Sunil's Priorities |
Recovering from
Covid-19 Losses The COVID-19 crisis has brought increased student needs and budget constraints at the same time. The dislocation caused by the coronavirus-led school closure added to stress and anxiety in many families. If we want to reopen schools and have them be effective centers of learning, we must ensure that schools are adequately funded to support social distancing and other safety measures as well as new technologies and innovative practices. We will also have to change old ways of doing things and make hard choices. But to do this will require the BOE will need to communicate clearly with and bring along families, students, teachers, and staff. See more below on academic recovery.
|
Fighting for
Equitable Schools The pandemic laid bare persistent inequities and powerful testimonies in the blackat* and survivorat* Instagram accounts demand action. We need an inclusive curriculum, diverse teachers and administrators, and a culture that does not discriminate. We need consent education and meaningful reporting channels. In the long-term, we need to ensure equitable distribution of resources, including a policy of systemwide, regular, and predictable boundary review and adjustment. We need more than words. We are past due on action. Scroll down on School Boundary Plan.
|
Supporting Our Educators MCPS has an educator crisis on its hands. Even before the pandemic, teachers and staff were stressed and burning out. There was a national and regional teacher shortage. Now, at a time when we need them most of all, MCPS is in labor impasse with teachers. Not only are educators without a labor contract, they bear the brunt of the transitions to and back from virtual learning. On Sept 26, MCPS gave teachers its required 45-day notice, meaning that they could be back in school buildings Starting November 9. There is no plan for personal safety equipment and protocols for testing and tracing, let alone the possibility of addressing widespread ventilation problems in school buildings. We need to find the resources to enable our educators to teach our children.
|
|
Academic Recovery Plan
We have to do much better in responding to the pandemic. Distance learning did not work in the Spring, but it was better in the Summer. The Fall, however, looks very difficult. Sunil has taught online for years and knows what it will take to bring MCPS to this new era. He has also proposed a practical equity-driven school building reopening plan. Read more here: Changing the Reopening Timeline: A Recipe for Confusion and Anxiety Fixing Distance Learning Governor says to reopen schools, what's the plan? Plan C, but it is the Best Option Right Now Sunil's response to MCPS Draft Plan for Fall 2020 |
Aim for Excellence Plan
Sunil isn't running for the Board of Education because he thinks everything is broken; he's running to take what's working in our school system and make it excellent. To read more about Sunil's plans for special education, pre-k, environmental education and climate change, cultivating student journalism, and magnet program screening, please take a look at Sunil's Aim for Excellence Plan |
|
School boundaries were a lightning rod in the primary elections in June 2020. The results of the at-large and District 4 races show that Montgomery County residents overwhelmingly support the idea of change, even if we don’t agree on the specifics of what those changes ought to be. In 2019, there were 10,860 students overcrowded in about 100 of our schools and 9,357 open seats in the other half of MCPS schools. While not all those empty seats can be filled with students at overcrowded schools, a significant number can be, and school assignments in the future must keep abreast with population and demographic changes.
What we need going forward is a specific plan around which to coalesce. I was the only candidate in the primary—and now the only candidate in the general—who has provided specific solutions for dealing with overcrowding and under-enrollment and to address the problem into the future. The question now is whether we allow change to be forced upon us or we come together as a county to push for a predictable, reasonable, and fair way to move forward. Learn more: What should a new school boundary policy look like? 
| ||||
To have long-term impact on inequity, we not only have to address curriculum, staff, and services, but also develop a policy instrument that allows greater balance between schools. A regular, systemwide, and transparent boundary review and adjustment policy will not solve all equity problems, but without it the impact of other measures will erode over time. |
Sunil offers public comments about school boundaries at the January 9, 2020 MCPS Board of Education meeting.
|
