Baltimore County Public Schools is the school district in charge of all public schools in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. It is the 25th largest school system in the US as of 2013. The school system is managed by the board of education, headquartered in Towson. The superintendent is Darryl L. Williams, appointed by the School Board on June 11, 2019.
Schools
All areas in Baltimore County are unincorporated; as there are no incorporated cities in Baltimore County, all place names are neighborhoods, and have no legal jurisdiction over their areas. There are currently 106 elementary schools, 30 middle schools, and 25 high schools in the district. A number of these are magnet schools that students from any part of Baltimore County can apply to attend. In addition, there is one charter school and several specialty schools.
In the mid-1980s, Baltimore County shifted the grades in the intermediate-level schools. Until this time, the schools were called "junior high schools" and had grades 7–9. The 9th grade was moved into the high school and the 6th grade was moved in from nearby elementary schools, creating the current "middle school" model with grades 6–8.
Demographics
BCPS has a $1.76 billion budget as per 2016, with a total enrollment of 111,127 students. The majority of its students are white (42.1%) and a 38.8% black student enrollment. Asians and Latinos are a minority with 6.7% and 7.7% enrollment respectively. In 2014, Sean McComb of Patapsco High School was named National Teacher of the Year. Superintendent S. Dallas Dance was appointed to the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans in August 2014. The school system was accepted into the prestigious 32-member League of Innovative Schools in February 2013. BCPS is the only school system in Maryland to be designated as ISO 9001 international certification for management.
Leadership
The school district is led by superintendent Darryl Williams and his respective cabinet, consisting of a chief of staff as well as academic, communications, administrative operations, and human resource officers.
Notable events
On November 24, 2020, the school system's computer network suffered a ransomware attack suspected to be due to Ryuk malware. County school officials characterized it as "a catastrophic attack on our technology system" and said it could be weeks before recovery is complete. The school system's director of information technology said, "This is a ransomware attack which encrypts data as it sits and does not access or remove it from our system". Prior to the crippling malware attack, state auditors from the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits performed a periodic audit of the Baltimore County School System's computer network in 2019. They found several vulnerabilities in the system, such as insufficient monitoring of security activities, publicly accessible servers not isolated from the school system's internal network, and a lack of "intrusion detection ... for untrusted traffic". Avi Rubin, Technical Director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said the auditors' discovery of "computers that were running on the internal network with no intrusion detection capabilities" was of particular concern. Although the final report by the Maryland Office of Legislative Audits was released on November 19, 2020, the auditors initially warned the school system of its findings in October 2019.
Students and Teachers Accessing Tomorrow (S.T.A.T.) To create 21st century learning environments that allow for student-centered learning experiences within the school system's "Framework for Teaching and Learning", Baltimore County Public Schools has established Students and Teachers Accessing Tomorrow (S.T.A.T.). S.T.A.T. is aligned with the school system's "Theory of Action", part of which is to "ensure that every school has an equitable, effective digital learning environment". The work that supports S.T.A.T.'s goals includes the district's conversions of curriculum, instruction, assessment, organizational development, infrastructure, communications, policy, and budget.