Montgomery County committees press for clearer OST data and back expansion of Excel Beyond the Bell

The Joint Education and Culture and the Planning, Housing and Parks committees of the Montgomery County Council on Monday pressed county staff and school officials for clearer, de-duplicated data on out-of-school-time (OST) programs and agreed to advance two Executive-recommended enhancements to Excel Beyond the Bell (EBB).

Committee members voted by consensus to send forward the Executive's budget recommendation to expand EBB to Waters Landing and East Silver Spring elementary schools and to add a program manager position to support the expansion. Ms. Cummings (S3), the committee staff presenter, said the expansion item appears on the staff report with an estimated cost of $688,246 and that a program manager would be required to administer at least one additional site.

Why it matters: Council members said they need reliable, comparable metrics to judge whether OST investments are reaching unique youth or merely reflect duplicated reporting across providers. Without that clarity, members warned, budget decisions could appear misleading and make it difficult to target resources.

"We have 23 organizations and businesses across the county that are committed to the network," said Sydney Wilson Hunter (S4), director of out-of-school-time programs at the Collaboration Council, describing the network advisory group and centralized reporting work. Hunter and staff described progress on a centralized OST budget report and on building data-sharing relationships among county agencies and community providers.

Several council members said the chart shown to the committee conflated different measures. "I'm a little confused as to what this chart is telling us," Co-chair Friedson (S2) said, noting the slide mixed public budgets and self-reported youth counts in a way that could mislead readers into thinking funding had become dramatically more efficient. Friedson urged staff to produce either unique-youth counts or alternative metrics such as total service hours.

MCPS out-of-school-time coordinator Jennifer Strobel (S11) told the committee that grant-funded programs carry external evaluation requirements. "Each of the grants is for approximately $400,000 and they're each for three years," Strobel said, describing external evaluators who collect attendance, test scores and behavioral data for those grantees. She said several programs expanded through 21st Century Learning Center grants and that summer programs achieved strong pass rates for the students served.

Hope McGuire (S12), supervisor of community schools, said an umbrella memorandum of understanding (MOU) between Montgomery County Recreation and Montgomery County Public Schools that includes a data-sharing component is nearing completion and is expected to be in place before the next school year. Committee members requested that staff circulate the finalized MOU and improved reporting materials before a scheduled July follow-up meeting.

Council members pressed for an interim fix to presentation format and recommended that staff submit data in advance of future meetings so that members can review inputs and metrics ahead of discussion. They also asked staff to clarify which dollar figures on the slide represent county investments versus full budgets of private providers and whether county funds that pass through to private providers are separately identifiable.

What happens next: The committee agreed to advance the EBB expansion and the manager position in the recommended budget package and scheduled a July joint-session follow-up to review a signed MOU and improved, clarified reporting on unique youth served, service hours and funding flows. The committee's action was recorded as a recommendation to move the Executive's enhancements forward; no roll-call vote was recorded in the transcript.

Sources: Remarks and data cited in this article came from the committee presentation and the following speakers: Ms. Cummings (S3), Sydney Wilson Hunter (S4), Jennifer Strobel (S11), Hope McGuire (S12), Co-chair Friedson (S2) and committee Chair (S1).