Meet the 2020 SMOB candidates: Nick Asante and Victoria Kidder

Annually, MCPS has their Student Member of the Board (SMOB) election which allows the students to take part in choosing their next SMOB. In order to narrow it down to two candidates for SMOB, MCPS hosts their SMOB convention which allows attendees to vote on who will be the final candidates. The convention started out with 12 candidates, with all of them having to fill our student profiles, answer questions, and most importantly, hand out stickers to the students that were attending. In the end, Nick Asante and Victoria Kidder came out as the final two candidates for the 2020 SMOB Election.

Nick Asante

Asante has worked as Nate Tinbite (2019’s SMOB) Chief of Staff, aiding Tinbite in his connection to the students of MCPS and relaying their issues to Tinbite who then relays the issues to the MCPS Board of Education. He has also worked as the MCR (Montgomery County Regional) SGA’s Legislative Affairs Director, familiarizing him with policies and the process that has to be followed to push change in all levels of government. Finally, Asante has worked at the Maryland Center for School Safety in which he worked under the State Board of Education, working with policy makers to influence policies that impact students across the state. He has four major platform points that he is basing his campaign off of: Innovation, Curriculum, Student Life, and Opportunity Gap.

One of Asante’s platforms for his campaign is Innovation which would prioritize environmental standards for the future, insert more refillable water bottle stations throughout middle and high schools, eliminate plastic lunch containers as well as limit the number of disposable plastic water bottles purchased by the county. He is also pushing for modern-day security equipment (security cameras, double-door entries) and wants to implement safer and more efficient procedures for students in portables and in after-school activities. Another point in Asante’s Innovation platform revolves around buses: rerouting some bus routes to make some inaccessible locations accessible as well and to move some routes away from major intersections; updating all buses with proper up-to-date air conditioning and heating systems; and, exploring the ideas of electric buses. Accessibility for students with disabilities and updating school facilities is another item on Asante’s large to-do list as SMOB which would include constructing ramps in buildings (where they don’t currently exist) and pushing for quicker maintenance of school facilities. Asante is also bringing back the popular idea that has been attempted by previous SMOBs: allowing the use of smartphones during lunch in middle schools as well as extending Media Center hours for the students that don’t have access to WiFi or computers in their residence.

Asante’s curriculum positions are new concepts that haven’t been explored that much by previous SMOBs. The curriculum adjustments that Asante would explore is: pushing for more field trips, decreasing the amount of tests (by increasing project-based work), promoting life-skill classes, and to make these classes more accessible to students in all schools. The current high school curriculum isn’t the only place Asante is focusing on as he wants to provide middle school students opportunities to learn about their potential careers during the day. In order to help them continue their career-chasing path Asante would push more specialized (not magnet) middle schools and optimized high schools which would be modeled after Thomas Edison HS (A Career and Technology-focused High School which has classes that range from fixing cars to making food as a chef). In addition to all of that, Asante would also want to push more access to professionals and internships in various fields to help students transition into the workforce. Another problem in the curriculum is the lack of diversity; Asante plans to fix this problem by: increasing the amount of books read by authours that come from different cultures and to increase the type of county-based media (videos, music, live performances, etc.) used to teach students to accommodate the various different learning styles of students.

Another one of Asante’s positions is regarding the lack of Mental Health support in schools. This issue would be improved by increasing the amount of counselours per school, hiring more school psychologists, increasing the number of schools that contain mental-health oriented spaces and Student Wellness Centers, and increasing the effectiveness of the county’s mental health month efforts. Furthermore, Asante wants to expand food choices to accommodate plant-based diets more, increase healthier food options that come from local providers, and encourage the extension of lunch periods that are less than 35 minutes. Asante also believes that there is a disconnect between students and the administration when it comes to student input and he plans to fix this issue by providing students with the chance to meet with their teachers to revise their teaching methods and to improve upon them, to allow students to meet directly with the school administration (upon the requests of the students) to discuss issues about their school, to make it easier for students to report school-specific problems,  give students the chance to suggest reading material and to give input on the curriculum. During Asante’s term, he would like to maintain the communication between the SMOB and other students through the use of social media as well as utilizing monthly live streams to answer any questions that appear, as well as revamp the SMOB minute making it more accessible, and visit every Montgomery County public school during the duration of his SMOB term.

Asante is pushing to make schools more equipped to prepare their students for college by implementing county-based SAT prep courses to aid students, increasing AP course offerings, expanding seats in the ACES program (a program that aids students getting their high school diploma and applying for college), hosting more county-wide fairs in all parts of the county, and expanding the dual-enrollment and MC2 programs. 

In addition to all of those ideas, Asante would also like to provide students with the options of using digital textbooks instead of traditional textbooks, make the Chromebook rental program more accessible and streamlined to students, installing TI Calculator software into the Chromebooks so that students can use the Chromebooks if they cannot afford a calculator, and reduce the parking permit fee for FARMS students.

Asante would also like to increase high-school magnet accessibility and information to low-income families, make access to preparation materials easier to all families, and to increase employment of more ESOl teachers who speak languages beyond Spanish and French. Finally, in order to reduce school inequities Asante would like to explore additional methods of reducing said inequities within schools to supplement boundary analysis, ensuring that the public has access to the findings of the boundary analysis and the decisions following the analysis, and increase involvement in the decision-making process from the community.

Victoria Kidder

Kidder has worked for the advisory council for past SMOBs Matt Post and Ananya Tadikonda; worked for the advisory council for current SMOB, Nate Tinbite; worked for the MCR-SGA as their Special Elections Deputy and Educational Policy Deputy; worked for his schools SGA as President for Shady Grove MS and was the Vice-President of Magruder HS; and she has been a member of Montgomery County Students for Change. Kidder has four platforms: Transportation, Technology, Mental Health, and Opportunity Gap. To fix the problems in the current transportation system Kidder states that she wants to alleviate overcrowding of buses as well as push for the introduction of electric school-buses. In order to improve the Technology system that we have currently Kidder states that she wants to improve WiFi in schools so that it would allow streaming as well as expanding graphing calculator, iPad, and Chromebook rental programs. The Opportunity Gap is a common issue shared between these two SMOBs and Kidder plans to combat the gap by implementing SAT and ACT prep courses in all high-schools and she plans to offer more career-pathway programs as well as creating project-based learning pathways as an alternative to taking progress-checks and state tests.

During her term, Kidder plans to Improve Mental Health support for students by increasing availability of Wellness Centers, implementing advisory/study hall periods (one per week), hiring full-time school psychologists, and bettering teacher training to identify signs of mental illness. The stories of overcrowded buses, poor school lunch options, broken athletic equipment, and crumbling infrastructure is a common issue that many schools have and Kidder plans to combat this by creating an app that would give students the option to use Ride-On buses, increase funding towards athletics and building services in schools, and to work to create a more diversified and higher-quality lunch menu for students. 

When Kidder was asked the question: “If you were given ten million dollars to allocate anywhere in the budget, where would it be and why?” she responded with this: She would split the ten million dollars into 3 separate groups, a group that was two million dollars and two groups that were four million dollars. She would spend two million dollars to implement SAT and ACT prep courses as well as making sure that there are drivers-ed courses in high school (which is something previous SMOB Nate Tinbite worked towards as well). One of the four million dollar groups would go to hiring school psychologists who can be at every school for at least one hour a day, hiring more bilingual counselors and teachers, and to get furniture for school Wellness Centers. The second four million dollar group would go to expand MC2, dual-enrollment, and other career-pathway programs to more high schools in the county as well as creating a system that can provide a comprehensive review of scholarship opportunities, career-oriented opportunities, internships, college visits, and plans for life after high school for every senior in the county.

While Kidder’s ideas are all very interesting and beneficial to the school district she also has another reason to run for SMOB that is smaller and will affect the future of the SMOB position if she wins: She wants to prove that anyone can be the next SMOB no matter what high-school they attend as a lot of the past SMOBs have been from Richard Montgomery. Kidder wants to make sure that the future students understand that no school has special powers to create SMOB-worthy material.

The elections will be held on May 20th, 2020 virtually with confidential, secure links going out to every student to participate in the voting process.

Article by Eli Umar of Cabin John Middle School

Image courtesy of Montgomery Community Media