New Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS) Superintendent Darryl L. Williams, Ed.D took questions from the public at a meeting at Perry Hall High School on Tuesday night. Some of the topics included preventing bullying and bus driver shortages.
One parent was critical of BCPS response time to bullying incidents. Williams responded that BCPS wants to take a proactive approach to bullying cases and BCPS is looking into bringing a systematic, disciplined approach. Williams added that sometimes the victim of bullying does not know where to go for help.
“We are teaching conscious discipline. We want to inform students [being bullied] where to go for [help], Williams said.
“We need to help the student that is receiving the action along with the student that is giving it.”
The BCPS Superintendent stated that society needs to go back to a “agree to disagree” mentality that does not result in a physical altercation and making rude comments to each other.
“We have to be able to teach our students that we live in a [civilized and respectful] society,” Williams added.
Baltimore County has a shortage of around 50 bus drivers. Sen. Kathy Klausmeier was at the meeting and she said she plans introduce legislation that will create incentives to help hire more bus drivers. Williams said adding bus drivers is a goal of BCPS.
“The recruitment is going to be key on how we hire and keep bus drivers,” Williams explained.
Other parents asked about having a more diverse staff similar to many of diverse student populations in Baltimore County schools.
According to Williams, BCPS would like to build a “pipeline” with black colleges such as Morgan, Coppin State and Howard and would like to recruit today’s BCPS students to become tomorrow’s BCPS educators. He would like to see more male role models too.
“There is also a gender issue. How do we get males to consider education? “Williams said. “The shortage of teachers is a national problem. We are looking into ways to improve our recruiting efforts.”
There were questions about seven period days vs. the four-period day, hiring more counselors and trying to get more stakeholders involved with BCPS.
“We have had some discussion on how we can get the community involved to support our schools,” Williams said.
