County confronting education inequities
Opportunity gap report considers disciplinary changes
Closing the opportunity gap will be an all-hands-on-deck effort in Anne Arundel County.
Members of Anne Arundel County Public Schools met with County Executive Steuart Pittman via a livestreamed ZoomcallMonday night to talk about the joint effort to address persistent disparities in academic performance between white students and Black students.
A report released last month by a joint task force between the county and school system calls for several changes in policy.
The school board and County Council will need to collaborate on recommended actions like changing the role of school resource officers, requiring equity analyses for all proposals before both governmental bodies and changing the regulation around students who are removed from attending school in person after discipline.
Schools spokesman Bob Mosier was encouraged by the momentum he saw between schools and government at Monday’s meeting. He likened the collaboration between the school system, county government and the community to a three-legged stool.
“Everyone has a critical part to standing that stool up,” Mosier said.
The committee recommended four priority action items be adopted and implemented by June 30, including requiring equity analyses to accompany all proposed policies and decisions made by the Board of Education, county schools central office and Anne Arundel County government. The others are to establish a coalition of stakeholders to
provide ongoing oversight on the contributors to the opportunity gap and recommend changes; engage government agencies and community partners and increase transparency through publicly reporting progress toward goals.
Board of Education president Michelle Corkadel said the board needs time to digest the report and work with Superintendent Dr. George Arlotto on next steps. She said the board implemented an equity analysis policy during the pandemic.
“The board has not developed an official position or statement on this but every single one of us is engaged in this topic daily and we embrace the overall outcomes of what the past course has achieved,” Corkadel said. “In the weeks and months ahead we’ll be diving into the details to identify that which can be addressed immediately, that which requires resources and whatwe need of the community.”
Corkadel said change will take time and she wants to include the community and school staff in policy changes to make sure they’re effective.
“I don’t like using Band-Aids,” she said. “Band-Aids don’t work when you need stitches. Sometimes stitches don’t work when you need staples. And I thinkwe’re at the latter. Healing is going to take some time.”
Pittman saidTuesday that he is considering an executive order to create the body of stakeholders called for in the recommendations.
“We have to decide whether that gets created through executive order or what the legal backing for that would be,” Pittman said. “That’s the first step.”
He anticipates a request fromthe County Council to create a high-level position overseeing the equity analysis directive.
Councilwoman Sarah Lacey, D-Jessup, liked the idea of the equity analysis practice but said she isn’t sure how it would work with the County Council.
“I want to sit down and think about how to implement it in a way that would make sense and who would do that,” Lacey said. “We could do it. It would just need to be very flexible and I just don’t know how at this point.”
Councilwoman Allison Pickard, a Democrat from Glen Burnie who previously served on the school board, said that while the county is working on issues that will help close the opportunity gap like affordable housing, she’d like to work with economic development to tackle food deserts.
The committee named poor nutrition among poverty, income inequality, unsafe housing, and inadequate health care as contributing factors and — for Black students, structural and systemic racism — that perpetuate inequities.
Councilwoman Lisa Rodvien, D-Annapolis, testified during public comment at Monday’s meeting, urging the school system to tackle gaps in transportation access.
Rodvien is also a part-time teacher for county schools. She said she’s seen students who miss the bus and can’t get a ride to school use their own money on cab rides.
“I feel like Annapolis is the poster child for the opportunity gap in a lot ofways. You can see it on full display,” she said.
“There are a lot of families in Annapolis whodon’t have cars or don’t have schedules that allow parents to take them to consolidated bus stops (in the case of magnet schools). To me, that kind of obstacle is the kind of thing that prevents access. We should at least have basic access to things.”
Along with the equity analysis for future decisions, Rodvien said governing bodies like the school board and County Council should consider analyzing existing programs and policies.
“A forward-looking analysis is great but we can’t always look forward,” Rodvien said.“We have to look atwhat’s in place.”
The discipline subcommittee found that certain school systempolicies helpedwiden the opportunity gap for Black students.
One of the goals to reduce the racial disparity seen in county schools discipline data by 2022 is to rework the policy for pulling students out of school when charged with crimes outside of school.
During the 2018–2019 school year, principals recommended the removal of 111 students from county schools for “a broad range of unproven allegations,” the report reads. The subcommittee notes that while students are supposed to be placedonhome teaching until charges are resolved, the gap in in-school education lasted sometimes from one to eight months with some students never receiving alternative education services.
Annapolis-based attorney Jennifer Alexander said she’shadmany juvenile clients removed from school for charges such as marijuana possession and destruction of public property. She said her clients have struggled to get assignments while on suspension and further struggle to get back in school when charges are dropped.
She said one of her clients, a senior, almost had his college acceptance revoked because he couldn’t get access to assignments. He was found to be not involved in the allegation, juvenile court’s version of not guilty.
“It was a serious cause of distress and angst for him and his parents,” Alexander said. “The school seems to take one monolithic look at this instead of looking at the student’s history or the seriousness of the charge.”
To close the opportunity gap for these students, Alexander said schools need to reconsider how much discretion they give principals in suspending students with community-based charges.
The recommended policy would put more of that power inthe hands of a student support teammadeupof a school psychologist, school counselor, pupil personnel worker and health services staff.
The team would be required to “make every effort to prevent the removal of the student from their regular school program by providing behavioral supports, counseling, increased supervision, or other services,” only permitting the removal of a student “if the team determines the student’s presence is an imminent threat of harm to other students or staff.”