Bill Qian Testimony at August 21, 2025 Board of Education Meeting

Good afternoon, Dr. Taylor and members of the board, My name is Bill Qian, and I am a rising junior in the STEM program at Montgomery Blair High School. I am here today to discuss my concerns with the new program changes regarding a shift from countywide programs to a regional model.  

For many students, including me, the most important thing that a program can bring to us is a community of like-minded individuals. The STEM program at Blair fosters a close environment of students with similar passions, providing a sense of belonging and a source of healthy competition and support. Splitting the countywide programs into 6 smaller regional programs will inevitably weaken these communities heavily, defeating one of the main motivations for attending a program.  

While I believe that access to programs is a big problem in MCPS, this regional model will not be an effective solution. In addition to the problems mentioned before, the new model is expected to be complete by 2027, which is nowhere near enough time to transition successfully. It takes time to find and train teachers who are capable of running special classes, and doing it within 2 years for one program is already difficult, but doing it for 6 is impossible.  

Furthermore, the model mentions how it will fix the problem of long travel times that current students in programs deal with. However, under the new regional model, some students endure commute times of more than an hour, which is even longer than many commutes currently.  

In the end, the regional model not only fails to solve many of the issues it was created for, but also destroys programs and communities that students have cherished for decades, something that takes years to build back up. We should instead expand and replicate the already successful programs. I highly urge you to consider the consequences of accepting the regional model and what students decades into the future would lose. Thank you.