Critical Conversation: The Frederick County Public School System

Critical Conversations is a series of discussions spearheaded by the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce focusing on timely topics and issues facing the Frederick County community. 

Join us for this conversation as we focus on the current state of public education in Frederick County with Dr. Michael Markoe, interim Superintendent of the Frederick County Public School System and Brad Young, the president of the Frederick County Board of Education.

In this interview, they discuss…

1. The impact of COVID-19 on public education
2. The current climate of education and learning
3. Upcoming FCPS budget request and how members can support
4. FCPS moving forward

Transcription edited for readability:

 

RW: Series of chamber critical conversations we are going to be conducting and recording with leaders of our community, influencers, people who make Frederick such a special place to live, work and play.

Today we are going to be joined by Brad Young, President of the Frederick County Board of Education and Dr. Michael Markoe, the interim superintendent of the Frederick County Public School (FCPS)  system.

Brad runs a very successful investment firm in Frederick. He is a faculty member of Mount St Mary’s University, he has coached softball both at high school and collegiate levels, he has served as a trustee at our beloved community college FCC (Frederick Community College) and has served several terms on our elected board of education.

Mike has spent his career in K-12 education. He has been a teacher, he has been an administrator and he has served as an executive in our system.

And on a personal note about these two guys- I have known Brad for going on 26 almost 27 years and I consider him to be one of my most valued friends in terms of the consistently positive influence he has in our community- way beyond serving as an elected board of education member. I see Brad’s hands and fingerprints on critical human services deliveries in our community, mentorships particularly for underserved populations with his work with Aje Hjill and I Believe In Me, and on a powerfully personal note his work with the DeSantis family and the Love For Lochlin Foundation. They have worked incredibly hard to raise awareness about the importance of the flu vaccine in our community, and particularly with young people. And Brad’s been a stalwart supporter, and I know, Brooke feels like she wouldn’t have been able to have the reach they have had if it not been for Brad. So thank you for that, Brad. 

And then a personal note for Mike- Mike is one of our superstar alumni for the Leadership Frederick County program. I’ve watched Mike for a long time as an executive in our public school system and I know his dad really well. His dad was one of my quiet mentors in the years. I was learning to be a public servant in our community and I see all the things I love about Dave Marco in Mike Markoe- and that’s the highest possible praise I could give to anybody. 

So welcome to both of them. Thanks for being here!

 

 

RW: So we have a lot to talk about and only 20 minutes to have this conversation. So I hope we can dive right in and I’d like to start with talking about what our entire community has been dealing with for the last two years. This global pandemic has literally turned almost all the aspects of our lives upside down the economic consequences and impacts on small and large businesses.

The public health impacts, just loss of life and, and sickness.You know, maybe the most worrisome though, when I look at all these impacts, is the changes we are forced to make in terms of how we educate our kids. Can you speak to those impacts both on the students and the teachers, school support staff and administrators.

And then as health metrics continue to improve and they are steadily improving, what does the path forward look like for FCPS? As we emerge from the pandemic.

 

BY:  So I’ll start and then let Mike jump in. This is my 12th year on the board of education. In the last two years by far have been the most challenging. They’ve been challenging because we’ve been tasked with making extremely important decisions and not always having the information that we needed many times. Information changed quickly. I can remember when we first made the decision to go virtual in the Summer of 2020 for the Fall of 2020 and it seemed like the right thing to do based on all the information that we had, based on what our health folks were telling us.

In retrospect, I wish we had gone back in person at that point. I think it really could have been doable. Again, I’m, I’m very proud that Frederick county was one of the first school districts to put many of our students back on the sports fields, back in the theater, which I know Rick you’re very kind to and then back into the classrooms.

And so I’m very proud that we’ve been very strong in trying to get students back. And we’ve recognized that students need to be in classrooms. There were a fair number of students who did extremely well virtually. In fact, we still have over 2000 students that have elected to continue to stay virtual.

And that is great for them because it works and I think going forward we should always have that flexibility, but there’s a large number of students that were adversely impacted. By not being in person – and you mentioned working with at-risk children, they probably were the most hurt by not being in school, not having the mentorship, not having hands-on direct contact with staff and students.

So that’s been challenging, obviously, any decision we made the last two years- no matter what decision it is, you’re going to make some people happy and some people upset. Right now people are getting a lot of emails about masking and we’re still under a state mandate from the state board of education that requires masking but they did provide for some off-ramping opportunities. 

There are three scenarios. One is when 80% of our county population is vaccinated, the second is if an individual school was 80% vaccinated and the third is when we have 14 consecutive days of low transmission. So that’s something as a board we’ll be monitoring.

I know Dr. Markoe is in regular contact with Dr. Brookmyer from the Frederick County Health Department and we’re trying to make the best decisions we can. I’m going to wrap up with this and give it to Dr. Markoe and say, our teachers, staff and bus drivers, our instructional assistants, our food service workers are all busting their tails to do what they can do. Please show them your support and respect. If you want to be mad at somebody, be mad at me, be mad at Dr. Markoe, but please don’t take it out on them. They’re trying their best. They care about your kids. They’re doing what they think they need to do in order to provide your student education. And we owe them that respect.

 

MM: I’d love to piggyback on that and just that we need to have a culture of appreciation for our educators, anybody that’s in the education business right now. They have stretched and strained and dealt with uncertainty and adapted at many points during these two years. And they’ve done it so well, I just ask anybody that’s listening to this if you’re involved in the education system, reach out and thank our educators and everyone Brad just mentioned. Our bus drivers, our food nutrition, or maintenance, our teachers, our administrators, our central office folks. There are so many people that have worked so hard to make this successful. One of our big focuses is just moving forward.

I’m proud to say that our student attendance is increasing every day. Our teacher absentee and our education personnel absentee has decreased significantly and continues to be increased. So we’re seeing a lot of positive measures and metrics to help us move forward. We can’t forget what we’ve endured the past two and a half years, our families have been traumatized.

There are a lot of social-emotional needs entering our school buildings that we need to be cognizant of as we move forward. We also know that our educators need to take a breath at some point too, and come up for air. We need to be very aware of that as we move forward-  we need to give them an opportunity to just breathe and gather themselves because they’ve been running at a rapid pace that I don’t believe is sustainable over time.

 

RW: Great point. And when you talk about the fact Brad, that we need to increase our level of compassion, I mean  I’ve been saying that about the business community now for the better part of 24 months, right. When you walk in that store and there’s a mask sign or sticker on the window of the business, don’t go up to a retail clerk and engage in a philosophical debate about how you feel about government control. That person is  just trying to make 14 bucks an hour providing you a service or a product that you want. There are plenty of opportunities to express yourself philosophically, ideologically but standing there conversing with a part-time retail employee is not the time.

 

BY: Rick, I’ve personally watched where a restaurant hostess was attacked because they simply were enforcing the rules that they’re asked to do there. That’s what their job is. And again, as you said, just to have some compassion, put the mask on for a second and sit down. If you don’t like that, go to a different restaurant.I mean, that’s your choice to do that. I was also actually out at Lowe’s and I watched people yelling at a clerk because they had to wait 30 minutes. He was the only person working and they don’t have other workers. So many of our businesses are short-staffed either because of the labor force shrinking or because of people being out- so just be patient, be compassionate and, and just be kind.

There’s no reason not to be kind at this time. We all can wait to get our new washer, we can all wait an extra 10 minutes to get our meal. It’s not going to hurt us. 

 

MM:  I think our pathway back is going to come through unification and empathy within the community. Those are going to be two key measures for us and, and we need to see the empathy and the civility and the unification come back together. Not only in the educational system but throughout the Frederick county community if we’re going to heal from this pandemic and move forward. 

 

RW: So I have the good fortune of seeing the level of collaboration that might be invisible to most people, including a lot of chamber members who, as I described earlier, are just busy doing the thing they do that contributes to our improved quality of life.

I have served as a board member on the county healthcare coalition for the better part of a decade and Mike, I see your people on a daily basis. In fact, on zoom for two hours yesterday. We were talking about how the community health priorities need to be adjusted for our next three-year increments to address adverse childhood experiences.

FCPS staff and mental health providers are going to work together to address the needs that existed pre-COVID but also the amplification and increasing severity of some of those sorts of things during the course of the pandemic. I’ve heard you talk about the concept of lost learning, and what we do about that. Would you share with the folks that are watching what that means?

 

MM: We know some students responded very well to the virtual environment and for some students, it just wasn’t for them and they may have elected to just check out. We know that we have a wide range of students reentering school with certain needs, not only academically, but socially and emotionally as well. For us to close those gaps, that unfinished learning, we need to differentiate our instruction as much as possible. Give additional resources beyond the normal school day to help our students, whether it be emotional support or academic support. We need to build new avenues for students in order to fill in some of these gaps. 

Last year, we offered a comprehensive, robust summer school opportunity. K through 12. We’re excited to announce we’re going to do that this year as well and this will be my quick plug to recent graduates as well as retirees – we know our teachers and our administrators are going to be very tired at the end of this year. The more we can get retired educators or students that have recently graduated from universities to come in and help us with our summer school, the better off we’re going to be, because we know our teachers and our employees are tired right now, but we also want to be able to lift up that robust, comprehensive summer school program.

 

RW: That’s fantastic news. Brad, I don’t know if you had anything you wanted to add to that concept. I know the board’s struggling with it.

 

BY:  No. I mean, it’s, it’s, we’ve seen the importance that kids need to be active and participate and we’ve pulled off a full sports schedule this year with very few glitches. We’ve had a couple of teams that have had to shut down for a period. We’ve been able to put it back in the theater. We’ve been able to put back on a number of in-person things. Dr. Markoe and I went out yesterday and spoke to our F-cast, which is our county student government association. It was just awesome to see 200 kids in the room collaborating together- that just doesn’t happen the same way when you do it virtually. 

So having those opportunities for kids- we know that the mental stress and social stress of not being together (on both students and on staff took) its toll. So it’s been extremely important for us to do everything we can to get kids back in school. We took a lot of flak for sending kids back right after the new year with the Omicron variant being out there but you know, it kind of went as expected. We had some outages in the beginning, but they’ve leveled off and it was the right decision. Kids needed to be back in school. 

 

MM: Brad, what was really scary about yesterday’s meeting with the students was there were approximately 200 in the room and Brad asked them to raise their hand if they’re interested in pursuing a teaching career. Of the 200, we saw about six hands that were interested in pursuing education. Once again, we have to lift up educators and revere them and respect them and bring that to the table or we’re not going to be able to recruit the teachers that we need in the future.

 

RW: So that’s a perfect segue to our next and maybe the most important aspect of this conversation. Something I want all of my members to hear come from both of you- and that is to talk about where we are with the budget. So we recently had a front page news story about a budget hearing and how teachers feel and what teachers are looking for, but this is a much more complex conversation. That’s certainly a major component because the teachers are a treasured resource in a public education system, but there are a lot of pieces, including this addressing lost learning and all of the other things that we deal with as we emerge from COVID. So can you guys talk to us about the budget and most importantly, how members of this chamber, who are the beneficiaries of a world-class K through 12 system, right? Because it’s the employees, it’s the business owners, it’s the entrepreneurs of the future that you’ve got coming into a kindergarten classroom today. Can you talk about the budget and talk about how members of the chamber can be more supportive of the budget process as it moves through its various marks?

 

BY: So I’ll start with that and then let Dr. Markoe turnover. We had, this week actually, Dr. Markoe put forth the superintendent’s budget, which I know was worked on heavily by Dr. Markoe, by the retired superintendent, Dr. Alban,  and by the tremendous staff that we have in our finance area, through Leslie Pellegrino and Heather Clabaugh.

This budget is probably the biggest ask that we’ve had since I’ve been on the board and it’s because we have the biggest need. It’s at this current point $42 million above maintenance of effort. Uh, and so, and this next Wednesday, we’re going to meet and could potentially add even more to that. So it’s extremely important for chamber members of which I am one to support this budget and say it’s important. Frederick county, if you take the amount of money that we spend per student or per-pupil allocation- is 22nd out of the 23rd three school districts in the state of Maryland. We are certainly not the 22nd poorest county in the state of Maryland.

Albeit, we always perform in the top third and using the top 3, 4, 5 in most categories of school systems. So members know that you’re getting a lot for your investment, but that being said, when you starve something long enough, it has consequences. Right now, unfortunately, our pay scale for starting teachers a few times has fallen behind where Carroll County and Washington County is, and no knock on those counties but Frederick County should never be paying less than Carroll County or Washington County for employees. So when we’re competing for employees that can go next door where it’s cheaper cost of living and work there, it’s going to be hard to attract them.

We recently had to increase pay for our support employees for our bus drivers, some of our food service workers, for substitutes, we have a lot of substitutes. And again, now we’re paying less than they could make working at WaWa or Sheetz. You should never have somebody teaching your child that is making less than they could make at a convenience store.

So from that perspective again no knock on those positions, but that’s how important teaching positions are. We have to be able to get people in there. So what we have coming up as the board, this coming week will adopt the budget that we’ll send over to the County Executive Gardner and the County Council, and then it will be up to them to fund it.

And I want to be the first to state that County Executive Gardner and the Council have been extremely generous to the school system over the past eight years. That being said, they were digging out of a hole that we’re still trying to dig out of and so the numbers that we need are extremely important.

The majority of the new funding is going to trying to make salaries more competitive, to adding positions for mental and social needs that are there, for adding positions to deal with our students of special needs that need to be taken care of and to take care of some of the technology and other needs that we have. Not to mention just the pure inflationary costs that are going up.

We know that gas is going up and we have 500 buses on the road- it’s a lot of gas. We know the energy costs are going up. So we just have those pure inflationary costs, but trying to get more competitive is extremely important. So we need your members to support our budget. Again, the most important investment we can make is in education.

As a small business owner, my wife’s a small business owner- having an educated workforce in Frederick county is so important and we have to be able to continue to provide that at the same level that we have been. We can only do that with the support of the budget. Dr. Markoe?

 

MM: I would just add that we live in our premier community and it’s our goal to provide a premier education to our students and for us to do that, we have to have competitive salaries in every area. Whether it’s food and nutrition services or teachers or administrators, I think this year’s budget really represents that commitment to be competitive for our employees and I’m pleased about that. 

And then Brad also mentioned that we’re really looking at our students with some of the most significant needs in this budget, whether it be mental health or students with disabilities, we’ve concentrated a lot of resources. Those were two of our biggest priorities moving forward and we feel that this budget represents this.

We need the voice and advocacy of our business owners to get out and just really champion public education, the value that it brings to our community and how it will strengthen our community even before. 

 

RW: So I’m fortunate to work very closely with Helen Prophetor in the Office of Economic Development for the County and Richard Griffin, the Economic Development Director for the City of Frederick, Karen Norman who is our Downtown Frederick Partnership Executive Director and Dave Ziedelis who leads our Tourism Council. We communicate on a weekly basis and spend an hour together every Thursday, talking about deals and opportunities and recruitment and retention. I can promise you of the questions that I get asked from small companies, you know, mom and pop startups to fortune 20 companies who look to locate here.

The first five or six questions I’m ever asked by anybody examining Frederick as a potential location, always have to do with our K through 12 education system and our higher education partners always. It’s a conversation I have before we talk about water and sewer before we talk about road infrastructure before we talk about the ecosystem of business…the questions are always about our school systems, right? What are our graduation rates? What are our dropout rates? How many blue ribbon schools have we had in our community? And where’s the leadership? 

So Dr. Markoe, we’re excited that this budget gets to reflect your priorities and probably not the way you wanted to, you know, bring a budget forward, in the time compression that you’ve had but I know you’ve been an influencer in terms of priorities over the course of several FCPS Systems budgets. It has not been unusual to have chamber volunteer leadership board members show up at public hearings to speak on behalf of these priorities and we want to be able to do that again.

BY: Rick I just want to add and thank you because I’ve seen you personally show up to testify for FCPS budgets and, and people have to realize that that is not common and particularly not common when you’re asking for more money from the county, to have the chamber and the chamber president and the chamber representatives come and say, we support this because we know how important it is.

So we thank you for your leadership and your recognition of how important our school system is. 

RW: Well, thanks Brad but it’s much more selfish than that. I’m the father of three adult children who are incredibly successful because of the education they received in the Brunswick high school feeder pattern. I have grandsons who are students in the Middletown feeder system. I had seen firsthand and without regard to the fact that I run the chamber of commerce, I understand what this means. 

And then when I’m exposed to our recruitment and retention efforts, as I said, all the questions, the important questions, all surround how are our kids going to be educated? What are the opportunities that are going to be laid in front of our children through the school system? It’s a pretty no-brainer to advocate on behalf of a well-funded well-managed well-run public education system. So that’s why we’re there to support the budget. 

Hopefully, everybody that is going to watch this video is going to email council members and call up council members- and I mean, we’re a big believer in an email blast to the county council, and we’ll even link it with this video, because they read those emails our county council members before they take hard votes, they pay attention to what the community has to say.

In our last couple of minutes, I wanted to give you a chance to talk about the runway ahead, because look, I’m starting April 1st or April 4th when my building is reopened to the public by the county- I’m all about the future. The experiences we’ve been through have been difficult for all of us. We have learned a lot and we still have more to learn, but I really think we gotta be focused like a laser on the next couple of years because how we recover and how we react to opportunity is going to define what the next two or three decades look like.

So in the last couple of minutes, would you each take a couple of minutes to share with our viewers what that runway looks like for FCP?

 

BY: So Rick I’ll start. This is my 12th and last year on the FCPS board. I’ve been incredibly honored and proud to have served on the board because we have so many amazing people like Dr. Markoe, who care so deeply and compassionately about our students in our school system and what we do.

What I will say is in the next few years, it’s going to be critical that we continue to fund our school system. I know that the current County Executive and Council will do right by us this year and with elections coming up and whoever’s elected county executive and other positions next year, we need to ask them and make sure they’re committed to continuing not to try and starve the school system. You need to ask those questions because your leaders going forward are going to have a huge impact. If our school system doesn’t continue to get the educational funding that it needs and deserves, it’s going to suffer and that’s going to have an impact on our community. 

I have four grandkids too, and as much as it pains me as a Walkersvillian, I’ll be up there with you-I have two grandkids in the Middletown feeder pattern as well, and I’ll be there and I’ve got two here in Walkersville. It’s so important that we continue to provide the opportunities that I got in Frederick County Public Schools- my parents, my brothers, all three of my children and now my grandchildren. That is so important to me because I am going to be here in Frederick County and I want to make sure my grandkids and great-grandkids have that same opportunity.

 

MM: Rick, what I’ve really been talking to our leaders about is strengthening trust within the community, across the country.

Even in Frederick County, we’ve seen a polarization of our constituents and we have to really work on building trust within our community. The DOJ report certainly didn’t help the trust within our community, so we have to heal and repair that trust and strengthen it moving forward. And then I think we really need to focus on transparency and just allowing everybody to see the why, why are we doing this.

Why are we moving forward? Whether it’s with masks/without masks, regardless of the issue, our public needs to know why we’re doing certain things. And then a final “T”  of the “three T’s” is truth. That’s sharing the good as well as the things that people don’t want to hear. We need to bring it forward and make them aware of it and agree to disagree on certain things.

I believe if we’re going to move forward, we need to focus on those three things and we have to make our decisions based on the best interest of our students- that has to be the core of what we do. And for us to get students back where they need to be, uh, every decision we need to make in the future, it needs to be based on what’s in the best interest of our students.

 

RW: That’s fantastic. I’m a big believer in the right men and women to find themselves in the right position at the critical and most important times. And that’s certainly how I feel about you, Mike.  I can’t think of anybody better to be that steady hand on the tiller as we navigate this ship, over the next several years, I’m thankful that you’re where you are, thankful that you’re the man that you are and the educator and administrator that you are.

Brad, I’m really looking forward to what the future holds. You still have some work to do helping us from that seat over at the central office with the board of education, but the future is very exciting for you and we’re looking forward to watching you continue to influence our community in a really positive and powerful way. 

I’ve promised you both. When we put together our candidate questionnaires, particularly for county executive candidates over the course of the next couple of months, I will include at least one question that’s probative on the issue of supporting our public education system from a financial standpoint to help educate our members on the candidates who seem to understand and get the importance of that.

I want to thank you for taking the time with us today, and I’ll urge everybody who watches this video these two guys are, um, have always been there and their walk and their talk are 100% in alignment. And I think that we are a Better community for that and we’re looking forward to being your partner as we move into the future. 

 

BY: Thank you. Rick and I want to, again, thank you as the leader of the Chamber of Commerce as somebody who’s been involved in Frederick County in so many different roles that’s always had a positive impact, always been a positive influence. Having you at the helm of the Chamber certainly is a great asset to Frederick county and we thank you for your support of education, but also for your support of small businesses and all businesses in Frederick county and all you’ve done. 

 

MM: And Rick, I think it’s an honor and privilege just to know you and have been able to work with you over the years, you have been a champion for public education, as long as I’ve known you and that so very much appreciated. So thank you.

 

RW:  It was my pleasure. Thanks again, guys. 

 

Contact:

• Dr. Michael Markoe, interim Superintendent of the Frederick County Public School System: Michael.Markoe@fcps.org
• Brad Young, the president of the Frederick County Board of Education: brad.young@fcps.org
• Frederick County Council Memberes: councilmembers@frederickcountymd.gov

 

Frederick Chamber Insights is a news outlet of the Frederick County Chamber of Commerce. For more information about membership, programs and initiatives, please visit our website.