Table 1 Summary-2016 BOE Candidate Forum
Kirsten Coombs
What programs do you want to improve?
Focus money more on teachers
Spending money unnecessarily on gallup surveys such as if teachers have a friend
Teachers feel bullied
Principals have micromanaged teachers and told them that they’re doing everything wrong
Teachers Union is overwhelmed with complaints, there’s a grievance procedure with the Union contract
Principal hopping is not good
What teacher evaluation system should be used?
Performance improvement plan
A teacher takes a break from teacher and becomes consulting teacher
Give teachers tips and help with planning
Montgomery County uses this
Plan of how to improve
Teacher evaluation
Lots of extra work for teachers
Should have students and parents evaluate teachers in a survey
Get input from everyone
Teachers say they don’t care; are fed up with teaching
Balanced evaluation
Some principals don’t take complaints about teachers very seriously
Need money to do evaluate teachers
But, county is using money inefficiently for pointless things
$160,000 used for law firms, $100,000 used to fight parents of special needs kids; used in July and August
Around 12% of children have special needs in Maryland
Got rid of qualified special education staff
Predicted increase in special needs kids, didn’t increase special needs budget
Help special needs w/o wasting money
Dr. Foose got rid of in-house attorney, costing the board lots of money
Janet Siddiqui
What has changed in the public school system?
Continued to eliminate achievement gap
Made secretary jobs easier
Infrastructure investment
Dr. Foose developed elementary school model
Put funds into most needy schools
Full day Pre-K
Have teachers teaching what they’re best at
32 million pension is taking a lot of money
Technology and the way people communicate
Facebook pages
Canvas
Surprising deduction in pay check?
Changed to new system
Miscommunication
How to meet the needs of special ed students?
Should we build special needs school?
Inclusion is best for special education
But we need to either lower class size or put professional development for teacher or make sure special ed teachers are qualified
Standardized tests
Teachers don’t really know how to use the tests, so are they necessary
Howard County has lowest amount of testing in the state
PARCC is needed or we lose 200 million in funds
MAP is only the local test; is guiding instruction, teachers need to be properly taught as to how to use the tests
Does school system use tests to evaluate teachers
Not really, Every Child succeeds act, lots of different measures as to how to evaluate teachers
Evaluation of teachers
Principal is responding to parent complaints about a teacher’s teaching methods with “It’s up to them”
Second language
Immersion is very important
Affirmative Action
Montgomery is letting students into GT programs based on race
40% of students are in GT, perhaps not necessarily meeting needs of students, higher level of education/new structure
Is investing in technology something the school system is planning to do?
Yes, and multiple ways of communication
Teachers need multiple ways to communicate with parents
Robert Miller
Tell us more about being a teacher
Band director at Hammond
Decided to retire and run for BOE
Teaches private percussion lessons
Running for BOE is quite time consuming
Majority of time if elected would go to BOE
How to improve system?
Restore sense of trust and honesty in system
BOE, teachers, and public should get answers
Teachers that said something against company policy could get into trouble
Teachers need more 1 on 1 time, taking students out of class is not really allowed
Reduce standardized testing time
Teacher evaluation system needs to go away
Students and parents should evaluate teachers
Cannot really be done well, no validity
Using a baseline test makes students feel bad, and is really unnecessary
Should be more anecdotal
Administration should serve teachers
Teachers shouldn’t have to do excessive stuff unrelated to teaching their classes
Not make everything so grade based in elementary school, have students go with hierarchical ability (math and reading) group they are in
Putting kid on 5th grade math level with 2nd grade math level is ridiculous
What do you do during professional days
Congregate together, given information, workshops
School would receive training, meet to do problem solving
Grades after reporting period
Is it sufficient?
More time could be put in, but lots of things need to be looked at, such as if county would be willing to pay teachers extra time during summer/outside of school time, if parents can get sufficient day care
Mavis Ellis
Evaluations
Not just test scores, multiple methods
Evaluate administrators
Class size?
Budget issue
Need teachers
Recommended 4th grade class size?
Elementary school should have smaller class sizes
30-35 kids is crazy
How to support teachers so they can have an equal amount of time with each student?
No need for equal amount of time for each student
High achieving students: could just tell them what to do to improve
Students that need help will be given help; equity
Teachers get assessed and are told what to improve and are given 1-2 years to ‘achieve proficiency’
Not for online instruction
As board hears information, parents should hear information
Should not be quotas, hold lottery if necessary, but should not be quotas as to how students get into GT
Christina Delmont-Small
How did you work with school system to make parent voices heard?
Over time, PTA and parent voice was not welcome anymore
Feels it’s important for parents to have information
Parents are experts of their children
School system didn’t like PTA giving parents information
Board is supposed to represent community, not the superintendent
Children are getting short end of stick
Focusing on each kid would make the county better
Decisions are being made that are not in the best interest of the students
Asian males and getting into college
Is AA really doing what it needs to for students?
Provide education in areas that are not strictly academic
More internship things
Everyone has test scores and GPA, we need something to make them stand out
Help them to be adults, need to be more in touch with the community
Students need love of learning and ability to think and communicate
Every group in GT being equal sounds nice, but isn’t all that great in reality
Test students with CoGAT in 3rd grade, and that’s that
Teachers know when students are bored; should have more input as to how to which students get into GT
Decisions are being made as to what is better for system, not students
Evaluation of teachers
With current system, anyone can make themselves look good, makes no sense
Input from parents and students
Should be going to board
Principal should not evaluate teachers; could be friends, thus biased
Board isn’t listening to teacher, parents, or students
If a decision is wrong, the board needs to own it and correct it, but that’s not happening
Spent millions on technology infrastructure, and need it to work with us
We need to keep improving, we can always improve, we can’t just say “we’re the best” and not keeping changing
Transportation is a huge part of the budget
Not really efficient
60 different bus companies that are providing service
Spent a lot of money on a fancy bus routing system
Should be routing students based on what’s best for students and educators, not the system
This would impact school start times
Vicky Cutroneo
Transportation isn’t efficient
Not most efficient bus routes
Some buses are overcrowded, others are practically empty
Safety
Water isn’t great
Water fountain testing in every school, even if well is tested, water still needs to be tested in the fountain
Communication
Emails about mold were dismissed
Lots of other parents advocacy groups were dismissed
Board shouldn’t be getting permission from Central office as to how to talk to the parents
Lots of closed meetings that shouldn’t be closed
Since Dr. foose, number close meetings has increased
We need a BOE of independent thinkers
BOE doesn’t question things
Substitute teachers
Not enough oversight
Better training
Not making it pleasant for teachers, and they leave mid-year, thus ending up with long term substitutes
Morale is very low in the teachers now
Fear of retribution
Teachers Union evaluated, it’s at an unprecedented low
Teacher evaluations
Basing it off of student test scores is dumb
Not evaluating based on relationship between teacher and students
