"If MCPS had tried their absolute hardest to come up with the very worst system possible for dealing with the current COVID situation, they could not have built this one. This one is infinitely worse. This mess is 100% MCPS’s responsibility."

1/5/2022 From BCC High School PTSA President:

Dear B-CC Families — I want to echo Dr. Mooney’s message from this afternoon.  I want to especially thank him for his calm in reporting on what the current situation is.  I know that he and the entire school admin team, teachers, and staff share the exact same frustrations that you feel.

Because I am a volunteer and MCPS cannot fire me and has to graduate my remaining student, I am going to say very bluntly what B-CC cannot. If MCPS had tried their absolute hardest to come up with the very worst system possible for dealing with the current COVID situation, they could not have built this one. This one is infinitely worse. This mess is 100% MCPS’s responsibility.  B-CC has risen to the occasion above and beyond, under incredibly difficult circumstances. 

Frederick County Public Schools provided information to parents earlier this week about bus routes that would not be running; MCPS sent its messages this morning AFTER high school students had already left to catch their buses.  As of now, B-CC has received no update on what bus routes will be running tomorrow. 

There is an acute shortage of bus drivers, substitute teachers, and other staff.  Administrators have become substitute teachers to try to cover classes, when they are not contract tracers and ad-hoc public health officers.  As of now, no plans have been communicated about how to handle this increasingly impossible situation. 

I know many students have been tracking raw COVID cases on the dashboards and are informing parents that B-CC is 2-3 cases away from 5%. Again, the school does not know for sure — the reporting is through a centralized Google form that requires a Google email account to access and file. We have likely broken the 5% mark, but no one knows, and no one knows what that means or whether or when anything will change. 

I empathize with all of you — with your exhaustion, with the inability to make plans, even to change jobs, because you do not know what the future holds for school for your kids. I know exactly how destabilizing and demoralizing this is for all our kids as well. They deserve so much better. It is every bit as much for teachers and staff and administrators, who are trying to navigate this mess personally and professionally. 

I’d like to suggest something positive, but quite frankly, I’m at a loss. I do not feel as if the Board of Education is listening. The media, hopefully, is to a degree. I do want to once again ask for your kindness and compassion toward everyone in our school. From our custodians and security guards and front office assistants to our cafeteria workers, teachers, resource teachers, counselors, and administrators, everyone deserves our deep thanks for showing up and keeping going. I’m sure there are many mornings when many of them would prefer to join the great resignation.

We are in this together; we will get through it together. Please find that last measure of kindness and patience you have been storing up for just such a moment. And of course, I remain thankful to all of you, particularly for your support, and thankful for the thing that matters most: our kids. 

Warmly, Lyric, BCC PTSA President