Why You Should Consider Attending the May 7 or May 11 Board of Education Community Discussion

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BOE Invest in PGCPS Flyer

by Genevieve Demos Kelley

If you have questions and concerns about the Board of Education’s requested operating budget for FY 2016, consider attending either the May 7 or May 11 community discussion with the Board of Education. (For locations and more details, see the flyer.) I attended the first in the series of three meetings on April 27, and I was pleased with how worthwhile it turned out to be.

First, let me qualify my enthusiasm just a bit: Not every moment was a valuable use of my time. The meeting was in two parts. It started with at least 30 minutes of vague generalities about the school system’s core values and mission, and comments about the need for full funding of the FY2016 budget. The substantive information gleaned from this portion of the meeting could have been easily squeezed into five minutes. (Fortunately, I had brought my hard copy of the requested operating budget, so I had material to study when my attention waned.)

We heard about the CEO’s plans to spend the additional $91.7 million requested in the amended budget, but they were so vague that they were essentially meaningless. Here’s how he wants to spend the money:

  • Academic Excellence
  • High-performing workforce
  • Safe and Supportive Environments
  • Family and Community Engagement
  • Additional Priorities

See what I mean?

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Police Officer Found Guilty of Assaulting Student

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From the Washington Post, reported by the Associated Press, published May 4, 2015.For the complete story, go here.

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. — A Prince George’s County police officer has been found guilty of assaulting a student.

Authorities announced Monday that Police Officer First Class Charles Pickard was found guilty of second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and malfeasance.

The whole story at the Washington Post.

The Amended Requested FY2016 Budget: Where Are the Additional 91.7 Million Dollars Going?

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IMG_6355by Genevieve Demos Kelley

The Board of Education’s requested operating budget is $1.93 billion. That’s an increase of $135.7 million or 7.6% over the Fiscal Year 2015 approved operating budget. Moreover, this amended budget exceeds the CEO’s original proposed budget for FY2016 by $91.7 million. How will the additional $91.7 million be spent? The CEO has outlined four areas that will absorb the additional funding, should the requested budget be approved — Academic Excellence, High-Performing Workforce, Family and Community Engagement, Safe and Supportive Environments — plus an assortment of “additional priorities.” In a March 17, 2015 presentation to the County Council, those areas were broken down into subcategories with specific dollar amounts attached to each. Continue reading →

A Day in the Life of a PARCC Test Administrator

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How does a PARCC test session impact the school day? An hour-long test session can result in several hours of lost instructional time.

PARCC Day Blogpost 2For middle school students, the PARCC test consists of nine sessions, which vary in length. Though actual testing time lasts no more than 90 minutes per session, the impact on the day’s schedule is dramatic. One middle school teacher in Prince George’s County has painted a picture of a typical day of PARCC testing.

On the day described in this post, the teacher is assigned to proctor a room full of 8th graders who are taking a 60 minute PARCC session. Note that for each middle school grade level, this scenario is repeated on 27 different days — nine times for each grade level. (In a previous post, we published the testing schedule for the middle school described here.)

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PGCPS Parent Urges School System to Look for Ways to Save Money

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The following is a statement to be delivered by Tommi Makila at the Prince George’s County Council Budget Hearing on April 28, 2015. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the owner of this website, Prince George’s County Advocates for Better Schools.

Good evening,

My name is Tommi Makila. I live in Accokeek, and my son attends Prince George’s County Public Schools. I am a PTA activist and heavily involved in my son’s school.

First of all, I consider improving our schools a high priority. Thus, I want to commend the County Executive for making our schools a high priority. However, I have serious concerns about the school budget proposal.

I believe the goals and strategies outlined in the County Executive’s school budget proposal make sense and seem likely to strengthen the school system and improve its performance. However, what seems to be lacking in the proposal is any serious effort to seek savings to fund the new proposals. When you ask for a significant investment in certain areas – significant enough to warrant a 15% property tax increase – I believe you also have the responsibility to look for meaningful savings opportunities in other areas of the budget. Our goal should be to try to minimize, or even eliminate, the need for a property tax increase. Just like any other organization, we will need to prioritize issues.

InstructionalExpendituresChart

Graph Credit: Tom Dernoga

To substantiate my belief that there is room in the school budget to prioritize items without sacrificing our investment in the classroom, I want to point out a couple of facts about the school budget. Between FY2003 and FY2015, total school system expenditures have risen by 685 million. During the same time period, instructional salaries have only risen by 156 million1.

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Prince George’s Association for TAG Supports County Executive’s Proposal to Fund PGCPS

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IMG_6359The following is a statement from the board of the Prince George’s Association for Talented and Gifted Education, republished here with permission. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the owner of this website, Prince George’s County Advocates for Better Schools (PGCABS).

To view this statement on the PGTAG website, go here.

Statement from PGTAG Board

Supporting the County Executive’s  FY’2015-16 Budget to Fund PGCPS’ Strategic Plan

April 12, 2015

Prince George’s County Association for Talented and Gifted Education

(PGTAG), during its April board meeting, agreed to support County Executive Rushern Baker’s fiscal year 2015-16 budget to fund PGCPS’ strategic plan.

For far too long, our school system has been requesting only the local funding for what it thought it might receive vs. what is really required to improve the quality of PGCPS. This practice of requesting the minimal funding needed to continue with the status quo is called “maintenance of effort.”

Our students deserve more than “maintenance of effort.”  This constricted funding stream for our public education system has denied PGCPS the ability to gain momentum on a host of educational priorities critically needed to create and maintain the kind of quality education system that is needed for the children of our county.

We don’t take our decision making—to support funding the budget through the lifting of our local property tax cap—lightly. But the cap is partially to blame for our limited success in the past. The four-decades long cap on property taxes means that we’ve been funding schools at the same percentage of dollars as we were in 1978.

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One Local Middle School’s Testing Calendar

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A local middle school teacher has created a calendar to demonstrate how her school has scheduled the tests required by Prince George’s County and the state of Maryland into the 2014-2015 academic year. Out of 180 school days, 55 days feature some sort of standardized testing (loosely defined here as mandatory non-teacher-generated tests) scheduled for some subset of students in the school.

The calendar for the entire school year is posted below. Scroll to the end for brief descriptions of mandatory tests.

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Prince George’s Schools CEO Says Tax Hike Will Lift Schools

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From WUSA9, reported by Scott Broom, April 22, 2015.

For the complete story, go here.

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. (WUSA9) — “It’s as much as a guarantee as I can give you,” said Prince George’s County Schools CEO Kevin Maxwell when asked about his strategic plan for Prince George’s County Schools.

Maxwell’s plan promises to lift the county’s long-suffering school system from near the bottom of state ranks to within the top-10 by 2020.

Not a single member of the Council has committed to support the tax proposal which will be voted on in the county budget by June 1.

Click here to continue reading and to watch the video coverage at the WUSA9 site.

$2 Billion Backlog in Repairs and Upgrades, Master Plan Support Project Identifies Renovation Priorities

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IMG_6349
by Genevieve Demos Kelley

The department of Capital Programs has identified $2 billion in needed PGCPS facility repairs and upgrades. With the current rate of annual funding for repairs — roughly $130 million per year — it will take more than 20 years to clear the backlog.

Begun in the fall of 2014, the Master Plan Support Project (MPSP) was designed to prioritize school construction and renovation projects, considering the mission, condition, and function of each facility. To assist with this project, PGCPS awarded a $1.47 million consulting contract to the program management firm Brailsford & Dunlavey in October 2014. Working with PGCPS staff, Brailsford & Dunlavey consultant teams have visited schools built before 1999, evaluating building conditions in order to update the Facilities Condition Index from the 2012 Parsons Report (go here for the PowerPoint summary of the 2012 report). The final MPSP report, including the firm’s recommendations to the Board of Education, will be posted in May 2015.

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Board of Education Violates Open Meetings Act

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From the Sentinel, by reporter Holden Wilen, published on April 15, 2015.

For the complete story, go here.

UPPER MARLBORO – The Prince George’s County Board of Education will announce at its next meeting it violated the Open Meetings Act after the Open Meetings Compliance Board (OMCB) ruled the Board’s staff failed to provide copies of minutes to a county resident.

Thea Scarato, an activist who opposes cell phone towers, said she was attempting to track the history of the school system’s cell phone tower policy by making open records requests and looking through minutes of meetings by the school board and its subsidiary committees.

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