Several hundreds gathered Wednesday night at Wheaton High School to probe Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Thomas Taylor on his plans to address education inequities affecting the school system’s Black and brown students.
The Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity and Excellence, a local advocacy group, hosted the town hall to ensure the superintendent heard the concerns of Black and brown students and to “send a message that the status quo is not is not OK,” coalition co-founder Diego Uriburu told MoCo360.
“He has a unique opportunity, but he cannot do it alone,” said Uriburu, who is the executive director of Identity Inc., a Gaithersburg organization that advocates for Latino youth. “This was for him to understand the parents’ viewpoint, but also for the parents to understand that if we want change, we need to support but we cannot support blindly.”
Parents, students and other community members raised concerns about issues ranging from hate-bias incidents to disparities in reading and math scores and asked Taylor how he planned to address the issues most impacting Black and brown students.
Echoing previous comments, Taylor told the crowd that he’s recognized since attending Bethesda Chevy-Chase High School in the 1990s that student experiences vary depending on which school they attend. Taylor said the district hasn’t made enough progress in addressing the disparities impacting underserved schools.
One parent asked if MCPS would allow students to switch schools if their needs aren’t being met at their neighborhood school. Taylor responded by saying that programs should be equitable across the district.
“We should take a step back and look at that from even a bigger picture of: Why go to another school if we could just provide better programming across the county and making sure that folks have that access?” Taylor said.
Another parent noted that teachers are often expected to solve the social, economic and mental health issues impacting students within their classrooms and asked whether Taylor had a plan to alleviate that burden.
While Taylor said he strongly believes that students can’t thrive if their basic needs aren’t met, he noted that it’s impossible for teachers to provide every service their students need. He said the district is offering robust mental health and social services but he doesn’t know if schools can continue on that path without a significant investment.
“From the outside looking in … a lot of our resources are going to things that don’t touch the classroom,” Taylor said. “That needs to be reevaluated because when we get to the point, the tipping point … where more than half of what we do is stuff that’s not [on] the teaching and learning side of our business, [that] is problematic.”
Dealing with racism in schools
Two students from Thomas S. Wootton High School in Rockville highlighted an incident that occurred in May in which a school printer was used to print a slur against the Black community 1,000 times. The students said they’ve been advocating for consequences for the incident alongside their teachers and asked why it took a high level of advocacy, including testifying to the school board, for concerns to be addressed.
Taylor said he was proud of the students for their advocacy and that it shouldn’t have taken extra effort. He said he would check to make sure the situation was investigated properly.
“It can be really frustrating when you see something happen and you don’t know what the outcome was,” Taylor said. “Oftentimes you don’t know what a discipline outcome is because of the [Family] Educational Privacy Rights Act. … There’s a lot of faith that has to go into that, maybe an uncomfortable level of faith.”
Another student asked for Taylor’s perspective on anti-racist education and who’s holding him accountable for implementing that work.
Taylor said it was critical for students to receive anti-racist education and that the community can hold MCPS accountable based on its action plan developed as part of an anti-racist audit it conducted and was presented to the school board in October 2022.
Uriburu told Taylor he had been accompanied by a friend who was hesitant to attend the event because he’s been disappointed by the results of similar events held by previous superintendents. “What’s different this time?” Uriburu asked Taylor.
“It would be so inappropriate and arrogant for me to stand up here or sit up here … and just say ‘You should trust me.’ So don’t,” Taylor responded. “What I want you to do, though, is to take a look at what happens and what actions take place. … You should be seeing incremental progress and things moving in the right direction.”
Taylor told MoCo360 that the biggest issue in making progress on equity within MCPS is having the adequate resources to do so.
“It’s one thing to say that there are needs,” Taylor said. “It’s another thing to make sure that there’s adequate resources available when kids do need them and where they need them — and they shouldn’t have to hop on a bus and go across the county to get a better education.”
Uriburu told MoCo360 that the Black and brown community needs to hold Taylor accountable.
“Hopefully he feels empowered and emboldened to make the decisions and the changes that need to be made,” Uriburu said.
