June 11, 2002 - Baltimore City Public Schools

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Board Meeting Minutes because it is not your program? How much courage does it take to say we do not have all the answers, and others may be able to help us? What is the fiduciary duty of this Board in whom it owns, to yourselves or to the children, to the hope of performance or to performance itself? We urge the Board to exercise courage and vote for the opportunity for these children to continue to take the steps that they have every right to expect. Thank you. MS. WELCH: Thank you, Ms. Robbins, and also Mr. O'Neill. MR. TILDON: Mr. O'Neill? MR. O'NEILL: Yes? MR. TILDON: I feel insulted, okay? MR. O'NEILL: Okay. MS. WELCH: Our final speaker for this evening is Mr. James Williams. Page 18 of 41 MR. WILLIAMS: Good evening, Ms. Russo, and the Board of Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I use this book as my spiritual text for humanity. And I have here the budget, the proposed budget, for next year, and I've looked through a lot of it. I heard about the Intervention Office, and I tried to get ahold of Dr. Jones, but I wasn't able to, last week. But I look -- it's a good idea, and I think Dr. Jones deserves to have it adequately funded. I don't really think it's going to be funded to the degree that it should be, because it took a lot of years to get into this situation, and with the promotion retention policy continuing as it's been stated, Ms. Russo feels that it's going to take us a while to get out. And, I think, that, really, Dr. Jones' funding is inadequate. I think she should get more money. Several hundred -- if I'm correct in reading this budget here, $793,000 is what she's proposed to be getting next fiscal year. I also looked at numbers for intervention for middle school, elementary school, and high school for children in danger of failing. And the total for that is $2,740,000. Middle schools are getting shortchanged here, in that context. It's willfully inadequate. I have a child in middle school, and middle school -- the middle schools have to do a lot of grant writing to get adequate funding. It needs to be funded more adequate than it is. It's way off keel here, as far as adequate funding. We went to Annapolis. I've been to Annapolis for the last three years to fight to get adequate funding for our School System that has been willfully underfunded for the last decade or more. We want that money to get to the schools. I'm president of a PTA, and we have fund-raiser programs. We have fund-raisers so that we can get what our school needs. But our schools should have what they need. When I look at the budget, it makes me think about North Avenue being a black hole, where dollars shoot in and coins shoot out to the schools. We need more funding to reach our schools. We're purchasing books for our classrooms through a fund-raiser that our PTA had in my elementary school, Callaway Elementary. But every year I ask the principal, what do we need to make our school better? And we back her up on that. Whatever it is she needs. We have one goal, and we're successful at reaching one. But the budget is $911 million proposed for next year. We need a lot of that money to reach our schools, because having fund-raisers is gouging a lot of our parents, and we have a lot of poor parents, and parents are ashamed to participate because they don't have money. So we really need to focus on getting intervention for these kids, because we have multiple repeaters, and those children, who are multiple repeaters, are in danger of dropping out, because eventually they give up if they don't have any remediation. So Dr. Jones needs, really, good funding for this plan of intervention to work. And, as I stated, the middle schools, I think, really need more money. We really have to understand the communications process. I've heard about disconnects all evening here. There's been poor communication. The communication is not good. Channel 7, I watch it. I see a lot of things that don't pertain to our School System. And I talk to a lot of parents. And they say, Mr. Williams, why do you go down there, you know those people don't care about what you've got to say? I say, because you can't win a battle if you don't join the fight. So I continue -- you won't see me frequently, but when you see me, understand why I'm here. Because I come from Owings Mills, and I have to crack a whip on those folks to get here. So communication is very poor. Channel 7 is terrible. They're underfunded. Now, we went to Annapolis to fight to get more file://S:\CMS_Content\meetings\2002\J11_02.html 9/23/2002
Board Meeting Minutes money. Communicate to the parents. A lot of parents will watch Channel 7 if it was more adequately funded. I've spoken with Wendy Gordon, at length, and they're underfunded. So if you -- good communication is the key to success. Teachers communicate with students; parents communicate with teachers; parents communication with their students. We have to understand -- we have to expedite our communication with one another. It's not happening here. Please expedite when you make decisions and choices. You can put it on Channel 7. Let them know so that we can see it. Because we don't get information on the radio from anybody. So I just came here to let you know, our parents have fought hard to try to get adequate funding in Annapolis. That's why I am here. So we've achieved that. Now we want to see some bang for the buck. I notice there's 114 positions that were deducted from the operating budget in this up and coming year. A lot of those positions are students -- special education of Student Support deducted 259 positions. We need Student Support. Student support is wonderful. I know a lot of people who work at Student Support in the schools, and it's a very needed thing, because a lot of kids, their parents don't support them, okay. It's terrible, but that's the reality of what we deal with. Student Support is very needed as well. Thank you. MS. WELCH: Thank you, Mr. Williams. Madam CEO? MS. RUSSO: We'll now begin with the Information and Discussion Items. And we were going to give the Board our Special Education Update. MS. WELCH: Ms. Amos? Page 19 of 41 MS. AMOS: Dr. Welch, Ms. Russo, Board of School Commissioners. Briefly, this evening, I will give you an update on our disengagement from the Bond G Consent Decree. As you know, two years ago, the District entered into an agreement for disengagement from Bond G. We entered into what's called Alternate Measurable Outcome. Each year we develop an implementation plan with action steps to meet those outcomes. I will remind you that some of the outcomes are two-year, 100 percent compliance outcomes; and others are three-year, substantial compliance outcomes. We are ending the second year of this disengagement, and the beginning of -- we're looking forward to the third, and meeting substantial -a substantial completion. What I will do tonight -- because your year for completing the action steps does not end until June 30th, at which time we do collect data and analyze the data, and work with the Special Court Master and the Plaintiffs on how well we've done in achieving the outcome. So what we have done, because we'd like to keep one step ahead in predicting how we're doing, and letting our areas and our school staff know how we're doing, we like to keep everyone updated on the likelihood of us meeting these outcomes. I will remind you that it is not final. This is a Special Master's Report. It is our report, our reading, on how we think we did. Once we have a final report and all the data is analyzed, we will come back again and give a full report on where we are. We're doing this because we were in the middle of the negotiations for our IP, and it's real important that we have public awareness and staff participation on what we're doing. So I'm going to start, very briefly, I won't read it, far too much to read, and the print is very small, but I will start and just read where we were on outcome, and just say a few words about the likelihood of us making it this year or not. The first is Disengagement Standard for Outcome 3, which states, "Within three years, the BCPSS will increase the rate of school completion for students with disabilities from 50 percent to 57.2, as measured by indicator, reporting to MSDE." School completion for students with disabilities are students that graduated with a diploma, students that ageout at the age of 22, and students that earn a certificate. This is a three-year substantial compliance outcome. It means that while we're not expected to hit the target, we are expected to come really close. We're excepted, though, to formalize and have institutional mechanisms in place that the Courts can look at and say, if they haven't hit the target at the end of three years, they have the infrastructure and structure in place to do so. The way we are doing our outcomes and implementation plans now is that we have required activity from Central Office, which are basically support; Area Office that supports this in both Area and Central Offices that supports the school staff. The likelihood of us making the file://S:\CMS_Content\meetings\2002\J11_02.html 9/23/2002
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June 11, 2002 - Baltimore City Public Schools

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