 |
| Wheaton High School cell tower |
That is how much money MCPS receives in one year from the leases for the cell towers you see on public school property.
At this link is the list of public school property with cell towers and the number of leases at each location.
The lease payments are made to MCPS, but the money received does not go to pay teacher salaries, buy classroom materials, or build classrooms. When the money is received by MCPS it is immediately funneled to local principals for deposit in their local school bank accounts. We refer to these accounts as slush funds because there is no public accounting for how these funds are used. In the past, investigations of principal bank accounts have shown all sorts of uses for these funds.
Check out the MCPS Operating Budget. You won't find any mention of this revenue, nor will you ever hear the Board of Education discuss these funds. Remember recently the Board of Education voted to not install water bottle filing stations at all secondary schools because they couldn't find the $200,000 needed for the project. The Board said that voting to install water bottle filing stations would involve a "trade off," but they never mentioned the $539,842 they get every year from cell towers as a possible source of revenue.
Does the Montgomery County Council even know the Board of Education receives this money? The revenue is not listed in the Operating Budget and isn't brought to the Council for appropriation.
What could an extra $539,842 in the MCPS Operating Budget buy? A few more teachers? HVAC repairs? ADA compliance? Water bottle filing stations?
http://audits.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploads/boe/20190214_Cell%20Tower%20Revenue.pdf
Actual revenue was $539,841.99
RF is classified as a Group 2b possible human carcinogen. Cell towers should NEVER be placed on a school building or on school property! It's unfortunate that the schools that have allowed this do not have enough parent involvement to fight this atrocity that is a relatively small means of generating revenur. I vote for that money to be put in a fund that will be used to care for the children and teachers who will get cancer or at least an autoimmune disease in the future!
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of the Ford Pinto Cost Benefit Analysis:
Deletehttps://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-matteson/module-1-why-does-business-need-ethics/case-the-ford-pinto/
I'd like to know what teachers and principals received $ from this.. it is difficult to tell from the pdf report.
ReplyDelete