Risk assessment recommended fixes, not an end to CCPS's Outdoor School overnights

The safety and security risk assessment that Carroll County school officials commissioned before voting 5-0 in June to end the overnight component of Outdoor School recommended repairs and procedural fixes, according to a copy obtained by Westminster Wire through a Maryland Public Information Act request. In the portions released, it does not recommend ending the overnight program.

Three months passed between the report and the vote. The district says that time was spent on staff analysis, legal review, discussions with the county and the Sheriff's Office, and monthly closed-session briefings to the board — sessions that are not public. Staff also developed cost estimates for the recommended repairs during that period; those figures have not been released. CCPS has said the risk assessment report was one of several inputs behind the board's decision.

The Outdoor School's future had come up in each of the previous two budget cycles. At the June 10 meeting, Superintendent Cynthia McCabe said that in the most recent of those cycles, staff had also referenced risk-management and liability concerns, separate from cost, and described how those concerns were removed from the budget process.

"In this most recent budget process, there were times in our presentations where we generally referenced risk-management concerns and we have had some different liability issues as well," she said. Board members, she said, had then asked her to take the issue out of the budget conversation: "You advised that we should review any concerns with liability and address them outside of a budget action."

So the district went to its insurer. "One of the first things we did was to contact our insurer and asked that they conduct a risk assessment of our outdoor school program," Jonathan O'Neal, CCPS's assistant superintendent of operations, told the board at that same meeting. The assessment was arranged through the Maryland Association of Boards of Education's Group Insurance Pool, which provides the district's coverage, and conducted by Unison Risk Solutions, a consulting and claims-administration arm of Unison Risk Advisors, the parent company of Baltimore-based RCM&D.

The firm proposed an on-site visit in a Feb. 27 email and estimated that it would take up to two and a half hours. Correspondence indicates the walkthrough took place on the following Monday, March 2. The cover letter names two district employees present: Cindy Ringley, CCPS's risk manager, and Outdoor School Principal Bryan Shumaker.

Three days after the walkthrough, on March 5, Ringley emailed the consultant a description of how the overnight program was staffed, relaying answers from the district's director of middle schools. That description would appear, nearly verbatim, in the final report.

The final report, running 45 pages, is dated March 8 and was emailed to Ringley on March 9. O'Neal told the board he received the results in March.

Its recommendations are physical and procedural. Fix unstable boardwalks around Lake Hashawha. Hire an arborist to survey hazard trees. Raise a dock guardrail and an interior balcony railing to a 42-inch standard. Add illuminated exit signs and panic-bar hardware in the cabins. Move the fire alarm from local sounding to central-station monitoring.

The executive brief, a two-page summary pictured below, calls the report "a practical roadmap to strengthen safety, security, and supervision" while "preserving the program's educational mission." Its overview notes that while the program shows "strong operational culture, experienced staffing, and effective medical protocols," there are opportunities to "modernize physical infrastructure, strengthen access control and surveillance, improve life-safety systems, and formalize documentation workflows."

On staffing, the report repeats what Ringley had sent on March 5. "At night when the students are sleeping, they are in cabins of about 6-10 students with 1 high school counselor supervising them," it reads. "There are 2 teachers (1 ODS and 1 hourly) sleeping in another cabin and a nurse in the main building who is on standby and will respond immediately to any call or concern."

That is three adults on site overnight. The assessment separately found the program's adult-to-child ratio "appears to be in line with best practices" and, counting volunteers and counselors, said the ratio "exceeds recommended 1:12 ratio for outdoor schools." It notes a standing policy of three people in a group at all times.

On site security, it calls for better signage marking restricted areas, notes that county maintenance staff do not log their activities in the Outdoor School's system, and says members of the public have been found in restricted areas and have become lost.

It also describes protections already in place: a gated entrance road, which report photographs show blocked by a gate arm and posted with a sign restricting public access beyond that point, an existing visitor check-in process, secured storage and equipment areas, and background checks completed for staff in accordance with CCPS requirements.

On the cabins, it says exit doors "are locked at night and there are alarms in place," with an alarm sounding at the staff cabin and the nurse's station. Fire extinguishers and smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are present in the main building and every cabin.

The report also identifies risks specific to overnight programs.

A section on liability exposure states that overnight programs are subject to a heightened standard of care. Because they involve minors in vulnerable settings, courts often apply a professional standard of care, "which is higher than a typical 'reasonable person' standard," and the duty extends to sleeping quarters. It identifies negligent supervision as "a leading cause of school liability" and says overnight stays increase that risk. Without strict policies on sleeping arrangements, counselor wakefulness and bathroom procedures, it says, "schools face high exposure to physical or sexual abuse claims." It notes that liability waivers signed by parents typically "do not protect schools against 'gross negligence' or 'willful misconduct,'" and adds that public schools may have some immunity protections under the Maryland Tort Claims Act.

The report also documents one incident, unrelated to the Outdoor School, in which "a person was struck and killed" by a falling tree or branch on the property. Separately, it says trees or branches have also fallen at Hashawha and struck people, or narrowly missed them, on other occasions.

CCPS withheld portions of both documents from Westminster Wire. The redactions cover surveillance coverage, security patrols, door and key control, and part of the emergency-preparedness section. One of them covers a line item on overnight supervision. Titled "Nighttime staff patrols in place," it has its evaluation and recommendation columns blacked out, except for a single visible sentence: "The nurse is available and the adult leaders are in a central cabin to assist as needed." Westminster Wire cannot rule out that the withheld passages address overnight supervision more pointedly than the released text does.

Three months passed between the report's delivery and the vote. The board discussed Outdoor School in closed session every month in between.

Asked by Westminster Wire what accounted for the interval, Carey Gaddis, CCPS's communications officer, wrote that "a lot of things occurred in that timeframe," including discussions with county government, which owns the property and facilities, and with the Sheriff's Office, along with staff analysis of the assessment and review with legal counsel.

She provided the schedule: risk-assessment findings and next steps went to the board on March 11. An Outdoor School progress update, which she described as covering the district's analysis and the development of cost estimates, followed on April 15. Legal advice on the program was on the closed-session agenda on May 13 and again on June 10, the day of the vote.

Gaddis did not cite a new incident or changed condition during that period, and none appears in the records released to Westminster Wire.

Staff also priced the repairs during those months. O'Neal told the board they developed remediation plans and "developed cost estimates for what those improvements would involve, both one-time costs or ongoing operating costs."

Those figures were not presented at the meeting and have not been released. Asked whether CCPS would release the estimates, Gaddis said the district did not make the costs public "as the Superintendent's ultimate recommendation was to end the overnight program and move to a day program." She said one-time estimates would have covered capital or physical site improvements, and that ongoing costs would have been mostly staffing-related, "although there may have been some other, smaller on-going operational costs."

O'Neal had also told the board that money was not the only obstacle. Beyond the budget question, he said, "there were some aspects that we were unable to find a solution or a remedy or a mitigation for. Some things we just fell short of being able to address." Asked by Westminster Wire which items those were, Gaddis declined to specify, writing only that "these were generally concerns with securing the site, particularly for the overnight program."

Ownership complicated any repairs. O'Neal told the June 10 meeting that CCPS owns neither the land nor the buildings at Hashawha, which belong to Carroll County government, leaving the district "sort of tenants." He said the county was addressing broader issues affecting the public park, but would defer improvements specific to the Outdoor School site to CCPS "to decide whether or not to remediate and to pay the bill."

The Carroll County government has already addressed some of the items mentioned in the assessment.

In an email to Westminster Wire, Christine Cambareri, the county's public relations manager, said the bridge connecting the Wetlands Classroom to the Stream Trail — the route she said the Outdoor School uses most — was repaired in April. The remaining lake boardwalk has been closed to visitors and is scheduled for removal, she said.

Cambareri said the county is evaluating a new boardwalk as part of a future stormwater management project, with any guardrails on it built to industry and safety standards. She also said a licensed arborist regularly inspects trees along Hashawha's trails and that hazards within 100 feet of a trail are removed. She said, “The county continues to evaluate and make repairs and upgrades at all its parks including Hashawha.“

The item reached the public agenda that Monday with no documents or explanation attached. Speakers at the meeting complained about that, and one said she learned a vote was coming from a newspaper the night before.

O'Neal told the board that staff had treated the insurer's assessment as one of several inputs. They also reviewed law enforcement coverage under Maryland's Safe to Learn Act, the 2018 law requiring every public school to have either a school resource officer or an adequate coverage plan, and decided to hold the county-owned cabins to the same standards CCPS applies to its own buildings.

"An insurance assessor is not going to know much about the Maryland Safe to Learn Act," O'Neal said. "So we looked at the overall picture in terms of that lens." He said the district consulted a member of Sheriff Jim DeWees's command staff on law enforcement coverage at the site. Westminster Wire reached out to Sheriff DeWees's office to ask about law enforcement coverage at the site, but did not receive a response.

The recommendation to end the overnights came first from Edmund O'Meally, the board's attorney and chair of the labor, employment, and education department at PK Law. He told the board the Hashawha property "is not secure" and that "any one of us at any time could go up to Hashawha and walk right up to those cabins, and it happens." He described "11 year olds spending the night there under the supervision of 16 year olds" as "dangerous."

O'Meally said some specifics could not be discussed in an open session. "When we talk about school security, we don't have a public discussion of where the cameras are located," he said. "That would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?"

O'Meally also drew on material beyond the assessment. Asked at the meeting to explain Maryland's Child Victims Act, which took effect Oct. 1, 2023, and eliminated the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims, O'Meally said roughly 12,000 plaintiffs statewide have sued entities including public school systems, private schools, churches, and camps. The largest share of those cases is against the state itself, he said, because of youth detention centers.

He said he is personally defending about 100 such cases across Maryland, six of them in Carroll County. His earliest, not a Carroll County case, alleges abuse from 1956.

"A situation that might occur in 2026, you could be defending that in 2046," he said. O'Meally told the board that same night, as it voted to retain his firm for another year, that he has advised the Carroll County board since 1986.

Board member Kristen Zihmer told the meeting that some of what the board had learned could not be fixed at any price.

"Even if we lived in the perfect world where we had all the money to institute all the necessary changes to make Outdoor School safe in the eyes of the insurance person or the folks who came out and did the threat assessments, even if we were able to do all of those things, there are still safety concerns that we would never be able to address even with all the money in the world," Zihmer said. She added that the board was not acting on minor concerns. "These are major things. And if I can't send my kids, I can't in good faith send your kids either."

Westminster Wire asked Zihmer which concerns she meant, whether they were documented in the assessment or anywhere else, and whether they were the same items O'Neal said staff could not find a mitigation for. She did not respond.

Board President Steve Whisler, presiding at the June 10 meeting, addressed the money question directly. "I know everyone out there's going to say it's about money," he told the meeting. "It's not about money. It's about student safety, the safety of our staff, and looking out for the taxpayers with regards to the risk of litigation and lawsuits that we could face as a school system."

Whisler also asked residents to accept that the board could not explain everything publicly. "We can't really share all of the things because of the risks, if exposed, might encourage a bad actor to take advantage of those vulnerabilities," he said. No one on the board wanted to see Outdoor School closed or changed, he said, and "we're turning over every rock we can to see if something can be done." He asked the public to "just trust your five board members."

The board voted 5-0 on a motion moved by Tara Battaglia and seconded by Zihmer, to modify the program.

What that means in practice: there is no Outdoor School program at all in 2026-27. The 2026-27 year is for planning, with a day program beginning in 2027-28, shifted from sixth grade to seventh.

O'Neal said the sixth graders who would have gone next year would attend as seventh graders instead, so no current student misses the curriculum entirely. He said the day program would not necessarily be held at Hashawha, and that staff would assess whether other sites around the county could reduce bus time, since a single shuttle run from the far corners of the district would leave students with only enough time for about two activities and lunch.

Before the vote closed, Whisler asked the district's Community Advisory Council and its curriculum council to work with the Outdoor School principal and staff on shaping the replacement. He said he wanted parents and administrators to "have a direct say in how we move forward."

The board's written statement, issued June 11, described the arrangement it said it would never approve today: sixth graders "sleeping overnight in cabins supervised primarily by high school students, on unfenced public property, with a single adult overnight."

The assessment, which carried a staffing description CCPS's risk manager had supplied three months earlier, counted three. So did Misti Kelly, a just-retired Outdoor School teacher, who told Westminster Wire in July that two teachers and a nurse were on site overnight.

The same statement said the site lacks the "controlled access, security measures, alarm systems, trained staff" of a school building and has "no perimeter fence" and "no dedicated overnight security." The assessment describes locked cabin doors with alarms sounding at the staff cabin and nurse's station and a visitor check-in process, and its photographs show a gated entrance road posted with a no-public-access sign. The absence of a perimeter fence is not disputed.

The statement also makes a narrower claim that the assessment does not contradict: that "there are not enough certified educators present during overnight hours to provide the level of supervision expected in today's environment." The report lists two teachers, one of whom is an hourly employee, and does not assess whether that meets a certification standard.

In emails obtained by Westminster Wire through its Maryland Public Information Act request, Ringley wrote to Melanie Wernig at MABE at 11:04 a.m. on June 11. The board “voted last night to approve the Superintendent's recommendation to pause the Outdoor School program for the 2026-27 school year,” she wrote, adding that a new day program was scheduled for 2027-28, possibly at CCPS properties in addition to Hashawha. She closed: “Thank you for your assistance in getting the site inspected.”

Wernig, whose email signature gives her title as MABE's deputy director of insurance programs, replied 85 minutes later. "Thank you for the update," she wrote. "Based on some of the concerns I am happy to hear this. I am glad we were able to assist."

Wernig did not say which concerns she meant. It is the only place in the records released to Westminster Wire where anyone on the insurance side offers a view of the decision itself, rather than of conditions at the site. The written assessment her office arranged recommended repairs and did not address whether the overnight program should continue.

Westminster Wire asked Wernig to explain the remark, and asked directly whether the Group Insurance Pool had raised any concern with CCPS about coverage, premium or insurability tied to the overnight program. She declined to answer either question. "We prefer that you direct any questions to our member, CCPS," she wrote.

The assessment was one input, and not the only one. Board members also received legal advice in four closed sessions between March and June, none of which is public, and O'Meally told the June 10 meeting that specific vulnerabilities could not be discussed in open session. Neither the public nor Westminster Wire has seen that material, and it may answer some of the questions the released records do not.

What is not public: the dollar figures, the specific security concerns O'Neal said staff could not solve, and the withheld portions of the assessment, including the line on nighttime patrols.

Asked by Westminster Wire for comment on the differences between the assessment and the board's public statements, Unison Risk Solutions said a confidentiality obligation to MABE, its client, prevented it from discussing "the engagement, the report, or related materials," and referred those questions to MABE. MABE’s contact, Wernig, had separately declined to answer questions about her own email, referring Westminster Wire to CCPS.

Westminster Wire has covered the Outdoor School decision, including an initial report on the June 10 vote, a follow-up on the board's post-vote statement, a summary of unanswered questions about the decision, and a retired teacher's challenge to the board's account.

Have tips or other news to share? Submit them here.