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https://parentscoalitionmd.substack.com/p/surprise-taylor-moving-495-buses
Dedicated to improving responsiveness and performance of Montgomery County Public Schools
From Fox29 Philadelphia, reporter Isabel Soisson. To read the full story go here.
The new law, which was signed by Gov. Josh Shapiro in February, makes it so "instruction in cursive handwriting or joined italics" will be taught at the "appropriate grade levels."
What we know:
The law amends the state’s Public School Code of 1949 to add printing, joined italics and cursive handwriting to the required writing curriculum for all students.
The legislation received bipartisan support in the General Assembly, passing the House 195‑8 and the Senate 42‑5 before being signed by the governor.
The mandate officially goes into effect on April 12.
What they're saying:
The bill was sponsored in the Pennsylvania Senate by Sen. Wayne Langerholic (R-Clearfield), who said in a statement issued last month that "by reintegrating cursive into the curriculum…we are investing in our students’ cognitive development, strengthening their legal preparedness and preserving their connection to historical literacy."
The House sponsor, Rep. Dane Watro (R‑Luzerne/Schuylkill), said proponents believe the skill supports fine motor development and access to historical documents written in script.
Recent presentations to the Montgomery County Board of Education utilized a specific data visualization to argue that housing growth has “decoupled” from student enrollment. This chart has been cited as a primary justification for consequential infrastructure decisions, including the proposed closure of Wootton High School. As a data science professional with nearly two decades of experience in time series analysis, I have audited this visualization and found it to be methodologically invalid. The presentation relies on mismatched axes, hidden baselines, and a known statistical anomaly to manufacture a divergence that does not exist in the raw data.
The Images shared with the BOE (WRONG)...
https://parentscoalitionmd.substack.com/p/the-images-shared-with-the-mcps-board
She said MCPS leadership informed them of a potential vote by athletics directors but would give them another notice prior to the vote. She said the gymnastics coaches were also promised the opportunity for public comment periods.
"At the very best it's a bait and switch at the very worse its a bold face lie," Shaibani told 7News during a phone call.
It wasn't until a coach at another school was told by an Athletics Director about the vote that Shaibani said she even knew of the decision.
She added that only two gymnastic coaches were told of the decision in a formal statement and said they were given very few opportunities to talk with MCPS athletic leaders on how to keep the program...
...While well-intentioned, this bill would place a costly mandate on county governments to carry out new state policies to create sidewalks and crosswalks as alternative routes for all public-school students. MACo does not raise policy objections to the bill’s goal of ensuring safe routes for students – county concerns are merely practical and cost-driven...
“I think this is just a bunch of bull,” said board Vice President Brenda Wolff after presenting a resolution, which failed, that would have given the school until December to solve the issues. “I’m very disappointed in some of this discussion because we don’t have all of our schools that are successful in our own system, and we don’t give them three months to improve.”
The board voted 5-2 to approve a resolution based on Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Thomas Taylor’s December recommendation to begin formal proceedings for revoking MBLI’s charter. The recommendation to revoke the charter earned 5 votes from board members Rita Montoya, Laura Stewart, Julie Yang, Karla Silvestre and Student Member of the Boa/rd Anuva Maloo...
...A local parents' group wants to see the contract between the Bethesda-based company and MCPS.
"This has not been discussed at the Board of Education. This has not had any procurement process so once again, we see MCPS making a deal with a company behind closed doors," said Janis Sartucci of the Parents'Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland.
The Coalition filed a Maryland Public Information Act request to secure a copy of the contract between VOLT AI and MCPS.
"There's an agreement with a company that's going to effectively be able to watch students in hallways, and there's no documentation that's been made public," Sartucci said.
Sartucci showed 7News a letter she received from MCPS saying, "There are no contracts, invoices, receipts, or purchase orders from VOLT AI. The 30-day pilot program is a no-cost agreement."
She also told us at a meeting earlier this month, MCPS Chief Safety Officer Marcus Jones assured the school community that lawyers from both sides had thoroughly vetted the agreement between the school system and VOLT AI...
Once again, we're reprinting this article, which we first published on March 3, 2012. Because it's always time to celebrate Girl Scouts.
Girl Scout Cookies are now available, and the Girl Scouts have a nifty app to show us where to buy our cookies this year. To find your local girl scout cookies, go here.

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In 2006, MCPS was stopped by the Montgomery County Council from moving Seven Locks Elementary School to another site after a scathing report was released by the Montgomery County Inspector General. The IG found that MCPS had fibbed about construction costs.
A few weeks after the IG's report was released the County Council defunded the project and Seven Locks Elementary School was not moved.
The superintendent's plan had been to hand the existing site over to developers.
Here's the timeline of what happened:
FEBRUARY, 2006: Montgomery County Inspector General Thomas Dagley releases a 25-page report that faults MCPS for providing misleading and inflated cost data about renovating Seven Locks Elementary and failing to provide the board and council with information about two less costly options on the site. The report also states that MCPS misrepresented community sentiment in reports to the board and council. In response, Councilmember Howard Denis (R-1) says he’ll introduce a CIP amendment to halt plans to build on Kendale and instead build a new school on the current Seven Locks site...
https://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2006/feb/14/seven-locks-controversy-timeline/
The Montgomery County Council affirmed March 28 that it will not fund the construction of an elementary school on Kendale Road in Potomac — an outcome that was nearly inconceivable three months ago...
https://www.connectionnewspapers.com/news/2006/mar/28/if-not-kendale-then-what/
Notes from the PTSA meeting held at BCC High School on February 18, 2026.
The topic of the meeting was the surprise announcement of a pilot of the VOLT AI system. MCPS Director of Security Marcus Jones was the only speaker on this topic. No representatives from VOLT AI spoke.
Director Jones said that MCPS was approached and offered a no cost, 30 day trial of the VOLT AI product.
The 30 day pilot will be at three schools: Seneca Valley HS because it is the largest high school in the state of Maryland, BCC High School because it is urban, and Magruder High School because it is suburban. They asked the principals if they would participate. The pilot will begin March 2nd.
Director Jones said this is the "evaluation phase." There will be weekly reports and a final report. MCPS schools already have cameras. The VOLT AI system will only be on 30 cameras per school. Each school has about 200 cameras. Currently, existing MCPS cameras are not monitored.
A question was asked about what data MCPS currently has on incidents at schools and if that data would be used to compare to to the data generated from the VOLT AI pilot. Director Jones said there isn't any data and you can't know what will happen in a school any given week. There are no plans to evaluate data and no metrics for evaluating the system were stated.
The agreement to do this pilot was reviewed by MCPS legal counsel.
Director Jones said that nothing is off the table with regard to school security.
Once installed, MCPS will run tests to see how VOLT AI responds. They will set up test scenarios and see response. A human at VOLT AI will receive the alerts, review the video and contact MCPS. A question was asked about where the VOLT AI human was located, the answer was USA.
VOLT AI will retain the video for 30 days and then it will be deleted.
Director Jones said he can not speak to the cost of VOLT AI. He said he is not the decision maker. The decision maker are the elected officials. Even though VOLT AI is from Bethesda, they won't be given preference.
Director Jones will not tell principals how to use the information from VOLT AI.
Eventually, as the comments continued, Taylor told families he knew his responses would be “unfulfilling and unsatisfactory,” and then ended the meeting.
“That was very embarrassing,” one parent said. “We came here because we expected that they were going to answer our questions, but unfortunately, they didn’t answer our questions.”..