We just are coming off of February, during which we celebrate Black History Month. And in many of our schools, we had celebrations and our Board of Education members attended various programs in February.

Specifically, we honor Black history through focusing on the achievements and contributions of Black Americans.

Each of our schools held special events and exhibits throughout the month. At Galena Elementary School, classroom doors were decorated to dive into Black experiences and Black history. H.H. Garnet Elementary School hosted local Black readers and speakers in classrooms, as well as the brothers of Eta Eta Lambda for an assembly. Rock Hall Elementary School had another successful Black history books-and-breakfast experience, including local resources provided by Sumner Hall and an amazing display by the Chesapeake Heartlands program on women in the waterman profession. In the afternoon, students learned all about stepping, a dance style which originated in African American fraternities and sororities.

Teacher leaders from every school participated in the Culturally Responsive Teaching professional learning program.

I am so grateful for the many ways our schools and school systems celebrate local and famous African Americans and their contributions.

And looking forward, we know March is Women's History Month, and so I'll be excited to share with you all the celebrations that our schools are doing to elevate that aspect of our collective history.

I also want to take a moment to highlight that we are focused on trying to build out resources for parents to support academic achievement. Tonight's highlight is going to be focused on our math curriculum. Illustrative Math is the curriculum that we use, and they have extensive Parent Resources in many languages.

We just finished building out these parent resources on our website last week. What you'll see is every single grade level, every single unit and every lesson within that Illustrative Math curriculum. There are corresponding parent resources that help you help your child at home learn the math.

We'll continue to bring forward highlights of our Parent Resources website.

I also want to do a shout out that next week, March 19, is our Spring Conference Day. So if you need to connect with your students' teachers, now's the time to do that.

It's hard to believe that we're already in the third quarter — in the middle of the third quarter — and before we know it, spring break will be here.

And then last but not least, I want to provide you with an update on our middle school project replacement building.

Last week, I had the opportunity, as did our community, to communicate to the Maryland State Senate Budget and Taxation Committee our desire to seek additional construction funds to build a new middle school building or "replacement building," as they say in state construction terms.

We had, in total, over 750 written responses that came through us and we had additional community resources. The Support Our Schools community group submitted another 50 letters.

So in total, we had over 800 written testimonies submitted to the Maryland Senate Budget and Taxation Committee advocating for us.

In addition to us testifying last Tuesday, March 4, in person in Annapolis, we were granted the opportunity to have a follow-up conversation with the vice chair of the committee, Sen. Jim Rosapepe. Last Friday, myself, Sen. Stephen S. Hershey Jr., who's our sponsoring senator for this legislation, and our consultant Dr. David Lever met to go over in greater detail our construction project and why we're requesting additional state funds to build our middle school.

So that is our most up to date status of our project.

I'll continue to keep you informed, but as far as I'm concerned, we are still in the game. No one has said no yet and put it to rest, so we are still advocating diligently to try to get additional funds to build our middle school on schedule.