January 30, 2024, Staff and Community Update: Highlights from the Superintendent’s Press Conference
WATCH THE PRESS CONFERENCE
Dr. Myriam Rogers (Yarbrough) held a media availability today, January 30, to share important system updates on the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 operating budget and BCPS’ efforts to address chronic absenteeism, provide safety reminders for Team BCPS and information on two upcoming job fairs and a ribbon cutting ceremony. Dr. Rogers also provided a brief update on the Pikesville High School investigation and answered questions from the media.
Pikesville HS Investigation
- Our investigation of the audio recording is ongoing and when we are able to provide details without compromising the progress of our investigation, we will. We are deeply grateful for the partnership of Baltimore County Police Department in ensuring that the community and our employees are safe.
- As you can imagine, this has been a very difficult time for the Pikesville High School community. The statements on the recording do not reflect the core values of our school system. We welcome the rich diversity that exists throughout Team BCPS.
- In addition to the investigation, our top priority has been providing direct support to students and staff and creating a safe space for them to process their thoughts and feelings given the international, national, and local attention this incident has garnered. These resources have included additional counseling support for students, healing circles for students and staff, and targeted staff support through the Employee Assistance Program and the Department of Equity and Cultural proficiency.
- Working with the Department of Schools, under the leadership of Dr. Racquel Jones, we developed a leadership plan to ensure there is steady leadership in the building. Mrs. Kyria Joseph, executive director for high schools, and Dr. George Roberts, consulting administrator, are serving as the lead administrators in the building working alongside Pikesville High School staff.
- We are incredibly proud of the students and staff and how they have stepped up to support one another and maintain their focus on teaching and learning.
- BCPS is unable to provide any more details at this time.
Fiscal Year 2025 Operating Budget
- On January 9, Dr. Rogers formally presented her $2.58 billion operating budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025 to the Board of Education.
- The budget proposal reflects the collective efforts and goals of the Team BCPS community. We heard from hundreds of members of Team BCPS over the last five months who shared their thoughts and ideas on the areas they believed we should prioritize in the budget and investments we need to make that will help us provide the greatest public education to every student.
- The proposed budget takes a thoughtful and strategic approach to helping our school system fast forward, and it prioritizes investments in our areas of greatest need—academic achievement, infrastructure, safety and climate, and highly effective teachers, leaders and staff.
- This has been an incredibly challenging budget cycle for BCPS. To address the pending ESSER shortfall, we adopted a new budget approach that enabled us to identify more than $104 million in reductions. These savings include position reductions, teacher adjustments to match enrollment, a slight increase in the student-to-teacher ratio at the secondary level to meet system needs, shifts in revenue sources, and other built ins. We focused on increased efficiency, eliminating redundancies and moving resources closer to schools.
- Even with the tight fiscal constraints, we are very pleased that we could work with our employee associations to reach a historic agreement on new, multi-year contracts. The contracts provide for an average of a 13 percent salary increase for all represented employees over a multi-year period and enhanced salary scales that focus on the recruitment and retention of highly effective employees. The Board has approved these agreements, and they will go into effect July 1.
- The Board is scheduled to adopt its budget on February 27. The budget will then be submitted to the County Executive and County Council for approval.
Chronic Absenteeism
- Part of our work to ensure all students excel and reach their highest potential involves investing in comprehensive strategies to address absenteeism.
- Recognizing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on student attendance, we launched a comprehensive plan to combat chronic absenteeism, empower students and families, and reduce barriers to school attendance. Our “Here for It” campaign is leveraging creative strategies to promote a culture of attendance and to support efforts to decrease the percentage of chronically absent students. Special thanks to our Director of School Climate and Culture, Dr. Roberts, Ms. Erika Hamlet, Coordinator and Ms. Tamesha Peterson, Attendance Liaison, for leading these efforts and coordinating with our schools.
- Post-pandemic, BCPS ended the 2021-2022 school year with a chronic absenteeism rate of 33.4 percent. A third of our students missed more than 10 percent of the school year with another 14 percent coming close to meeting the threshold for being considered chronically absent. A little more than 50 percent of our students attended school with consistency.
- During the 2022-2023 school year, the problem grew as the number of students attending consistently dipped below 50 percent and the percentage of students in the moderate and chronically absent categories increased.
- This school year, with the implementation of our “Here for It” campaign and reinvigorated efforts from school communities, we are starting to see promising results. The percentage of students attending school consistently has increased significantly, while the percentage of students who are chronically absent has decreased. More than 60 percent of our students are attending school with consistency.
- We look forward to providing additional updates on our efforts to combat chronic absenteeism in the near future.
Second Semester Safety Reminders
- Our priority is academic achievement for all students across Team BCPS. Students and staff must feel emotionally and physically safe. While we continue our efforts to tackle absenteeism, we are also working to address disruptive student behaviors to preserve and protect teaching and learning. We are a few days into the second semester, and I want to remind all members of Team BCPS that we all play a role in creating safe and welcoming environments for all.
- We will continue to use all legally available tools and resources to protect students and hold accountable those who break the rules.
- Fighting, bringing weapons to school, calling in false threats, and other dangerous behaviors will not be tolerated. We also want to remind parents and guardians of the importance of modeling positive behaviors. We are seeing an increase in disruptive adult behavior at our schools, at bus stops and in the community and this is not acceptable.
- We are grateful for our continued partnership with Baltimore County police and their tireless efforts to keep our students and staff. We believe that working together, we will have a safe and positive second semester!
Upcoming Job Fairs and Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
- Please join us on Thursday, February 1 at 1:30 p.m., as we cut the ribbon on the new Summit Park Elementary School building. The $63 million project replaces the old school and features more than double the capacity (684 seats) and square footage (100,441 square feet) of the former school building. Designed to relieve overcrowding and to provide a modern learning center for the community, the new school formally opened to students earlier this month.
- We also have two job fairs coming up—a special education fair on February 21 at 4 p.m. here at the Greenwood campus and a March 12 job fair at the Timonium Fair Grounds for all positions. Our efforts to recruit are year-round and we invite all interested candidates to join us at our upcoming fairs to learn more about joining Team BCPS.