MCPS discourages volunteering as public school sports managers by singling them out for severe limitation on SSL hours.

From MCPS SSL Fact Page

 by David Wilkerson

The Montgomery County Service Learning organization has singled out public school sports managers to limit the earned SSL [Student Service Learing] hours to a small fraction of the actual hours worked. No other SSL activities are limited (including other school related activities) and in fact one of the basic requirements of all SSL activities is that Students receive one SSL hour for every hour of service outside of the instructional day. 

Earning SSL hours beyond the graduation requirement doesn’t provide tangible benefits to the student. But the SSL hours are a token of recognition like the gold stars teachers gave in kindergarten. These have no value and cost the school system nothing, but they are used to encourage volunteerism. In this case, they seem to be discouraging volunteers by telling them they don’t deserve the gold stars other people get. They have taken something that is free (SSL hours – gold stars) and decided not to spend it on these sports managers for some unspoken reason which seems on the surface to be a crusade against public school sports. 

This limit doesn’t affect the ability to earn enough SSL hours for graduation, but instead serves no other purpose than to denigrate this volunteer activity. These administrators have gone to an effort to make this distinction but after several months of emails and calls, they are unwilling to explain the true reason for this decision. The only reasons given were complete nonsense. Mrs. Block-Rincan said that it was because they determined 30 hours was enough to meet the graduation requirement (which is of course true of all SSL activities but only applied here). Mrs. Smith told me it was because the managers enjoyed this job – which of course is also hopefully true of all volunteer activities. Mr. Warner scheduled a meeting with me but postponed it numerous times and then cancelled it.  

This SSL organization is part of the Office of Community Engagement and Partnerships – specifically Timothy B. Warner MCPS Chief Engagement and Partnership Officer (301-279-3074, Timothy_B_Warner@mcpsmd.org ), Mrs. Kimberly Block –Rincan Coordinator, student service learning and volunteer programming (301 279 3454, Kimberly_A_Bloch-Rincan@mcpsmd.org ), and Mrs. Cheryl Smith Director, Family and Community Engagement (301 279 3100 Cheryl_l_smith@mcpsmd.org). 

In the SSL brochure issued by the Montgomery County board of education Joshua P. Starr, Ed.D. (The superintendent of schools 301-279-3383, Joshua_Starr@mcpsmd.org) states that “SSL is an opportunity to strengthen character, develop responsibility, learn new skills, explore careers, and develop avenues for civic engagement.” Being a sports manager for a public school team meets ALL of the MCPS documented requirements for earning SSL hours, and frankly I can’t think of any volunteer activity that can do the things mentioned by Mr. Starr better...

...These infections are a huge issue and it requires diligent process and substantial effort to keep the mats and equipment clean. Our managers clean the mats before and after practice every day. If not for the managers doing this job, the schools would need to hire professionals to keep the mats clean using real dollars instead of free SSL hours...

...Personal bias against public school sports cannot be used to drive public policy and to make decisions like this that single out a class of (mostly girl) students doing a valuable volunteer function. Decisions need to be transparent, and must be based on objective criteria. 

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