1. Name 

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Julie Hotopp

2. Email address 

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hotopp4boe@gmail.com

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3. Date of birth

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This will only be used to show your age at the time of the election. Your DOB
will not be published. 
 

4. Residence

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Columbia, MD

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5. Current occupation 

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Scientist and professor in microbiology and genome science

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6. Education 

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B.S. Microbiology and Immunology
Ph.D. Microbiology and Molecular Genetics

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7. Previous political experience 

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None

 

8. Why are you running for office? 

I’m running for Board of Education because of my passion for education,
particularly science education. I want to ensure that Howard County
maintains the highest quality education system. The issues that I deem as
needing the most attention include new school construction, school start
times, improving outcomes for students from lower income households,
supporting special education, ensuring an inclusive learning environment,
and addressing pandemic-related learning loss. I am running to advocate
and affect change in these areas. I want to ensure that this work is done
with excellence, integrity, and transparency and without outside influence. I
will not take developer or dark money donations. I also will not have a
political party affiliation (also known as being an independent) and will not
pursue or accept any political party endorsement or funding.

 

9. What do you see as the most pressing issue the county school system
faces and how would you address it? 

The most pressing issue with the school system involves ensuring that every
student has the best opportunity to learn and succeed in life. We need to
ensure that we retain high quality teachers. We need to ensure that every
child has a seat in a brick-and-mortar classroom, instead of a portable. We
need appropriate school start times that align with our children's biological
clocks. We need to address the issues that family income has on educational
outcomes, ensuring that all students succeed and live up to their potential.
We need to identify students early who have learning disabilities, since early
intervention is the best and least expensive intervention. We need to
eliminate discrimination and bias in our schools. We need to have safe and
bully-free schools and support students of all genders, race, ethnicity, sex,
and sexual orientation. We need to address the learning loss that happened
during the pandemic.

 

10. How should county schools assist students in recovering from the
learning loss? 

Teachers know how to help students recover from learning loss. Teachers
have been trained to do this. Teachers have always done this to fill the gaps
students have who may have moved from outside our school system, or
even within our school system. They have done this to fill the gaps that may
have happened due to illness or other reasons. But it requires individualized
attention to do it quickly and efficiently. To do that, we need to give
teachers more time with students by significantly reducing class sizes. I
would recommend using COVID-19 relief funds aimed at combatting learning
loss to reduce class sizes to enable teachers to facilitate recovery from
pandemic-associated learning loss during the normal school day for all
children.

 

11. Should the county school board consider redrawing school boundaries
further? What criteria should be used? 

Our school boundary issues are a direct result of development, both with site
selection, zoning, and the lack of adequate public facilities. We need to
ensure the grown-ups at the beginning of the development process are
addressing it, not the children at the end of it. The school board must redraw
school boundaries in 2022 with the completion of the three new schools and
will likely continue to have to redraw boundaries for many years to come as
growth occurs disproportionately in some areas of the county. The major
criteria in redistricting must be balancing school capacity. We need new
school construction so we have fewer schools over capacity. With diminished
overall capacity, it is increasingly difficult to balance capacity without many

frequent moves often of the same families. Rebalancing on capacity needs to
be done in a manner that ensures that poverty is not concentrated in
schools.

 

12. What efforts do the county schools need to make to address systemic
racism in education and society? 

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We must (1) ensure that our curriculum is representative of all students, all
history, and all culture; (2) ensure that all students, families, and staff feel
equally valued; and (3) address disparities in outcomes. Those disparities for
racial and ethnic groups correlate with socioeconomics, which is not
surprising given that poverty is a consequence of systemic racism. The
socioeconomic achievement gap is often attributed to a diversity of
enrichment experiences outside of school. Yet my son’s majority-minority
middle school lacks a number of academic extracurricular and enrichment
activities relative to neighboring schools. They lack the activities that give
students a breadth of experiences that prepare them for life and aid in the
development of soft skills. I would advocate to ensure diverse high quality
extracurricular activities in schools that have a higher number of low-income
students as well as our majority minority schools.

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13. What, if any, changes would you propose to the school system’s
discipline policies? 

There are significant discipline disparities in schools, including HCPSS, that
lead to higher rates of discipline for children in special education, male
children, and black children. This is not okay and must be addressed. I
would advocate for the evaluation of a program aimed at addressing root
causes focusing on reducing student behavior that requires discipline, which
also has the potential to improve school safety. For example, the My
Teaching Partner (MTP) program is available at all grade levels and has
repeatedly been shown to reduce discipline disparities for children with
disabilities and black children. The program focuses on using videography to
coach teachers across the school year in techniques that improve the quality
of student and teacher interactions. The coaching focuses on addressing root
causes by increasing predictability and consistency in the classroom as well
as increasing student engagement through meaningful and cognitively
challenging activities.