@mocoboe Should Not Accept @mcpssuper Proposal on #RockTerrace. Reject Sleazy, Low-Ball Offer!

To: Members of the Board of Education
From: Lyda L. Astrove

I have reviewed the memorandum submitted by Superintendent Starr as well as the accompanying memorandum from DLA Piper. In advance of your discussion on Tuesday, I would like to offer the following comments:

1. Lots of revisionist history going on in that tax memo. MCPS seems to have told the tax lawyers that the purpose of the money was to teach the students about money. How could that be if the (1) students never actually saw any money, (2) students never actually saw any of their bank statements (3) large amounts of money were withdrawn from student accounts that the students never received or saw. Just when was this supposed "learning about money" taking place? Answer: it wasn't.

2. It is a fact that SYMS paid cash that was divided up among the students accounts. Either this money was intended to be compensation for services performed, or Rock Terrace administrators were engaged in money laundering.

3. The money deposited in credit union accounts which were opened in student names, using their social security numbers, belonged to the students,. To say several years after the fact that the money never belonged to the students at all is insulting and incorrect.

4. This memo is the first parents are learning of students being "paid" for grades with tax dollars. By copy of this email, I am informing the associate superintendent for special education at MSDE of this practice.

5. At no time whatsoever were students "taught about money" using the credit accounts. The credit account statements were NEVER reviewed in class. Students NEVER balanced their actual checkbooks in class. How could they, when the account statements were tossed away, unopened, in a drawer at the school? These facts call into serious question the veracity of whoever told DLA Piper that the whole "credit union scheme" was intended to be educational.

5. Roger Pisha of the internal audit unit has already been provided copies of bank records for students for whom W2s were never generated, and for whom the bank records show that substantially more than $200 flowed in and out of the account. The $200 figure is based on nothing other than an imaginary amount intended to limit MCPS's payout. Families of these affected children should not be shortchanged because MCPS employees themselves shredded, threw away, or otherwise destroyed these supposedly "educational" records.

6. It is revisionist history to now claim that MCPS never intended the money to be treated as W2 income. The only reason MCPS is saying this now is because the thefts from the students has been revealed.

7. If the payments were intended to help the students learn how to handle money, why didn't the students EVER ACTUALLY HANDLE THE MONEY. Why were envelopes of CASH handed over by MCPS staff to the office at Rock Terrace? What happened to that cash?

8. The tax memo clearly stated that they didn't perform an independent investigation of the facts or reviewed any documents related to the facts within. Because so many facts were reported incorrectly to them, the MCPS BOE should NOT rely on that memo as sound advice.

9. Joshua Starr is proposing to take the fast and cheap way out of this mess. The Board of Education should take the accurate and legal way out, by hiring an independent auditor to contact each family, obtain authorization to secure the bank records, perform an audit, and recommend individualized payments, family by family. Anything less means the $200 payment is just a sleazy, low-ball offer which bears no relationship to the years of work these students did. Paying for grades? Why isn't someone being FIRED?

Lyda Astrove