Overcrowding problem persists at Montgomery County school

Breaking: All Woman MoCo Board of Education FIRST to ever Approve a NEW Cell Tower Lease on Public School Land

One of the leases for a cell tower on the Woodwards Road Future School site was set to expire.

The Board of Education did not have to authorize a NEW lease.  The Board of Education could have decided that public school land should be used for building classrooms for students instead of for commercial uses of private companies.  

The Board of Education could have voted to not approve a NEW lease.  

But they didn't.  

The Board was fed a series of falsehoods, fell for them, and voted for the NEW lease. 

To date, none of the 12 cell towers existing on Montgomery County Public School land were ever approved by the Board of Education.  They were all approved by former Superintendent Jerry Weast without notification or approval of the Board of Education.  The Board of Education is the landowner. It is up to the landowner to decide what part of their land is to be leased.  

Below is the video from the August 24, 2021, Montgomery County Board of Education meeting where the unanimous Board of Education voted to approve a NEW lease for the Woodwards Road Future School site.  

In the discussion, MCPS staff (not under oath and not legal counsel) told the Board of Education members:

• That the Board has delegated their authority to the superintendent (False. They have not).
• MCPS staff called this vote the "renewal of the entire lease"  (False. It's a NEW lease.)
• MCPS staff claimed that bringing this lease to the Board was for transparency (False. It is legally required.)
• MCPS staff told Board members they were not turning over land to another company.  (FALSE. It is a lease for PUBLIC SCHOOL LAND.) 

NBC Nightly News coverage of East Silver Spring Elementary School incident involving police and MCPS staff berating child and telling mother to beat child.

 https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/outrage-in-maryland-over-video-of-police-handcuffing-5-year-old-109200965560

NYT: Child Abusers Run Rampant as Tech Companies Look the Other Way [How many pictures of MCPS students are circulating on the Internet today?]

The two sisters live in fear of being recognized. One grew out her bangs and took to wearing hoodies. The other dyed her hair black. Both avoid looking the way they did as children.

Ten years ago, their father did the unthinkable: He posted explicit photos and videos on the internet of them, just 7 and 11 at the time. Many captured violent assaults in their Midwestern home, including him and another man drugging and raping the 7-year-old.

The men are now in prison, but in a cruel consequence of the digital era, their crimes are finding new audiences. The two sisters are among the first generation of child sexual abuse victims whose anguish has been preserved on the internet, seemingly forever.

This year alone, photos and videos of the sisters were found in over 130 child sexual abuse investigations involving mobile phones, computers and cloud storage accounts.

The digital trail of abuse — often stored on Google Drive, Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive — haunts the sisters relentlessly, they say, as does the fear of a predator recognizing them from the images...

...Amazon, whose cloud storage services handle millions of uploads and downloads every second, does not even look for the imagery. Apple does not scan its cloud storage, according to federal authorities, and encrypts its messaging app, making detection virtually impossible. Dropbox, Google and Microsoft’s consumer products scan for illegal images, but only when someone shares them, not when they are uploaded.

And other companies, including Snapchat and Yahoo, look for photos but not videos, even though illicit video content has been exploding for years. (When asked about its video scanning, a Dropbox spokeswoman in July said it was not a “top priority.” On Thursday, the company said it had begun scanning some videos last month.)..

...During the trial, an investigator said that offenders often knew that live streams are harder to detect and leave no record.

“That’s why they go to Zoom,” said the federal prosecutor in the case, Austin Berry, during his closing remarks. “It’s the Netflix of child pornography.” Prosecutions in other cases have involved live streaming on Apple’s FaceTime, Facebook, Omegle, Skype, YouNow and others...

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/09/us/internet-child-sex-abuse.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Board of Ed Releases Only One Page of Three Page February Artificial Turf Report. Report Shows Whitman Got Taller Plastic Grass and ZEOFILL is Abrasive Infill.

Handwritten notations and highlighting have been added. 

The above page from a February Report on artificial turf infill was posted to the Board of Education's Agenda for the June 24, 2019, meeting (video of parent reporting on continuing injuries to athletes from Richard Montgomery HS artificial turf).

Also posted with this page of the Labosport Report was information from MCPS showing which field was referenced by each column of the chart.  We have made notations on the above Report showing which MCPS field the data refers to and what type of infill was used at each field.

Pages 1 and 2 of the Labosport Report were not made public.  

The Labosport Report shows that the Whitman High School artificial turf plastic grass is taller than the plastic grass installed at Richard Montgomery HS and Einstein HS.  The Report also shows that the Richard Montgomery HS infill is highly abrasive.  In addition, in the columns evaluating the ZEOFILL infill we see higher numbers for abrasiveness.

This Report shows that there is increased abrasiveness when ZEOFILL is used in the infill.

Why has the Board of Education been withholding this report from the public since February?  Students continued to use these fields even when the Board of Education KNEW there was a hazardous situation causing injury to students.

When will the Richard Montgomery High School artificial turf infill be REMOVED and REPLACED with a less abrasive infill?
 

Breaking: Board of Ed Keeps Dangerous Field in Use Despite Testing Showing Field 4 Times as Abrasive as FIFA Standard. #SueUsWeDon'tCare #SuckItUpKids

Public Comments of Jennifer Young

Before the

Montgomery County Board of Education

 June 24, 2019

On Richard Montgomery High School’s Artificial Turf

Good evening members of the Board of Education and Superintendent Smith.  You
may remember at the CIP hearings in November a student from Richard
Montgomery who plays on the soccer team as a goalie, Molly Winchenbach.  She
testified about the unusual abrasiveness of RM’s new artificial turf field and the
resulting injuries suffered by student athletes.  She is my daughter.  She would be
here tonight to give you this update and make this plea herself, but she is at practice.  High school athletes never seem to have a season off these days.

To MCPS’s credit, after Molly’s testimony, they sent out samples of RM’s and Whitman’s artificial turf for independent testing to a lab in Canada.  Both
fields had been installed at the same time using the same organic Zeofill rock/sand mix but their effect on the athletes was drastically different with RM’s field causing substantially more serious abrasion injuries.  That different experience of
the athletes was confirmed by the objective tests.  Although in my meeting with the
Director of Construction and Director of Athletics back in February to go over the
results of the tests, I was not permitted to keep a copy, I wrote down the pertinent
results right after the meeting, so my numbers are within a few points.  There was
agreement in the room that the results were shocking.  The abrasiveness of the field
was measured against FIFA’s standard of 30.

Old crumb rubber fields tested a 3. 

Whitman’s field tested a 20.  

RM’s field tested 128!
Four times the FIFA standard!

The lab tests also figured out why – the volcanic rock particles used in
the RM field Zeofill were much larger than those used at Whitman, and at RM, the
rock was layered with the sand like a cake, rather than all mixed together, as it was
at Whitman.  

Now that MCPS has verified what we have been saying all along – there is
something very wrong with the RM turf – it is so abrasive, it is tearing the skin off
the athletes, what are you going to do about it?  MCPS thought that perhaps they
had solved the problem for this spring.  They had removed some of the fill and
tried to mix up the layers more by deep tining it.  The plan then was to just replace
the offending larger particle fill with the smaller particle fill gradually with regular
monthly maintenance.  But, I’m here to tell you, on behalf of my daughter and the
other student athletes who are using and will be using this field in the fall
regularly, that MCPS’s remediation plan is not aggressive enough.  I’ve provided
you with a picture of what happened to Molly’s leg the first time she slid on the
turf this spring to stop a ball coming into the goal.  The RM turf scraped off the top
layer of about 6 inches of her skin.  This cannot be the conditions under which you
expect student athletes to play.  While all athletes may not experience the
abrasiveness of the RM field the same, it is particularly damaging to the students,
like Molly in positions, like goalie, who have to slide on the turf all the time.   She
plays on turf all over the county, both indoor and outdoor, and only receives
serious injuries like this from the RM turf.  

I understand that MCPS is in the process of asking the manufacturer of the
turf how much it will cost to replace all or most of the fill in RM’s turf all at once
over the summer.  I am asking you to ensure this remediation gets done
immediately.   (And any cost should not come out of CIP funds already allocated
to capital expenditures for RM, which needs substantial expansion over the
summer just to keep up with its ever growing student population.) You owe it to
the students whose health and safety you say are your top priority.  You now know
this turf is 4x the standard for abrasiveness, you know the reasons why it is so
abrasive, and you know what you need to do to fix it.  Don’t waste anymore time
while more students get hurt.  Do it now.
 Thank you.

UPDATE:  Board of Education sneaks February Report on to their website.

Damascus principal struck deal to resign, retain $160K salary in MCPS office job

By Neil Augustine, For full story go here. Yellow highlight my own.

When Casey Crouse resigned Tuesday as principal of Damascus High School amid the investigation into alleged rapes in the football locker room, she didn’t know what her job would be, but she knew she would maintain her $160,763 salary.

Crouse has taken a job in the Montgomery County Public Schools central office as “administrator on special assignment,” school spokesman Derek Turner said Friday.

Asked whether the position were permanent, Turner said, “This is the position she is going to be in for now, and she’s always welcome to apply for other positions.”

Environmental Waste Generated by Board of Education's Lust for Plastic Football Fields: The Turf Mountain

The Netherlands is a country of artificial turf. No country in the world has more artificial turf per capita. Last summer, over 200 artificial grass pitches were replaced in the Netherlands. No less than 1 million square metres of artificial turf had to be removed. All waste that cannot be dumped. What happens to the old pitches? What happens to all that plastic and all the polluting rubber in them? Processing companies promise to separate all the waste and recycle it. Municipalities pay top dollar for that. But what is the reality? Those involved call it 'the best kept secret in the market'. ZEMBLA follows the trail of a number of transports, and finds itself in a world of dealers, defrauding artificial turf processors, absent supervisors, and a growing artificial turf pile.

How is that Turf Working for You?

Artificial turf, or plastic grass, is fast becoming the standard for Montgomery County. Soon every high school - and some middle schools and elementary schools, will have the benefit of that ever so good looking green plastic adorning playing fields.

But - we keep asking, is this really good for our kids and others who play sports?

Our neighbors in DC are beginning to rethink artificial turf.

As reported in The Washington Post, 

On Tuesday, the city abruptly closed 15 of its 52 artificial turf fields, saying the rubberized surface was too hard for athletes to use them — with spots that were more like concrete than grass. The closures upended plans for D.C. Stoddert Soccer’s opening weekend and sidelined many of the nearly 6,000 children who play in the city’s largest league.

Fortunately for DC residents, eight of the 15 fields were repaired and reopened by Friday - just a mere three days later. Weather permitting, the rest will be open by Monday.

Do you think that we would get similar service in MoCo?

First - we wouldn't close our fields. Our kids would keep playing on them regardless of the heat, and how high the temperatures climb. 

Second - repairs? We don't do repairs in MoCo. Look at our schools, where are kids are require to receive an education. If the county doesn't repair the air conditioning and heating units in the schools, the county cannot be expected to repair athletic fields, for extracurricular activities.

Finally - work on a weekend? Be serious. Not happening in MoCo. Ever see a snowplow on a weekend when schools have been shut? 

So what's the harm if our kids continue to play on plastic grass that is hard. Again, from the Post article:

Signs posted at closed fields warned users that the surfaces had recently failed a “hardness test” and that “there is an increased risk of injury in the event of a fall on this field.” 

That means when a player falls, the ground absorbs less of the impact and their bodies absorb more, increasing the chance a player gets injured. One study estimated that about 15 percent of concussions in high school sports are due to players hitting their heads on rubberized turf.

So - when your MoCo athlete starts getting more injuries this year, remember - you can always move to DC, where the artificial turf is greener - and a bit softer than in MoCo. 

Do Electronic Devices in the Classroom Help?

Or are portables a distraction?

And does this impact only the student with the device?

Read the results from a Rutgers Study:

Students perform less well in end-of-term exams if they are allowed access to an electronic device, such as a phone or tablet, for non-academic purposes in lectures, a new study in Educational Psychology finds. 

Students who don't use such devices themselves but attend lectures where their use is permitted also do worse, suggesting that phone/tablet use damages the group learning environment.

Researchers from Rutgers University in the US performed an in-class experiment to test whether dividing attention between electronic devices and the lecturer during the class affected students' performance in within-lecture tests and an end-of-term exam.

Board of Ed. Voted Superintendent Authority to Execute Contracts. No Contracts were Executed. No Field Maintenance Program was Executed. #artificialturf #nobid #nocontracts

There is no contract for Field Turf, Inc.

The Parents' Coalition filed a Maryland Public Information Act request with Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) for:
records, reports, memoranda,  purchase orders, work orders, paid invoices, unpaid invoices, contracts, bills of lading, receiving documents, Requests for Proposals, Invitations for Bids, and bid documents in your custody and control pertaining to Field Turf business with MCPS from January 1, 2015 to March 2018.  

In response to our request, we received invoices and purchase orders.  

We did not receive any MCPS contracts with Field Turf. 

The Board of Education has on multiple occasions specifically authorized the Superintendent and the President of the Board of Education to execute documents to purchase artificial turf and to obtain maintenance agreements for the existing artificial turf.

Yet, despite that directive from the Board of Education, no maintenance program documents were received from MCPS. 

MCPS currently has 6 artificial turf fields.  

Based on the documents that we received, it would appear that in 2015, MCPS only did maintenance on 1 field.

In 2016,  it is impossible to tell if all of the fields were maintained because the invoices from FieldTurf do not all list a location.

In 2017, it appears that MCPS only did maintenance on 4 fields.  

Nowhere in these documents is maintenance ever mentioned for the Walter Johnson High School field.

There is no Maintenance Program document as voted on by the Board of Education and it is, therefore, impossible to tell what maintenance has been done on any of the fields.  

The invoices from Field Turf cannot be reconciled with the payments from MCPS. 

Below is a summary of the invoices and purchase orders that we received. 

Below are the documents we received from MCPS.

   2018 FieldTurf MPIA by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland on Scribd

Board of Ed Pays $147,515 Salary of Private School Principal #ethics #ConflictOfInterest #PublicSchool

The Montgomery County Board of Education pays the salary of a principal at a private school.

Why?

Can other private schools have the Board of Education fund their principals?  How does a private school apply for this perk? 

Apparently the MCPS Operating Budget is so flush with cash that public school education money can be used to fund positions in private schools.

The principal of the George B. Thomas Saturday School is Khadija Barkley. 
Ms. Barkley's annual salary of $147,515 is paid out of the MCPS Operating Budget as was the salary of the previous Saturday School principal. 

The Board of Education has been paying the salary for the principal of this private school for years.

This information is from the MCPS June 2017 salary database.

Whitman parent to Board of Ed: ...THEORETICAL RISKS and objections being perpetrated by a small group of detractors...concussion GMAX misinformation...#zeolite #donotinhale

The first person listed to speak to the Board of Education this evening during public comment is now a Whitman High School parent who calls concerns about zeolite "theoretical" and refers to "concussion GMAX misinformation."  

Whitman High School parents want a plastic grass field using the experimental infill of zeolite. 

Board of Education member Patricia O'Neill represents the Whitman Cluster and is up for re-election this year.  She will be counting on campaign contributions from this community.  No need to guess how the Board of Education will vote this evening, we are calling it a yes for zeolite!  

Just remind the children to not inhale (that's the caution from the Material Data Sheet from the very company that will be supplying this product) when they use the Whitman HS football/soccer/lacrosse field or any of the other 7 fields that will be using zeolite.  

   2018 Whitman Zeolite Andrew Hosker by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland on Scribd

Federal prosecutors say Maryland dad secretly filmed children in his bathroom

A Maryland father of two hid video cameras in his bathroom and secretly recorded at least 30 young girls as they took off their clothes or bathing suits, took showers and got dressed, federal officials said Friday.

Jonathan Oldale, 54, was accused of recording hundreds of videos, and a criminal complaint said some of the girls were recorded after playing in “splash” parties in his back yard.

“Mr. Oldale told the children that they needed to take showers before they left,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph R. Baldwin said in court Friday.

Oldale appeared Friday in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt to face a charge of production of child pornography. He faces at least 15 years in prison and up to 30 years, authorities said.

During a hearing that lasted more than an hour, Oldale’s wife, Alison, spoke briefly, asking that he be allowed to stay at home with her and his children. Oldale appeared in a black T-shirt, jeans and sandals with no socks...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/federal-prosecutors-say-maryland-dad-secretly-filmed-children-in-his-bathroom/2018/04/13/8471cbca-3f1d-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html?utm_term=.b1cc6d3fdd00

WUSA9: Parents Demand Answers After 3 Teachers Arrested on Sex-Related Charges

http://www.wusa9.com/article/news/education/3-md-school-staffers-arrested-on-sex-related-charges-in-21-months/65-534690547

In MCPS Sexual Predators have Worked in 20 High Schools, 29 Middle Schools and 34 Elementary Schools

MCPS Middle and High Schools (highlighted)
 where sexual predators have worked in recent years. 

If your local school has a red dot next to it on the list below, then there has been a sexual predator that has been arrested, convicted or removed from working at the school.

Yesterday, Superintendent Jack R. Smith decided to focus on Cloverly Elementary School, but the reality is that sexual predators have been found to have worked at 83 Montgomery County Public Schools in recent years.

Known sexual predators have worked at 20 out of 25 high schools, 29 out of 40 middle schools and 34 out of 133 elementary schools.

Sexual predators in Montgomery County Public Schools is a system wide problem that has never been addressed by our elected Board of Education.  The Board of Education's failure to address this problem and put in place policies and procedures to keep children safe goes way beyond Cloverly Elementary School and extends to all parts of Montgomery County.

Once again we remind all parents that Urgent Changes Needed regarding MCPS and Child Abuse (read the recommendations at this link).

   2018 MCPS Schools (Red Dots) by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland on Scribd

ABC7: “I think symbolically it’s important for me to go there after what happened.”

“I think symbolically it’s important for me to go there after what happened.” - Superintendent Dr. Jack Smith hours after protests over substitute teacher accused of touching student inappropriately @ Cloverly ES.

More at 10 on @NewsChannel8 & 11 on @ABC7News.  @Jeniffermalvaro pic.twitter.com/gIFfoDRCiQ

— Anna-Lysa Gayle (@ABC7Annalysa) March 20, 2018

WBAL: 3 Children report touching by MCPS Substitute Teacher

A substitute teacher has been charged with sexual abuse of a minor and fourth-degree sexual offense in Montgomery County.

Now, school officials are concerned he may have been involved in inappropriate behavior with children in other school districts where he worked.

...A court charging document indicates the 11-year-old boy claims Katz touched his shoulder and then moved his hand down to the child's buttocks. According to the court record, Katz denied, then confessed, admitting to investigators he apologized to the victim for touching him on his buttocks and that it was an "accident."

"He did touch the back of the female student, and advised that he apologized to her," charging documents stated. "Katz also stated he touched the waist of another student in the class and apologized to that student as well."

"We're asking all of our parents to have conversations with our young people, if they've had any interaction with this individual, to bring that forward immediately," said Dr. Michael Martirano, Howard County Schools interim superintendent...

http://www.wbaltv.com/article/montgomery-county-substitute-teacher-charged-with-sexual-abuse-of-a-minor/19486186

NBC4: Katz has taught at 15 of the county's schools since May 2017 @mcps

...Katz has taught at 15 of the county's schools since May 2017

Burtonsville Elementary School

Olney Elementary School

Sherwood Elementary School

Cloverly Elementary School

Pyle Middle School

Kennedy High School

Burnt Mills Elementary School

Brooke Grove Elementary School

Seven Locks Elementary School

Sherwood High School

Wayside Elementary School

Paint Branch High School

Farquhar Middle School

Frost Middle School

Burning Tree Elementary School

In a letter sent to parents, Howard County Public Schools Interim Superintendent Michael Martirano said Katz was a substitute teacher in Howard County as well. Martirano said the news of Katz's arrest has sparked a change in how the school system will do background checks.

"These charges cause me great concern as I'm sure it does for each of you. We take safety of our students seriously and I am greatly chagrined that this individual was trusted to enter our classrooms and teach our children," Martirano said. "As with all HCPSS employees, he underwent a criminal background check, fingerprinting and a detailed reference check when he was hired by HCPSS. I have directed our staff to review the process for evaluating substitutes, and putting in place a system to more periodically conduct background checks."

Montgomery County police said any parents whose children may have had contact with Katz should talk to them and contact SVID detectives at 240-773-5400 if they believe their child was victimized.

https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/Substitute-Teacher-Charged-With-Sexually-Abusing-Elementary-Student-477182163.html?akmobile=o

Superintendent Jack R. Smith Phones Cloverly Parents, But Not Showing Up at School Yet

@barnardfox5dc @AdamTuss @ABC7News updt - Dr Smith briefly spoke via phone to concerned Cloverly parents. @MCPS Hopefully a face to face meeting will take place this week or after spring break #Cloverly pic.twitter.com/QKIRTVFVUm

— Adam McKenzie (@A_mac_25) March 19, 2018