ROCKVILLE, Md. — No waiting, no doubts. Montgomery County’s new school superintendent, Jack Smith, says he’s confident the school system can see real improvement, especially in regards to its achievement gap, and he expects to see some of those improvements in the first year of his tenure.
“We can get there; I have no doubt. As long as we have the support of the community,” he said.
At a meet-and-greet session with members of the County Council, Smith said he’ll lay out more details on his plan for the coming school year in a Board of Education meeting on Tuesday. The next step, he said, is to meet with the people who will have to put his plan into action.
“My target date is August 17, when I address all the principals and all the people across the system and lay out the idea of how we’re going to look at these metrics,” Smith said.
At the lunch meeting, an open-ended affair with council members asking questions over sandwiches and soft drinks, Council President Nancy Floreen put Smith on notice that the council wouldn’t rubber-stamp budgets from the school board, and would dig in to policy questions.
“We don’t just write the check,” she told him. “We care very deeply about education.”
Smith was also asked about the achievement gap by council member Marc Elrich, a former teacher.
“To me, one of the most grievous things in the school system is the absolute failure to deal with African-American achievement,” Elrich said.
Smith responded by saying he was dismayed by a pattern he saw regarding performance of African-American students in the school system.
“You know what dismays me? Is that it’s uneven,” said Smith, explaining that he’d looked over the data.
In one school, he said he found low achievement; in others, he found the performance was high “with no discernible differences.”
Saying that the school system needs to address the issues surrounding race and poverty, Smith said obstacles to achievement have to be overcome.
“My mother finished the 10th grade. My father finished the sixth grade. If that had been a barrier, folks, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” he said.
Council members asked about how the school system should balance training students for careers versus a college track. Smith answered that both have to be part of the offerings in Montgomery County schools.
“We don’t need every person in society to be a plumber or a mechanic, but we don’t need every person in this society to be a chemistry major or a British Lit major,” Smith said.
“We need people who are well prepared by the end of middle school” to then begin to explore their interests and map their futures with what’s available in school, he added.
Council member Nancy Navarro, a former School Board member, told Smith that many people look at the achievement gap as something that affects just a few, as if they’re isolated from the rest of the system.
“This is the mainstream of our school system: children of color, low-income children, children with disabilities,” Navarro said. She added that she’s eager to build a collaborative effort with the superintendent.
At the end of the lunch, Navarro said he’s “optimistic” that with leadership, the problems can be overcome.
