Public Comment given by a MCPS Speech-Language Pathologist in response to Superintendent Thomas W. Taylor's surprise gutting of Special Education support personnel in December of 2025.
January 15, 2026:
Protecting Students’ Ability to Communicate
By
Maintaining a Stand-Alone Supervisor for MCPS Speech and Language Services Good evening,
My name is Amy Thek. I am an MCPS Speech-Language Pathologist, and I am here tonight
because I believe in something very simple:
A student who can communicate, even without words, is a student who can learn,
belong, and be safe.
Speech-language services are how thousands of MCPS students find their ability to
communicate, to find their voice.
Right now, MCPS is in the process of making a structural change that would weaken the system
that protects these students. The district is eliminating the stand-alone Speech and Language
Services Supervisor and moving Speech and Language Services under a general administrative
umbrella that oversees multiple departments.
And that is why I am so deeply concerned.
I have worked as a speech-language pathologist in this district for more than two decades. I
have served students in preschool, elementary, middle; in special education programs such as
SESES, PEP, Autism, and Deaf and Hard of Hearing. I have worked with students who could
not ask for help, who could not tell someone when they were scared, and who could not explain
what they needed.
One kindergarten student I worked with could not tell his teacher when he was confused or hurt.
He screamed. He hit. He shut down. Not because he was defiant, but because he had no way
to communicate.
After months of speech-language therapy, he learned to say, “Help me,” “I don’t understand,”
and “Stop.”
That did not just change his behavior. It changed the entire school experience for him and his
classmates.
That is what speech-language services do. And those services only work when there is a
strong, clinically led system behind them.
Parents also feel this impact. They’ve shared how their children went from being "invisible" and
frustrated—unable to express needs or make friends—to actively participating in class and
sharing their day. Speech therapy didn't just provide a means of communication; it gave them
dignity.
That dignity does not come from organizational charts or paperwork. It comes from a system
that is properly led, protected, and clinically guided.
Speech-language pathology is not a generic support service. It is a licensed, regulated clinical
service. It directly affects literacy, behavior, mental health, access to instruction, and student
safety.
That is why MCPS has maintained a dedicated, clinically qualified Speech and Language
Supervisor over the past 40 years. Someone whose responsibility is to ensure that over 12,000
students receive speech and language services that are legally mandated, appropriate,
compliant, and based on sound clinical judgment.
Under this change, students are the ones who will feel the impact first. Without a certified
Speech and Language Supervisor, students are going to experience missed IEP services,
delayed evaluations, inappropriate dismissals, inconsistent therapy, and breakdowns in services
when staffing changes occur.
Our department currently supports over 320 full-time equivalent SLPs.
We are in the middle of a national SLP shortage. School systems across the country are
struggling to recruit and retain licensed clinicians. MCPS is no different. When districts remove
clinical leadership and place SLPs under non-specialized supervision, clinicians leave for
districts that respect their expertise and provide professional support.
If this position is eliminated, MCPS will lose many of its own experienced clinicians, and the
students who rely on them will lose continuity of care.
Especially the students who are most impacted: students with autism, complex communication
needs, multilingual learners, and students in our highest-needs schools.
But those students cannot come to this podium.
Their parents are not always able to navigate the system. They rely on us to protect the systems
that protect their children.
A student’s ability to communicate is powerful and necessary.
A system that protects that ability is essential.
Do not remove the one position whose responsibility is to protect students’ communication
services.
Our students deserve better than that.
MCPS Speech and Language Services requires focused, clinically qualified leadership, not
oversight divided across multiple departments.
Thank you.
Maintaining a Stand-Alone Supervisor for MCPS Speech and Language Services
Good evening. My name is Amy Thek. I am a Speech-Language Pathologist in MCPS, and I am
here tonight because I care deeply about the children and families we serve and about the
professionals who work every day to help those children find their voices.
I am asking you to protect something that matters a great deal to our students and to our staff:
that MCPS Speech and Language Services continues to be led by one dedicated, certified
Speech-Language Pathologist, not folded under a general administrator who oversees many
departments.
Currently, Speech and Language Services sits in the Department of Special Education Pre
Kindergarten and Related Services with its own clinically qualified SLP Supervisor whose sole
responsibility is protecting speech-language services. Under the proposed move to a
Department of Special Education Related Services, that structure disappears. One supervisor
will now be responsible not only for Speech and Language Services, but also for Deaf and Hard
of Hearing, Vision Services, Physical Disabilities and High-Incidence Assistive Technology.
These are all highly specialized, regulated programs with completely different clinical standards,
service models, and compliance requirements. No single supervisor - especially one without
SLP licensure - can meaningfully oversee the thousands of IEP service minutes, evaluations,
legal timelines, and clinical decisions required to protect speech-language services while also
running all of those other departments. The result is predictable: Speech and Language
Services will no longer have a real voice when decisions are made about staffing, caseloads,
service delivery models, or compliance with IEPs and federal law. Without an SLP in a
leadership role, decisions will be driven by budget, scheduling, and administrative convenience
rather than by clinical standards, student communication needs, or legal requirements.
And that is why I am worried.
Speech and language services are not just another support on a checklist. When a child cannot
communicate, they cannot learn, they cannot make friends, and they cannot fully participate in
school. We are licensed clinicians who diagnose and treat speech, language, fluency, voice,
social communication, and motor-speech disorders. We write legally binding IEP services and
we are accountable to state and federal law and to a national Code of Ethics.
This work needs clinical leadership.
For decades, MCPS has understood that. Speech and Language Services has always been led
by an SLP, someone who has done this work and understands what is at stake when it is not
done well. That leadership has kept students safe, supported staff, and kept the system running
in a way that is both ethical and legal.
Putting Speech and Language Services under a general administrative umbrella breaks that.
A non-SLP can track paperwork. But they cannot determine whether a child’s speech goals are
clinically appropriate, whether therapy is being delivered in a way that can actually produce
change, or whether a student is failing because of their disability or because the program is not
designed correctly. They cannot look at data and know if a child is truly making progress,
plateauing, or regressing. They cannot evaluate whether an IEP goal is evidence-based,
whether services are being delivered with fidelity, or whether a child who cannot speak is being
given a meaningful opportunity to communicate. Those judgments require licensed clinical
expertise
And when clinical leadership disappears, quality turns into compliance, and children are the
ones who lose.
Right now, Speech and Language Services serves more than 12,000 students across 211
schools with more than 320 full-time equivalent SLPs. The need grows every year. At the same
time, we are in a national shortage of speech-language pathologists.
There are more open jobs than there are SLPs to fill them.
Fewer clinicians are choosing school-based work.
Graduate programs cannot keep up with demand.
And more children than ever need services.
This is not a short-term problem. This is the reality of our profession.
MCPS is still able to function in this crisis because Speech and Language Services runs its own
clinician-led recruitment and staffing system. We know licensure rules. We know supervision
requirements. We know what it means to be a school-based SLP. People do not come to MCPS
because of a generic job posting. They come because they talk to SLP leaders who understand
them, their training, and their profession. That connection is what brings people here and what
keeps them here.
Our department also tracks vacancies in real time, works directly with principals, manages
transfers, recruits nationally, and places contractor SLPs when MCPS clinicians are not
available. These decisions are made based on student needs and clinical realities, not
convenience.
That is how we keep services running.
Contractor SLPs are not used casually. In-person services are prioritized for Pre-K, special
schools, self-contained programs, and students with complex needs. Virtual services are used
only when there is no other option, and they are closely monitored and changed as soon as an
in-person SLP becomes available.
This system works because it is run by clinicians.
Every SLP in MCPS is bound by a national Code of Ethics. We are required to do what is right
for children. When decisions are made by people without clinical training, it puts us in
impossible positions and it puts the district at risk of legal and ethical violations.
That is why a certified SLP Supervisor matters.
And MCPS already has that safeguard. It is working.
Speech and Language Services is not one person. It is a countywide clinical system. The
Supervisor, six Support SLPs, and an Instructional Specialist support all the SLPs, IEPs,
meetings, Pre-K programs and services, services in private and parochial schools, diagnostic
evaluations, staffing, allocations for all schools, vacancy coverage, professional learning,
Clinical Fellows, hiring, and contractors just to name a few.
This is how services stay consistent and safe, no matter where a child attends school.
Under SLP leadership, Speech and Language Services also successfully led the overhaul of the
Medical Assistance billing platform, a complex, multi-year effort that will improve compliance
and increase revenue for MCPS. That only happened because the people leading the work
understood both the clinical side and the system side.
Please do not dismantle something that is protecting children just because it looks simpler on
paper.
Speech-Language Pathology is specialized, regulated, and high-stakes work. Our students,
families, and clinicians rely on having a stand-alone, clinically-qualified SLP supervisor, and we
cannot afford to lose this leadership.
More than 12,000 students across 211 schools are counting on you.
Please stand with them. Please protect the system that serves them.
Thank you.
