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Tag: montgomery county board of education

  • Montgomery Co. schools superintendent asks for $2.7B to maintain school buildings – WTOP News

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    Montgomery County Public Schools faces soaring construction costs, prompting a $2.7 billion capital budget proposal from Superintendent Thomas Taylor to maintain and replace aging school buildings across the district.

    Montgomery County’s portfolio of school buildings is growing, and so is the cost of maintaining and replacing schools in the county, according to a presentation from Superintendent Thomas Taylor.

    In order to maintain the 238 school buildings in the Maryland school district’s portfolio, Taylor’s asking for $2.7 billion in his six-year capital budget proposal.

    Taylor said the school system’s “true needs” would require a $5.2 billion investment.

    During Tuesday’s Montgomery County Board of Education meeting, Taylor was asked by board member Grace Rivera-Oven to explain the big-bucks request, saying, “I keep hearing we’re building Taj Mahals,” a reference to complaints that the school system overspends on projects.

    Taylor told the board, “Cost escalation has gone up 42% in just six years.”

    “This is the highest construction cost increase in our lifetime,” he said.

    The rising costs are exacerbated by “the environment where there are steep tariffs on international steel and building materials, and the constraints in labor because of some of the federal policies,” Taylor said.

    Among the school projects proposed for the capital improvement plans through 2031 is replacing Piney Branch, Burning Tree, Cold Spring, Highland View and Sligo Creek elementary schools. At the secondary level, the proposal includes replacing Eastern Middle School and Damascus High School and “renewal” at Sligo Middle School.

    During the Tuesday meeting, board member Laura Stewart asked what she called “the big question in the room” about the plan to close Silver Spring International Middle School, a building that once housed the old Blair High School and that was originally built on the Wayne Avenue site in 1935. The plan is to eventually use it as a holding facility.

    In Montgomery County, a “holding facility” is a school building that’s kept open to serve as a temporary home for students while their home schools are either renovated or replaced. Referring to the site, Stewart asked “why this is OK as a holding facility and not for a school?”

    Taylor responded in part, saying, “a lot of people can put up with a lot if it’s temporary,” but was quick to add that work needs to be done at the SSIMS site “to elevate it so that it can be a satisfactory place” as a holding facility.

    Stewart also raised concerns about the SSIMS site as the Purple Line light rail project is being located next to the school.

    “It does concern us, if we switch to a holding school, we would just switch to bus transportation and that would change the dynamic,” Taylor said. It would give the school “a dimension of safety, which is a little bit different than what we have right now.”

    Meetings for public feedback on the proposal are planned for Oct. 23 and 28 at 6 p.m.

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    Kate Ryan

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  • From hip-hop to climate change, student-driven electives are approved for Montgomery Co. schools – WTOP News

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    Classes on topics that, in many cases, were proposed by students have been given the green light by the Montgomery County Board of Education.

    Classes on topics that were proposed by students have been given the green light by the Montgomery County Board of Education to be taught in schools.

    Electives with titles such as “Jewish Peoplehood Throughout History,” “Social Justice Through Public Policy” and “Hip-Hop Poetics and Rhetoric” were proposed for pilot development for the 2025-26 school year.

    The Board of Education approved a resolution giving the go-ahead for the classes after a discussion that Superintendent Thomas Taylor kicked off by saying, “Now for the fun stuff.”

    Taylor noted that the process of piloting electives suggested by students and teachers can “maximize student engagement,” while also providing rigorous coursework.

    Student member of the board Praneel Suvarna, a senior at Clarksburg High School, shared what he called a “secret” from his predecessor, Sammy Saeed: “He said that this was one of the most interesting parts of the Board of Education work, and I have to agree with him here. I think that this is just so cool and so fun.”

    Other classes, including “Muslim Global Experiences,” “Principles of Artificial Intelligence” and “Virtual Reality Design,” already completed the pilot process and were given approval at specific schools for the same 2025-26 academic year.

    Not all the classes will be made available at all county schools, and several board members asked if there was a way to provide the topics to a broader student audience.

    Irina LaGrange, director of the Department of College and Career Readiness and Districtwide Programs, told board members, “I do think we have an opportunity to think about how we’re using online pathway courses.”

    Board members also asked if the classes remain popular over time. LaGrange said, since 2018, there have been 33 courses designated as “active.”

    Board member Julia Yang responded, “Sounds like we do have a pretty significant survival rate for these courses.”

    There was a concern that some courses could be duplicating other electives. Board member Brenda Wolff asked about the difference between a history of hip-hop class already offered and the new elective on the “poetics” of the musical genre.

    After learning that one is more like a social studies class, and the newer one is more about looking at hip-hop as a literary form like poetry, Wolff said, “I’m excited for it, I just wanted to understand what the difference is going to be because I know that my grandson is jumping around all the time, and he’ll be looking for this!”

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Kate Ryan

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  • Montgomery Co. schools to spend $2M for vape detectors – WTOP News

    Montgomery Co. schools to spend $2M for vape detectors – WTOP News

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    The Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland has approved a plan to use $2 million to install vape detectors in all county high schools.

    From vaping, the cost of supplies to cellphone policies, the WTOP team is studying up on hot-button topics in education across the D.C. region. Follow our series “” on air and online this August and September.

    The Montgomery County Board of Education in Maryland has approved a plan to use $2 million to install vape detectors in all county high schools.

    While there’s agreement that students vaping in bathrooms, and even in hallways, has been a problem in the schools, there are still lots of questions.

    During the school board meeting Tuesday, Praneel Suvarna, a student member of the board, asked what the procedures would be when vape detectors go off.

    Dana Edwards, chief of district operations, responded by saying that the school system had learned from the pilot program and “the part that we will take from that pilot are the best practices,” but didn’t specify what those best practices were.

    The school system piloted the use of the detectors in five county high schools in the 2023 school year.

    Ricky Ribeiro, the president of the Kennedy High School PTSA, is skeptical about the districtwide adoption of vape detectors, in part, he said, because there was no discussion of the findings of the pilot program.

    “If you did a pilot, what did you learn? What worked and what didn’t work and why wasn’t that shared with the community before we go ahead and invest $2 million to install them?” he asked.

    Suvarna asked Marcus Jones, the newly appointed chief of security and compliance at MCPS, about whether the use of the vape detectors would require more staffing.

    Jones told Suvarna, “I don’t think we have a solid number at this point, I know that there is some funding allocated for a position.”

    Suvarna said there are concerns about the way the vape detectors work and how they are triggered: “They will say the vape detectors can be triggered by things like perfume.”

    The $2 million for the vape detectors would be funded through a settlement between MCPS and the e-cigarette company Juul. School board documents indicate the allocation of the $2 million would be subject to approval by the county council.

    Another question that came up during Tuesday’s meeting was related to concerns about drug use on and around school grounds. Suvarna asked Jones if all security staff could be equipped with the overdose reversal drug Narcan.

    “I don’t have an exact timeline,” said Jones, explaining that discussions with the county’s Health and Human Services agency indicated, “there’s a little bit of, I guess, a supply issue.”

    But, Jones said, MCPS is continuing to work with the county on the issue.

    Ribeiro said while he’s “pleased by what I have heard so far” from Jones and that he liked that the new school superintendent, Thomas Taylor, was “security-centered” at his first meeting with the school board, he felt more attention needed to be paid to drug use in the school system.

    He added that the recent news about a first grade teacher accused of distributing drugs — even leaving her classroom to sell drugs outside the building — spotlights how pervasive the problem is.

    “We have had kids overdosing. We have student dealers. MCPS has a very serious drug use and trafficking problem,” said Ribeiro. “The call is coming from inside the house.”

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Kate Ryan

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