Whitman High School Students Involved in Altercation at School

A violent assault occurred at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda Monday.

According to a letter to high school community members from Principal Gregory Miller, “a physical altercation took place involving several Whitman students. The incident was recorded.”

The assault was reported to the county police department and “an investigation is currently underway,” Miller wrote...

https://www.mymcmedia.org/whitman-high-school-students-involved-in-altercation-at-school/

Wootton Students: Bathrooms Smell, Air Conditioning Faulty

Five Wootton High School students spoke Thursday at the Montgomery County Board of Education concerning the “unhygienic environment” and “crumbling infrastructure” at their school in Rockville.

Ashi Stanislaus, secretary of the student government association, told board members, “students face problems with the bathrooms every single day. There are many issues including mold, broken toilets, broken faucets, and bathrooms without mirrors.”

Many of those issues were pointed out to school officials last school year, she said...

Wootton Students: Bathrooms Smell, Air Conditioning Faulty - Montgomery Community Media (mymcmedia.org)

Superintendent McKnight limits bathroom access during lunch. What other "additional support" is McKnight implementing??? #security #bodyworncameras

School Restrooms

Safety measures for school restrooms are currently being examined with input from students, staff and parents. Our restrooms must be safe places for students and cannot be places where activities that violate our code of conduct, such as drug and tobacco use, occur.

Schools are making sure restrooms are checked regularly and monitored throughout the day so they can continue to be available for use as intended. Latches are being installed on exterior restroom doors in secondary schools to ensure doors remain open. During transition periods and more unstructured times, like before school, after school and lunch periods, schools may limit access to designated restrooms. Staff are increasing the frequency of their visual monitoring and checks inside restrooms throughout the school day, in between class periods and during lunch periods. These measures, along with additional support from the Department of Systemwide Safety and Emergency, are being implemented to enhance the level of security students feel. Schools will continue to keep this as a priority.

Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) (montgomeryschoolsmd.org)

MCPS to address bathroom safety concerns as parents voice frustrations

Inside Walter Johnson High School Bathrooms Before the Pandemic. What are they like now?

It’s time to talk about how toilets may be spreading covid-19

 ...Here’s what we know: When you flush a toilet, the churning and bubbling of water aerosolizes fecal matter. That creates particles that will float in the air, which we will now politely call “bioaerosols” for the rest of this article...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/01/its-time-talk-about-how-toilets-may-be-spreading-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR06Qn7DFc7cFaE4dv5GjxavYlCQQfiNU-cjffPN009gLiBkYqrxEhX4LKk#comments-wrapper

New York City DOE scrambles to fill teaching slots weeks before schools reopen

...A DOE building report released Tuesday indicated that only 43 percent of bathrooms are currently operational.

Asked about that figure, a DOE spokesperson said school restrooms will be limited to single-occupancy, thus lowering the risk of coronavirus transmission...

https://nypost.com/2020/09/08/doe-scrambling-to-fill-teaching-slots-weeks-before-schools-reopen/

Why Fair and Square Is Best

The Baltimore Sun reported on December 11 that a 15-year old homeschooled student in Howard County was arrested and charged with "making arson threats, telephone misuse, harassment, second-degree assault, making a false statement about a destructive device and disturbing school operations." According to a Howard County Schools spokesperson, the young man was enrolled at Oakland Mills High School earlier this year. A female, as yet to be identified, was also involved in the phone calls that were placed to the Board of Education and the student's former high school using spoofing software.

Members from my homeschooling community in the Baltimore area, normally quick to post links to homeschoolers' success stories, have remained conspicuously silent on this current event, which is not the kind of attention homeschoolers care about. Put that in the same category as Jerry Weast's defeat on the issue of attempting to close Monocacy ES. Or Jerry Weast's anguish at not having one MCPS school make the list of the 100 best high schools in the nation. Or the embarrassment at all the "toilet" stories that have leaked in the press. I could go on, but you get my drift.

So why do I bring up the arrest of a homeschooled student? Because I believe that fair and square is best. For about a year now, I have been asking, and asking, and asking that MCPS provide the kind of supervision that is described in the pertinent COMAR regulations. Not regulations that they invent. Not regulations that Nancy Grasmick creatively derives from the intent she contemplates [see Patricia's comment] and which has the funny effect of contradicting their stated purpose. Just regulations as they are written, plain and simple -- the purpose of which is to ensure that homeschooled students actually receive an education when their parents assume the legal responsibility for teaching them. End of story.

Using the DEBUG system [page 4] that school officials have perfected over years and years of practice, MCPS and MSDE officials respond to my letters. They just ignore the questions and arguments I raise in them, choosing instead to pursue their intimidation campaign.

Homeschoolers who opt for supervision from MSDE-approved umbrella groups do so for a variety of reasons. One frequently mentioned is the desire to have nothing to do with their public school system and thus avoid portfolio reviews with school personnel. Were MCPS and MSDE to treat homeschoolers in a reasonable and respectful manner, in accordance with the law and the core values described here, they would actually know more about the homeschooling community. Homeschoolers would benefit as well because they would stop being perceived as strange figures lurking in an underground culture. Then, when a homeschooled student makes the headline not because he has won the Spelling Bee, but because he is charged with despicable acts, all parties would agree that this incident is a freak occurrence, in no way representative of the homeschooling community. Fair and square is best.