Six out of seven.

So I'm I'm uh standing in for Councilman Urto, Chairman Urcel today.

Um who's traveling who's joining us, uh, but he asked me to uh uh chair our our meeting today.

Quite an honor.

Thank you, Chairman Urtell, appreciate it.

Um today we have a discussion with uh Dr.

Miriam Rogers, uh the superintendent of Albert County School, Dr.

Rogers.

Thank you so much for for joining us.

Uh I know that you have some.

I I'm assuming you have some remarks for us, and then I'm I'm betting that uh my colleagues have some questions for you uh as we move forward throughout the afternoon.

So thank you.

I would I would prefer to see to be in person.

I really don't I don't like WebEx or whatever, but given the circumstances, thank you so much for taking the time and for joining us uh today.

So with that, uh Dr.

Rogers, would you like to uh go ahead with uh your your remark?

Yes, thank you very much.

And and agreed.

Uh definitely we're planning to be in person, but Mother Nature has different plans.

So thank you for the opportunity to provide you with an update, and as you shared, um, after these slides, we'll open it up for questions and answers.

Um, really appreciate this opportunity.

Next slide, please, Brenda.

Wanted to begin by sharing some information uh that you may or may not have heard.

Um, we're very excited to be partnering with CCBC for the first time in Baltimore County Public Schools for direct admit partnership.

Um this is a benefit to our senior students.

Um it means all BCPS graduates are automatically going to be admitted to CCBC, but beyond the admission, um staff at CCBC will be uh working directly with our students for uh financial aid for college advising and uh making sure that they are prepped for the next phase of their career.

Um we are uh even more excited because CCBC has been most fortunate in providing the vast majority of their students with either reduced tuition or tuition-free um admission to their uh courses.

Uh this means a lot for our working families, um, and there are partnerships that already exist between CCBC and several four-year institutions in the state of Maryland where uh students who complete their course of study in C C B C will be fully admitted in all of the credits in the uh four-year colleges.

And so this is uh something that we think um is of great value to our uh students.

Uh this happens in many other large school systems across the United States, and so we are excited, uh Dr.

Kurt Knightis and I to launch this for our students.

And I think it's either this week or next week at the latest, where our seniors class of 2026 are going to receive their first uh joint message from um CCBC and BCPS.

And so wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of that.

Next slide, please.

Um, and then the next few slides uh really talk about the adopted budget, just some uh reminders and a uh challenge uh that we are facing that we wanted to make sure that we are sharing in uh with a variety of uh school system partners and advocates.

Um our students have changed over the last five years.

Uh when we look at our students, not only has enrollment uh decreased since post-COVID, um, economically disadvantaged the percentage of those students has increased drastically, followed by multilingual learners.

Our special education students, the percentage um has remained relatively stable, but the cost associated with meeting the needs of students receiving special education uh services has increased uh drastically over the last five years.

Our charge was simple three years ago, and you've we've been having this conversation for the last three years together.

Um, our work was to come together to reverse the trajectory of academic decline to make sure that we were focused and had priorities.

And for the last three years, we have been working on the same four priorities because this work is not yet done, elevating academic achievement for all of our students, creating our building structures for our students, but also our processes and how we do our work to make sure that we are as efficient and effective as possible, improving safety and climate for our students and staff, and investing in professional development to ensure that we have highly effective teachers, leaders, and staff.

As a result of the work over the last two years, and some of this you're aware of the state of Maryland and other outside entities provide regular updates about how all 24 school systems are doing this year.

When the state of Maryland released information, they shared in BCPS, every student group across every single level improved in proficiency in both mathematics and language arts, school quality and student success improved for our elementary, middle, and high schools across team BCPS.

82% of our schools over the last two years.

Significant improvement in higher-rated schools, four-star.

We improve by 82%, 21% improvement in five-star.

64 individual schools improve their rating.

And as you know, for the second year in the row, we have the highest number of five-star schools across the state of Maryland.

The state of Maryland ranks all of the schools elementary, middle, and high across all 24 districts.

And Baltimore County Public Schools has nine out of the top 10 elementary schools.

We have the number one and the number four high schools.

When we talk about this data and being very proud, none of these schools are new to Baltimore County Public Schools.

They have all been here, been in existence.

It is the kind of work that the school leaders, along with the teachers and staff have been that have been doing that have moved them to the level to be top across the state of Maryland.

We have made some major investments in team BCPS, and most recently, when I was with the state board of education, they asked why do I believe we are seeing some of the progress that we're seeing across the school system.

Part of it has to do with these investments, and I do want to thank you again for the role that you played in supporting Team B CPS so that we could invest in early childhood special education, a new curriculum, particularly in literacy and English language development, expanding our community schools, recruitment retention, safety, and infrastructure in Team B CPS along with professional development.

All of those investments have made a difference in terms of outcomes for our students.

During this budget season, uh we worked really hard to make sure that we could answer questions plainly for our community, making sure that everyone was very clear on the sources of school system revenue, making sure that everyone understands that BCPS is not revenue generating.

And while we receive a large school system budget, that is the law, and it is based on the size of our school system.

Most recently, someone shared with me that we are larger than more than 99.8% of school systems across the United States of America.