It Took Only Three Months for MCPS to Fail New Parent

Often times you’re told that what you fear the most is a creation of your own imagination. I had hoped that this was true of Montgomery County Public Schools. Then I heard these words from Associate Superintendent Myra Smith: “Superintendent (Josh) Starr doesn’t have to speak to black parents if he doesn’t want to. That’s not how things work here.”

A stunning admission from a county official to a parent new to the school system.  

After a stint in Catholic schools where using the Bible for fundraising and principal-of-the-year campaigns was considered trendy, the vision of MCPS that friends and colleagues had given me made it seem as if it was a viable option. Free education – and in Bethesda – it was like private school without the price tag, they said.

I’ve been a journalist and an editor for 20 years, and covered MCPS for the Gazette in the mid-1990s, so I had no illusions that public school was different. I did, however, fall for the line that schools in areas with money and a more engaged parents fared better. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. 

I was opening my digital agency and needed to be closer to clients so I moved my family back to Bethesda for new school year. In August I met with Sandra Reece, principal at Bradley Hills Elementary School. She seemed overly eager to please and spoke in well-rehearsed marketing blurbs, “Best in the country” “world class education” “no child left behind.” Beyond that the discussion was about her shiny new building and the cafeteria’s salad bar.

I made it clear to her that I would not accept any loss of academic progress in my son’s education; he’d had a plan in place to address his learning issues that worked. She assured me that no child had ever come to the school and regressed. On the first day of school, I handed over my son’s psycho-educational testing that I paid for out of pocket when MCPS failed to do it two years earlier because he was in Catholic school. It had recommendations and insight on how he learned with his attention deficit disorder diagnosis and executive functioning issues. Reece said she’d put it in his file and it would be retrieved if needed.

Then I discovered, at Bradley Hills, there was barely any homework, no textbooks and parents aren’t allowed to see where the information students were being taught came from. No good. I pressed for answers and got virtually nothing.

After the school refused to allow me to leave his asthma inhaler on a day he was having issues with the problem, I kept him home. Then I asked for his teacher, Mrs. Woodfork to send me his work so he could complete it at home. What I received was a jpeg image of the worksheets sitting on a desk. So I went to the school and retrieved hard copies. I was told the school didn’t have a scanner so she couldn’t create jpgs. Ironically, however I noticed the front desk personnel were all wearing matching t-shirts that read “Bradley Hills Elementary.”  Price of a new scanner from Staples: $100. Cost of matching t-shirts for staff: more than $100. 

I made my first visit to MCPS offices on Hungerford Drive that same day. I ultimately received a call from associate superintendent Pat Abrunzo who assured me I was not asking for anything unreasonable.

  

Over the next week, I met with my son’s teachers (ever notice how every meeting starts with “your son is a delightful, lovely boy and we like him a lot?”…as if they would say “your kid sucks” at the start of a meeting) and they turned over some out-of-date textbooks as the source material, patted me on the head and sent me on my way. Reece promised to transcribe the notes from the meeting and email them to everyone. What she returned were a litany of cryptic, indiscernible short-hand phrases she’d written down; certainly not a polish report you’d expect from someone in a leadership position.

The next weeks were no better. My son would come home with virtually no homework, or not understanding the one worksheet he did get out of math class. 

So I returned to the MCPS offices on Hungerford Drive and demanded to either speak to the Associate Superintendent…or Josh Starr. I got Associate Superintendent Myra Smith and her damning comment -  “Superintendent Starr doesn’t have to speak to black parents if he doesn’t want to. That’s not how things work here.” 

During something called an Educational Management Team meeting I was chastised for teaching my son at home, having him read outside of class and do book reports, and working with him on math facts and other concepts. “It’s like you’re home schooling,” I was told. I was also told I should just “trust” the teachers to do the teaching. Again, I was denied access to the source material that the teachers were using to teach my son. Then came a disheartening admission: most of the lessons my son was being taught was just information the teachers were finding on the Internet.

So my son was a student of Wikipedia now?

After my son came home Monday with piece of graph paper with an equation on the top and an email note from his math teacher that said, “if your child can’t figure it out, just initial it and return it to school.” The assignment came with no examples or directions. I called the school and complained to Reece said a copy of the Power Point lesson from the Promethean board would be coming home with him. It didn’t. 

Reece was fairly complacent that this was business as usual for her school. She also remarked that she didn’t think it was even important for the students to learn to write. I guess they don’t have to sign her paycheck so it’s just not a priority. 

She attempted to make a case that the new 2.0 curriculum was limiting what teachers could do. I pointed out that the buck stops with her. Learning to integrate interesting and informative lessons into a curriculum structure is possible; she just lacked the will to do it. Ironically, she didn’t disagree with that. 

MCPS does a great job at marketing. Nearly every teacher and principal can mutter the “world class education” line with a straight face. But basic inbound marketing principals dictate that a business - and MCPS is that, with a billion-dollar budget - learns to attract visitors, convert them into customers and then delight them with exceptional service. The marketing department forgot the last third of that formula.

Josh Starr has walked into and continues to cultivate a culture where the parents are outside of the educational process. It’s a racist process because those with little-to-no socio-economic power who tend to be black or Hispanic will be loathe to complain; and apparently, according to his own associate superintendent, he won’t talk to them anyway. And it’s exclusionary – when was the last time you saw Starr with special needs children or talking with their parents about making sure they get what they need when they need it?

Starr refuses to meet with one-on-one with parents – especially black parents – who have issues with MCPS because it will cloud the rosy picture the county has painted for decades of the school system. What it really means is that he has little to say to them because he can’t or won’t fix the problems that are systemic. And what would a white, upper middle class man have to say anyway to a single, Hispanic mom with a special needs child? Chances are, he is either fearful that MCPS has indeed missed something…or he will realize how much he just doesn’t care. Not his kid, after all. 

I invite parents who have had issues with MCPS, (and MCPS teachers with a backbone and a conscience) to reach out to me on my Twitter feed @kathyagambrell. Share this blog with your friends. And let’s keep the unvarnished conversation going.