Education Advisory Committee

Approved: 051616 M&C Somers Gardiner Minutes - APPROVED Education Advisory Committee May 4, 2016 Jason’s Deli Attendees Members Present Absent Charlene Mahoney, Dist 2 __X___ Dawn Powers, Dist 2 __X__ Melissa Day, Dist 3 __X___ Carolyn Bernache, Dist 4 _X Doris Ellis, Dist 4 __X___ Alethea Ten Eyck-Sanders, Dist 3 __X__ Peggy Wilson, UMD X__ Also Present: Peggy Higgins, Staff Liaison and Laura Salers, Contract Secretary Call to Order Ms. Bernache called this special meeting to order at 6:30 pm at Jason’s Deli. Old Business Allocation of Grant Money: The City Council allocated 60K of the available 80K for use by the EAC for EAC projects. Up to 20K of these will used to fund the 96 applicants for Summer Camp Scholarships. The remaining approximately 40K was earmarked by the City council for the EAC to use for grants for city schools to support literacy improvement activities/programs. Due to the fact that the funding allocated is lower than the original EAC proposal, a discussion ensued to amend the grant awards. Ms. Higgins passed out copies of the original EAC grant recommendations as well as a copy of the College Park enrollment figures for all neighboring schools. Ms. Ten Eyck-Sanders made a motion to award $4,000 to each of the schools with the greatest number of city students (Hollywood, Paint Branch, Parkdale and Greenbelt Middle) and to award $3,000 to the remaining neighboring schools. (Cherokee Lane, High Point, University Park, Berwyn Heights, Buck Lodge, Hyattsville, Northwestern and College Park Academy) Motion was seconded by Ms. Mahoney. Motion passed. Ms. Powers made a motion to spread the extra funds (approximately $3,000) evenly between the four schools with the greatest number of city students. (Hollywood, Paint Branch, Parkdale and Greenbelt Middle) Seconded by Ms. Day. Motion passed. New Business Four Cities meeting Update: Ms. Higgins shared information from a recent Four Cities meeting. The Four Cities leaders met and discussed the need for better coordination among the coalition cities to support our local schools. The Four Cities agreed that their respective education committees should come together for a discussion to explore opportunities further. Greenbelt will take the lead and invite the other cities to a joint meeting. Ms. Higgins shared Councilman Kabir’s support of this collaborative meeting to develop shared initiatives for our schools. The College Park EAC agreed it is looking forward to meeting with members of New Carrollton, Berwyn Heights and Greenbelt’s education committee representatives. Essay Contest: The EAC will fine tune the requirements for the essay contest at their regular meeting on May 16. Summer Camp Scholarships: The scholarship notification letters for the first group of awardees have been mailed. If a family does not respond by the deadline, a copy of the letter will be sent to the school for distribution to the family and a phone call will be made as well. The same will be done with the second group of letters. A brief discussion regarding the funding forecast for next year. The EAC will need to explore other options for providing summer camp scholarships due to proposed reduced funding in the city budget. The EAC will explore requesting reduced fees from the University of Maryland for College Park residents. Another option would be to request the camps hold aside a number of slots for scholarship recipients to attend for free. This would allow more students to attend camp next year and stretch city dollars. Meeting Time: The topic of moving the EAC meetings earlier in the evening will be on the agenda for the May 16 meeting. Adjournment: Meeting adjourned at 7:25 pm.