Social Blocking is MCPS, Starr's Form of Crisis Communication

The one thing that I find interesting about Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Josh Starr is that he is the proverbial bully on the playground. It's always about him. He doesn't take responsibility for anything and when he is the focus of criticism, well he takes his balls (yeah, pun intended if he had any) and goes home.

Latest example of that one is his choice to block me from his Twitter account because I've been critical of his policies and how he treats MCPS parents. Wow, a mom can tick him off that much? Or is that his opinion about women in general? Have an opinion? Then block her!

Specifically I asked Starr via Twitter about programs to teach county kids how to code, why he wouldn't have a discussion with parents of special needs kids about the issues they're having, and what he's doing about MCPS' predator problem? Yep...all block-worthy questions.

While I'd love to think I'm the only one he and other Montgomery County officials block from their social media accounts when the criticism becomes too warm or just plain uncomfortable, I'm not. But rather than engaging, as usual, the practice is to block.

Starr's been taking what is akin to victory laps around to local schools lately and using the students as props in his own media campaign - I guess to use if he is chosen as schools chancellor in New York, a job he apparently really wants. Even his wife has said she doesn't think he'll be in Montgomery County long, I've heard from a few sources. If he's got his sights on New York, he's going to have to grow a much tougher skin, that's for sure.

I've only been a parent in MCPS for four months, but I've dealt with public officials enough in my career to know when they aren't engaged, aren't loving their jobs or the people they have to deal with on a day-to-day basis...and when the mission is really all about them getting their next job. Kind of like Congress, MCPS, like D.C. Public Schools and Prince George's Public Schools, is that politically connected springboard for so-called educators with loftier political goals. Too bad those goals don't include focusing on our children.

What officials like Starr don't get is this: When government doesn't listen, engage and act, it creates activists. When activists listen, engage and act, they create change. It may be slow. It may take decades, but it comes.

It is perplexing that Starr uses the words "social justice" in his Twitter profile - buzz words that are supposed, I guess, to endear him to nonprofit groups and well-connected activists and create the illusion that he actually knows what they mean. Somehow, I don't see him walking at Selma, or holding up a protest sign at the (first) March on Washington. Just sayin'.

It was sort of like when last week I tweeted a response to MoCo Council member Valerie Ervin's use of a quote from Martin Luther King about social vision - something that the Council has not had in decades. It was laughable and I told her so. To that, I got a quick and frantic, almost-like-drunk-tweeting paranoid response from Ervin that I should be transparent about who I was. Well, it's on my profile...and always has been. I'm a mom, and a newly minted member of the Parents' Coalition. A creation of Josh Starr's apathy and disdain for parents - and apparently, for African American parents.

Both MCPS, the County Board of Education and the Montgomery County Council have a lot of questions to answer about special education, the new curriculum and the cronyism that has become ingrained here. Instead of answering openly and honestly, engaging in discussion about problems, they would rather spend time fielding special education lawsuits, blocking social media accounts and ignoring  potential problems with hiring that has resulted in students being sexually molested in school. What a waste of time for our kids.

For me, I agree with Jerry Mitchell.

Well, Starr and his minions got the public relations thing down pretty well. Crisis communications, not so much.