ROCKVILLE, Md. - Hundreds of students were left stuck in the hot sun for hours last Wednesday and now some parents in Montgomery County (web | news) are up-in-arms.
EMS crews treated dozens for dehydration at Robert Frost Middle School in Rockville. wednesday night, parents looked for answers at a meeting at the school.
Robert Frost Middle School Principal Dr. Joey Jones apologized to a crowd of concerned parents Wednesday night...
..."My kid came home miserable, sunburned, dehydrated, starving," said parent Tasha Museles...
There's a little problem with the statements coming from MCPS on the issue of emergency preparedness.
MCPS is a national model for Emergency Preparedness in large school systems. Other school systems are told to emulate MCPS and use the MCPS procedures for emergency planning, including establishing an off-site evacuation plan. Read the report here - see page 38 where MCPS is rated Best.
Nothing about this situation should be a surprise to a principal, nor should there be any need for "lessons learned." This scenario should have already been planned for, and the plan was to be documented by the local school's On-Site Emergency Team (OSET).
Here is the Fox 5 report on the meeting Wednesday evening between Frost Middle School parents and the Principal. Was Superintendent Jerry Weast in attendance at this meeting?
Robert Frost Middle School students spent more than two hours in the school's fields last Wednesday, a day when temperatures climbed into the upper 80s.
Emergency personnel treated the kids who felt dizzy or dehydrated on-site, giving them water and Gatorade, said Scott Graham, a spokesman for Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service. None were transported to a hospital...
“Principals have to make a call very quickly about potential threats,” Tofig said. “[Principal Joey Jones] thought he was doing what was in the best interest of the students.”
*The Frost Middle School meeting is scheduled for June 2nd at 7PM in the Frost MS Media Center.
I am the mother of a sixth grade student at Robert Frost Middle School. I am writing to express my outrage over the actions of Dr. Joey Jones, the Principal of Frost MS, and the entire school staff, for their inexcusable treatment of 1,300 students during the bomb threat on Wednesday. The fact that 24 children FAINTED while being forced to sit without water (while watching their teachers drink water) under the direct sun for almost three hours while an air-conditioned auditorium at Wootton High School sat empty a couple of hundred meters away is unprecedented; I cannot believe this actually happened in a Blue Ribbon School in MCPS.
The incompetence of the school staff is beyond comprehension. I am a Russian émigré and former teacher who is now a US citizen, and I do not have words to express my feelings on this matter. I do not know what information you have received through "official" channels, but it is essential that you follow up on this incident immediately. We got a voice mail from Principal Jones at 4:30 PM about what happened and a weakly worded follow up letter, but neither even began to address the situation. Mr. Jones and his staff demonstrated a complete inability to handle a situation of this magnitude and we have lost complete confidence in his ability to safeguard our children.
Everybody knows how important it is to practice sun protection… the children were in direct harsh sun at the most dangerous time of the day for sun protection for three hours getting extreme sun damage during a very hot, cloudless day, yet even when multiple children started to faint from extreme exposure and dehydration, the clueless staff did not take any actions.
Dehydration is a severe threat to health, especially for children, and my son has asthma, which exacerbated the situation. I am also shocked that the children were seated relatively close to the building; if there was a bomb threat, why weren't they moved to the lower field away from the building. The breakdown on Wednesday was complete at every level. Even the medical technicians treating the children did not recognize the urgency of the lack of water and shade.
Inexplicable. Words fail me for this failure. And where was Principal Jones during this time? My son did not see him at all outside. He just saw staff doing nothing and drinking beverages while not even letting kids stand up.
One kid accidentally had carried his lunch outside and when he tried to eat it, he was harshly reprimanded by the same staff person who was drinking comfortably earlier. Every outdoor event for children that I have attended such as field days puts a paramount importance on having abundant water suppliers; EVERYONE knows how important this is. Meanwhile, our kids were left to broil and dehydrate in the direct sun for no apparent reason except sheer incompetence.
Dr. Weast, I hope you will take the appropriate actions quickly and decisively before other parents and I go to the media; this endangerment and abuse of children is beyond the pale and cannot be excused with typical bureaucratic nonsense.
The Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland thanks this parent for forwarding this letter to us. This parent wishes to remain anonymous in this posting. For the reference of our readers, here is the Google Earth image showing Frost Middle School and Wootton High School.
Remember last Wednesday, May 26, 2010, when the temperature reached over 90 degrees?
Its a day that many Frost Middle School students will remember too.
According to a letter sent home to parents by Joey Jones, the school principal since 2002, the school received a bomb threat at 11 am, evacuated the students to the nearby athletic fields, and reentered the building at 1:35 pm. Students were left outside, because officials in charge thought there was not enough time to walk to the designated shelter-in-place location, Wootton High School.
For those of you unfamiliar with the geography of the Wootton Schools, the two schools are adjacent to each other. And its all downhill from Frost to Wootton, as any family with a sled can tell you - its a great place to hang out when schools are closed due to snow. Frost MS's established emergency evacuation plan, as shared with parents and the community, has Frost MS students evacuating to Wootton HS.
But not this time.
For some reason, the students and staff were kept outside and not sent over to Wootton.
For some other unknown reason, the kids were left on the fields without access to water or bathrooms. Twenty four students were treated for dehydration - two percent of the student population, not an insignificant number.
Maybe Dr. Jones has never walked between the two schools.
Parents want to know. Why were the students kept out in the heat, with no water, for over 2 hours?
Someone in charge of the plan needs to rethink the plan, or else someone in charge of the plan needs to be replaced. I'd suggest both.
And given the proximity of Frost and Wootton, and the conveniently located Giant where many Wootton families shop, other schools may want to examine their emergency evacuation plans too.
After all, if a school as green and as flush with resources both in physical and financial assets can't safely evacuate its premises, what guarantees do we have that other school emergency plans in Montgomery County Maryland public schools have plans that work when needed?
This item from Robert Frost Middle School reminded me of Dickens character, Oliver Twist, with the students asking:
Please sir, I'd like some more. I am hungry for science education, and I just can't get what I need to succeed here.
MoCo's Promethean Procurement has kept many a Parents Coalition blogger busy writing about the proliferation of these funky techno-toys in schools throughout the county. Honestly, by now we thought that these boards were all over MoCo schools.
Imagine my surprise when I found the following on Frost's PTSA webpage.
I know that math teachers and social studies teachers have Promethean boards at Frost - so why were the science teachers left out? Can't the teachers share?
More important - I wonder what the folks who are promoting "Science City" on the Belward Property will think when they find out labs in MCPS middle schools aren't state of the art. Shush, don't let them know that the high school labs at Wootton and Churchill are lacking in basics too - maybe they will rethink their plan for locating to a county that doesn't support K-12 science education.
Did you know that: 1. Rockville no longer has public libraries? 2. Rockville no longer has public transportation? 3. Students can only read books that they can purchase? 4. Schools in Rockville don't have enough books to support a summer reading program?
That's the message sent out by Dr. Joey Jones at Frost. This follows a similar message as reported on this blog earlier concerning the decision by Whitman High School to eliminate its summer reading program.
The newly revised MCPS policy on eliminating curricular fees forces Dr. Jones to eliminate summer reading. Note that the Wootton cluster of schools is considered the gem in the MCPS portfolio, with its high ratings in many measures of school performance.
You may read the letter from Dr. Jones at the end of this blog.
