The SMOB Race, explained [Part 2]

Read Part 1 here

Budget Cuts

At the time of publication, the most current proposal for the 2020 Montgomery County budget cuts MCPS’ operating budget by $12.4 million. Montgomery County Councilmember Craig Rice called County Executive Marc Elrich’s plan a “education last” budget.

Tishaev disagrees with Rice on this issue.

“Elrich is doing the best he can under the circumstances. And while I don’t agree with what he’s doing, I don’t think we should attack [his budget as an] education last budget. We’ve been handed a bad situation, because of the revenue shortfall. The county has received a lot less money than what they expected. So we’re in really tough financial times,” Tishaev said.

The county should, according to Tishaev, start looking for ways to save money.

Tishaev commented that the country should invest into RideOn bus infrastructure, which would “reduce the demand for busing,” and that MCPS should expand magnet and CTE programs to all parts of the county in order to cut down on bussing costs.

Tinbite avoided a question about budget cuts during the MCPS TV forum, instead rattling off a list of things that the county should fund.

When asked about what needed to be cut in MCPS’ budget, Tinbite stressed that MCPS didn’t necessarily have to focus on budget cuts.  

“I don’t believe [in] budget cuts and there don’t have to be budget cuts so long as the student voice is well-represented and fighting for the full funding. We don’t have to shortcut or short change ourselves, we have to come out just as every other movement has, and just as we’ve done it in past years to fight for the full funding. Budget cuts definitely happen. But we need to look at what we needs to prioritized,” Tinbite said.

Tinbite believes that ESOL, mental health awareness programs, extracurriculars, and “everything along those lines” needed to be funded. “These are the programs that make up our schools,” Tinbite said.

Mental Health

Tinbite advocates an expansion of the number of school counselors, more advertising of the presence of a school psychologist, and urges the BOE to see the issue of mental health as a much bigger priority than it currently is. He advocates for “impractical information” to be cut out of the health curriculum, and replaced with “real-life knowledge,” as well as an increased emphasis on the materials and resources accessible to students.

He further pushes for teacher training about mental health to be reformed. His website states he will “Advocate for teacher training of mental health recognition which would be important during sensitive topics during instruction.” He hopes to create a focus group that would study the effects of testing and homework on students’ wellbeing.

Tishaev plans to improve counselors’ availability to talk with students by re-assigning scheduling duty to other personnel. She further plans to advertise to students the availability of a school psychologist to them. “School psychologists are poorly advertised around high schools,” she wrote on her website.

She further advocates for wellness centers, a space for students to get mental health support from nonprofit organizations which provide 1-2 therapists and assistants to the therapists, to be established at every MCPS school. Currently, only Northwood, Watkins Mill, Wheaton, and Gaithersburg High School have one, with one coming to Kennedy High School.

According to Tishaev, the Montgomery County Dept. of Health and Human Services, which is in charge of the centers, plans to expand the centers first to schools with a high Free and Reduced Meal Service (FARMS) rate, and later to more schools, but hadn’t seen much action on that front. In Tishaev’s proposals, the health curriculum to be completely overhauled to make the class more relevant.

“The health curriculum does an insufficient job of guiding students in the struggle against mental health issues. As the new curriculum rolls out for K – 8, we will work to completely overhaul health class to be more topical and relevant to the strife faced by students with mental health issues,” she wrote.

School Lunch

Both candidates advocate for the revival of strawberry milk in school lunches. In response to concerns of pandering, Tishaev stated that while the issue of strawberry milk was an important part of her platform and a promise she plans on following through with, it serves as a representation of her overall policies on school lunch.

She wrote that “‘We’ll improve the lunches’ is vague and ambiguous, but ‘We’ll bring back strawberry milk’” is much easier to stick in people’s brains. She further plans to address long lunch lines, but didn’t have a specific proposal available at the time of writing, partner with Real Food for Kids Montgomery, the organization that had originally advocated for the ban on strawberry milk, and similar community-based organizations to ensure that all students have access to “delicious and nutritious food.”

Tinbite plans to expand breakfast options for all students, and offer food that is amiable to those with dietary restrictions, with vegetarians, vegans, and lactose-intolerant students being specifically mentioned. He further advocates for the surveys to be provided to the BOE about the quality of school lunches and for the BOE to research the amount of time it takes to get lunch through focus groups, as well as for more lunchlines to be implemented.

Expanding the Student Voice

Tinbite takes a slightly more progressive approach than Tishaev on this issue. He plans to ensure that all BOE focus groups have a student representative. Tinbite plans to overhaul the SMOB Advisory Council by creating a Student Advisory Council within it. The Student Advisory Council would report to the superintendent, and its members would be allocated based on school population. The SMOB Advisory Council would be changed to reflect the student body and every school.

Tishaev, on the other hand, takes a more conservative approach to expanding the role of the SMOB. She does not advocate an expansion of the official role of the SMOB. Rather, she promises to testify in front of the Montgomery County Council and coordinate with the Montgomery County Department of Transportation (MCDOT) in a quasi-official manner, where, while she is not the official student representative, she acts as the de-facto student representative.

Curriculum

Tishaev and Tinbite advocate for serious changes in the MCPS curriculum. MCPS is currently working on rolling out changes for the K-8 curriculum in English and Math classes, and Tishaev hopes to revise Social Studies classes to be more inclusive with less of a “westernized focus” and hopes to introduce a civics class that would teach about all forms of government and teach students’ rights in the face of police.

She further pushes for the high school social studies curriculum to be revised to include the Mexican-American rights movement and to start looking at LGBTQ plight. She plans to advocate for changes in high school science classes, but did not name any details.

Tinbite states that he will work with the MCPS Curriculum Office to revise the curriculum so that it “culturally reflects the student body.” He hopes to offer College Prep classes as an accredited course, pushes for the return of drivers ed to schools. From his website, he hopes to “Ensure that school counselors advertise the availability of quantitative literacy classes (life skills classes) to juniors and seniors within their schools.”

School Safety

Tinbite advocates for an increase in lockdown drills. The Washington Post investigated the trauma associated with lockdowns in a recent piece. The Post follows Mackenzie Woody, a first grader in the DC public school system, and her experience during the lockdowns:  

MaKenzie didn’t stop loving school because of the lockdowns, but she did think about them often. About how upsetting it was that they had interrupted her time to learn new words and different ways to add up numbers. About how scared she’d felt when some of the kids wouldn’t stop making noise and how her teacher had offered them Smarties if they could just stay quiet for a little longer.

She’d also become wary of recess on the playground, where games of tag and climbs across the monkey bars had once been among the highlights of her days.

“Until the lockdowns happened,” MaKenzie said. “I don’t want to be outside because what if someone was shooting and we had to leave and we were too late and everybody got hurt?”

In reaction to this passage, Tinbite told The MoCo Student that “I understand where that student is coming from. And I’ve seen that trauma and despair amongst myself and I’m many others in this county and the Parkland victims as well, the way it can happen, in a school environment and traumatize a student—I think that we need to be prepared in every situation and scenario that’s possible, which is why I was advocating specifically for more active shooter drills and reverse evacuations.”

Tinbite emphasized that he was not saying that safety outweighed trauma. “We have to address both the safety and the trauma and an equal way because this is a multifaceted a topic where every more than one component comes into play. We need to have a Student Committee on the SMOB Advisory Council that looks into school safety, where we get to address the school concerns, where we get to revisit how we’re addressing school safety in our schools [and] bring student perspective to the Board table, to say what we’re going through, and look into how we can address all traumas or concerns or issues in our schools mentally, emotionally and physically,” Tinbite said.

Tishaev, in response to the passage, stated that it was “heartbreaking,” but, given that there is an “increasing danger” in schools, it is important that students know what to do in emergency, and that “awareness and a better understanding combats that fear.” She supports increasing “non-traditional drills.”

Tishaev further outlines a plan to make schools implement single-door entryways during the day, when student masses are not filing in or out, so that visitors would first have to go through the main office before gaining access to the rest of the school. She also pushes for “less ambiguous instructions” during the lockdown with options drill, which would be tailored to the individual classroom in which the students are in.

Article by MoCo Student staff writer Joel Lev-Tov of Springbrook High School

 

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