St. Mary's school board looks at career readiness, capital plans

Once high school is over and the graduates head out into the real world, then what?

St. Mary’s public school system is trying its best to prepare local students for exactly that, and board of education members received an update June 12 on the recently-completed initial implementation of the College and Career Readiness program.

“It’s just amazing to see how this is really going to take flight and produce opportunities for students to graduate having a closely aligned idea and preparation for their career goal,” Supervisor of Counseling Rhonda Hunt said. “This has just been so exciting for us.”

The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the state’s education reform plan, implemented the readiness standards. The local program is in partnership with the Workforce Development Board and the College of Southern Maryland.

This fall CSM will provide readiness training while the Tri-County Council of Southern Maryland will offer consultations.

Next year the program will adopt a three-tiered approach: Tier I with classroom lessons, activities and job fairs for all students; Tier II for smaller groups that are not CCR students; and Tier III for seniors who have not yet established post secondary school plans.

According to data, this year 3,863 high school students took CTE courses, 804 middle and high school students took classroom lessons, 496 took individualized advising sessions, 66 were part of an apprenticeships, while 41 completed internships.

Hunt shared that during an Accountability & Implementation Board meeting in March that she thought her team “rather stunned [the board] and their response was to take notes vigorously and at the end of the conversation they said, ‘I think we’re going to have to come back to your team, we like what you’re doing.’”

School board member Dorothy Andrews asked Hunt and Career Counseling Program Coordinator Corinne Marino if they thought more middle schoolers and eighth graders would be using the program.

“In middle school we’re really focusing on their self-discovery so we’re looking at them identifying their strengths, why do we take risks, why are failures important to their journey, what do I like to do, what are my interests,” Marino said, “and then those conversations continue to connect with courses.”

Update on state fundingThe board was presented with the 2024 Educational Facilities Master Plan, as is required by July 1 of each year. The projects identified in the plan are the basis for the traditional capital improvement requests in the fall as well as for all other capital improvement project requests via other funding sources.

Highlights of the plan include maintaining existing infrastructure to extend buildings’ use, monitoring of residential development and non-public school enrollment for potential impacts for future enrollments, and monitoring and embracing new state legislation.

Director of Capital Planning Kimberly Howe said her staff recently obtained an approximately 400-page report of an assessment of the county’s school system and facilities and that it “very much substantiates is that we have an aging infrastructure and we’re going to have to continue to look at our HVAC systems and roofs as we move forward.”

And what will make it harder is less state funding.

“Capital project funding will not look the same and we’ll need to look at sources beyond the state for additional funding,” she said, and added that in her 34 years “this is the first time we have not been funded for the second year of an active ongoing project,” but added, “We have solutions and we will work through this.”

She noted the state annually allocates $450 million for schools in the entire state, “which is nowhere sufficient for our needs.”

St. Mary’s usually receives an average of $5 million each year, but received nothing this year.

Projects slated for fiscal 2025 include the modernization of Lettie Marshall Dent, Piney Point HVAC, chillers at three schools and two limited modifications for Chopticon High School, one of which is not funded while the other will be Built To Learn Act-funded.

The school board approved a contract with Specialized Education of Maryland Inc. in the amount of $876,647.88 to provide three in-district classroom programs for special education.

Each program provides three classrooms with nine student slots per class with one teacher and two assistants per site. This year’s sites will be Park Hall Elementary School, Margaret Brent Middle School and Chopticon High School.