Make free public schools part of MCPS Strategic Plan

Testimony to Montgomery County Board of Education
July 15, 2008

The Board of Education’s Strategic Plan is missing a key goal. The Strategic Plan is used by principals to run their schools and to formulate their school improvement plans. It is crucial then that it convey to MCPS administrators the primary purpose of the school system, to fulfill the mandate of the Maryland Constitution to provide a system of free public schools.

Included in the mandate of a system of free public schools is that textbooks, materials of instruction and supplies are to be provided free of charge for use in the public schools.

However, as I have testified to you before, students at Churchill High School have been forced to purchase textbooks when taking certain courses. After last year’s publicity you probably assumed that the practice stopped. It did not. However, I can report that our student did not have to purchase any textbooks this year. Each and every time a teacher attempted to require him to purchase instructional materials; he educated the teacher as to the state law by pulling out a copy of the law from his wallet.

He may have been the only student at Churchill High School who received a free and public education as mandated by state law.

The disregard for this law permits some to charge as much as they like for public school classes.

For example, our student signed up for a Chorus Class as part of Churchill’s Performing Arts Signature Program. The class listing in the course guide made no mention of a class fee. However, in October we received an e-mail listing the names of the families who had already paid the first installment of the $1,120 class fee. The e-mail advised those of us who had not paid yet to write a check for $623.50 (first installment) made out to Winston Churchill High School and mail it to a Jane Kubasik’s house. For your information, that is the name of a parent, not a MCPS employee.

Complaints to the administration about this exorbitant fee fell on deaf ears. These bills had been going out for years and the response was that “we should have known this was the way the class was run”. This $1,120 fee was listed as an “obligation” which meant that to not pay it was to risk our child being banned from activities, performances and being subjected to the withholding of report cards.

I have also attached the quotation from a Maryland Attorney General Opinion in 2003 that states that “schools must be open to all without expense” and that “at the very least ‘anything directly related to a school’s curriculum must be free’”.

Please add a Goal to the Strategic Plan to put forward the mandate of the State Constitution to provide students with a free and public education. Thank you

Janis Sartucci
Montgomery County parent