School Scene
Sue Katz Miller
A few days before the start of the school year, Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Jerry Weast announced that he would, indeed, retire as expected at the end of his contract in June. The early announcement gives all of us more time to engage in the tremendously important process of picking the next Superintendent.
What should the search process look like? What kind of Superintendent are we seeking? These two questions are closely linked. The biggest frustration many parents have with MCPS is the lack of two-way communication. So we need to seek out a Superintendent who is going to restore parents to their role as full partners in education, dismantle the fortress that surrounds the inner-workings of the Rockville bureaucracy, release data to the public, and recognize that the Board of Education is elected to represent the taxpayers in a system of checks and balances...continues HERE.
Dear Ms. Miller,
ReplyDeleteHelp, please - the bully that is Jerry Weast has swallowed up most teachers by teaching all the new administrators he's put into place to bully. Now the magnet program for the up-county is about to be swallowed up in this bully pulpit.
The dumbing down of an interesting and challenging multidisciplinary curriculum appears to be imminent even though these students test into the highly gifted magnet program and out perform all other 8th graders on standardized tests.
On February 17th the principal of RCMS will be meeting with parents to bully them into accepting her changes to the program "What we are doing is integrating the extracurricular activities the magnet program has..."The program's eighth grade English curriculum is being rewritten, as it is periodically, so the trip destinations will change to fit the new curriculum, she said. The duration of the trips will also change, she said, without providing specifics."
Neither of these quotes is an accurate reflection of what's really going on. The teachers appear to be afraid to speak up as they are routinely retaliated against and parents can't get an accurate picture without their help. The lack of transparency and the well known bully tactics that have led to Jerry Weast not being rehired are systemic.
A valuable program is in dire jeopardy and it is becoming crucial that this issue come out in the open before the decisions are made permanent and also before the board hires a new superintendent who will just carry on the same failed initiatives behind closed doors. Expensive initiatives that have no value except to pad false and misleading statistics is one of the major reasons the system's budget is bloated. These initiatives need "oversight" from Rockville - hence all the extra over paid administrators in Central Office while the classrooms are bursting at the seams.