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| MD State BOE Opinion 12-34 |
Are any of your child's teachers operating under similar restrictions?
- You will not be permitted to seek or accept stipend activities nor voluntary "club" activities that permit you to work with students outside your classroom duties and responsibilities.
- You are not permitted, even on an informal basis, to engage students in activities related to body building, muscular development and the life nor or any activities not related to instruction.
- Additionally, you will not be permitted to share with your students reading material or other visual arts depicting wresting or body building.
- You should know that swift and drastic action will follow any proven allegations of you as much as asking a student to raise or remove a shirt or flex his muscles for you regardless of the reason...
- Most importantly, you are not permitted to allow students to be separated from their classmates to have lunch or engage in other non-curricular activities with you.
February 9, 2000, from Superintendent Jerry Weast.
- This applies to small groups of students as well as individuals... Finally you should be aware that proven allegations of any of the directives listed above will be found for me to recommend more serious disciplinary action, up to an including dismissal."
@ math content coach
ReplyDeleteWe will not post the name of a student. You are free to comment, but you are not free to name students.
How valid is Dr. Weast's February 9, 2000 "reprimand" of Mr. Picca when just five days earlier his resource head Stan Schaub was plotting with MCPS's lead attorney Judith Bresler to railroad the teacher?
ReplyDeletehttp://savekmes.org/SchaubToBresler.shtml
"Set something up that we could nail him (Picca) on later without relying on reluctant witnesses"
How do you interpret this Ms. Sartucci? Coincidence? I think not.
Remarkably, this email obtained under the Freedom of Information act was not allowed into evidence because of Mr. Picca's inept union attorney.
http://savekmes.org/incidentreport.shtml
Can you imagine lawyer incompetence costing a 30-year master teacher his career and his reputation?
Ten years later, a student fell into a desk at the end of the school day. Picca properly administered first aid. He called the injured boy's parent immediately after school. The boy was forced to write a statement against his will, having words told to him and spelled for him.
http://www.wusa9.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=106251
Union rep Picca was framed. He blew the whistle on a pervert principal who lied about the fallen boy to get rid of Picca. A fact confirmed in Starnes's appearance before ALJ Hofstetter and verified again in the confidential May settlement between six MCPS teachers and Principal Floyd Starnes of KMES and the school system for millions of dollars.
This is irrelevant to the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that MCPS has a practice of placing letters in teachers' files restricting their ability to interact with students. We now know these letters are placed in teachers' files without NOTIFICATION to parents. The Picca letter is not an anomaly. The public has now been made aware of two of these situations, how many more are there?
DeleteThese letters create an untenable and unconscionable situation. How is a parent to request an IEP for their child that has dysgraphia, for example? What about a kindergartner who doesn't make it to the bathroom at the beginning of school? What if a child likes the Incredible Hulk and brings those books to the classroom? What does a teacher do who is operating under these types of physical restrictions on their contact with their students?
Why would any union permit their members to be placed in this unworkable situation?
While I agree with Ms Sartucci's analysis that Reprimands and Letters placed in ones personnel file many times have a restrictive intent upon a teacher's ability to teach, it is the local Principal and teacher's responsibility to live by the letter of the notifications and work towards those ends. Such was the case with Mr. P until the new administration came on board. Having worked for the school system and as a teacher advocate with the Association, I have had the ability to read through the entire file of many teacher's who have had difficulties with the System and Human Resources.
ReplyDeleteAs for the incident cited, I can't understand why this is 'news' or relevant to the discussion. From my knowledge of the case cited, Mr. Picca was set up by his Principal who lied and harassed staff members at his school as is evidenced by MCPS willingness to recently settle 'out of court' with substantial financial payments to the six litigants called the Kemp Mill Six as a result of the administrator's admitted actions and the mountain of evidence against him and the school system.
The relevance of the case is that MCPS does not do a good job in investigating allegations of administrators but is willing to do whatever it takes concerning teachers. The 1990's allegations against Mr. Picca were unsubstantiated and unproven and no charges were put forth by CPS nor the school system which both thoroughly investigated the allegations. Yet Dr. Weast issued a letter to Mr. Picca's file which went unchallenged for 10 years because there were no deviations to the intent of the letter. The 2010 incident was widely reported on by all major news services and he was relieved of his duties and subsequent licensing in the State of Maryland. All of this was a tragedy perpetuated by a lie put forth by the administrator in charge which went unchallenged by MCPS. Yet, MCPS tolerates the kind of administrative actions of distorting the facts and harassment of personnel which were the subject of the Kemp Mill Six law suit.
As for the Union. MCEA, the local union, works in a reactive sense in guiding their members through investigations. The Association does not interfere with nor try to influence the investigations. The Association waits until a formal investigation and report is final and issued. From my observations they rarely take the initiative of any kind of actions once a reprimand or letter to the file is issued. They help and advise members to author a response to the reprimands which is attached to the reprimand in each teacher's private personnel file.
As one should know, personnel decisions, reprimands and letters to the personnel file are never made public by MCPS since the matters are private and restricted to the individuals and administrators. All administrators have access to the complete personnel file of each employee, but not the public as it should be.
As it should be? According to who?
DeleteNO THANK YOU! My child should never, ever be in a classroom with a teacher who is restricted from touching them or being alone with them!
Sorry, that is not in the BEST INTEREST OF CHILDREN!
A teacher with a restriction on touching or interacting with children needs to be out of the classroom!
close sChool publics(MCPS).....IS TIME, PARENTS RAISE VOICES,NOT MORE ABUSE.."CLOSE school publics".
ReplyDeleteWhat happened?
Delete