Fees waived if you know who to ask

You might remember my article from about five weeks ago, where I described how I stumbled upon a way to get illegal curricular fees removed my daughter's account so that she will be able to attend graduation and participate in other school activities.

If you don't have time to read (or reread) the article now, the short story is that I received a demand letter for a curricular fee for one of daughter's classes and was eventually able to have the fee rescinded with help from Maryland State Delegate Saqib Ali. The fee was rescinded because, according to Superintendent Jerry Weast, the demand letter that I received was a "mistake".

A question that has never been answered is: Does the decision to rescind the curricular fee apply just to my child -- presumably because of Delegate Ali's involvement -- or to all MCPS students? To get an answer, I repeatedly called and emailed MCPS Director of School Performance Mr. Stephen Bedford (since he is handling the fees issues), but Mr. Bedford refused to answer my question.

Even after repeated calls, Mr. Bedford continued to be nonresponsive, so I contacted my elected BOE representative, Ms. Nancy Navarro. Here is my email to Ms. Navarro. (Again, I recommend that you read my previous article about the situation for background information.)

Publish at Scribd or explore others: School Work Study Guides, Notes, weast mcps

Initially, Ms. Navarro did not respond to the email message shown above. I wasn't too surprised, though, since she did not respond to any of the other three emails that I sent her during the past two years, even though I'm her constituent. (In comparison, my county councilmember, Mike Knapp, has been responsive and effective when I have contacted him. Now I'm not saying that Mr. Knapp has supported all of my positions, but he has always replied and provided an explanation for whatever action he decided to take.)

After waiting about three weeks for Ms. Navarro to respond to my email, I left her a voicemail message. About a week later, Ms. Navarro finally returned my call and I reiterated my request to get an answer to my question about the fee policy. Ms. Navarro told me that she would work to get an answer, but as of now -- five weeks after asking for her assistance -- I still don't have an answer from Ms. Navarro or from anyone in MCPS.

At this point, I doubt that I'll get an answer from Mr. Bedford or Ms. Navarro before the end of the school year. If things change, I'll certainly give an update.