Balt. Board of Ed. ACTS! Superintendent Avoids Questions as County School Board Enacts Discipline Change

(WBFF) -- The Baltimore County Board of Education took swift action Tuesday night, following a series of Project Baltimore investigations which exposed a spike in bullying and violence in County schools.

An impassioned debate concerning violence and bullying in the classroom unfolded as parents and community members addressed the board and school superintendent.

“The bullying epidemic is not going to go away if we don’t address it now,” one community member told the board...

http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/superintendent-avoids-questions-as-county-school-board-enacts-discipline-change

$800K severance deal negotiated for PGCPS CEO Dr. Kevin Maxwell, sources say

Read this MD Ct. of Appeals Opinion if Your Child is Sexually Assaulted in a Tutoring Session, a Music Lesson, a Martial Arts Class or Other Situation Where Someone is Responsible for Supervision of Your Child

This understanding of the statute nearly resolves this appeal. Mr. A. [teacher] had responsibility for the supervision of Ms. K. [minor child] when she was in his class, but that responsibility ended when she departed the martial arts studio and her parents resumed their responsibility – thereby terminating the implied consent of the parents and the instructor’s duty to supervise. (Page 15)

https://www.mdcourts.gov/data/opinions/coa/2016/46a14.pdf

   Wicomico County Department of Social Services v. B.A. by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland on Scribd

Baltimore County Board of Education members can talk and write resolutions. Take note silent Montgomery County Board members, this is what it looks like when Board members take their positions seriously.

Baltimore County School Board Members are taking action following a series of Fox45 investigations into violence and bullying in County schools.

“If we can’t keep our kids safe in school, then we are failing to do our jobs,” says Julie Henn, a member of the Baltimore County School Board.

Henn and fellow School Board Member Kathleen Causey have watched over the past month as Project Baltimore has interviewed parents, students, and teachers about a recent spike in violence in County classrooms...

http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/county-school-board-takes-action-following-project-baltimore-reports

New Law Could Prevent Sexual Abuse in Youth Sports

BOISE, Idaho – A new law could help prevent child sexual abuse on youth sports teams this summer. 

After hundreds of cases of abuse within the USA women's gymnastics team were revealed last year, Congress passed the Safe Sport Act in January. 

Under the law, youth sports organizations are required to give sexual abuse prevention training, and report abuse allegations to local law enforcement. 

With summer sports warming up, organizations are looking at how to stay in line with these new policies. 

"So many good things happen in sporting organizations, and young people and adolescents blossom into these really great adults, partly because of the experience and the coaching that they get, and all those kind of things,” says David Duro, president and CEO of Treasure Valley Family YMCA. “But not everybody can be trusted with our children."...

https://www.publicnewsservice.org/2018-06-25/childrens-issues/new-law-could-prevent-sexual-abuse-in-youth-sports/a63030-1

A new day in the Maryland Senate

If someone were to hang a sign on the doors of the Maryland Senate, it might read “exciting opportunities available, inquire within.”

Going into the primary election, almost a dozen seats in the Senate already were open as some of the most experienced members, and in many cases trusted allies of Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. declined to seek re-election.

And then came Tuesday.

“This was a tectonic shift,” Sen. Cheryl Kagan, D-Montgomery, said afterwards. “It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t happen overnight — except that it happened overnight.”

That seismic shift included the loss of most of Miller’s remaining leadership team. Still in place are only one of four major committee chairs — Sen. Robert A. “Bobby” Zirkin, D-Baltimore County and chair of the Judicial Proceedings Committee — and two vice chairs.

The results also raise questions about Baltimore’s strength as it leaves Sen. William “Bill” Ferguson as both the dean and youngest member of the city Senate delegation.

The changes will force Miller to build relationships with new members of his caucus, including those who unseated key allies and friends. The longest-serving Senate president in the country and in the history of the state has already started meeting with members, but some observers say those meetings are “the normal blocking and tackling” done by the Senate leader following an election...

https://thedailyrecord.com/2018/07/01/a-new-day-in-the-maryland-senate/

BOE wants @pcmc1 Tweet "taken down" - .@mocoboe Superintendent Jack Smith told the County Council's Ed Committee in open session that he has a zero tolerance policy on incidents of staff and sexual assault; that he can be overridden by Board of Education. True/False?

A Montgomery County Board of Education member has e-mailed to the Parents' Coalition requesting that we take down the following Tweet.

"police" should be policy

The Board member had BOE Chief of Staff Roland Ikheloa watch the video of the Montgomery County Council's Education Committee meeting referenced in the Tweet.  Mr. Ikheloa concluded,

 "...I watched the entire video and cannot come up with any statement by the superintendent remotely justifying the quoted tweet below by the Parents Coalition..."

Below are video clips from the April 25, 2018, Montgomery County Council Briefing- MCPS Child Abuse & Neglect Policy.

Councilmember George Leventhal, "I understand the Superintendent to be saying that these charges, if found to be true lead to immediate dismissal..."



Superintendent Smith says, "... I feel so strongly about this and I believe so much that we can not even allow people to resign when it is found they have done these sorts of things, they must be terminated..."

Superintendent Smith says. "... I, of course, make the recommendation to the school board, the school board acts..."

Now is the @pcmc1 Tweet of the statement by the superintendent remotely justified?

HVAC problems are widespread across Montgomery County schools

...According to longtime Blair Technology and Engineering teacher, John Kaluta, Blair's HVAC has been periodically faulty since the building opened in 1998. "The day the building opened, it was so hot that the panels popped off the walls in the Student Activity Center (SAC) and upstairs. During winter, we found certain places in the building, including one of my rooms that, as soon as the heat was turned off, blistering cold air would come in through the vents," Kaluta explained...

http://silverchips.mbhs.edu/story/13735

"People who knew and did nothing must be held fully accountable for turning their backs on children to aid and abet predators." (As in MCPS Superintendents, Administrators and Board of Education members)

Joshua Starr on Transition Team for New Haven Schools Superintendent

...Joshua Starr, CEO of PDK International — which lists growing and connecting education leaders as its mission on its website — said he has been a mentor to Birks for about 12 years when he was Stamford superintendent of schools and she was in a program at the University of Connecticut.

“For 12 years we’ve been working on making sure she gets the right job,” he said. “We’ll be supporting her behind the scenes.”

Starr said PDK International will oversee the transition period...

https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Reformers-take-center-stage-on-Birks-transition-12803581.php

The Dangers of Distracted Parenting

...Yet for all the talk about children’s screen time, surprisingly little attention is paid to screen use by parents themselves, who now suffer from what the technology expert Linda Stone more than 20 years ago called “continuous partial attention.” This condition is harming not just us, as Stone has argued; it is harming our children. The new parental-interaction style can interrupt an ancient emotional cueing system, whose hallmark is responsive communication, the basis of most human learning. We’re in uncharted territory...

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/07/the-dangers-of-distracted-parenting/561752/

Stop the Silence in Montgomery County

Officials consider building new school #MCPS

https://www.localdvm.com/news/i-270/officials-consider-building-new-school/1219843526

Hope Solo says youth soccer in the U.S. has become a 'rich, white kid sport'

Former U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo said Tuesday soccer in the United States has become a "rich, white kid sport" and that the sport's high cost at the youth level is detrimental to the "state of the game." 

"My family would not have been able to afford to put me in soccer if I was a young kid today," Solo said at the Hashtag Sports conference in New York. 

"That obviously alienates so many communities, including Hispanic communities, the black communities, the rural communities and under-represented communities. Soccer, right now, has become a rich, white kid sport." 

The two-time Olympic gold medalist also pointed blame at the high cost in the youth system as to why the U.S. men's national soccer team failed to qualify for this summer's World Cup in Russia. 

"You have to look at why have our U.S. men not qualified for the World Cup? And it goes back to our youth system," Solo said. "And it's because we are alienating so much talent in the youth system, and it breaks my heart because these kids are passionate about the game and they are filled with great skill, yet they're being told if you don't have the money, you can't represent your country."..

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/soccer/2018/06/28/hope-solo-youth-soccer-united-states-cost/741378002/

Silver Chips: Losing Lockers Why lockers are a waste of space

As the number of students at Blair is expected to surpass 3,000 students next year and the overcrowding problem is anticipated to grow throughout Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), it is clear that the schools must clear the space that lockers take up and use it in a more productive manner...

...Other schools have chosen to tear out lockers and instead use the space to foster a more welcoming learning environment. At Lakeville North High School, its 500 lockers were knocked down so that the school could make room for new cyber cafes. On the other hand, Ericia Turner, the principal of Rocky River High, has considered replacing the rows of zip tied lockers lining the halls of the school with display cases to highlight student achievements. 

In the past, MCPS has been reluctant to get rid of the lockers. In 2016, the administration chose to include lockers at the newly renovated Wheaton High School. However, other school districts have begun to completely remove lockers from their school designs. For instance, Wayzata Public Schools (WPS) has chosen to not include lockers in their renovation of Wayzata High School, which required an addition to hold the expanding student body, similar to the situation that Blair currently finds itself in. 

Costing between $50 and $100 dollars to install, this money would be better spent on expanding instructional space. Continuing to install lockers in MCPS is an antiquated practice, one that should have stopped at the same time when Silly Bandz and Heelys were no longer cool.

http://silverchips.mbhs.edu/story/13728

School District Pays $1.3 Million To Settle Landmark Special Ed Case

The Douglas County School District outside Denver has paid $1.32 million to settle a long-running special education case brought by a couple who sought reimbursement from the district for their son’s education at a private school for students with autism.

The payment, made to the law firm representing the couple in May, represents the last chapter in a landmark special education case known as Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District. The case lasted for seven years, leading to a 2017 U.S. Supreme Court decision that raised the standard schools must meet in educating students with disabilities.

“The settlement really just eliminates any uncertainty there may have been about the importance of the Endrew F. decision,” said Meghan Whittaker, policy and advocacy manager for the National Center for Learning Disabilities...

https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2018/06/25/school-district-sped-case/25227/

FOX45 News: MCPS #2 in Bullying Reports in State

The school system with the most bullying reports is Baltimore County. Last year, the County tallied 901 reported incidents. Montgomery County, which has 45,000 more students, was second with 870.



http://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-county-schools-leads-state-in-bullying-reports

Essentially what the seemingly benign “if you like that, you’ll like this” mechanism is doing is training young children – practically from birth – to click on the first thing that comes along, regardless of the source.

In November of last year, I read an article in the New York Times about disturbing videos targeted at children that were being distributed via YouTube. Parents reported that their children were encountering knock-off editions of their favourite cartoon characters in situations of violence and death: Peppa Pig drinking bleach, or Mickey Mouse being run over by a car. A brief Google of some of the terms mentioned in the article brought up not only many more accounts of inappropriate content, in Facebook posts, newsgroup threads, and other newspapers, but also disturbing accounts of their effects. Previously happy and well-adjusted children became frightened of the dark, prone to fits of crying, or displayed violent behaviour and talked about self-harm – all classic symptoms of abuse. But despite these reports, YouTube and its parent company, Google, had done little to address them. Moreover, there seemed to be little understanding of where these videos were coming from, how they were produced – or even why they existed in the first place...

...Take YouTube’s recommendation system for starters, which doesn’t differentiate between Disney movies and a grainy animation cooked up by a bot farm in China. Essentially what the seemingly benign “if you like that, you’ll like this” mechanism is doing is training young children – practically from birth – to click on the first thing that comes along, regardless of the source. This is the same mechanism that sees Facebook slide fake political ads and conspiracy theories into the feeds of millions of disaffected voters, and the outcome – ever more extreme content and divided viewpoints – is much the same. Add the sheer impossibility of working out where these videos come from (most are anonymous accounts with thousands of barely differentiated uploads) and the viewer is adrift in a sea of existential uncertainty, which starts to feel worryingly familiar in a world where opaque and unaccountable systems increasingly control critical aspects of our everyday lives...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jun/17/peppa-pig-youtube-weird-algorithms-automated-content?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The Immigrant Children's Center Near You

Investigative reporters Decca Muldowney, Alex Mierjeski, Claire Perlman, Lilia Chang, Ken Schwencke, Adriana Gallardo, and Derek Kravitz at ProPublica.org have mapped the detention centers where children are being held. Full article here.

Under President Trump’s new “zero tolerance” immigration policy 2,047 children remain separated from their parents, as of June 26. They are now held in shelters and foster homes run by the federal government and an assortment of nonprofit groups. These shelters were already home to an additional 8,886 children who crossed the border unaccompanied by older relatives before the “zero tolerance” policy was announced. ProPublica is working with partners in the U.S. and in Latin America to fill in gaps in what we know about these facilities, and to tell the stories of the people affected by the zero tolerance policy. More about the map | Español

Blue dots are detention centers, including one in Baltimore run by the Board of Child Care of the United Methodist Church, and one in Crofton run by Bethany Christian Services, and one in Alexandria, run by General Dynamics.

.@MCPS Students receive diplomas behind bars

BOYDS, Md. - It is graduation season for high school students across the country, but Friday was especially unique for those in Montgomery County. 

The graduates received their high school diplomas while behind bars. The Montgomery County Correctional Facility partners with Montgomery College and Montgomery County Public Schools to give inmates the same education they would get if they were not incarcerated. Family and friends came to the ceremony Friday as the graduates beamed with pride. 

"It was really great. I never felt that before in my life. I'm just thankful to be here today," said graduate Keon Taylor.

The graduates received a scholarship of up to $1,500 to attend Montgomery College when they are released. 

https://www.localdvm.com/news/i-270/students-receive-diplomas-behind-bars/1213322576