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Platform

Scroll below or click on each topic to learn more about Arvin's 200-point plan for MCPS

Curriculum

Student Voice

Equity

Student Life

Student Support

Facilities

Curriculum

Universal Access to all Courses via Virtual Classrooms

  • Offering all courses online to all students across MCPS, in addition to regular in-person learning

  • Ensuring that over-enrollment does not prevent students from taking their desired courses

  • Ensuring that students can take all their desired courses, regardless of if their school offers it

  • Ensuring high-quality education in online courses

Working with Students to Create Diverse and Accessible New Courses

  • Streamlining the process of creating and piloting new courses

  • Ensuring that student voices are included in writing curricula

  • Increasing the number of schools in which new courses are offered

  • Offering courses online to be accessible to all students

  • Minimizing the required amount of prerequisite courses

  • Creating a diverse array of elective history and studies courses

  • Increasing the number of arts courses offered in each school

Inclusivity in Curriculum

  • Ensuring social studies and english courses are accurate and inclusive in content

  • Using diverse source materials in social studies and english classrooms

  • Providing students with a diverse array of options for content, literature, and materials for study

  • Regularly updating current courses and creating new courses based on student feedback to be inclusive 

  • Providing diverse and accessible courses options modeled after the LGBTQ Studies and Asian American Studies courses

  • Requiring professional development for teachers and staff members to be create inclusive classrooms

Career Readiness Pathway Programming

  • Increasing and expanding career-specific training programs like the pathways offered at Thomas Edison High School and the Aviation and Aerospace Program

  • Ensuring that career readiness programming is equitable and accessible

  • Offering career readiness programing online to be accessible to students across MCPS

  • Promoting career readiness programming as well as career opportunities

  • Providing students with experience in respective career paths 

  • Continuing and promoting Teacher Signing Day (signing MCPS Students to jobs within MCPS after college)

Comprehensive Health Curriculum

  • Updating and modernizing the health curriculum at all levels

  • Facilitating comprehensive education around mental health for students in elementary, middle, and high school

  • Including comprehensive education around consent in all schools

  • Require teacher sensitivity training for health educators

  • Ensuring that the health curriculum in inclusive to LGBTQ+ communities

  • Enforcing that updated curriculum is being taught and that health classrooms are safe spaces for all students

Teaching Real-World Skills

  • Improving current and creating new courses to be oriented towards preparing students with real-world skills including financial literacy and career preparedness 

  • Increasing and expanding career-specific training programs like the pathways offered at Thomas Edison High School and the Aviation and Aerospace Program

  • Supporting the development of a required financial literacy course

  • Working with students to meet their educational needs

Minimizing Standard Testing

  • Transitioning away from relying on standardized testing 

  • Using project-based assignments and student grades as metrics of learning, instead of adding on standardized testing

  • Ensuring that testing is minimized and does not disrupt student learning or access to resources in school

  • Prioritizing the mental health of students

Equity

Racial Equity

  • Using the findings of the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium’s Anti-Racism Audit on MCPS to find comprehensive solutions to racial disparities 

  • Revising curricula to be more inclusive of communities of color 

  • Hiring teachers and staff members who reflect the diversity of MCPS students

  • Disaggregating demographic data to uncover racial disparities

  • Requiring professional development, with student input, around racial discrimination and implicit bias for all teachers and staff members

  • Ensuring the the police (Community Engagement Officers) are completely removed from schools to prevent the continuation of disproportionate arrests of Black and Latinx students and students with disabilities 

  • Implementing student-led anti-hate teaching in every elementary, middle, and high school to prevent incident of hate

Gender/LGBTQ+ Equity

  • Increasing the amount of gender neutral restrooms at every school

  • Ensuring that schools are providing and publicizing gender-neutral bathrooms

  • Providing students with the option to easily change to their preferred name on all platforms including StudentVUE and Canvas

  • Revising curricula to be more inclusive of LGBTQ+ communities

  • Ensuring dress codes and the enforcement of dress codes do not discriminate against any students

  • Ensuring that all bathrooms provide students with free menstrual hygiene products

  • Revising curricula to be more inclusive of womxn communities

  • Implementing student-led anti-hate teaching in every elementary, middle, and high school to prevent incident of hate

Opportunity Gap

  • Recognizing educational disparities between schools and demographics and prioritizing racial equity

  • Using the findings of the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium’s Anti-Racism Audit on MCPS to find comprehensive solutions to racial disparities 

  • Creating equitable school boundaries so that a student’s zip code, socio-economic status, or race does not determine the quality of their education

  • Expanding free MCPS-provided tutoring to reach a greater amount of students 

  • Translating all distributed MCPS materials in an increased amount of languages

  • Providing students with access to necessary technology including Chromebooks and internet routers

Support for Disabled and Neurodivergent Students

  • Ensuring that all MCPS schools and facilities meet and go beyond ADA compliance to be accessible to all students

  • Providing closed captions on all materials provided by MCPS

  • Ensuring that 504’s, IEP’s, and extended time accommodations are easily accessible and are being provided

  • Supporting the Learning for Independence program

Increasing Accountability in Schools for Incidents of Hate

  • Recognizing acts of hate and violence within MCPS

  • Implementing student-led anti-hate teaching in every elementary, middle, and high school to prevent incident of hate

  • Ensuring school administrations take student security concerns seriously and respond to them immediately

  • Increasing accountability for MCPS staff, teachers, and students

Professional Development and Teacher Education 

  • Requiring professional development for teachers and staff members to be create inclusive classrooms

  • Using student input to create teacher-trainings around sensitivity

  • Ensuring that classrooms are safe for all students

Equitable School Boundaries

  • Prioritizing diversity and equity in creating new school boundaries

  • Closing the opportunity gap by ensuring that a student’s zip code, socio-economic status, or race does not determine the quality of their education

  • Working to solve issues of overcrowding and long travel times with new boundaries

  • Working with the local communities of students and families in creating new boundaries

Student Support

Hiring School Psychologists

  • Increasing the amount of school psychologists in every school

  • Providing access to meetings with school psychologists virtually when school is not in session (Summer/Winter Break, weekends)

  • Allocating a greater portion of the budget to mental health and hiring psychologists

  • Using funding from the old 3 million dollar School Resource Officer budget to hire more psychologists

  • Ensuring that the amount of psychologists meets the needs of each school’s population

  • Promoting school psychologists as a resource to the community

  • Ensuring that school psychologists are accessible to all students 

  • Working with translators to serve every student’s mental health needs

Student Resources

  • Providing students with necessary resources in and out of the classroom

  • Expanding free MCPS-provided tutoring to reach a greater amount of students 

  • Providing students with access to necessary technology including Chromebooks and internet routers

  • Expanding free transportation for students, outside of school hours

  • Providing free lunches and breakfasts to all students

  • Providing access to mental health support and meetings with school psychologists virtually when school is not in session (Summer/Winter Break, weekends)

  • Providing school clubs and student organizations with funding and grants from MCPS

  • Implementing wellness days every week

Mental Health Resources

  • Being proactive, rather than reactive, in prioritizing student wellness and mental health

  • Limiting the amount of assignments and tests that can be given at once

  • Hiring more school psychologists at every school 

  • Implementing wellness days every week

  • Ensuring that mental health days are excused absences

  • Providing access to mental health support and meetings with school psychologists virtually when school is not in session (Summer/Winter Break, weekends)

  • Facilitating comprehensive education around mental health in the health curriculum for students in elementary, middle, and high school 

  • Improving the Signs of Suicide presentation and ensuring that it is presented in every school

Wellness Wednesdays 

  • Instituting a weekly wellness day in each school week

  • Preventing new assignments from being assigned on a designated wellness days

  • Preventing tests from being given on a designated wellness days

  • Prioritizing student mental health

  • Providing students with the opportunity to meet with teachers

Providing Free High-Dosage Tutoring

  • Using Covid-19 funding to make up for losses in learning via high-dosage tutoring

  • Expanding free MCPS-provided tutoring to reach a greater amount of students 

  • Coordinating with tutors and teachers to best serve students who need help

Supporting ESOL Students

  • Translating all distributed MCPS materials in an increased amount of languages

  • Ensuring in-school opportunities are promoted to English Language Learner students

  • Requiring school administrations to be inclusive of all languages in community outreach

Resources for School Clubs and Student Organizations

  • Working to connect communities, clubs, and organizations across the county

  • Providing school clubs and student organizations with funding and grants from MCPS

  • Ensuring that schools are supporting the activities of communities, clubs, and organizations

  • Creating an simple process with minimal requirements for students to start clubs and organizations

Student Voice

Student Representation

  • Requiring that student voices are represented in all decision-making 

  • Regularly updating current courses and creating new courses based on student feedback

  • Providing and promoting opportunities for student input 

  • Creating and instituting a brief, standardized student feedback form given throughout the year

  • Collecting input on curriculum, student safety and wellness, school culture, and student support

  • Hosting community events, town halls, and forums open to all students 

  • Collecting student feedback via a brief, standardized form given throughout the year

Community Events

  • Hosting community events including Board of Education town halls, forums, hearings, and stakeholder meetings

  • Coordinating outreach to plan forums at times and locations that are accessible to the community

  • Increasing accessibility by providing opportunities at locations across the county as well as offering a virtual option

  • Providing students and families with the opportunity to meet with MCPS decision makers to elevate their voices

  • Promoting community events and advocacy opportunities to every student in MCPS

Opportunities for Students

  • Hosting and promoting opportunities for student advocacy including Board of Education town halls, forums, hearing, and stakeholder meetings

  • Creating a SMOB Advisory Council open to all students to represent everyone’s needs

  • Providing school clubs and student organizations with funding and grants from MCPS

  • Creating and promoting opportunities to work within MCPS (Teacher Signing Day, Student Aides)

  • Working to register 100% of eligible student voters in MCPS

SMOB Advisory Cabinet

  • Building a team of students from every middle and high school in MCPS to assist the SMOB in representing the student voice

  • Working with a diverse group of students, representative of MCPS' student population

  • Host meetings in varying locations across MCPS open to all students

Student Life

Learning During Covid-19

  • Closing schools when necessary to protect students and staff

  • Creating safe and healthy environments in schools

  • Using funding to provide resources to recover losses in learning from Covid-19

  • Making virtual options for learning accessible for all students

  • Expanding access to vaccines and tests for all MCPS students

  • Prioritizing student physical and mental health 

  • Supporting the MCPS Virtual Academy and providing online courses for students enrolled in their home high schools

  • Continuing to safely host school activities, virtual and in-person

School Safety

  • Prioritizing student mental health with outreach and resources

  • Ensuring school administrations take student security concerns seriously and respond to them immediately

  • Implementing transparent communication between the school and the community as security concerns unfold

  • Challenging the school-to-prison pipeline and creating a safe and welcoming environment for all students

  • Ensuring the the police (Community Engagement Officers) are completely removed from schools to prevent the continuation of disproportionate arrests of Black and Latinx students and students with disabilities 

School Lunches

  • Providing free lunches and breakfasts to all students

  • Accommodating for all diets with more vegan and gluten-free options

  • Creating an open-campus policy during lunches at all high schools

  • Ensuring lunches are 45 minutes long at every school

  • Allowing students to use phones and other devices during lunch

Transparent Grading Policies

  • Creating fair and transparent grading policies

  • Communicating grading policies to students, families, and teachers

  • Allowing students to easily dispute unfair and inaccurate grades

  • Requiging grades to be entered quickly so students may see their grade before the end of each interim, quarter, and semester

  • Ensuring that teachers assign a grade no lower than 50 percent to a task or assessment

Staffing and Hiring

  • Hiring teachers and staff to reflect and meet the needs of MCPS students

  • Hiring a diverse team of teachers and staff to reflect the diversity of MCPS students

  • Continuing and promoting Teacher Signing Day (signing MCPS Students to jobs within MCPS after college)

  • Using funding from the old 3 million dollar School Resource Officer budget to hire more school psychologists in every school

Facilities

School Renovations and the Capital Improvements Plan

  • Providing opportunities for community input in the Capital Improvements Plan

  • Prioritizing renovations for schools with poor infrastructure which impacts student learning

  • Ensuring that schools receive necessary renovations and that the Capital Improvements Plan is equitable

  • Increasing transparency in the process of planning school renovations

  • Developing a quicker response time to poor conditions in schools

Environment

  • Raising environmental standards in schools and MCPS facilities

  • Providing education about climate change and environmentally harmful practices

  • Minimizing the environmentally harmful material used in packaging in school lunches

  • Facilitating the transition towards an entirely electric bus fleet in MCPS

  • Facilitating the transition towards renewable energy in all MCPS facilities

  • Providing and maintaining water bottle filling stations, water fountains, and electric hand-dryers in all MCPS schools and facilities 

  • Requiring all new MCPS schools and facilities built to rely on renewable energy

Transportation 

  • Ensuring that bus routes best accommodate for the needs of students

  • Hiring more bus drivers with higher wages and more support 

  • Creating an app with the feature of tracking busses and arrival times

  • Working with the Montgomery County Council to accommodate student needs with free-access to the Ride On Bus

  • Expanding free transportation for students, outside of school hours

  • Maintaining safe environments in school busses

  • Facilitating the transition towards an entirely electric bus fleet in MCPS

Technology

  • Providing students with access to necessary technology including Chromebooks and internet routers

  • Providing universal access to resources via online textbooks and calculator programs

  • Offering all courses online to all students across MCPS 

  • Supporting the MCPS Virtual Academy with the necessary resources 

  • Improving current and creating new MCPS programs and applications 

  • Ensuring that students can consistently and accurately check their grades online

  • Creating an app with the feature of tracking busses and arrival times

  • Streamlining communication between MCPS, schools, and families using technology

Curriculum
Equity
Student Support
Student Voice
Student Life
Facilities
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