But when MCPS administrators spend days traveling around the country to hawk education vendors' products and services, the travel expenses and time away from their desks add up. Suddenly, there's $50,000 in travel expenses and time away from their desks and one less program for students.
How do students benefit from administrator travel on behalf of vendors?
In previous posts the Parents' Coalition has documented how MCPS' Superintendent, Board members, and administrators continue to travel, even during this budget "crisis." It appears that the Superintendent, the Board of Education and MCPS administrators don't really see the budget issues as that dire. So why the talk of cutting programs for students when MCPS' Superintendent, Board and administrators are still on the road?
Today's travel: February 22-24, 2011 - Houston, Texas
Michael Perich, Consultant for Continuous Improvement for Montgomery County Public Schools (MD) will present on their Journey to become 2010 Baldrige award winners.Sometimes Mr. Perich is listed as Director of Systemwide Continuous Improvement for MCPS, sometimes as Consultant. How much is he paid from MCPS? Who is paying for him to travel to Houston to present on behalf of MCPS at this convention? APQC is a membership organization, a club if you will. How much does MCPS pay to be part of this club?
Thousands of dollars in membership dues, and thousands of dollars in administrator travel add up to diverting education funding away from students and classrooms.
Dr. Michael Perich has been in education for 42 years and has held various leadership positions including 15 years as an elementary and secondary school principal. He has been with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) since 2000 and led the implementation of the Malcolm Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence into all schools and offices. Dr. Perich developed a Baldrige-guided school improvement planning process and trained the leadership teams from all 200 schools. This process has been in place for seven years. He established three Baldrige Quality Academies for teachers to learn how to move Baldrige into classrooms, resulting in many teachers throughout MCPS utilizing the concepts in their classrooms. More than 7,000 teachers have attended one of the academies. Dr. Perich led the development of the application for the state of Maryland’s Baldrige Award and in 2004, MCPS received Maryland’s most prestigious award for organizational performance excellence—the United States Senate Productivity Award—for implementation of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. He also has led the development of a Process Management and Improvement (PMI) initiative resulting in the formalization of key processes in all offices, departments, and divisions and, during 2011, will begin training all schools in PMI. Dr. Perich directed the preparation and development of the 2010 application for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. On November 23, 2010, MCPS was named one of seven recipients of the 2010 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which is the highest presidential honor an American organization can receive for performance excellence through innovation, improvement, and visionary leadership.
ReplyDelete