Last week in a phone interview View staffer Christie Dumler asked Patti Caplan, director of public relations for the Howard County Public School System, for an update of school system initiatives and policies, ongoing and new.

What is new this year for the school system?

This year the emphasis is maintaining the direction toward the two goals of the school system, Caplan said.

Goal 1 Each child regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, disability or socio-economic status, will meet the rigorous performance standards that have been established. All diploma-bound students will perform on or above grade level in all measured content areas.

Goal 2 Each school will provide a safe and nurturing school environment that values our diversity and commonality.

What's on the horizon for school redistricting and school construction?

As of now there is no planned redistricting until the 2010-2011 school year. Schools under consideration for redistricting during that school year are Thunder Hill, Howard High School and Reservoir High School.

You can take a look at the June 2008 Feasibility Study, an annual review of long term capital planning and redistricting options, posted, on the Howard County Public School Web site.

Caplan said construction of any new school is not in the budget at this point. The most likely area under future consideration for a new school would be the eastern part of the county, specifically the Route 1 corridor.

There has been a shift from building new schools to modernizing older facilities, Caplan said. This change is evident in the Long Range Master plan fiscal year 2010-2019. The plan is also on the school system's Web site. Caplan noted that "changes can be made and the plan will be adjusted annually."

Would you describe some of the recent initiatives taken by the school system?

The Safe Schools Initiative is one. Schools are slowly implementing a school-based approach to discipline and behavior know as PBIS -- Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, Caplan said. At least half of the schools in the system have implemented the approach.

Bullying was also recently added to the school system's code of conduct as a suspendable offense.

We are in the second year of the STEM-science, technology, engineering, and math initiative, a national and state initiative, Caplan said. The school system is working to beef up curriculum opportunities in the four STEM areas for students, Caplan said. Partnerships between businesses and schools are providing more opportunities for students and resources for teachers.

The initiative is being led with the support of federal money by the school system's science department.

Providing more professional development for teachers and access to curriculum specialists to help them implement teaching strategies which have proven successful have been stepped up, Caplan said.

A recent strategy, which Caplan said has been very successful at the high school level, is to team a special educator with a content teacher. The special educator can bring strategies for instruction that the general education teacher might not be familiar with. "The content teacher adds the knowledge and the special educator the alternative teaching methods," Caplan said. Some middle schools have elected to pilot the co-teaching model without additional staffing. If results are similar to those at the high school level, the system may consider expanding the strategy to middle schools, Caplan said.

There has been a concerted effort to make sure data from state and county assessments gets in the hands of teachers and administrators trained to interpret the data and use it as a piece of school improvement, Caplan said. Results from the Maryland State Assessments have shown that the school system as a whole has made progress toward raising the achievement levels of students groups, Caplan said.

Staff was added at the high school level to bring down the teacher to student ratio in state assessed classes. Twenty-three teaching positions were added across high schools this year; 15 to lower staffing ratios and eight to provide academic intervention for high school assessments, Caplan said.

Ten ESOL teachers across all grades K-12 have been added.

What is the outlook for the next school budget?

Caplan said there will be a tight budget for FY 2010. Howard County Public School Superintendent Sydney Cousin has presented his proposed FY 2010 capital budget and FY 2011-2015 Capital Improvement Program to the Board of Education. The operating budget will be out in January.

"We don't expect to see the level of state and county funding of past years," she said.

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