Montgomery County teacher convicted of sexually abusing students for 15 years faces new charges

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — A former Montgomery County elementary school teacher convicted of sexually abusing his students for over 15 years is facing even more charges.

An indictment was returned against John Anthony Vigna on Nov. 30. Officials say Vigna is additionally charged with one count of sexual abuse of a minor and three counts of third-degree sex offense...

...According to Montgomery County Police, new victims have come forward since Vigna's initial conviction. Detectives said they believe more victims could still be out there. They are asking anyone with information about the case to contact the Special Victims Investigation Division of MCPD at 240-773-5050. Tips can also be reported online at www.crimessolversmcmd.org. 

New charges filed against Maryland teacher convicted of sex abuse | wusa9.com

Ed Department Finds Students With Disabilities Disproportionately Disciplined

For the first time in years, federal education officials are releasing data showing how the experiences of students with disabilities in the nation’s schools vary from others and the picture is stark.

Students with disabilities account for a larger percentage of those attending public schools than just a few years ago, according to findings from the U.S. Department of Education’s latest civil rights data collection. At the same time, these children are far more likely than others to be subject to restraint and seclusion, be suspended or expelled or referred to law enforcement.

The information offers a look at the situation across more than 17,000 school districts and over 97,000 public schools during the 2020–2021 school year...

Ed Department Finds Students With Disabilities Disproportionately Disciplined - Disability Scoop

Opinion Montgomery County Public Schools failed its staff

Regarding the Dec. 2 Metro article “Watchdog identifies evidence of misconduct”:

The Montgomery County Public Schools system should be humiliated. It took a Post investigation to uncover the facts about an allegedly unsavory middle school principal, Joel Beidleman, whom the school system was ready to promote to high school principal.

So let me understand: Seven years and 18 complaints from staff members were apparently not enough to convince Montgomery County Public Schools that Mr. Beidleman was not a good staff member to keep, never mind promote. I wonder what the threshold of complaints needed to be for the school board to have acted...

https://wapo.st/3NpyavI

Montgomery County Inspector General: "in recent years the OIG has experienced a steady increase in the number of complaints received regarding MCPS operations"

...Additionally, in recent years the OIG has experienced a steady increase in the number of complaints received regarding MCPS operations. Our revised staffing plan includes 2 additional investigators which will allow us to conduct proactive engagements aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of MCPS operations while also completing timely investigations that will deter and root out fraud, waste, and abuse... 

Work Plan & Projected Budget Fiscal Years 2022 – 2025 (montgomerycountymd.gov)

***BREAKING: New Charges filed on former MCPS Cloverly Elementary School Teacher John Vigna

Please see our previous extensive coverage of the arrest, conviction, vacated conviction, and re-trial of former MCPS elementary school teacher John Vigna. Recall that Mr. Vigna was never fired by the Montgomery County Board of Education and his teaching license was never revoked.  He was allowed to retire and voluntarily surrender his teaching license. His original conviction was vacated and he was released from prison.  A new trial on those charges has been scheduled for 2024.  Now additional charges have been filed against Mr. Vigna.  

New charges were filed against Mr. Vigna on November 30, 2023.

From Maryland Judiciary Case Search: 

Circuit Court For Montgomery County - Criminal

Location: Montgomery Circuit Court

Case Number: C-15-CR-23-001418

Title: State of Maryland vs. JOHN VIGNA

Case Type: Criminal Indictment

Filing Date: 11/30/2023

Case Status: Open

 

11 Investigates digs into people wrongfully ticketed by automated cameras on school buses [Bus Patrol America]

...“They said ‘We even ticketed the school bus,’” Frangos tells 11 Investigates. “The gotcha moment was when the police officer with the school system said that center divide needs to be a certain height.”

Frangos was told the median wasn’t high enough, but that’s not what state law says.  PennDot’s law clearly states:  “If physical barriers such as grassy medians, guide rails or concrete median barriers separate oncoming traffic from the bus, motorists in the opposing lanes may proceed without stopping.”

If physical barriers such as grassy medians, guide rails or concrete median barriers separate oncoming traffic from the bus, motorists in the opposing lanes may proceed without stopping. Just on principle, I’d spend $2,000 to fight it before I will pay the school system,” Frangos added.

Jay Beeber wrote a report for the National Motorists Association.  He says data nationwide shows automated cameras don’t make kids safer and a cut of the revenue goes to the local school district...

11 Investigates digs into people wrongfully ticketed by automated cameras on school buses – WPXI

National watchdog group calls on Baltimore County Council to reject Jones’ amendments

The association representing inspectors general nationwide today took the unusual step of denouncing amendments proposed by Baltimore County Council Chair Julian E. Jones Jr., saying they serve no purpose but to “undermine” and “restrict” Kelly Madigan, the county’s inspector general.

Noting that a blue ribbon commission had spent over a year crafting plans to enhance the powers of Madigan’s office to undercover waste, fraud and abuse in county government, the Association of Inspectors General said Jones’ amendments would upend the county’s “progress towards the creation of a truly independent office of the inspector general.”

“The AIG calls on the Baltimore County Council to reject Council Chair Jones’ amendments to Bills 83-23 and 84-23,” the group, which represents 2,000 federal, state and local government watchdog offices, said in a statement released from its New York headquarters.

The statement follows Jones’ attempt last Monday to slip unpublicized and unvetted changes into inspector general bills up for a final vote at the Council.

Shortly before the scheduled vote, The Brew disclosed the secret amendments, which Jones had sent to fellow Council members the day before on his private email account...

National watchdog group calls on Baltimore County Council to reject Jones’ amendments | Baltimore Brew

A teacher wrote a Palestinian rallying cry in her email. She’s on leave. Montgomery County, Md., has now suspended at least three teachers for such speech

...Hajur El-Haggan said in a complaint filed to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission this week that other employees at Argyle Middle School in Silver Spring similarly have expressed support for political and social causes through their email signatures but that she was the only employee known to face disciplinary action...

https://wapo.st/41kguHm

11 Investigates viewer complaints about school bus cameras wrongly ticketing people [BusPatrol America]

PITTSBURGH — Safety on the roads is of critical importance when protecting kids and school buses.

But now, Pittsburgh Public School buses are using automated cameras that send tickets and our viewers say they’re not working.

“I think the system was designed to make money,” Lance Duggar tells 11 Investigates...

...He got a $300 violation in the mail and said he was so surprised, he thought it was a scam. He was able to go online and look at the video footage showing his “violation.” The video showed he didn’t pass the bus on Brownsville Road while the red lights were flashing, so he went to court and won.

BusPatrol says a Pittsburgh Public Police officer looks at the video before a citation is actually mailed out. Dugger says, based on what he saw, he’s not sure anyone reviewed his case. And it came with court costs he said he had to pay for in cash.

“$90. I don’t have 90 dollars [in court costs] to give away,” he said...

11 Investigates viewer complaints about school bus cameras wrongly ticketing people – WPXI

Prince George's County parents want public schools to supply more safe water fountains

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, Md. (7News) — 7News wants to know why it's taken Prince George's County Public Schools 19 years to supply safe, lead-free, and filtered water at fountains on each floor of its schools.

"This is a chronic problem. They started a lead remediating program in 2004 and they said they had finished all their steps in their strategic plan in 2018 - and here we are in 2023 and the schools do not have filtered water," says Christina Toy who has a student attending classes.

Since 2019, every school has been provided at least one filtered water fountain with a bottle fill, district officials told 7News. That's at least one filtered water fountain at each of its 200 schools with roughly 131,600 thirsty students combined...

Prince George's County parents want public schools to supply more safe water fountains | WJLA

Math Scores Dropped Globally, but the U.S. Still Trails Other Countries

In a global exam for 15-year-olds, only a handful of places, including Singapore, Japan and Australia, kept math performance high through the pandemic.

The math performance of U.S. teenagers has sharply declined since 2018, with scores lower than 20 years ago, and with American students continuing to trail global competitors, according to the results of a key international exam released on Tuesday.

In the first comparable global results since the coronavirus pandemic, 15-year-olds in the United States scored below students in similar industrialized democracies like the United Kingdom, Australia and Germany, and well behind students in the highest-performing countries such as Singapore, South Korea and Estonia — continuing an underperformance in math that predated the pandemic.

The bleak math results were offset by a stronger performance in reading and science, where the United States scored above average internationally.

About 66 percent of U.S. students performed at least at a basic level in math, compared with about 80 percent in reading and science, according to the exam, the Program for International Student Assessment, known as PISA...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/us/math-scores-pandemic-pisa.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FU0.gdCH.yjbq4RSm6pyN&hpgrp=c-abar&smid=url-share

Watchdog finds evidence of misconduct by Montgomery middle school principal

An investigation by Montgomery County’s inspector general found that a former middle school principal violated the system’s sexual harassment and bullying policies, including making repeated comments about the appearance of female subordinates and having a sexual relationship with someone he supervised.

Joel Beidleman, former principal of Farquhar Middle School, was placed on administrative leave in August after an investigation by The Washington Post found Montgomery County Public Schools had received at least 18 reports alleging misconduct by him dating back to 2016. After the report, the school system — Maryland’s largest — hired the Baltimore-based law firm Jackson Lewis to investigate The Post’s findings. The law firm identified additional complaints, making the total 25...

https://wapo.st/48aPv3t

Victims lawyers defend Maryland’s Child Victims Act following Washington archdiocese challenge

Attorneys for several men who say members of the clergy in the Archdiocese of Washington sexually abused them in Maryland decades ago defended on Friday the new law that allowed them to sue the Catholic Church: The Child Victims Act.

The filings from plaintiffs’ lawyers respond to a legal challenge from the Washington diocese last month, with the church’s attorneys arguing Maryland’s child victims law is unconstitutional, and that the men’s lawsuits, filed in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, should be dismissed as a result.

Archdiocese attorneys contend the legislature granted defendants immunity from child sex abuse lawsuits after the victim turns 38, when it expanded the statute of limitations to that age in 2017. They argue their legal protection stems from a rare provision in the law known as a statute of repose, which created “vested rights” that lawmakers cannot simply change.

Lawyers for the victims in the lawsuits disagree.

In their filing Friday, attorneys for a man who sued the Washington diocese in Montgomery County said the diocese’s lawyers’ interpretation of the law runs afoul of “well-settled principles set forth by the Maryland Supreme Court.”

“Applied here, those principles demonstrate that the law at issue here is a statute of limitations, which the General Assembly is free to modify under Maryland’s constitution,” wrote attorneys Robert K. Jenner, Philip C. Federico and Steven J. Kelly, all of whom are representing the man suing in Montgomery Circuit Court...

Victims lawyers defend Maryland’s Child Victims Act following Washington archdiocese challenge – Baltimore Sun

MCPS Releases 2022-2023 Statistics on Demographics, Graduation and Retention Rates

...In the previous school year, MCPS’ graduation rate was 90.3% with Asian students graduating at a rate of 97% and Hispanics at 80% The district, with an operating budget of $3.16 billion, has 24,907 employees. Close to 14% of teachers left MCPS, which is fewer than the 21.7% who left during the previous school year.

Kindergarten literacy rates increased 24%, from 48% to 72%. Twelve new math coaches were hired this school year, and 22 schools were added to the expanded enriched literacy curriculum in elementary schools, for a total of 63 schools.

MCPS now has six wellness centers in six high schools and 117 mindfulness rooms and spaces...

MCPS Releases 2022-2023 Statistics on Demographics, Graduation and Retention Rates - Montgomery Community Media (mymcmedia.org)

High court struggles on whether officials may block social media critics

The Supreme Court will decide several cases this term that impact the future of free speech on social media platforms

...The pair of cases before the justices presented a fresh opportunity for them to consider when public officials — in this case, two school board members in California and a city manager in Michigan — can bar critical voices from social media accounts that are increasingly used at all levels of government to communicate with citizens. They are part of a set of legal controversies the justices will review this term that will clarify the future of speech on social media platforms...

https://wapo.st/41d23oP

MCPS Principal sexually harassed female employees to the point they changed their appearances to avoid attention, report says

 

"Those complaints alleged, among other things, acts of bullying, retaliation, sexual harassment and unfair hiring practices," the investigation reads.

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Md. — Years of bullying, sexual harassment and a culture where some staff felt threatened, are just some of the findings of an investigation into the former Montgomery County Public Schools Principal Joel Beidleman, according to a recently released report. 

In September, the Office of the Montgomery County Inspector General (OIG) announced that it would open two investigations related to allegations against Farquhar Middle School Principal Dr. Joel Beidleman and Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) handling of misconduct complaints. Officials claimed he was unanimously promoted during a June meeting to become the principal at an area high school – all while being under investigation for sexual harassment...

//www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/maryland/investigation-misconduct-former-mcps-principal-dr-joel-beidleman-released/65-f43e0399-bfcc-4744-8519-76b62ef38588

MCPS Selling It on the Conference Circuit

dc23_program_0623_web1.pdf (learningforward.org)

Home - Learning Forward Annual Conference

 

Northwest High School: a 'serious' 'Hate/Bias' incident

This time at Northwest HS. Here is the letter from the principal, Scott Smith, who will not state exactly what the 'hate/bias' incident was. Just that it was 'serious.' Not to worry, though, as with every other 'hate/bias' incident in our MCPS schools, he makes sure to let the community know that this is 'unacceptable.' And there will be 'consequences.'

PSA here: If you see an antisemitic or other 'hate' act, call the county police immediately and report it. Here is the non-emergency number: 301-279-8000. Also report to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR). We are assured the OCR wants to hear from you. Here is the form. Remember, if you do not report it, it didn't happen.

Narcan Administered Twice in Schools Since Beginning of Academic Year

Narcan — the medicine that counteracts an opioid overdose — has been administered twice in Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) as of three months into the academic year, according to the school system’s medical officer.

The medicine was administered 18 times during the last school year, with no deaths, MCPS Medical Officer Dr. Patricia Kapunan said during a joint council committee meeting Wednesday. Councilmembers received an update Wednesday on youth safety and crime as well as substance use and overdose trends...

Narcan Administered Twice in Schools Since Beginning of Academic Year  - Montgomery Community Media (mymcmedia.org)

More Antisemitism at MCPS, this time Takoma Park Middle School

 The structural antisemitism in MCPS continues, and this time again it is coming from a teacher. Again. The call is coming from inside the house.