Stephen Jascourt's Testimony at the Board of Education: Oct. 30, 2025

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to testify in front of the board and Dr. Taylor. My name is Stephen Jascourt and I am a parent of a child who will be in the second fully-phased in year in the proposed region 2 in the proposed 6-region academic programs model. I would like to focus your attention on the criteria-based programs, because as you have heard from others, it takes many years of building a program and teacher development and strong student cohorts for the program to become special. Many years ago, I attended the Eleanor Roosevelt Science and Technology Center in Greenbelt in neighboring Prince George’s County – a test-in program similar to the Math, Science, and Computer Science magnets at Blair and Poolesville. At the time, it was the only such program in that county, and it attracted the most talented, motivated, and dedicated students and parents from across the entire county and teachers from all across the region and beyond willing to suffer long commutes just to teach at Eleanor Roosevelt. As a result, it had a culture of excellence across the board, in math and science and also many other areas. For example, the orchestra finished second among 54 in an international competition in Vienna, Austria.  

How are we going to have the concentration of top talent and top motivation if we dilute the program into 6 regions? How will Blair’s program maintain its quality if the student and teacher pipelines are spread thin? Region 4 sends more than 4 times as many students to the program at Blair as region 3 and region 5 send to these programs at Blair and Poolesville, which are outside of all 3 of those regions. How will the regions as proposed be able to have equitable criteria-based programs for Math, Science, and Computer Science? Are there other criteria-based programs that should also be viewed in this light? I hope Dr. Taylor and the Board will take the time to carefully and thoughtfully consider these questions, gather community input, seriously study this matter, and revise the proposal accordingly. 

 Thank you very much.