Maryland State Board of Education President Joshua Michael, center, gives remarks during Tuesday’s meeting in Baltimore, where an emergency measure on students charged with serious crimes was approved. Photo by William J. Ford.
The Maryland State Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday to approve an emergency rule requiring that school leaders be notified if a student charged with “serious criminal offenses” is about to enroll in their school.
School leaders were previously allowed, but not required, to share such information with other schools. Tuesday’s emergency action changed one word – from “may” to “shall” – in the policy on sharing records of students charged with “reportable offenses,” which include serious criminal offenses such as murder, arson and armed carjacking.
The change comes a week after Howard County Police arrested a 17-year-old student at Howard High School in connection with the Oct. 9 fatal shooting of Kendrick McLellan, 26, who was found dead inside a car in a Columbia office building parking lot on Oct. 12. A 14-year-old from Severn has also been arrested in connection with the killing.
Howard County school officials said they had not been alerted to the fact that the 17-year-old Ellicott City resident – who had a handgun in his backpack at the time of his Oct. 15 arrest – had been charged in another county and was under Department of Juvenile Services supervision before he enrolled in Howard High School.
“The lack of information sharing meant that the HCPSS (Howard County Public School System) superintendent was not fully apprised before he made decisions about the placement of the student such as how and where to educate the student, as well as any necessary safety planning for the school community,” three state lawmakers said in a letter Monday to State Superintendent Carey Wright.
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The letter – from Sens. Clarence Lam (D-Howard and Anne Arundel) and Katie Fry Hester (Howard and Montgomery) and Del. Courtney Watson (D-Howard) – asked for immediate changes from the state Department of Education, including issuing guidance for all 24 school systems to transfer all “appropriate information and records” of students who are transferring, or have transferred within the past year.
They also asked for the change to the regulations on sharing student information, and for a full review on recommendations to share information between schools “in order to avoid similar future circumstances.”
Wright told reporters during a break in Tuesday’s meeting that the board has done everything lawmakers asked for in their letter.
“Would we have loved to have done something like this earlier? Absolutely. I think that goes without saying,” said Wright, while being careful to note that the changes were not made because of the Howard County incident. “But now that we are where we are, we feel that we’ve taken some very strong stance where this is concerned.”
While the board asked for the policy to take effect immediately, it must still be approved by the legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative, Executive and Legislative Review.
‘Really like this job’
News of the arrest of the 17-year-old – who Howard County police said was “under supervision of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services and on an ankle monitor for a previous incident in another jurisdiction” – renewed calls by Republicans for the ouster of DJS Secretary Vincent Schiraldi.
The General Assembly’s Joint Republican Caucus said in an Oct. 1 letter to Gov. Wes Moore (D) that the incident was just the latest in a year of “catastrophic failures” at DJS under Schiraldi’s administration. The Senate Republican Caucus followed on Friday with a letter to Moore that played on his time in the military, urging him to “relieve” Schiraldi “of his command.”
The Maryland Sheriffs’ Association followed Monday a letter calling on Moore to immediately demand Schiraldi’s resignation. While it was endorsed by most sheriffs, the letter was not signed by sheriffs in many of the state’s biggest jurisdictions – Anne Arundel, Charles, Howard, Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.
“Consistently in Maryland, juveniles have been charged with serious violent crimes, only to be turned right back over to a parent or guardian, and back out on the streets to commit more crimes,” wrote Carroll County Sheriff James T. Weiss, president of the association. “Secretary Schiraldi’s policies are dangerous and sadly result in creating new victims on a daily basis.”
Maryland Department of Juvenile Services Secretary Vincent N. Schiraldi. Photo by Bryan P. Sears.
Schiraldi said Tuesday evening that he is not planning to go anywhere.
“No. I really like this job,” he said, when asked about the campaign against him.
Schiraldi declined to comment on specific cases, but said he understands the “fear” of some lawmakers and residents.
However, “I think that often gets worse during presidential election years because there’s a lot of talk about crime going up and how our cities are all dystopias,” when in fact crime is going down, he said. Schiraldi noted that 94.6% of youth on electronic monitoring “don’t get arrested.”
“That’s a successful program. That’s not a failure, but I don’t think most people know that,” he said. “We need to work harder explaining that to elected officials, prosecutors, to law enforcement and folks in the media. Do better and communicate better.”
For residents and lawmakers who want to see violent youth offenders locked up in “secure facilities,” he noted that there has been a 20% increase of youth in DJS custody since he arrived. But that cannot be the only answer, he said.
“We don’t want to overuse it,” Schiraldi said. “We want to make sure that we are selecting, and the judges are selecting kids for community services who can benefit from them. If you put a kid into locked custody who could be in the community, you make that kid’s chances of reoffending worse.”
Moore, at the groundbreaking Monday of a hospital in Easton, was asked about Schiraldi, whom he appointed last year.
“Everybody is working together to ensure that our community is going to be safe,” Moore said. “Our administration has two priorities: We’re going to increase accountability and we are going to increase opportunities for our young people. That is the vision that we have for our administration and everybody in my administration understands that, including Secretary Schiraldi.”
– Report Danielle J. Brown contributed to this report from Easton.