Alternatives to School Closings: One Resident’s View

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The following is written testimony submitted by community member and longtime youth advocate Denise Joseph in advance of tonight’s Public Hearing on the proposed boundary changes, and school consolidations. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Prince George’s County Advocates for Better Schools.

Greetings,

I would like to provide some ideas and suggestions as testimony for upcoming school decisions to be considered to help improve schools:

I would like to see PGCPS apply for grants to renovate and improve schools. Some grants to be considered are from the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, U.S. Department of Education or other organizations that specialize in grants for CIP funding.

I propose that Fort Washington Forest Elementary should become an ESOL or Spanish Immersion School to help populate the school so that it does not have to be part of the consolidation plan. I think that you should also consider a home school partnership program to help with the under enrollment, since the home school population is high in this area.

Please consider creating a middle years program at Stephen Decatur Middle to help with the enrollment and reduce the overcrowding of nearby schools.

I would like to see the creation of a 6-12 grade model, secondary school at Friendly High School, similar to Hayfield Secondary in Fairfax County Public Schools

Bring back the military academy to Forestville High School and make it a military career academy and partner with several branches of the military and possibly Andrews Air Force base. You can also partner with colleges that specialize in the military like VMI and Navy to encourage high school graduation and help students to become college and career ready. This will help with enrollment but will also help capture a portion of the students that might not go directly to college after graduation or drop out before graduating. This in turn will help the Prince George’s economy and tax base and provide hope to students that feel hopeless and trapped, because they feel like their only option is college.

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The December School Boundaries Community Discussion

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by Natalie Barnes

On December 15, 2015, I attended the Community Discussion on School Boundaries, Modernization, and Consolidation held at Northwestern High School in Hyattsville.  The meeting consisted of three parts: a PowerPoint presentation by district personnel, small group discussion to share concerns and to brainstorm potential solutions, and brief presentations by each group to share the highlights of their discussion.

The PowerPoint presentation by district personnel reviewed the Educational Facilities Master Plan and the Capital Improvement Program.  Pupil Accounting and School Boundaries then shared information about funding, enrollment trends, concerns about current facility usage, and potential solutions to consider.

The small group discussions focused around the following:

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Speak up About Proposed Boundary Changes

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In a news release dated Friday, February 19th, Prince George’s County Public Schools announced a public hearing about proposed school boundary changes and consolidations. The public hearing will be hosted by the Board of Education on Tuesday, February 23rd at 7 pm, in the Board room of the Sasscer Administration Building.

To register to speak at the meeting, sign up by calling 301-952-6300 before 4:30 p.m. the day of the hearing. Speakers will be limited to three minutes.

The CEO’s recommendations include consolidating Forestville High School into Suitland High School and consolidating Skyline Elementary School into William Beanes Elementary. It is also proposed that the 6th grade at certain K-6 elementary schools be reassigned to the feeder middle schools. The Board of Education will vote on the CEO’s proposed boundary changes at its February 25th meeting.

Keep reading to find more specifics about the boundary changes, consolidations, and grade  reorganizations that are on the table. Scroll to the end to find links to documents with more details about the proposed changes.

Recommended Changes:

New feeder pattern. Assign all Calverton Elementary School students to Martin L. King Jr. Middle School for grades 6-8. Currently, Calverton students feed into Buck Lodge Middle School, which is over capacity. Martin L. King Jr. has open seats.

Consolidations. Consolidate Forestville High School into Suitland High. Consolidate Skyline Elementary School into William Beanes Elementary. Assign 6th grades from both schools to Drew-Freeman Middle School.

Accokeek Area Boundary Changes. 

  • Change the boundaries of Accokeek Academy so that some neighborhoods are reassigned to Fort Washington Forest Elementary School and Gwynn Park Middle School.
  • Fort Washington Forest Elementary students will feed into Gwynn Park Middle and Gwynn Park High School.
  • Potomac Landing Elementary School will feed into Gwynn Park Middle and Gwynn Park High, instead of Accokeek Academy and Friendly High.

Grade adjustments. For the following elementary schools, the 6th grade will be reassigned to the feeder middle school:

Francis S. Key Elementary, Longfields Elementary, William Beanes Elementary, Ardmore Elementary, Kingsford Elementary, Cora L. Rice Elementary, Highland Park Elementary, Rose Valley Elementary, Flintstone Elementary, Glassmanor Elementary, Oxon Hill Elementary, Valley View Elementary

Read more:

Find the January 21st presentation to the Board of Education on the proposed boundary changes here: School Boundaries Board Presentation 2016 (1)

Find the community discussions on school boundaries, consolidations, and modernizations presentation here: Community Discussions Presentation (12-14-15)

Maryland Legislative Session: The Kindergarten Readiness Assessment

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The following is a testimony given by Genevieve Demos Kelley at the Maryland House of Delegates Ways and Means Committee Public Hearing on February 18th, 2016, in support of House Bill 657, a bill that would limit the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment to a random sample of students. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Prince George’s County Advocates for Better Schools.

Image 2-20-16 at 4.28 PMThank you for giving me the opportunity to speak in support of HB 657. I am a mother of two boys: a seven-year-old in the Prince George’s County school system and a four-year-old who is still in preschool.

My older son started kindergarten in the fall of 2013, one year before the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment was implemented statewide. I vividly remember the mix of anxiety and excitement that we both experienced as I took him to his classroom and then said goodbye. Of course I wanted him to learn to read and and to write, but most of all, I wanted him to learn to love learning, to learn to love school. And he did! He was fortunate to have a teacher who sparkled in the classroom. Her lessons were engaging, and she cared about her students. I was confident that my son was in good hands.

The next school year, as my son was adjusting to first grade, I kept hearing the same complaints from parents in my community whose kids had just entered kindergarten: Their children were underwhelmed, and they did not understand why the kindergarten teachers were so frequently absent.

Eventually, an article in the Washington Post and a quick google search led me to MSEA’s Report and Recommendations on the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment. I learned about the terrible disruption to the classroom that this new test was causing, as teachers were required to administer a one-on-one test to every child in their class. Hundreds of teachers had responded to MSEA’s survey, and I found pages and pages of heartbreaking comments from teachers — teachers who felt that they were no longer able to do their jobs effectively during the critical first few weeks of school.

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Teachers Concerned about Time-Consuming Test for Kindergarteners

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by Genevieve Demos Kelley

IMG_6404I have been a teacher in Maryland for over 33 years and I have never had anything impact my instruction negatively as the administration and recording of the KRA.  — from MSEA’s Survey of Kindergarten Teachers, (Appendix I, p. 34)

Maryland’s Kindergarten Readiness Assessment (KRA), introduced during the 2014-2015 school year, is designed to measure a child’s readiness for school in four areas: Language & Literacy, Mathematics, Physical Well-being & Motor Development, and Social Foundations.

On the surface, this sounds reasonable: Teachers have always assessed their incoming students’ skills, so that they can better meet the needs of the class. But the outcry from kindergarten teachers over this new assessment was so loud that the Maryland State Education Association (MSEA) asked that the use of the KRA be suspended until “critical revisions” are made. A 100-plus page report issued by MSEA documents survey data and narrative responses from hundreds of kindergarten teachers.

The feedback has been overwhelmingly negative. Teachers are deeply concerned about the loss of instructional time, and they see little value in the data generated by the test.

  • The test is administered by the child’s kindergarten teacher — not an assistant or other staff member — on a one-on-one basis. Since the assessment occurs during the school day, instructional time is lost as teachers pull students for testing and substitutes take their place. Here are comments from three teachers who responded to MSEA’s survey:
    • The time used to administer the KRA…could be used to pull small groups, work one-on-one with students, provide enrichment to students, collect data for progress reports, etc. (p.2).

    • Some of the fun projects we do in the beginning of the year, that go along with the curriculum, have gone by the way side (Appendix I, p. 58).

    • The first few months of school are the most important in setting routines, expectations and getting to know my children. I have spent more hours ignoring their needs or handing off instruction to substitutes then I can count (Appendix I, p.1).
  • Initially, teachers were told that the test would take about 45 minutes for each child. But according to the Maryland State Education Association’s (MSEA) survey of kindergarten teachers, about 80% of teachers found that the test took more than hour to administer. Nearly one in five teachers (17.7%) reported that the test took over two hours. Multiplying this by the number of kindergarteners in each class means many hours of lost instruction.

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PGCPS to Host Four PARCC Nights for Parents

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With the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) test window opening on April 18th and closing on May 31st, many teachers are beginning to prepare their students. These computer-based assessments, introduced in the spring of 2015, are Maryland’s new accountability program and are designed to measure college and career readiness. Beginning in third grade, students in elementary, middle, and high school will take both Mathematics and English Language Arts (ELA) sections of the PARCC. Prince George’s County Public Schools (PGCPS) will involve parents in these preparations by hosting four parent nights in the upcoming weeks.

Each event will feature an address from a representative of the Maryland State Department of Education. PGCPS staff will explain the PARCC assessment, the student score reports, and current preparations happening in classrooms. This information will be followed by breakout sessions including topics pertaining to parents of Pre-K through high schools students as well as English Language Leaners and special education students.

Registration in advance is strongly encouraged. Parents may register here. (Language interpretation services will be provided in Spanish but registration is required for ASL or any other language.)

Locations and dates are as follows:

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Journey to Kindergarten, Part 2

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This is the second part of a series documenting the steps one family is taking to prepare for their son’s entrance into kindergarten next year. Read Part 1 here.

by Gail Z.

20151020_153233I was wrong.

In my last post, I explained that I thought that we could pretty much choose where to send our son for kindergarten next year, within the Prince George’s County Public School system. 

Not quite.

I got clarity from my friend who had been through this process. You must first register your child at their neighborhood school. Once your child is enrolled and assigned a student ID, you may then submit a transfer request.

We’re not interested in an immersion program or charter school at the moment (but could be–more on that later). So we’re planning to send him to our neighborhood school. But we want to check it out first.

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Every Comment from the Feb. 9 Budget Hearing

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by Genevieve Demos Kelley

The Prince George’s County Board of Education held its third and final hearing Tuesday on the fiscal year 2017 operating budget. The hearing was well attended, and many of the speakers and audience members arrived on a bus chartered by Casa de Maryland in Langley Park. Video coverage of the meeting will be posted on PGCPS’s Youtube channel.

Board Chair Segun Eubanks reminded participants that comments would be limited to three minutes per person. He also noted that the Board is scheduled to adopt the budget at the February 25th Board meeting, after which it will be sent to County Executive Rushern Baker.

Fifteen people spoke at the hearing. Their comments are recapped below:

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Elementary School Volunteer Charged with Child Pornography

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From the Washington Post, published February 8, 2016, by reporters Lynh Bui and Donna St. George. Go here for the full story.

An elementary school volunteer and youth choir director faces charges in Prince George’s County after allegedly making pornographic videos involving children, communicating with many of the victims through an anonymous messaging app popular among teens.

Deonte Carraway, 22, of Glenarden, Md., is charged with 10 counts of felony child pornography and related sex charges in connection with 40 recordings involving at least 10 children ranging from 9 to 13 years old, charging documents state.

Continue reading at the Washington Post.

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UPDATE: From WJLA (ABC 7), published February 10, 2016, by Brad Bell. Go here for the full story.

PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, Md. — A lawsuit has been filed in the case of Deonte Carraway, the school employee from Judge Sylvania Woods who was charged with making child porn. The principal of the school is also named as a defendant.

The lawsuit, filed by Joseph, Greenwald & Laake, P.A., on behalf of a 9-year-old and the child’s guardian (referred to as John Doe and Jane Doe), alleges that Michelle Williams, the principal at Judge Sylvania Woods Elementary School, “took no action” despite concerns being raised about Carraway by parents and teachers.

Continue reading at WJLA.

Session Materials Available from Budget Q & A

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by Tommi Makila

The budget question and answer session organized by Prince George’s County Advocates for Better Schools on February 4th was a success. Despite the need to reschedule the event due to the snowstorm, the meeting was well attended.

The agenda for the meeting was straightforward. PGCPS Budget and Management Services Director John Pfister provided an overview of the budget, followed by a lively and informative question and answer session. Among the many topics discussed were special education funding, student based budgeting, technology expenditures, philanthropic donations to the school system, building maintenance, professional development, and the proposed parent university. Mr. Pfister and his staff also had prepared answers to previously submitted questions by PGCABS members.

Residents are encouraged to provide input on the CEO’s proposed budget. See this recent blog post for information about the February 9th public hearing and other ways to make your opinion heard.

Mr. Pfister’s presentation and other handouts from the Q&A event are helpful resources for those interested in the budget:

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