Just over three months into her term of office, 44th Student Member of the Board and Richard Montgomery High School senior Hana O’Looney has passed various milestones for improving both current and future conditions in the county. This includes the development of COVID-19 policies, refinement of the school curriculum and the reconstruction and planned reopening of Woodward High School.
In the school year’s opening month, O’Looney helped develop legislation focused on school support, working towards stricter COVID requirements for building services.
Through O’Looney’s dedication, the Board of Education recently enabled countywide access to rapid testing kits and enforced requirements for distancing, masking, quarantining and vaccinations for teachers and student athletes. In addition, the Board worked to provide students with their own Chromebooks, schools with greater access to sanitation, PPEs and other equipment, and buildings with renovations to air vents.
The Board of Education, working closely with a select group of teachers, administrators, students and other community members, is setting up a contingency plan in case of a statewide decision to switch to a hybrid learning model. It is adamant that the county itself will not commit to that unless mandated by the state. But O’Looney is hopeful that MCPS will be able to continue fully in-person operations.
“It feels like we’re in the same place again as we were in August 2020 … but I think there’s one very, very important distinction between August 2020 and August 2021: we’ve had so much experience and we’ve gotten so much more guidance and there’s been so much more research on this virus and how to handle it,” O’Looney said.
Another important milestone achieved through O’Looney’s and other student leaders’ work is the removal of stationed police officers in schools. This has been a long-standing and controversial issue in the county that O’Looney herself was involved in through the Montgomery County Regional Student Government Association and other student advocacy groups prior to her work as the SMOB.
“This is the first year in 19 years that MCPS schools have opened without police officers, thanks to student activists who have worked tirelessly on this issue,” O’Looney said.
She is also involved with improving the content and quality of education itself.
“This year, I’ve made it my utmost priority to visit all 65 middle and high schools during their lunch period throughout my term, and I’ve only been able to hit 15 so far, but at every single school, every single grade, and regardless of demographic, I’ve heard something very similar from all of our students, and that is that they wish that what they were learning in school was more relevant and applicable to their lives,” O’Looney said.
Among others, O’Looney works with county curriculum writers to redevelop the existing syllabi for health education, a semester-long credit required for high school graduation.
She has also expressed concern, in particular for seniors preparing to graduate, that many MCPS students are not provided with enough experience in financial matters and are thus ill-equipped for adult life. To this end, she put forward a proposal during a Board business meeting to introduce a required semester-long financial literacy course for graduation. It is tabled until the Board’s next meeting on Oct. 26.
Recently, the county also enacted a “Say Yes to the Test” campaign in partnership with various community organizations to encourage families to consent to their children receiving COVID-19 testing at schools, through either an online form or with a paper copy. This was an effort that O’Looney supported, working with the MCPS Office of Communications and other staff members to advance outreach for the endeavor.
O’Looney will be visiting Northwood High School and Odessa Shannon High School on Oct. 20, as well as Gaithersburg High School and Gaithersburg Middle School on Oct. 21. A full schedule of her middle and high school lunch visits can be found on her website.
Written by Ellie Montemayor of Walter Johnson High School
Photo courtesy of Hana O’Looney of Richard Montgomery High School