“It needs to be a cultural expectation that is set at the highest leadership level within the school system, at the Board of Education, that is demanded from the superintendent, and that is expected among everybody who works within the school system,” County Council President Andrew Friedson said Monday. “Everybody who works within the school system should feel like there is a level of accountability.”..
https://www.mymcmedia.org/cultural-change-needed-at-mcps-council-president-says/
To access the entire recommended FY24 budget, click here. To watch the County Executive’s FY24 recommended budget presentation, click here...
Board of Education member Scott Joftus' spouse KID Museum founder and executive director Cara Lesser says that KID Museum "partnership has been evaluated every year both by MCPS Office of Shared Accountability and by external evaluators and we've been showing significant results year over year."
The Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, MD filed a Maryland Public Information Act request for:
Kid Museum Data Brief _21-2... by Parents' Coalition of Montg...
KID Museum Data Brief _v.15... by Parents' Coalition of Montg...
The same week Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) announced the purchase of a fleet of electric buses, but many parents are asking who is going to drive them. The public school webpage that gives a list of all the school bus routes shows dozens of “uncovered” routes each week. Some parents say they are not getting calls or emails and the webpage they say doesn’t always update correctly...
MCPS parents frustrated with busing issues as district faces driver shortage | WJLA
The OIG currently has four announced engagements in progress:
o Audit of the Department of Environmental Protection
o Audit of the Office of Intergovernmental Relations
o Emergency Procurement Practices
o Accountability at Montgomery County Public Schools
Microsoft Word - October 27 Audit Meeting_v1 with karen edits (montgomerycountymd.gov)
MCPS’ Internal Audit Unit conducted a limited review in October 2021 of a
transportation management employee’s credit card activity. The Internal Audit
Unit issued a report dated November 17, 2021, which identified questionable
purchases (such as gift cards, furniture, and purchases shipped to the employee’s
home) made by the management employee.
MCPS further discovered the existence of an account maintained by a transportation vendor outside the control of MCPS’ Office of Finance that was funded with amounts owed to MCPS. This “off the books” account was used to make payments to several MCPS employees and to purchase goods and services circumventing MCPS’ established policies and procedures. Specifically, the account was funded with amounts due to MCPS for liquidated damages resulting from the transportation vendor failing to deliver goods timely and credits for certain items included in the original bus procurement contract and paid for that were subsequently cancelled.
Based on the results of the internal audit and the discovery of the account maintained by the vendor, MCPS reported the questionable activity to the Montgomery County Police Department. Additionally, MCPS hired an accounting and advisory firm in December 2021 to conduct an independent forensic investigation of the aforementioned account and certain transactions during the period from July 2016 to January 2022.
In February 2022, the firm issued a report which identified that approximately $1.2 million had been deposited in the account and that payments totaling approximately $649,000 were made either directly to MCPS employees or for purchases of goods and services purportedly on behalf of MCPS during the period from October 2017 to November 2021. As of November 16, 2021, the account had a balance totaling $535,036. The firm also reviewed MCPS credit card purchases during the period July 2016 to January 2022 and identified purchases totaling approximately $572,000 made by transportation department employees that were considered questionable or required additional review. The firm stated in the report that additional work would be necessary to fully investigate the aforementioned activity.
On November 15, 2021, MPCS placed two transportation management employees on administrative leave pending investigation into the questionable purchases. One of the employees was subsequently terminated in February 2022 and the other employee resigned in March 2022.
As of April 7, 2022, we were advised by MCPS management that MCPS, the Montgomery County Police and State’s Attorney Office, were still conducting investigations related to these issues. Specifically, MCPS was pursuing collection of the credit balance totaling $535,036 with the transportation vendor, was modifying its process for purchasing buses, and developing procedures for how it accounts for changes to bus specifications; including ensuring that credits from 13 vendors are handled properly. Furthermore, MCPS management advised us that it provided training on proper credit card usage, decreased credit card purchasing limits as necessary, and eliminated credit cards based on limited or no purchasing activity. Finally, MCPS was planning to further review certain questionable credit card purchases identified by the firm...
Maryland’s motto for the new year: prevention and preparation | GUEST COMMENTARY
By JIM ROSAPEPE and JOSELINE PEÑA-MELNYK
FOR THE BALTIMORE SUN |
JAN 22, 2022 AT 5:11 AM
We know from centuries of human history — and two years with COVID — that viruses don’t surrender easily. They morph in unpredictable ways. The plague of the Black Death in 14th Century Europe lasted more than a half dozen years — and reappeared periodically into the 19th Century. There were four waves of the Spanish flu in the early 20th Century.
We’ve already had more than four surges and three significant variants of COVID. Will this winter’s omicron be the last? Not likely.
...Last, all organizations — including health providers, schools, retailers, nursing homes and the legislature — need to embrace, not reject, what we’ve learned from this crisis, both to minimize short-term disruption and, as President Joe Biden says, to build back better. We know that telemedicine, online retail, telework and online education have worked for many. Even in our legislative work, allowing the public to testify on ZOOM instead of having to drive to Annapolis, find a parking place and wait hours in committee rooms was a big victory for ordinary people. It has made our democracy and our families’ health safer. Let’s make it permanent.
Maryland’s motto for the new year: prevention and preparation | GUEST COMMENTARY - Baltimore Sun
“What was the hurry that this could not be addressed?” he continued. “When letters go to the nominating committee about the makeup of this board, and they did absolutely nothing about it, they’re doing that because they say — we are not accountable to the General Assembly.”..
boe@mcpsmd.org
Hello,
I am writing today, as a concerned MCPS staff member, to ask the BOE to support MCPS in implementing a clear and transparent COVID reporting dashboard for the school system.
Currently, the MCPS COVID dashboard and case reports are not following a universal standard. Many schools' email notifications of positive cases never make it to the MCPS website, such as the cases reported at Sherwood HS, William H. Farquhar MS, and Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School, just to name a few.
Also, many case reports have multiple cases listed, so it is difficult to see where individual schools stand with recent cases and outbreaks. For example, Magruder HS, Blake HS, and Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS have used this notification method within the few last weeks. In fact, since December 7, Magruder HS has sent four community letters reporting 46 cases. Yet when you look at the MCPS website, there is no indication at all that there are so many cases at Magruder HS.
Lastly, MCPS is not reporting all of their schoolwide outbreaks to the state health department. Only 9 MCPS schools have been listed on the state dashboard as having outbreak-associated cases for the month of December. You can download the data here: https://data.imap.maryland.gov/datasets/md-covid19-schooloutbreaks/explore. Yet MCPS lists 452 total COVID cases on their own website. While all of these cases may not meet the school-wide outbreak definition, according to the state many schools should meet the criteria for an outbreak and be listed on the state dashboard.
Howard County Public School System has clear and transparent COVID dashboard. HCPSS provides daily case totals among elementary, middle and high schools: https://covid.hcpss.org/
You can see each individual schools’ daily case numbers, which are categorized by student, staff, contractor, or visitor. For example, this is the case reporting for Oakland Mills HS: https://covid.hcpss.org/school/omhs
MCPS has approximately 100,000 more students than HCPSS, yet we have no idea of the number of current cases or the schools that have current cases. We do not know if there is an increased number of cases in recent weeks, and without the state/county health department reporting a current positivity rate, we need MCPS to act now to get this information to all of its community members.
It is time for the BOE and MCPS to set clear, transparent guidelines for school administrators to report and publish COVID case information.
It is also time for the BOE and MCPS to implement a clear and transparent COVID dashboard for all members of the community so that we can track the number of cases in our schools, which is especially important for both holiday/seasonal surges and new variants. At this point in the pandemic, our current method of publishing COVID cases in our school system is unacceptable.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
In October of 2021, MCPS staff and parents were relying on the MCPS COVID-19 Dashboard to show when COVID-19 Community Notification Letters were being sent out.
However, the Parents' Coalition was increasingly hearing from staff and parents that the Dashboard was not accurate. We particularly heard that Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School in Damascus had COVID-19 cases but that the school was not showing up on the MCPS Dashboard at all.
We filed a Maryland Public Information Act request to see if there had been any Community Notification Letters sent out for Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School.
What we received from MCPS was a surprise. There had been 5 Community Notification letters sent out for Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School from September 3rd to October 5th and not one of those letters was recorded on the MCPS COVID-19 Dashboard.
From: Parents Coalition
Sent: Thursday, October 7, 2021 12:02 PM
To: mpia@mcpsmd.org <mpia@mcpsmd.org>
Subject: Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School
This is a Maryland Public Information Act request for all of the COVID-19 Community Notification Letters for Lois P. Rockwell Elementary School for 2021 from January 1st through October 7th.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this request.
On October 7, 2021, here is what the MCPS COVID-19 Dashboard looked like. Note, Lois P. Rockwell ES would come after Little Bennett ES. It's not there.
2021 Oct. 7 Lois P. Rockwel... by Parents' Coalition of Montg...
Here is what the MCPS COVID-19 Dashboard looked like on October 26th, after we received the above response to our Maryland Public Information Act request. Suddenly Lois P. Rockwell ES was listed and 5 Community Notification Letters were shown.
After FCPS handed over more than 1,300 pages of information, the moms posted some of the documents on their website for others to read.
FCPS took the Fairfax County moms to court, asking a Fairfax Circuit Court judge to censor the information on the mom’s website in a preliminary injunction motion.
This past week, the judge denied most of the school district’s request delivering a legal win to the mom’s seeking transparency...
*Anne Arundel County Public Schools will receive its proportional share of these federal funds as noted. [Source: Office of Elementary & Secondary Education, U.S. Department of Education, ESSER Funds]
The report is a devastating account of how the former principal of Augusta Fells Savage Institute of Visual Arts, Tracy Hicks, and three other administrators fabricated courses and approved students for graduation when they had failed to legitimately pass classes. While the report does not determine a motive, principals are evaluated on graduation and attendance rates...
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| https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/AXVPH464979A/$file/Award%20Cont%20Install%20Turf%20Walt%20Whtiman%20HS.pdf |
On June 12, 2018, the Montgomery County Board of Education approved a
contract for the installation of artificial turf fields at Einstein High School and
Julius West Middle School.
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| https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/AZEH84473086/$file/Award%20Cont%20Turf%20Install%20Julius%20West%20MS%20Albert%20Einstein%20HS.pdf |
