Former B-CC teacher creates GoFundMe to help cover costs of suing MCPS for career-ending email

B-CC High School

Note:  The Parents' Coalition is not taking a position on the matter described below. However, we do urge readers, especially those connected with Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, to read and comment. 

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-dan-engler-and-hold-mcps-accountable

Excerpts from the GoFundMe page:

On February 13, Dan Engler’s teaching career – more than 18 years of devoted service to B-CC High School, multiple honors including 2017 B-CC International Baccalaureate Teacher of the Year and 2018 University of Chicago Outstanding Educator award, and 16 years as the highly regarded coach of B-CC Boys’ Crew – was destroyed by a single false and malicious email from the school principal to parents, students, and Dan’s colleagues.

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Since embarking on that legal process, we have been even more shocked to learn that Dan’s case is symptomatic of a very serious culture of corruption and toxicity inside MCPS. As a recent email from the Montgomery County Education Association president stated: “it’s appallingly apparent that MCPS’s central office culture is corrupt and corrosive.” At B-CC, there have been multiple instances of severely toxic behavior: only weeks before the email defaming Dan, a chemistry teacher who forced 10th grade Jewish students to “self-identify” in front of the class, who stated that “the Jews controlled the economy in Germany during this time [1930s],” who told a Jewish student, “Yes, you would be dead,” and whom students heard say that “Hitler acted for the common good,” received administration support and was held up as an example of “cultural differences” and whose different “point of view” deserved attention. At the same time, the Jewish students in the chemistry class were publicly chastised by the principal and school leadership. Separately, an English teacher was verbally berated for her Jewish identity by a B-CC administrative staff member. On the student side, B-CC openly refused to intervene in a very serious student bullying episode and had to be compelled to act by the Central Office Restorative Justice Team. Later in the year, another student was targeted and falsely accused by the B-CC principal of spreading online hate. Outside of B-CC, we have all been shocked by the detailed reports of how MCPS Central Office personnel ignored years of repeated reports of vile sexual harassment by a different school principal, who was repeatedly promoted. Only when the Washington Post reported on the case did the school system respond – and a subsequent law firm report indicated that, according to the MCEA, “there was a deliberate falsification of records with the intent to mislead.” This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.