — which have already been met — and no guidance for when student/staff Covid cases breakout. Also, no guarantee of PPE equipment to schools,” Pinsky wrote on Twitter soon after the news conference.

Nor do the new guidelines include transmission rate thresholds or contact tracing, he said.

“We’d likely have more local school district consistency on reopening if the State had provided *any* guidance whatsoever prior to TEN DAYS before the planned start of SY 2020-21,” Ferguson tweeted.

Del. Brooke E. Lierman (D-Baltimore City) said she was also disappointed with the governor’s announcement.

“To be clear, this was a no-news press conference. Gov. says that schools can now reopen: that was already a local decision He announced MSDE has created metrics for schools to use — the day AFTER @BaltCitySchools reopened for teachers,” she tweeted.

“He should be embarrassed.”

By Elizabeth Shwe

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