Bullying. Budget cuts. Closing the achievement gap. Drugs in schools.
While parents are usually the ones who raise these issues, high school students in Montgomery County Public Schools apparently worry about them as well.
That’s what schools Superintendent Joshua Starr discovered Wednesday when he held a 40-minute Student Town Hall Meeting at James Hubert Blake High School in Silver Spring.
For 40 minutes, Starr answered students’ questions on issues ranging from major to minor – including how to get extra credit in class and whether high schools should have open lunch. The session was broadcast live on the MCPS website and a local cable access channel.
Starr has spent the first three months of his tenure meeting with parents, residents and MCPS staff to find out what they think about MCPS schools. But students are the ones living the day-to-day reality in the schools and it was their turn to speak their minds.
In addition to questions from Blake students, other MCPS students had been encouraged to email or tweet questions or comments for the meeting. Another session is scheduled for Nov. 9 at Quince Orchard High School in Gaithersburg.
So what are students concerned about?
Bullying continues to be a big topic and students wanted to know how Starr plans to address it.
“I wish I had the answer to bullying,” said Starr, who seemed relaxed as he sat at the front of a room filled with students. “There’s no one answer. It’s got to be a school-specific approach” that reflects the values of that school.
A big part of the answer lies in the relationship that staff members have with students, he said. He advised students to develop a close relationship with at least one staff member at their schools. When school staff members develop these relationships with students, schools see a drop in bad behavior and bullying, Starr said.
On a positive note, he added, students are feeling more comfortable about reporting bullying when they witness it.
The achievement gap was another issue raised by students. Addressing a student’s query about how he would close the gap, Starr noted that it’s the “number one question” that he’s dealing with. He reminded students that MCPS has made great strides and told them that another step will be to eliminate the variability between how schools – and teachers – deliver the same curriculum.
As an example, he mentioned visiting a middle school classroom in which students took turns reading aloud from a book. At another middle school, students were discussing the same book in groups. “Now, which class would you rather be in?” he asked the Blake students.
When it came to questions about school funding, Starr laid it on the line.
“I don’t want to freak you out,” he told students, but the dire budget crisis faced by the schools and the county makes it impossible to predict whether there will be enough money for such things as arts education or to restore previous cuts. The county’s changing demographics and annual growth in student enrollment – between 2,500 and 3,000 students per year – are also big challenges.
“We have more poor children in Montgomery County than the District of Columbia has in its schools,” he told the students.
One student said she’d noticed an increase in drug use at school, and sometimes saw students with drugs in the hallways. Starr reassured her that things may not be as bad as they seem.
“Student drug use and student violence are lower now than in many, many years,” he said. “While we have drug issues and alcohol issues, you guys are actually much better behaved.”
Still, schools can do more to get rid of drugs, he said, circling back to his message that students and staff need to be connected to one another. “If we all take care of each other, then we’re less likely to see rampant drug abuse,” Starr said.
When asked how he planned to stay connected to students, Starr urged them to tweet or email him and said he hopes to hang out in school lunchrooms to get to know them.
“I want students to not only invite me to places, but to hold me accountable,” he said.
