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Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Rock Terrace: What Must Be Done

The allegations concerning financial mismanagement of Rock Terrace student earnings have been known to Montgomery County Public Schools upper administration for over one month. Every day that passes without swift action by MCPS to discover which students had bank accounts, and what happened to the money in those accounts, serves to jeopardize those students' adult services, their Medicaid benefits, and their Supplemental Security Income payments. On multiple occasions over the last month, I have sent emails to the Associate Superintendent, the Superintendent, and the Community Superintendent urging them to contact the affected families and begin to rectify the situation.

Yesterday, I learned that a "robo call" went out on "ConnectEd" from Dr. Chris Garran, the community superintendent (now high school superintendent), responsible for overseeing operations at Rock Terrace School. The robo-call message was something to the effect of these are just allegations at this point, and if you have any evidence contact Ms Dublinski in Human Resources.

I don't know if it went to all current Rock Terrace parents or to current and former Rock Terrace parents.

I do know that I think Dr. Garran has it backwards: MCPS should NOT be issuing robo-calls asking people to call Human Resources, Dr. Garran and his associates must take the time to contact each family, one at a time. A live person should be making these phone calls, offering assistance, explaining the situation, and promising to work with all the families until the situation has been resolved. MCPS should START with all the students named and identified by account number on the internal "spreadsheet" who were indicated as having been paid, and work out from there! These parents don't know what they don't know! MCPS, on the other hand, knows which kids were paid! They should contact the families and explain to them what is going on, and assist them with recovering the money that was paid to the youths, help the families ascertain if they had one of those bank accounts! This problem is not limited to current students, and reaches as far back as 2004.

This is going to take MONTHS to unravel. Time for some of those administrators over in the Carver Center to get to work. Maybe if they had stepped 50 feet out the rear entrance of Carver and taken a visit to Rock Terrace once in a while, they would know some of these families personally. It is not acceptable to sweep this issue under the rug. Parents and advocates will be watching to ensure that new procedures are developed to ensure that any money earned by students is properly documented, and students who had money withdrawn from their accounts are made whole. Anything less amounts to a breach of duty owed to these students.

Lyda Astrove

5 comments:

  1. Were all students at Rock Terrance who received wages taught in vocational ed program (by Vocational team in RT Staff Directory)? Or were they in other programs as well?

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  2. Thanks again Lyda for all the hard work to uncover this.

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  3. Time for the State's Attorney to step in and do their job.

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  4. Does anyone know if there has been a response from John McCarthy, the State's Attorney; an elected office, by the way.

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  5. I am shocked and disappointed that the public are not being made more aware of this crime. The principal posed as the legal guardian of approximately 111 students. All withdraws were cash and there is no record of how it was spent. Fraud, wouldn't you say? So they say the bank accounts were to teach the students with special needs real life experiences. I guess they have learned just how cruel this world can be. There was certainly no teaching of earned income, savings or wise spending habits. This is beyond sad; and if this principal retires without a consequence, it will speak loud and clear of what MCPS thinks of their students with special needs.

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