a. What are your top three priorities for Howard County? 

 

My top three priorities for Howard County education are school construction, ensuring later start times for school, and addressing issues with special education.

 

School construction: Every year, the school has needed a capital budget request that fully funds deferred maintenance and new school construction to ensure that every child has a seat in a brick-and-mortar classroom.  It takes at least five years to plan for and build a new school. Yet in 5 years, we will be almost 7-8% over capacity at all levels, even taking into account the ongoing school construction at Hammond HS, HS #13, and Talbott Springs ES. Yet this year we did not see a capital budget request for new funding for school construction to address those capacity issues. 

 

Later start times: The data has supported the need for a later start time. Implementing a later start time must be a priority. Changing school start times has long been known to improve outcomes, reduce absenteeism, and increase graduation rates. These improvements in outcomes are highest for the most disadvantaged students, particularly those whose parents have jobs that prevent them from seeing their child to school on time each morning. This policy has also been extensively discussed for many years within the HCPSS community, with plenty of avenues for public input. It is time to implement it.

 

Special education: HCPSS needs to properly identify students, have a more inclusive and less adversarial IEP process, intervene early for the best possible outcomes, shift the burden of proof in due process claims, and develop a twice exceptional program. HCPSS consistently under-identifies students who need special education services. Howard County only has 10% of its students receiving special education services, despite numbers of 14% nationwide and 16% for neighboring jurisdictions. Collectively, policies that reduce access to special education students hurt our kids, and raise significant issues with respect to equity, since some families can afford to get outside medical diagnoses and interventions, but other families cannot. For many families, school-based interventions are the only interventions their child will receive. Therefore, the issues with special education in HCPSS lead to significant and substantial inequities in our education outcomes for lower income families.

 

b. What values will inform the policies you pursue once elected to office?  

 

First and foremost, I value education with a particular fondness for education in STEM. I grew up below the poverty line and a STEM education was important for me to ensure that my own children did not grow up in similar circumstances. My parents worked and put themselves through college, my mom rising in the school system from lunch monitor to teacher’s aide to guidance counselor.  I will bring those values with me. Public schools were envisioned to be the “great equalizer of the conditions of men” and women, and I believe that they can be and that we need to ensure that they are the great equalizer for all. One of the reasons my husband and I moved to Columbia was a desire for a community that embraced and reflected our extended family’s diversity in terms of race, gender, identity, ability, sexual orientation, and socioeconomics. I will bring those values, of embracing all manner of diversity, with me.

 

c. What can the Howard County Board of Education do better and how can you make that happen? 

 

The Board of Education needs to find a way to be responsive to its constituents. It needs to respond to parents, to educators, to staff, and to students who reach out to them with concerns. I am committed to ensuring that constituents know that their voice is heard. Many parents, teachers, and staff want to be involved. They want to advocate but often end up being reactive rather than proactive, which is a direct result of how and when information is released relative to when the vote happens and when public testimony registration closes. We need to do better. I would advocate for more transparent communication directly from the BOE to the public. I would also advocate for better timelines, where information is released several days before a vote and before registration for public forum closes, to ensure an opportunity for parents and teachers to share their thoughts. This potentially could aid in shortening the meetings as well, since board members would be able to ask questions of staff prior to the meeting.

 

d. What experiences have you had where you’ve worked with others to create solutions to difficult problems? 

 

I am a scientist and educator; both require working with others to create solutions to difficult problems. Science is often used as an example of a positive collaborative culture, and my field of genomics in particular involves collaborations that are often quite large include diverse and sometimes difficult people. I have participated in and led such collaborations successfully, including both national and international collaborations with people of diverse backgrounds and on all six inhabited continents. 

 

e. Economic inequality is greater in the United States than ever before. Howard County is among the wealthiest counties in the nation, but over a quarter of our neighbors don’t have enough money to make ends meet at the end of the month. Students from struggling families often struggle in school. What role can the Howard County Public Schools take in addressing economic inequality and ameliorating the impacts of economic inequality in our children’s educational outcomes? 

 

We need to ensure support for our schools in the Title 1 program and the community eligibility programs. We need to continue to ensure that schools with a larger population of lower income students have the highest quality teachers. We also need new initiatives. The socioeconomic achievement gap is often attributed to a lack of diverse enrichment experiences outside of school. Yet my son’s middle school that has a high proportion of free and reduced meal-eligible students lacks the number and breadth of academic extracurricular and enrichment activities that neighboring HCPSS schools have. It lacks the activities that give students a breadth of experiences that prepare them for life and aid in the development of soft skills. I want to ensure diverse, high-quality, and enriching extracurricular activities in our middle schools that have a higher number of low-income students.

 

f. Black and brown students in HCPSS are more likely to be suspended and expelled and less likely to graduate than their white and Asian American classmates. What do you believe HCPSS can and should do to address these and other racial disparities in our public schools?

 

Disproportionate discipline outcomes need to be addressed–with black and brown children, males, and special education students all being disproportionately affected. 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; (3) ensure that the teachers and staff reflect the diversity of the students; and (4) address these disparities head on. Those disparities for racial and ethnic groups often correlate with socioeconomics, which is not surprising given that poverty is a consequence of systemic racism, such that addressing socioeconomic outcomes may address disparities observed between different racial or ethnic groups.  With respect to disproportionate discipline outcomes, 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.