All six candidates running for three seats on the School Board attended.
Frederick, Md (KM) All six candidates running for three seats on the Frederick County Board of Education attended a forum on Sunday afternoon at Hood College. It was organized by the League of Women Voters and took place at Rosenstock Hall.
One of the questions the candidates faced dealt with school safety and violence prevention. Chad Wilson, who has 18 years experience as a teacher, said one of the concerns he and other instructors have when they get up in the morning is whether that will be their last day to come home to their families. He says there’s also fights among students, and educators often have to break them up, getting hurt in the process. Wilson says the School System should place unarmed guards in the schools. One of their jobs would be breaking up fights. “We really have to uphold and seriously look at the policies for bullying, harassment and intimidation because I think that’s a major problem inside of our schools. And I think that adds also to safety. And the last thing I’ll say is we need to insure that every single school is a warm and welcoming environment, and that we are building positive relations with our students and parents,” he said.
Veronica Lowe also said the School System needs to enforce its policies on bullying, harassment and intimidation. “To ensure that our safety systems are in place and everyone knows about them. We have to look at ‘do we need to revisit them and tweak them a little bit’,'” she+ said. “We have to ensure that we continue to have relationships with local, state and county law enforcement.”
Another question addressed to the candidates concerned the Career and Technology Center. They were asked how to expand the school which at its current site is “landlocked>” That means it has no more space to expand on its current property Jaime Brennan said it may be time to move some of the CTC programs to other schools. “I think we maybe need to look at breaking up our center, spreading it out between other facilities. And then also work with our community leaders who want to employ people from our center as far as what options they can help us with, and what guidance we could maybe get from them as far as expanding our programs and options,” she said.
Josh Bokee said this idea is worth exploring, but it needs funding. “How to bring that programming out to where the students who need it are. We need to think about it. But we can’t think about that in isolation. FCPS can’t do that alone. That’s in partnership with the County Executive, the County Council and the state, in terms to helping unlock those partnerships with funding,” he says.
Expanding early childhood education was another issue brought up during the forum. Chad Wilson said he’s 100-percent in favor of it. “It is the one program that has proven time and time again to close the achievement gap. It is the one program that eases the program on parents wherever it’s implement,” he said.
But Colt Black had a concern. “We have to figure out where we’re getting that money to fund it. It’s a great idea. But we really, really need to work on the funding mechanism. We’re struggling as it is to fund what we have,” Black said.
Jaime Brennan said not all parents want early childhood education their kids. “The reality is many parents actually don’t want their small children in our schools this early. They miss their time at home with them. They want to spend more time with them” said Brennan.
Overcrowding is always a concern within the School System, and how to address it without redistricting came up during the forum. . Chad Wilson said Frederick County Public Schools needs to press the state for the needed funding to relieve overcrowding. “People are moving to Frederick County because it has a great school system. It does have great opportunities. So we really need to look how are going to manage our students inside schools that are up to 150 sometimes up to 200 percent capacity,” he said.
Jaime Monier said this overcrowding resulted from development and growth, and not planning ahead for how to deal with it. “When it comers to redistricting, that has got to start with the community and it’s got to start with many conservations with the community,” she said. “And really going to the schools and to those feeder districts and saying ‘so what we can do to make sure we’re getting to as many in this community as we can,’ So redistricting is going to have to happen based on where schools are built, and where overcrowding is.. But it has to have the input from the community.”
Early voting starts this week, Thursday, October 24th, and continues through Thursday, October 31st. General election day is Tuesday, November 5th.
By Kevin McManus