[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] tonight is the second of two nights that we have set aside to hear from the community on the Capital Improvements program CIP tonight's hearing will also be broadcast live on television and mcps media as always board members are looking forward to both hearing and thoughtfully considering your input as we prepare to review and
take action on the CIP before we begin I will ask board members to introduce themselves Dr Felder is also joining us this evening and we have several mcps staff members joining us here in person I'll start with Miss Harris good evening everyone my name is Lynn Harris I use she her pronouns and I'm an at large member of the board hello everybody my name is Sammy S and as always I am really excited to be here at this hearing today and thank you all so much for for making it out here today online I
see Miss Evans go ahead Miss Evans good evening shebra Evans District 4 okay do we have anyone else online no okay Dr Felder sure well thank you so uh good evening everyone I'm so glad you all came out looking forward to hearing your testimony and joining uh tonight uh from staff uh we have Mr Brian Hall and Mr Brian Hall call do you want to introduce um your team or we can have sure so we got uh Mr Seth Adams the associate superintendent for facilities management and uh Miss Adrien kameas the
director of capital planning thank you uh the order of speakers is listed on the agenda that is available on the board's website board members will have the opportunity to hear from the community via inperson testimony or by Audio or video presentations written testimony of those who signed up for tonight's hearing has been made available to the public and for board members to review on board dos the board will then take action on two boundary study Scopes as well as capital project scopes on Tu
esday March 19th 2024 during the board's regularly scheduled board meeting let's begin with our speakers who are here with us in person when your name is called please approach the PO and push the flat button below the microphone to turn it on and begin speaking please speak clearly and directly into the microphone and our first speaker is Doran Hoffman please come forward uh president sylvestri vice president Evans superintendent Felder and members of the board thank you for the opportunity to
testify tonight my name is Doran Hoffman I am honored to testify on behalf of the Walter Johnson cluster of ptas last week you heard our cluster's concerns about the last minute proposal to delay the auditorium of the future Woodward High School and open without the full amenities available at all other mcps high schools this week we will focus our testimony on the Woodward High School boundary study our message is simple we urge the board to be sure that the Woodward boundary study is on track
for the new timeline proposed by mcps staff so there are no further delays now that Woodward has been delayed to not open until 2027 along with crown we recognize that there are two large and impactful Boundary studies slated to happen concurrently please do not let this set either boundary study back since there are many key questions still to be answered how will students be assigned to Woodward will there be a choice process will there be a traditional cluster catchman area what programs will
Woodward have will there be new programs or students at Walter Johnson how does the Consortium aspect of the DCC fit into all of this where will my child go to high school where will my child go to Middle School will the board reassign Rising 10th and 11th grade students who have already been through a choice process to select their High School in the DCC what grades of students will get moved to the new high school our families are asking these questions and many have been asking them for year
s now the reopening of Woodward will Mark the first time in more than 20 years that a new high school has been opened and the scope of the boundary study is large this means there are many more questions to be answered in this boundary study than in a traditional boundary study last week we heard mcps assure us that there will be plenty of time for Community input and the board to take action and then for the new school to have an opportunity to introduce itself to its new community before the s
chool year begins this is particularly important and complicated with a new school that will require a new principal one or more new magnet programs new Transportation program plans and more our community has dealt with a high school that is overcrowded to an extreme 777 students over capacity projected for next year the Walter Johnson Administration has handled this admirably but as Mr s mentioned during last week's work session overcrowding takes a real toll on students our families are ready
to see relief and ready for the Woodward High School boundary study to get started we are ready to learn more about what the options are for our schools and our students we are ready to learn more about the priorities of our families and our neighbors we want to be sure that a new High School Administration has ample time to get familiar with each other and their new community the next step is to issue an RFP for a consultant to help conduct the boundary study this is supposed to be released thi
s spring please urge MP mcps to have this out as early as possible and not not to blow through yet another deadline please do not delay any further in getting the boundary study underway and please keep our large community fully engaged throughout the process thank thank you our next speaker is Amy akerberg Hastings please come forward good evening president sylvestri and the board of educ ucation interim superintendent Felder and mcps staff my name is Amy akerberg Hastings I serve mccpta as one
of this year's Richard Montgomery cluster coordinators and I am the parent of a Richard Montgomery High School sophomore tonight I will say a few words about twinbrook elementary school's place in the FY 25 to3 CIP with non-recommended reductions that will go to the city coun county council's education and culture committee for reconciliation and I will share some musthaves for the proposed combin combined boundary study for crown and Damascus high schools first frankly I was relieved to see th
at the planning funds for twin Brook's major Capital project were retained in both reduction scenarios prepared by mcps this retention signals to our community that mcps and Boe believe in the good work that is happening in this title one in community school indeed it was encouraging to hear both board member Brenda wolf and Associate superintendent Seth Adams specifically cite Twin Brooks proog atic needs during the February 27th presentation and work session we were naturally disappointed to s
ee mcps recommended 2-year delay in construction placeholder funds for Twin Brook in both scenarios but we understand the budgetary challenges that have resulted from the gap between County revenues and boe's original fy2 to30 CIP request my written testimony reviews both the repairs Twin Brook has already received and the intractable problems that remain we ask you to remember that this school merits moving forward in the renovation queue as soon as possible after in process major capital proje
cts are completed second our cluster was glad to see that a recommended timeline for populating Crown high school has been released however as most of you know from experience every boundary study is fraught with potential for miscommunication and conflict since three4 of the county will be involved in a boundary study by this time next year a massive public Ed education campaign needs to begin now during last Thursday's hearing Stephanie Fitz of the Quint Orchard cluster provided a substantive
list of thoughtful practical questions that are already arising in all of our communities I urge everyone in capital planning the interim superintendent office and the board to keep those questions close at hand for the next two years perhaps like me it immediately occurred to you that FAA and Fa along with precedents established in previous boundary studies addressed many of the concerns Miss F Miss Fitz raised in her fourth paragraph I am certain that thousands of mcps families have no idea th
at these policies exist let alone are aware of the processes and practices that are outlined in them I also want to remind you of some lessons from the 2017 Bayard Rustin Elementary School boundary study that our cluster had to figure out and demand via trial and error mcps Boe and all of us now know better let us do better this time around first and foremost do not make assumptions about what any stakeholder groups need if they are not attending informational events find out why do they know th
at events are occurring are there barriers such as scheduling translation Transportation or Child Care second do not think it is sufficient to hold a couple of large events at Central locations go directly to underrepresented communities and give presentations in the first languages of those communities convening many small meetings will make it easier for everyone to speak up listen to caregivers opinions and the reasoning behind those opinions trust caregivers judgments about their children's
educations third while improvements have been made it always Bears repeating that mcps must use reliable relevant representative data to guide School assignments and school Improvement processes my proudct moments as a PTA Advocate have come from helping facilitate participation in mcps by families at risk for being overlooked with respect to tonight's hearing Vivid memories remain of the night in November 2017 when the family engagement advisory team assisted our cluster mccpta Leaders with bri
nging our Spanish-speaking families together with boan capital planning so that these caregivers could explain their valid opposition to the disruptive last minute adopted Alternatives that were considered during the Bayer rust and Boundary study the RM cluster always prefers to work with mcps rather than at Cross purposes the upcoming boundary studies will offer numerous opportunities for positive productive cooperation let's not screw it up by failing to communicate clearly and frequently than
k you for your time thank you our next speaker is Kevin Santino please come forward just hit the button underneath the microphone and that will start there you go thank you uh good evening to to the board um my name is Kevin sartino I wear many hats I'm a parent um PTA board member at twinbrook elementary and a volunteer at various things I've lived at twinbrook since uh 2000 I've had a child uh in twinbrook from 2012 to 2018 and then another child there from 2018 to 2024 that's 12 years running
um when the bell rings at twinbrook I can hear it at my house uh my goal today here is to bring you into the twinbrook community and to have you see the need and the value for investing at our school next please uh we are twinbrook we are a community um we are a mix of new and old we are a mix of cultures uh we are more than just strip malls and a metro stop which is the joke that's online um and as you heard we we get we need to be heard um we have challenges next slide please just like everyo
ne else uh we have a lack of sprinklers we're not ADA Compliant continuous ongoing never ending seeming maintenance issues uh Legacy systems continually in use rooms that are you know alternately hot and cold but we don't let that stop us next slide please uh Twin Brook Tigers we roar uh respectful organized always safe responsible when we when I made this presentation both of my children remember these rules and these are the rules that CH children have learned at twinbrook for a very long time
um I actually learned after doing all this twinbrook is one of the oldest uh elementary schools in Montgomery County Public Schools and at one point it was one of the largest ones in the school system as well I did not know that until recently next slide please we want to learn uh during the pandemic we were one of two schools that uh participated in the mcps bookmobile hundreds of books were loan to hundreds of students uh community members were yearning to connect and staff at our school was
helpful and reached out hard work plus this connection yielded results for our kids during the pandemic next slide please we find a way uh staff continually finds a way to make things work at twinbrook uh we collaborate with the open book foundation and each fourth and fifth grader went home with the book above the trenches my my child has this book um the Maryland Center for Computing Services we won an award for our coding stuff that we did at our school well um our school partners with the ca
pital food bank for monthly family markets every uh other every beginning of every month you know we have a food drive at our school and parents can come and pick up food for their homes uh we engag in community outreach with both Montgomery County and city of Rockville for many programs for all the kids at the school after school programs soccer art drumming uh and many sports and you name it next slide please uh we lend a hand uh during 2021 there was a huge flood at the Rock Creek Apartments
at the corner of uh twinbrook Parkway and uh VI's Mill uh people were asking the PTA what can we do the PTA partnered with Interfaith Works which is the uh thing which is a program that the county also partners with and the PTA collected donations over $6,000 for the people who were at uh the Rock Creek Apartments are and our Outreach officer our Outreach uh staff from our school actually went to the apartments and helped out as well next slide please we see growth around us I took that picture
from the front door of twinbrook Elementary that is Twin Brook quarter you I'm sure you've seen it it's on 355 it's huge and they can see our school from that building and we can see our building from that school next slide please we are top five so from the C from 2024 and took this right out of that PDF J Brook is pretty much near the top there of the last time the school's been revitalized and expanded uh we are waiting for the council to act and we expect the council to act next slide please
we are a legacy this is a wall in our school he pictures of kids on this wall who became parents who have pictures of kids on that wall I have pictures of kids on that wall who serve right next to me on the PTA and who have served on the PTA in the past there are pictures of kids on that wall who became mcps teachers and staff next slide please we need you we ask the uh Council to be part of the next chapter of twinbrook by turning twinbrook 1.0 into twinbrook 2.0 a building who as heart as big
as the people who go to it we're glad that we've that you've recommended keeping the planning funds uh we understand why there's been a delay but we still need you guys to keep us in the front of your mind thanks for your time thank you our next speaker is Raul Ortiz please come forward thank you very much for listening and hearing us out U my name is R Ortiz from demascus high school I teach the automo Automotive program there um I've been there 22 years um it's funny the picture he brought up
with uh his all the students I have the same thing I have students that children from the students that I taught uh one of the things that we want to make sure that you guys understand that um uh the automotive students at uh Damascus is not just six there's there is uh 62 students in my class right now um the 62 is double period so they need to be counted twice uh I also am one of the only teachers that teach six periods when under contract uh we actually are only supposed to teach five but uh
for my program to work I teach six which is fine I mean I'm used to working hard and no problem with that um the other problem that we have is um uh when you when the uh the board was in meeting next last week uh one of the things that was stated was that um they only have the six students uh certified well that's not true I have uh 19 that are completing the the program this year plus the six that already completed the program so that means you know we have 25 students graduating from the prog
ram this year I have a potential of 34 students that will be graduating next year uh with certifications uh certified completers now out of those 30 uh 25 students I have probably I think 12 of them that are ASC Certified that's a big deal okay um my program is a NF program which is means that it's a certified program it's not just working on cars it's not just uh a matter of you know just working on things that Seth said that it was uh working on alternators and stuff last week and uh it's a li
ttle bit more than that uh we do cover um a lot of stuff we cover a lot of items um from Bumper to Bumper we cover it uh Damascus is uh we have the multi cultural uh class um all the students they want they wanted to ship the students over to senic Valley and uh they don't want to go I mean I've did did a survey on my own just hey what would you want to go over there and they said no I don't want to go over there it's Multicultural um students so we have you know a lot of them that want to stay
because they're just proud to be Damascus uh hornets and again didn't get through it thank you Zach Jones please come forward not here okay our next uh testimony is video Wendy Smith please play the video my name is Wendy Smith I'm submitting this video testimony in advance of the March 14th Spring Capital Improvement project my my husband and I have lived in Damascus since 1983 both of our sons graduated from Damascus in the trades program curriculum one from the automotive trades Foundation pr
ogram and the other from the construction trades Foundation program we're pleading to the County Council and the Board of Education to strongly reconsider the inclusion of this very relevant and important program at the Damascus High School the current renovation plans do not allow space for that nor is there funding in the budget for this program students that are exposed to this program and graduate from the program are exposed to vehicle maintenance troubleshooting problem solving for their o
wn personal benefit and maybe others as well as networking problem solving critical thinking skills uh very very transferable and relevant business skills are even exposed to finance when they have their uh automotive car sales event going on not every child is destined for a four plus year college degree and not every family can afford a four plus year college degree many students and families are left with a tremendous amount of student loan debt and it takes a very long time to pay that down
students choosing to go the technical uh trades Foundation track the um College the university for that is very affordable uh often times they can be set up to have a working internship with a dealer uh there are many many benefits of students going the automotive trade Foundation track lastly we'd like to give our personal testimony uh success story directly attributed to the Damascus High School ATF program our oldest son graduated from that program he went on to a local Technical College for
the 2-year applied science degree he was working as a mechanic when all of that was going on and when he graduated he was able to get hired on with a major Automotive Parts distributor and that led him through networking to get hired on to one of the the top three major US Automotive manufacturers in the US he's now a Zone Manager covering seven South Central states in the US relative to customer care service and uh aftermarket parts please keep the very important program at Damascus high school
thank you thank you and that concludes our testimony for tonight I will now open it up to board members for questions or comments Mr s uh yeah I again want to thank all speakers today as always um and you know reiterate a couple things um you know my concerns about overcrowding I cannot stress that enough especially with the win last week and being in portable classrooms as a student having to go out there I mean it's crazy and we have article after article talking about how you know students c
an't make it from the Portables to third floor in the five minutes allocated I mean that causes people to be late all day I mean I could go on and on about that but I cannot stress that enough so to with you there um and then you know of of course um you know I appreciate all the you know people from Damascus for coming out um in the interest of transparency I stand Where I Stood with my vote I I still today would vote to keep that vote to keep that program um and I just kind of want to say that
I I fully stand with that and and I totally hear you guys and agree with everything you have to say so um but of course you know it's a democratic process so if that doesn't go through it doesn't but you know I do stand with you all on that issue but uh other than that again thank you all so much for coming out today um and I'm also looking forward to the spring weather that we're seeing now and so getting away from the cold I really do appreciate that so all right thank you so much M Harris ye
s thank you and I I echo my colleagues comments and sort of Switching gears just a little bit I want to give the floor to Mr Adams just for a couple of minutes as one of the things that we are trying to do as we look at our CIP challenges is be very very pragmatic in looking at um our entire portfolio of properties so mcps is a very large property manager in the county we we have a lot of buildings that are no longer being used for mcps purposes and um just taking a holistic look at all of those
to see along with our colleagues at the council and in the county about what how we might dispose perhaps some of those buildings to help us um deal with some of our CIP and operating budget challenges sure thank you Miss haris so yes we we I believe it's probably about four years ago we did a we started a presentation with the Board of Education just around the overall property inventory that mcps has um how we're utilizing spaces and how we can utilize space more effectively in the future um
coming off uh today's educ education culture meeting where we had you went through some really challenging discussions around um the financial climate uh they went through project by project we were really looking at tough choices that the county needs to make um tough choices about um pushing projects out of the CIP completely um you know even projects like Damascus you know pushing the start date till 2029 um you know there's some some challenges out there from a financial standpoint so one of
the things that does make sense for us is to start bringing back some of our facility inventory um you know attributes and and start to think are there ways that we can uh work with the county to um a better utilize our facilities but also if there's facil fa ities that are no longer um you know in use they're no longer really viable for academic purposes to see if there's opportunities to work with the county to either repurpose or even uh look to possibly sale um and transition to Property Di
sposition um so it is a it is a process that we're starting to look at we we are working with a few Consultants we're working with the county dgs but we probably have anywhere in the neighborhood of of 30 facilities that are closed those schools that we use for a variety of purposes whether it be Partnerships with private special education providers to um pre-k program providers to daycare um you you name it um but there are other facilities that are used for other purposes um that we have attem
pted to look at from from the purposes of reopening in the future and it just doesn't seem viable so it does make sense for us to start transition in that way and see if we can positively impact the the economics of the county and see if we we can transition some of the These funds back into the CIP in order to move the needle on on things like Damascus or other delays that we're we're likely to see throughout the CIP so um that is an update I believe we we'll we most likely bring that back to f
iscal management um and obviously back to the full board at some point but it is uh certainly the right time to start to think differently about the properties that the Board of Education owns and see if there are opportunities to to help the fiscal climate that that we're currently facing thank you Mr Adams and for the millions of viewers we will be talking about this just a little bit at next week's fisal management committee meeting when we talk about CIP and then um we will be scheduling a f
inal C uh fiscal management committee meeting before the end of the fiscal year and this will probably be a major agenda item as we go through the whole portfolio and see after our conversations with the county about what kind of dispositions we might be able to come to Mrs Evans any any questions no questions just like my colleagues have done just thank every thank thank you to everyone who came out today to share their um feedback with the board we really appreciate it have a good evening I wa
nted to um ask Mr Adams in terms of the boundary studies which we will be approving next week um can you remind us the original start time for Woodward and what the proposed new start time is and the rationale for that so yes it's a it's a year difference so um under the previous timeline we would be most likely starting Community meetings with a consultant at this point um as as we talked about just you know from last year to this year we saw obviously some of the challenges with the constructi
on that resulted in a delay more for obviously Northwood than for the Woodward project but um so we're about a year behind but we are well positioned with an RFP at this moment we're we're actually hopefully we'd be ready to release that um in the coming weeks to months and hopefully have a consultant on board this summer uh to actually hopefully um accelerate some of those Community discussions ahead of even what the the uh the timeline that we shared with the board so um it's a like what like
a six-month delay or six month difference it's it's a year I mean we're yeah so we're the proposed uh shift is an entire year um but where we are right now we're obviously not starting from Ground Zero where we were last year so we have quite a bit um from RFP development and ready to release so uh we're obviously a few steps ahead of of starting from from the starting point from where we were last year and are you confident that you're still able to do the engagement necessary as to do such a l
arge scope project yes I I think the engagement um the types of engagement may look different than what we're used to through different boundary study processes um again just because of the large scale of of what we're talking about so part of the RFP and with a consultant is is to look at a variety of different ways to um reach families to to receive that feedback uh but I do believe it's going to look very different than what we are accustomed to from boundary studies this is not um going to b
e just all uh site meetings school meetings um at individual schools it's just it's it's not um it's not feasible with the scale that we're looking at so we'll look at a variety of different you know uh engagement methods and and obviously that will be part of the RFP process and selection of a of a consultant thank you I don't see any other lights on or questions so thank you so much for coming out to testify appreciate it um and Dr Felder do you have any closing comments sure I to would like t
o thank everyone uh for coming out tonight your voices were certainly heard and um your time appreciated I also appreciate what uh Mr Adam shared with regards to um looking at how we engage families um in a more comprehensive way and the comments that with made specifically about that so so thank you okay with that we adjourn please try safely have a good evening [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] for
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