>> "State Circle" is made by MPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members.

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>> Connecting Marylanders to their government.

This is "State Circle."

>> Jeff: Good evening, and welcome to "State Circle."

Tonight, a trailblazing legislator is calling it a career.

And new ideas to overcome pandemic learning loss.

Those stories ahead.

First tonight, one big employer struggling to find out which of its workers are vaccinated.

The employer is the Baltimore County government.

We spoke with County Executive Johnny Olszewski.

Thank you very much for joining us.

Your county has about 9,000 employees, and you've wanted them to report their vaccination status as of this week.

Where does that stand?

>> First I want to thank our employees.

We have two-thirds of the workforce have reported they're vaccinated.

We are still waiting to hear back from another third before we start implementing the testing requirement as part of this initiative.

>> You were asking everybody to fill out the report though, so, frustrated at all that the data, the forms or whatever are late coming in?

>> Well, we know that vaccines are safe and effective, which is why we encouraged not just our public but employees to get vaccinated.

We have made every effort to give folks time off to make them accessible.

Yes, we want to have all of our employees vaccinated.

It is possible that more than two third are vaccinated.

We know that two-thirds have gone through process to upload that information so that we can not have to go through the testing protocols with them.

So we hope that, as that starts, and as that ramps up and as we continue to support them, we find that more of our employees are, in fact, vaccinated.

>> What are your plans for testing?

You are not the only employer that is set up this way.

We want you to be vaccinated.

If you are not, we want testing.

This is going to be weekly?

>> Yes, it will be weekly for any employee who is not vaccinated or does not upload their vaccination status to Baltimore County.

We have engaged with a vendor who will be on site at many of our police-- all of our police and fire precincts and fire houses will be at major county installations like our Trump castle, our public courthouse.

We have used the data to making this as easy and fair as possible for our employees.

We have done this in partnership with union organizers and representatives to make sure that this is a policy that is fair but acknowledges our shared commitment and need to uphold public health.

>> What concerns did you hear from the union representatives and maybe what are you hearing from the people who have been resistant to getting the vaccine or uploading their vaccination card?

>> Everything from privacy concerns.

We implemented a paperwork around so people can show their physical card to us so show their vaccination status, how difficult it would be to get testing and we've worked through all those issues in partnership with those who represent our employees who make sure that as concerns have been raised we have addressed them.

We think this is a very fair policy.

It's straightforward that says, you know, we think again the best way is to get vaccinated so you don't have to be subjected to the weekly testing but if you choose not to and if you choose to, for whatever reason not get your vaccination, we are going to require testing.

But again it has been done in partnership with those who represent our employees.

We think it's important that we recognize the need to get vaccinated but at the same time to work with our employees as we stand up these policies.

>> The number I saw for the response from the police department, which, I think includes sworn and civilian employees, was significantly lower.

It was like 44% is what I saw.

Are there any special issues there?

>> Yeah, I mean we see that our public safety areas, fire is at 56%, police is at 46% in terms of acknowledging and known vaccination status.

For whatever reason, as we see across the country, there is hesitancy to report it or actually get vaccinated.

We are working with Chief Hyatt and Chief Rund to go talk to our officers and firefighters, correctional officers about the importance of the vaccination, to keep them safe, to especially coup the public they serve safe and working with union reps in the cases of individuals choosing not to submit their status or get vaccinated, providing a mechanism to make sure that we are testing and keeping our workplace and public as safe as we possibly can.

>> It is a little concerning because you know, that's like NFL quarterback compliance numbers.

And you wonder if these are front line workers first responders who are in constant contact with the public.

Maybe they figure they've already been exposed 10 times and they don't need it.

>> And some people have said that, Jeff.

You know, this is about us though trying to do what is best for our employees and for the public.

It's my hope that as we begin the testing protocols as part of this policy, we actually see the numbers continue to rise.

We know that there is a significant number of our outstanding employees who are in those two agencies specifically.

I believe it's about two-thirds of our outstanding employees are in public safety.

So we are taking a special time and attention to make sure that we are working with our leadership police and fire both union and our leadership teams to try to share the message of why this is important for them, for our communities and again, if folks choose not to get vaccinated there or across county government, we expect testing will either increase the testing-- increase the vaccination rates or just be a step to keep our employees and our public safer.

>> We have been fortunate throughout the pandemic to talk to your county health officer Dr.

Branch a number of times.

Last time we talked to him, it was pretty clear the vaccines don't 100% stop people from being able to transmit the virus.

You can be typhoid Mary even though you are vaccinated.

But they're incredibly effective in keeping people out of the hospital and out of the morgue, which, you know, seems like it would be a really strong selling point.

>> Well, that's what we are telling public.

Dr.

Branch and his team in the health department have done an outstanding job.

We have been recognized in Baltimore County as the gold standard in the state and model for vaccination efforts first at the fairgrounds and white marsh mall and other locations for our youth vaccinations but yeah, we know these are safe.

We know they're effective.

70% of cases are still among those unvaccinated and for the small amount of breakthrough cases we are seeing, we are not going to the hospital and not dying at the same rate of people unvaccinated.

The message is strong, get your booster.

And for parents of young children, I encourage you to look at the science.

And like our family, we chose to get our daughter vaccinated to keep her and our family safe.

>> What is the county's role when it comes to that new younger group, 5-11 for whom the vaccines are now approved?

>> We are taking a three-pronged approach to this effort to vaccinate our youngest individuals, now available 5-11.

We are setting up larger scale clinics at places like I mentioned at white marsh mall and other locations across the county.

Partnering with pediatricians across Baltimore County and working with the school system to provide direct clinics at our school sites so parents have a variety of options to make sure their feeds are met and we can protect their children and hopefully that helps us get back to some sense of normalcy as we come out through this winter that we have adults who are vaccinated, boosted and children who have the access as well.

Coupled with better treatments and better testing access, it's my hope that as we make this final push, we keep approaching some return to normal.

>> Where do you stand with the State of Emergency that kicked in at the beginning of the pandemic?

>> Yeah, so we have let the State of Emergency expire in Baltimore County.

We've consistently said that we will only employ it as it is absolutely necessary.

And it's been useful for us.

It has been able to expedite contracts with employees, to stand up our site at the white marsh mall in terms of the clinic and contracts, but we are at a place now where we feel we have the pandemic manageable from a public management perspective.

We have the resources we need, the people we need.

We certainly will act if things, unfortunately go in the wrong direction, but at this point we feel like we have a plan in place that does not require continuation of the State of Emergency.

But we will continue to do whatever it takes to keep our folks safe.

>> Let's talk a little politics before we go.

You have proposed public financing of political campaigns.

It would not start with this coming election.

>> Yeah, so we were excited that one of the first pieces of legislation that we introduced to put on the ballot in Baltimore County was public financing elections that allows for more diverse group of candidates, more diverse pool of candidates.

Governor Hogan was elected through public financing.

We were excited that voters overwhelmingly supported that in the last election so we have, before the council, enabling legislation that will finally stand up as public financing, this fair election fund and we trust it will empower our residents because you know, big money should not be what drives our policy and your voice shouldn't be determined by the size of your wallet.

We are excited to have the council consider this and hopefully pass this in the weeks ahead.

>> Johnny Olszewski.

>> Long time Baltimore delegate Maggie McIntosh announcing she will not seek reelection.

The leader of the powerful appropriations committee spoke with MPT's Nancy Yamada.

>> Since your big retirement announcement, I have seen so many tweets and posts on social media from constituents and lawmakers, which must be so gratifying.

Speaker house Adrienne Jones said your career is nothing short of groundbreaking.

How did you decide it was time to retire?

>> That's a very good question and one I have been asked multiple times obviously.

I will tell you that I began to think about retirement probably as early as five years ago.

The reason being, you know, when you are in a job for 30 years, and the job is as demanding as this is, you just begin to think about what else could I do or should I do anything else?

And by the way, I am 73.

Going to be 74 soon.

And I just thought it was time for me to move out of the way of what I see behind me as incredible, exceptional young leaders, who could step into a number of roles in the legislature.

>> In your announcement, you talked about some of the pieces of legislation that you have helped pass over the last 30 years that you are most proud of.

You talked about the Dream Act, the Chesapeake Bay restoration fund.

What other laws come to mind?

>> I have to tell you that the two areas that stand out for me and always will, is the work that I was able to do not just as appropriations chair but even as a freshman delegate under Howard Pete Rawlins when we passed the Thornton Act and then as chair I was here to be a part of the Kirwan Commission to pass the blueprint for Maryland's future.

I also, basically, pulled together a group that authored the built to learn, which is the capital funding for schools, which will help so many schools all across the state get built or remodeled, renovated so our kids in Maryland have safe and clean and healthy spaces to learn in.

That's one area.

Education.

But the other one is the passage of same-sex marriage in Maryland.

Was personal to me and many of my colleagues.

And, of course, I did not do this by myself at all.

That's not even-- I was just there and helped and worked with so many groups that believed that this was a civil right that my community needed.

>> You have held so many leadership positions.

How have you seen the status and role of women change in politics over the last 30 years?

>> It's changed quite a bit in the house of delegates and the Senate.

And that is, I think, in large part because of speaker Michael Aaron Busch.

For instance, the first meeting I attended as house Majority Leader, I walked into the room and there was only one other woman the there.

And there was only one person of color there.

And yet this week, when I go to a house leadership meeting with speaker Adrienne Jones, I'm going to walk into the room that has many people of color and many women sitting in the room.

It has changed tremendously over the last 20 years.

And it's changed that will make us a better and stronger legislature.

>> You represent Baltimore city, the latest census shows that Baltimore's population is at its lowest in a century.

How do you think that trend can be reversed?

>> I think-- you know, I think all urban areas have tremendous problems right now.

One with crime, two with aging infrastructure, three with schools that have been underfunded for years.

And I think the blueprint for Maryland's future that we passed plus built to learn will help Baltimore city, especially those kids who need us the most, be lifted to a new achievement in their educational career.

The other is crime.

I mean I think we have to address crime in a very different way.

Crime and these shootings are not happening between people who have conflict necessarily.

There are a lot of really broken young people in our community who have come up through now generations of really severe poverty and live in broken neighborhoods and the trauma that they have seen and faced is what we need to address.

>> And finally, the question everyone wants to know is what's next for Maggie McIntosh?

>> A little bit more time to relax.

But in all honesty, my wife and I plan to do was we love to do, which is travel quite a bit.

And spend more time with family, more time with friends and, you know, just have, I hope, some kind of meaningful contribution that I can continue to make for the city and for the state.

>> Delegate McIntosh, thank you for your time and we wish you all the best in the next chapter.

>> Thank you.

>> Our newsmaker this week is Kevin Lowndes deputy superintendent of the Charles county public schools.

Sir, thank you for joining us.

You have come out with a new plan to help students recover from pandemic learning loss.

And we'll get into the details.

But to start with, how do you assess the problem?

>> So what we did was we end the up going with i-ready an assessment that we can determine our students in reading and math, the core skills they need in both those areas and it determines where they are missing some of those functional skills.

And so in giving all of our students this test, we are able to determine, you know, where they are and where they should be and lets us know where they are compared to other students both within Maryland and nationally.

So we have a good indication of where our students are and what we need to do to help them get caught up.

>> If you gave that test to 100 kids, how many would you say are close to where they ought to be?

How many are a little bit behind and how many are, you know, really far behind and have really been hurt by the pandemic?

>> So, unfortunately, you know, we are looking at only, you know, less than 10% that really are where they should be at this time.

And we are looking at, you know, a large number of students that need substantial help and support and extra time working on their functional skills to get them where they need to be.

>> I mean that's a crisis.

You hear very little public discussion about this.

Maybe there is a lot more within your profession.

>> There is definitely a lot of discussion within the profession because you know, when we looked at where the folks are nationally to compare our students with, what we've noticed is that nationally everyone is having the same problem; that this time that we have been away in distance learning, our students were not able to get the same amount of material and learn it at the same rate as they were when our students are back in the schools.

And so we are very thankful that we are back in our brick and mortar locations but we have to spend time helping students get to where they should be in their grade level and get caught up in the areas that they missed while they were home learning in a distance learning format.

>> Even this new school year that we are a few months into isn't perfect in terms of the learning environment.

You still have people wearing masks, I think, a few cases of quarantine.

Do you think what is happening now is comparable to a normal school year in terms of the amount of instruction you are able to do on a regular day?

>> It has been a very challenging year for many of our staff members in our buildings because with COVID we have staff that are both, you know, coming in and then going out and being quarantined.

We have students coming in and then having to go out and being quarantined and during this time period it has been extremely difficult to hire and get enough people to both teach our students and also support the teaching that goes on within the building.

So we are talking our building service folks, we are talking our cafeteria folks.

And so it's been a challenging year our teachers and administrators and everyone in the building doing multiple jobs because we haven't be able to hire the amount of folks that we usually do when we were in pre-COVID so it has been a challenge to make sure our students are getting what they need every day and that we have the folks in the buildings to help our students learn on a regular basis every day.

>> One last question before we get into the details of the plan.

To point out that you weren't born into the administrator's office there.

You have been a special education teacher, general education teacher and some big school systems Montgomery County, Maryland, the giant L.A. unified district in Los Angeles.

So you have got a variety of perspectives on this.

>> Correct.

And you know, the one thing I've learned is that students are students and we need to take care of them and it's very important to have those relationships with the students and to help them learn so that's why it is so important to be back in the schools so that our teachers can really interact with our students to help motivate them and help them get the support that they need.

It's really difficult when we are in the distance learning, to be able to identify where our students are struggling and have the time to really pinpoint interventions that would help them get to where they need to be.

So, you know, I'm thrilled that we are back in our buildings and our teachers are able to work with our students directly.

>> Now this is a three-year plan for Charles County.

Where do you start?

How does it progress over the three years?

>> So it's a continuous plan that is going to be year round.

It really started last summer when we were able to bring our students back into the schools.

we offered multiple summer programs focused in on areas that our students needed help and support with math and with reading.

We looked at our students that are at the high school level and credits that were lost while they were home in the distance learning format.

And we offered multiple opportunities for our students to get caught up at the high school level.

We also looked at our students that have special education and have IEPs, individualized education plans, and where they were falling short on their goals and offered summer programs to identify those areas and support in those areas.

So the summer really kicked us off.

And coming back into the school year, we used the beta that we collected this summer to identify extra supports that our students needed and we use that i-ready data to identify areas and gaps that our students needed.

And so we adjusted our school day to make sure that we had time during the school day to address some of these needs.

So we have a large reading block in the elementary and middle school level where we have a portion of that block, students-- teachers are focused in on accelerating our students which means they're really working in and focus on the current grade level curriculum.

And they're making sure that our students are getting that.

With the understanding that there are areas that they missed while they were at home in the distance learning.

And so a portion of that block actually is focused in on filling in the gaps and so our students are then broken up into small groups and we work on the individualized areas that they need help and support.

And so that's one of the areas that we looked at addressing was how do we change our reading and our math blocks that will allow us both to move students ahead with their grade level curriculums but also allow teachers to book time to focus in on the areas they need help and support.

>> You are asking a lot of the teachers, too.

>> We are asking a lot of our teachers.

And you know, the one thing that I'm extremely proud of in Charles county is how our teachers have stepped up, and our administrators to really help and support our students and our families during this time period.

Because the other thing is, when you are behind, we don't have a different day than we had prior to COVID.

And so we really do need more time.

So one of the other things that we are asking our schools to do is to come up with a plan to extend the learning day and extend the time that students will be able to interact with the instructional material.

And so they're going to be working with students after school and in other periods of time where traditionally, they might have been focused in on something else.

>> I saw the plan, something about a 90-minute math block, which sort of gave me an instant headache.

I wonder is there a limit to how intense anything can be in a normal school day before kids and teachers hit a wall?

>> Well, so part of that block is really focused in on supporting students in small groups.

And so it's not giving students the new material that they need to move forward with their grade level curriculum.

It's really looking at where does the student need extra help and support and so, for example, in first or second grade, you might have a student that doesn't have much-- needs help and support within number sense and is not understanding what the number 2 or three means.

And so you would spend time working with manipulatives to help them understand the concept of what the numbers is.

Owe sights focused more on the individual.

>> How can parents and other family members help?

>> Well, you know, one of the things that we are doing is that we've noticed that our teachers are doing so much extra that we are going to have to go outside and use some companies to help support us with some tutoring outside of the classroom.

So we are working with some companies to provide one on one tutoring in the distance learning format so when students are home.

So one thing that families can do to help and support is help with setting some time when the students are home to work on some of these skills with the tutor, with these companies that we are buying.

And also just spend some time reading with their child at the early grade levels.

And when the students are holder, in high school, checking in to make sure they're doing their home work and staying on track because one of the things that we've noticed, it has been a real adjustment for our students to come back into buildings into being in school for the full day.

Some of them didn't have the structured day that a regular school day presents.

And so we are working with them on putting those structures back into place and I think we could really use some help and support from our families to reinforce that.

>> Thanks to Kevin Lowndes, deputy superintendent of the Charles County public schools.

That is our program for the week.

We are back Monday with "Direct connection."

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For all of us at MPT, thank you for watching.