This is the third in a series of letters written to Superintendent Joshua Starr, MCPS and Montgomery County officials over the last 15 months concerning the many arrests of MCPS staff, substitutes and contractors on charges of sexually abusing MCPS students.
To: Joshua_Starr@mcpsmd.org
Cc: Andrew_Zuckerman@mcpsmd.org; Roland_Ikheloa@mcpsmd.org; boe@mcpsmd.org; Peter_Park@mcpsmd.org
Date: Monday, February 10, 2014 5:07 PM
Good Afternoon Dr. Starr,
For the past five months I have been trying to get a response from you regarding the sexual abuse of MCPS students by MCPS staff. In case you did not have a chance to read my letters, I am attaching them here for your review.
In response to two years of arrests of 12 adults for the sexual abuse of children and adults (who worked in 40 different MCPS schools), your response has been silence.
Today, I got an email from the school system which announced the creation of your new Cybercivility Task Force. I find it perplexing that in response to one day of tweets by students to you, your response over the past several weeks has been mulitifold. You have written an open letter to all parents, given media interviews and now you have begun formation of a task force to address the issue.
Dr. Starr, don't our children who are being abused deserve at least the same attention, response and action you do when you are faced with things you find inappropriate and threatening?
As with my past outreach attempts, I await your response.
Jennifer Alvaro
A deadlock situation: The authorities will respond only if MCPS requests and MCPS will respond only if the authorities request.
ReplyDeleteThe approach of officials of MCPS , is to spend time and money to cover-up the offense. No one, or any school district, should be immune from prosecution. What an injustice to children and youth of all ages, being minimized and traumatized by a system that created the problem. More stringent measures must be taken!
ReplyDeleteWhat's the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office doing about it?
DeleteThis from top to bottom is an attorney general situation and they will do something because politics is what makes the world go around. and this is all over the news. Now that the man in charge of this is out, Im sure others in authority in the schools will be watched over carefully to make sure the children are unharmed and given lots of attention. I guess there is a large surplus in the budget for a legal defense of the multiple suits that can emerge from this. Hope the taxpayers are not stooges and pay for the bad deeds of those who are there to serve them.
ReplyDeleteMaryland does not have any penalties for MCPS administrators that fail to report.
DeleteNothing will change until Maryland catches up to other states and has criminal penalties for failure to report.
Don't hold your breath on that.
DeleteAccording to the OAG URL: "The Attorney General is the legal counsel for the State of Maryland."
Which has a snowball's chance in Havre De Grace.
DeleteBut, unfortunately in Maryland the three branches of government resemble the subatomic particles, leptons quarks and bosons
DeleteThis is a civil rights issue for the children as well and thus there could be Federal charges if newspapers in Washington keep posting updates like they are doing..Does not necessarily have to be a state or local authority. There are many at risk children in the school system that are vulnerable. They have federal protection under many enacted laws. On their behalf things can happen on the Federal level.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, we live in Montgomery County, right outside of DC and many of the feds live here too. Their kids go to MCPS and they don't want any bad publicity for their neighborhood school system. The feds are on the same cocktail party circuit as our local politicians and MCPS administrators. With previous situations where the feds could have gotten involved we simply saw cover ups.
DeleteDon't hold your breath.
I believe that you hit the nail on the head!
Delete