Dr. Saelens, Dr. Sprankle, and Mr. Bell surprised Mrs. Schulte at KIHS with the great news! Pictured left to right – Dr. Rankin, Mr. Harding, Mrs. Schulte, Dr. Saelens, Mr. Bell, and Dr. Sprankle.

Today, the Maryland State Board of Education and Maryland State Department of Education announced the names of the seven finalists who will compete to be named the 2023-2024 Maryland Teacher of the Year. The finalists were selected by a panel of judges from key Maryland education organizations representing principals, teachers, school boards, teacher unions, parents, and higher education.

Mrs. Andrea Schulte, Visual Arts teacher at Kent Island High School, was named as a Maryland State Teacher of the Year Finalist! The 2023-2024 Maryland Teacher of the Year will be announced during a gala reception and dinner at Martin’s West in Baltimore on October 13, 2023. The winner will receive cash awards, national traveling opportunities, and participate in several national meetings and conferences. The press release from MSDE can be found here.

Two new public employee unions had extra cause to celebrate this Labor Day weekend.

New faculty unions at Howard Community College and Frederick Community College were certified and recognized last week under a state law governing unionization on community college campuses.

Howard and Frederick are the first community college faculties in Maryland to organize after the General Assembly passed a collective bargaining bill in 2021, over the veto of former Gov. Larry Hogan (R).

On Wednesday, the full-time faculty at the campuses were recognized as members of AFT-Maryland by the state Public Employee Relations Board.

The unions were formed under a new “card check” law, through which unions are recognized if more than 50% of bargaining unit members sign authorization cards saying they’d like to join.

After months of organizing, more than 80% of the 170 faculty members at Howard Community College and 100 faculty members at Frederick submitted cards to the board on Aug. 21.

The American Federation of Teachers Maryland now represents about 18,000 employees across the state.

The community colleges are among 54 new units organized this year by the AFT, the nation’s largest higher education union. Its total membership is now at a record high of 1.72 million, union leaders said.

“Higher ed faculty want unions — and the more workers who are organized, the more students see that respect and voice leads to greater opportunity, that’s the way more families have access to the middle class,” AFT’s national president, Randi Weingarten, said. “That’s why it is such a hot labor summer.”

Union members at the Frederick and Howard campuses said they undertook the organizing effort to address ever-increasing workloads, inadequate compensation and other issues they hope to deal with as a collective voice.

“I’m for unionizing because faculty know what’s best for our students, our schools and higher education, and a union and a contract will finally give us our say. Administrators tell us how to do our jobs without knowing their way around a classroom. But when it comes to our students and their learning, I trust my colleagues. I trust faculty,” Howard Community College English instructor Tim Bruno said in a statement.

The college issued a statement last week after the union’s certification and recognition.

“As HCC and AFT embark on this new chapter of cooperation, both parties look forward to working closely together. The shared goal is to cultivate an environment that promotes excellence, innovation, and the continued advancement of education,” a press release stated.

In Frederick, the unionization effort comes after allegations of bullying and harassment by former President Elizabeth Burmaster, who left the college in 2021 following protests and a no-confidence vote.

“The history of the institution shows that no existing organization, including FCC’s board of trustees and various state and regional accreditation organizations, will protect faculty and other employees from abusive administrators. The solidarity and power we are creating with our union will ensure our protection,” Greg Coldren, a member of the school’s math faculty, said in a statement.

Ray Baker, a spokesperson for AFT-Maryland, said the new unions will help faculty members elevate their concerns collectively — and improve outcomes for students on their campuses.

“Unions do not necessarily have to be adversarial. In the best situations, unions and campus leadership work hand-in-hand because they have shared goals and shared values,” Baker said.

Nationally, Baker said he thinks labor unions are growing because “workers are looking around and saying ‘This is a little tougher than it used to be. This is a little harder than it used to be. I know we’re not getting the benefits that this work once delivered.’”

“So the way that you remedy that, the way that workers can find some power for themselves again, is through a union,” Baker said. “And that’s why we’re seeing this increased interest.”

Before passage of the 2021 collective bargaining law, some employee groups were already organized at the Community College of Baltimore County, Montgomery College, and Prince George’s Community College.

There are additional faculty organizing efforts by AFT-Maryland underway now at the Community College of Baltimore County and Prince George’s Community College.

“Hopefully very soon we will be adding them to our labor family as well,” Baker said.

And at Anne Arundel Community College, the push for a unionization vote is underway.

In May, Service Employees International Union Local 500 filed a representation election petition with the state, seeking to become the exclusive representative of part-time faculty there.

The new labor actions have gone forward under the purview of the Public Employee Relations Board, a new panel that was created by The Public Employee Relations Act passed by the General Assembly earlier this year. The new board replaces and consolidates three former panels: the State Labor Relations Board, the State Higher Education Labor Relations Board, and the Public School Labor Relations Board.

Gov. Wes Moore (D) named the first members of the new Public Employee Relations Board in August. The members are subject to confirmation by the Maryland Senate.

By Danielle E. Gaines

Governor Moore interacts with student at Benedictine

Governor Wes Moore toured the Benedictine campus in Ridgely on Thursday on his way to the 2023 Maryland Association of Counties summer conference. The tour was conducted by Benedictine Executive Director Scott Evans and Education Director Julie Hickey. Joined by Maryland Department of Disabilities Secretary Carol Beatty, the tour also included members of the Benedictine leadership team, board members, Benedictine’s students, adults, family members and staff. Congressman Andy Harris’ office Community Liaison Mike Arntz; Delegate Jeff Ghrist; Senator Johnny Mautz; and Ridgely Town Commissioner Anthony Casey also joined the group.

The Governor’s tour included an opportunity to sit in on a class on the student’s first day back to school. He also visited a residential suite where Evans and Hickey explained the need to upgrade the facilities to meet the changing demographic of students who have moderate to severe autistic and behavioral challenges.

The Benedictine campus also has vocational training spaces and recreational facilities which are utilized by both students and supported adults. The Governor met supported adults who talked about their work experiences in the community and vocational activities they participate in on campus.

“All of us at Benedictine want to thank the Governor and his staff for touring Benedictine. What a great opportunity to show what we do here at Benedictine in supporting those living with developmental disabilities and autism. The Governor’s engagement with our students and supported adults was truly inspirational to witness,” commented Benedictine Executive Director Scott Evans.

The original school and residential suites were built in the early 1960’s and the Transforming a Campus to Transform Lives master plan has been developed to address obsolescence, safety, and health issues of the current and future student population that attend school and reside on campus. The first phase of the project is to renovate and construct new residential suites for the school-age population, a new nursing and kitchen facility, and new traffic access improvements.

For more information about Benedictine and how you can support this organization, ple

The nonprofit organization Moving Dorchester Forward, based in Cambridge, started as a group of local leaders concerned about the holes in the resources and services available to the community. They chose to concentrate on three areas: early learning, workforce development, and community engagement. The task of getting area citizens involved in what MDF was doing began with Community Engagement Coordinator Shay Lewis-Sisco and her team holding events to create awareness of MDF.

While they were out there, the team asked people what the community was missing and how MDF could connect them to vital resources. It quickly became clear that money, activities, personnel, and action planning (among other things) were sorely needed, so MDF decided to be the conduit to those services. One of the questions the organization asked themselves was, “What are the capacity-building skills for parents?”

Fortunately, they learned about the Parent Encouragement Program from Kevin Beverly, Moving Dorchester Forward’s board president. Beverly, who lives and works in Montgomery County, knew of the PEP group that has been active there for twenty years, meeting with parents and caregivers of children ages 3-18 and then teaching them skills in cohort-based environments.

“A lot of them are parents sitting there going, ‘How do you talk to a teenager, and how do you get them on regular routines’ and all that fun stuff,” explained MDF director Chris Wheedleton. “Particularly for folks that are working two jobs and maybe single-parent homes and all these extra challenges for them from a parent standpoint.”

PEP wanted to work in another community besides Montgomery County, so they came to Dorchester with a grant and the Family Resiliency Program, which helps families learn how to communicate with their children and generally balance the things in their lives.

MDF decided to conduct two pilot programs. Though PEP’s model typically relies on virtual classes, Wheedleton and his team chose to begin theirs in person. The first session of the initial cohort was held on February 7 at Delmarva Community Services Intergenerational Center, with Lewis-Sisco and another community engagement staff member as facilitators.

“We wanted to do it in person simply because it’s about building relationships, and it’s hard to build relationships when you’re doing that in a virtual environment,” said MDF Coordinator Nancy Shockley, who oversees PEP. “We were willing to do the structure and set up whatever we needed to do in terms of the food, in terms of the daycare and facilitation and stuff like that.”

Parents were able to take their children to the in-person session, where the kids were placed in groups by age to work with the community engagement staff while the parents focused fully on their own group. But, there were also challenges with everyone meeting in one place: the time of day they all could gather, activities parents needed to accomplish at home or elsewhere, and the difficulties of transportation.

So, MDF gave the attendees the option of having the sessions online, and the next time they met it was on Zoom, which turned out to work well. The second cohort ran from April to June and was fully virtual. It was offered in two groups of sessions, on Thursdays and Sundays. Any parents who wanted to participate but didn’t have the necessary equipment were provided with it by MDF.

The topics for the eight weeks of sessions, outlined by PEP, were very relatable and included helping a child manage change, raising more motivated and cooperative kids, knowing when to set limits, and responding to a child’s strong emotions. The facilitator would show an instructional video that presented simple tools parents could implement within their families. This would be followed by some specific questions, and the group members would hold a discussion about such things as how their own parents responded to them during difficult incidents of their childhood. There were talks about the three parenting styles–permissive, democratic, and authoritarian–and why the democratic style was the preferred one.

Then there were the discussions of mental health, which children need support with no matter their age or stage of development. Because of generational differences among the parents, there were some for whom the normalizing of mental health was a challenge.

“I will say that, in one session, I felt that culturally, specifically around mental health, there was some tension at times,” said Lewis-Sisco. But, it was her job to set the tone of the conversation, and she made sure everyone knew each session was a safe, confidential environment for difficult dialogues. “As a facilitator, you have to be intentional to make sure that, no matter what the culture is or race that’s present, they have the space to be able to share their experience. And I often say, in facilitated conversations we need to attack the problem, not the person.”

As the group members talked and realized that everyone was being open and transparent, they were willing to continue the engagements and connect on a whole new level. The parents found themselves looking forward to the sessions as their own form of mental health support. While the facilitator would play videos and ask the hard questions, it was up to the parents to provide each other with encouragement. Some of them even learned to be leaders themselves.

“And then from there, we’ve actually been able, through the first cohorts, to identify additional facilitators,” said Shockley, “because the whole idea of using that PEP model is that parents who go through the program can potentially become facilitators of the ongoing groups, which is really just building the capacity and giving parents sort of that peer sort of network opportunity of working together.”

When the cohorts were finished, MDF brought the parents together for a family fun night event at Cabin Fever in Downtown Cambridge. They were able to meet with author Joy Thomas Moore, mother of Maryland’s governor, for some family engagement activities and discussions.

“Both groups that went through said, ‘What’s next? We’d like to keep going,'” said Wheedleton. “And we just met with PEP recently and they said, ‘We’ve got additional funding to actually do eight more cohorts next year.'”

He and Shockley are now planning that with Lewis-Sisco, who will take the lead on the structure of the ongoing Family Resiliency cohorts to commence in the fall. At the same time, they are able to offer the parents other programming focused on such subjects as mental health, first aid, and finances.

“So many of these families are working two jobs and are struggling to make ends meet,” said Shockley. “And that makes parenting even more difficult because of the ongoing stresses of trying to pay the bills and meet all of those things. So, we’ve actually had a number of those parents sign up to participate in some of our other work around generational poverty and how to kind of take the next step and move on.”

For more information on PEP’s Family Resiliency Program or to sign up for the next sessions, contact Shay Lewis-Sisco at [email protected] or 443-440-5370.

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Accountability and Implementation Board has approved updates to the statewide comprehensive education reform plan, on schedule with a law that calls for the massive plan to be revised each year by Aug. 1.

Some changes the board made Tuesday were discussed July 20, such as requiring local health and social service agencies to share with local school systems the names and contact information of families with children who could be eligible to enroll in free prekindergarten.

This and other revisions — which were recommended by staff of the state Department of Education and other state agencies, as well as by local school leaders, parents and other stakeholders — focus on most of the Blueprint’s priorities: expanding early childhood education, hiring and retaining high-quality and diverse teachers, preparing students for college and technical careers and providing additional resources for students in need.

The other priority is governance and accountability for the Blueprint board, also known as the AIB, that was established by lawmakers to oversee the education reform plan until 2032. The board decided that, together with the Department of Education, they will develop a framework to identify areas of technical assistance that need to be provided to school systems and what agencies should provide it.

“I just feel like this process has worked extremely well and that we’ve been very open and accommodated the input that has come from a variety of different quarters,” said Blueprint Board Vice Chair William “Brit” Kirwan, chancellor emeritus of the University System of Maryland.

Blueprint Board Chair Isiah “Ike” Leggett, who served three terms as Montgomery County’s executive, said the work isn’t over, with another meeting scheduled for Aug. 10.

“This is an important document, but it’s a document to some degree [that] will be subject to changes as we look at new approaches to education and new changes that need to be made,” he said. “We have put in an awful lot of work and we’re still not through. We’ve accomplished a great deal with all our supporting personnel and organizations that have worked with us.”

Last week, the Blueprint board approved all 24 school systems’ first submissions of local reform plans.

Most counties have already planned to increase salaries for teachers, prepare to expand prekindergarten opportunities for 3- and 4-year-old children and provide career counseling for middle and high school students.

The plans also detail how local officials will implement Blueprint strategies through the upcoming 2023-24 school year.

Some members of the AIB praised a couple of school systems for their work during an online meeting Thursday.

Kirwan said that Anne Arundel County public schools’ plan to expand the number teachers to achieve National Board Certification “really stands out.”

AIB Executive Director Rachel Hise said Anne Arundel has one of the highest number of teachers with that credential in Maryland.

Blueprint Boardmember Joseph Manko said Frederick County’s plan to create a teacher pipeline with higher education institutions should be replicated by other school systems.

“Teacher shortages are a challenge across the state, but it seems like in Frederick County there’s been a really deep connection with their local institutes of higher education,” he said.

Between May 20 and June 25, each local school system received two rounds of feedback from staff of the AIB and the state Department of Education.

Twenty school systems received unanimous approval last week for their local reform plans. Calvert, Charles and Garrett counties need to amend documentation on a Career and Counseling Memorandum of Understanding.

Queen Anne’s also received unanimous approval, on the condition that it convert $1,000 teacher stipends from the current and two previous fiscal years into the base salary for all teachers. The stipends were paid because school officials realized they couldn’t provide a 10% increase for teachers this fiscal year, as required by the Blueprint law.

Each school system’s plan will provide a roadmap for local school officials to receive assistance from staff of various agencies as they prepare documents that outline strategies through the 2026-27 school years and in order to submit them to the board by March.

Meanwhile, the AIB made available summaries of each approved school system’s plans along with feedback from AIB staff specifying “areas of strength and opportunity” and “areas for further growth and improvement.”

Here’s a snapshot of the feedback for each school district on the Mid-Shore

Caroline – Strength: “Caroline County provided comprehensive responses in its implementation plan overall, but particularly in describing its K-12 mathematics and literacy instructional plans. Caroline’s process for identifying and selecting both high-quality and culturally responsive instructional materials by utilizing the MABE [Maryland Association of Boards of Education] equity lens and evaluating potential materials against a culturally responsive scorecard is particularly noteworthy. AIB staff look forward to following Caroline’s progress in forming a workgroup to identify specific criteria for culturally responsive materials in the 2023-24 academic year.”

Improvement: “Caroline’s implementation of CTE [career and technical education] programs could benefit from a greater focus on opportunities that CTE pathways present for students to attain high-wage, high-skill jobs. This could also help to encourage more students to pursue industry credentials and enroll in high school apprenticeships.”

Dorchester – Strength: “DCPS is expanding its pipeline of teachers through partnerships with the Teacher Academy of Maryland (TAM) program, Chesapeake College, and Salisbury University with a specific focus on efforts that will diversify the teaching force to better mirror the student body. Continue to seek solutions to fill hard to staff positions through these and additional collaborations.”

Improvement: “DCPS describes how staffing challenges are impacting implementation throughout the plan, including professional development and supporting students who are not yet meeting college and career [readiness] (CCR) expectations.  As strategies are developed to overcome these challenges, DCPS has the opportunity to consider creative approaches that will position the district as an early innovator in implementing the Blueprint, particularly with regards to meeting career ladder expectations. Such strategies could include teacher leaders returning to teaching for part of the day while creating, leading and monitoring professional development efforts; using high quality, school day tutoring funded through grants; and reallocating central office staffing to ensure teachers are in the classroom and students are receiving necessary support, etc.”

Kent – Strength: “Given Kent’s need to provide CCR [college and career readiness] support for very large numbers of students, the LEA [local education agency] has some strong structures in place now to build on including their Trojan Time period (to offer support/enrichment during the school day) and the summer programming that combines academic catchup with CTE exploration.  The LEA [local education agency] is thinking about the support it provides as needing to be engaging to students [and] Kent County is collaborating with neighboring Cecil County to organize community schools.”

Improvement: “Like most LEAs, Kent’s focus on the career ladder to date has been on supporting teachers working to achieve National Board Certification.  The district needs to think through how to structure new teacher roles and organize staffing to better serve students in their schools.  The LEA will benefit from technical assistance and guidance to develop a career ladder that goes beyond a focus on National Board Certification/salary incentives and leverages teacher leadership to improve teaching and learning.”

Queen Anne’s – Strength: “Queen Anne’s has created a continuous improvement process for their dual enrollment program. Data on how students perform prior to and in their dual enrollment courses will be used to help future students navigate whether to participate and which classes to take and help shape their partnerships with IHEs (institutions of higher education).”

Improvement: “QACPS has historically had trouble staffing math, world language, and secondary science teachers; recent shortages and decreasing enrollment in teacher preparation programs have made it hard for them to staff special education, elementary, and secondary positions in all levels. Queen Anne’s actively recruits at a number of events, but because of these shortages, the LEA [local education agency] needs to consider additional strategies to build strong teacher and teaching assistant pipelines, including through new recruitment and retention strategies (especially those targeting historically underrepresented populations).”

Talbot – Strength: “There is a comprehensive plan and commitment to monitoring key data and intervening early for students who are not on track as they enter high school, including an organizational audit to look for connections between policies and practices that either support or hinder student success [and] partnering with neighboring counties to collaborate on cross-county CTE [career and technical education] program offerings to broaden student options.”

Improvement: “As a smaller county, Talbot faces a number of challenges in Blueprint implementation including expanding early childhood education options (no private providers and no 3 [year] olds enrolled currently) and attracting the needed mix of teachers, support staff, and English Learner specialists. These were acknowledged and strategies were discussed but will need ongoing attention.”