Subpoenas to be issued, Principal Out, Students Punished

What does MCPS do when they find financial improprieties at a school?  Punish the students, of course!  

Because Superintendent Starr found problems at Rock Terrace School when students were engaged in transition to work programs, the stipends for all students in these programs will be SUSPENDED for the upcoming year.

Somehow at another MCPS school where a transition to work program is run the program is able to operate without problems:  students work, they open bank accounts and they control their own funds!  But all students in these programs will now be punished this year for the financial improprieties of the staff at one school?

The letter below was posted to the Rock Terrace School website today.  From the letter we learn:

• Rock Terrace parents were not informed about the stipends or about the bank accounts set up in their child’s name


• Using its subpoena power, the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office will request account records from the credit union.


• MCPS will temporarily stop providing stipends to these students until the district is able to clarify whether these stipends should be treated as earned income.

• MCPS can't figure out that when you pay a student for services the money paid is the property of the student!  The MCPS letter includes this telling sentence:  "But we want to make sure that any stipends received are distributed and spent appropriately."  Sorry Superintendent Starr, the point of teaching students how to handle money is to allow THEM to make mistakes with their own funds.  That's the point of the exercise!  It isn't about controlling the funds after they are paid out. It isn't about taking student funds and spending them on administrator perks.   

  Rock Terrace Letter 71813 by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland