What kind of information should be released to the public upon request? Many difficulties can be avoided by knowing the answer. This class helps officials and staff at all levels understand the requirements of state law governing requests for public records and suggests best practices for handling those requests. The class includes small roundtable discussions using real-life scenarios to further illustrate appropriate responses to requests from the public or the press.
Friday, November 13, 2020
Wednesday, November 11, 2020
MD Reports St Elizabeth School in Rockville @StEsRockville on Outbreak-Associated Cases in Schools Dashboard for 11/11/2020
Today, the Maryland Dashboard for Outbreak-Associated Cases in Schools was updated to include St. Elizabeth's School in Montgomery County as having 2 positive cases of COVID-19. Last week St. Andrew's Episcopal School was on the list. Last week was the first week this Dashboard was made public.
As a reminder, the Maryland Dashboard uses the following criteria for reporting COVID-19 cases. Not all cases are reported, only those that satisfy the following criteria.
Note: This dataset reflects public and non-public K-12 schools in Maryland that have COVID-19 outbreaks. Data are based on local health department reports to MDH, which may be revised if additional information becomes available. This list does not include child care facilities or institutes of higher education.Schools listed meet 1 or more of the following criteria:
1) At least two confirmed COVID-19 cases among students/teachers/staff within a 14-day period and who are epidemiologically linked, but not household contacts; or
2) Three or more classrooms or cohorts with cases from separate households that meet the classroom/cohort outbreak definition that occurs within 14 days; or
3) Five percent or more unrelated students/teachers/staff have confirmed COVID-19 within a 14 day period (minimum of 10 unrelated students/teachers/staff).
Cases reported reflect the current total number of cases. Schools are removed from the list when health officials determine 14 days have passed with no new cases and no tests pending. Archival data is available through the COVID-19 open data catalogue.
These data are updated weekly on Wednesdays during the 10 a.m. hour. MDH is continuously evaluating its data and reporting systems and will make updates as more data becomes available.
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
Nashville reaches tentative harassment settlement of $1.2M with former public school administrator (Also Former MCPS Administrator - Moreno Carrasco)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Lawyers for Metro Nashville Public Schools have reached a proposed settlement of a $1.2 million sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a former district administrator.
Terms of the final settlement with Dr. Vanessa Garcia have not been made public. That deal still must be approved by the Metro School Board, according to Metro deputy law director Mike Safley.
Latest case to be settled from Shawn Joseph tenure
items.[0].image.alt
Copyright 2018 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
By: Phil WilliamsPosted at 3:53 PM, Jan 06, 2020 and last updated 5:12 PM, Jan 06, 2020
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Lawyers for Metro Nashville Public Schools have reached a proposed settlement of a $1.2 million sexual harassment lawsuit filed by a former district administrator.
Terms of the final settlement with Dr. Vanessa Garcia have not been made public. That deal still must be approved by the Metro School Board, according to Metro deputy law director Mike Safley.
The proposed settlement, disclosed in a new court filing Monday, came less than three weeks after U.S. District Judge William L. Campbell Jr. rejected numerous efforts by the school district's lawyers to throw out various claims made by Garcia.
Garcia's lawsuit accuses former Metro Schools administrator Mo Carrasco of grossly inappropriate sexual comments, as well as one occasion when he allegedly put his hand on her breast at a district Christmas party.
After Garcia filed a formal complaint back in November 2017, other witnesses came forward - and Carrasco resigned. In May 2018, Garcia herself lost her job as part of a so-called "realignment."...
Monday, November 9, 2020
Outbreak-Associated Cases in Maryland Schools Now Being Made Public on Maryland Dept. of Health Website
https://coronavirus.maryland.gov/pages/school-resources
Note: This dataset reflects public and non-public K-12 schools in Maryland that have COVID-19 outbreaks. Data are based on local health department reports to MDH, which may be revised if additional information becomes available. This list does not include child care facilities or institutes of higher education.
Schools listed meet 1 or more of the following criteria:
1) At least two confirmed COVID-19 cases among students/teachers/staff within a 14-day period and who are epidemiologically linked, but not household contacts; or2) Three or more classrooms or cohorts with cases from separate households that meet the classroom/cohort outbreak definition that occurs within 14 days; or
3) Five percent or more unrelated students/teachers/staff have confirmed COVID-19 within a 14 day period (minimum of 10 unrelated students/teachers/staff).
Cases reported reflect the current total number of cases. Schools are removed from the list when health officials determine 14 days have passed with no new cases and no tests pending. Archival data is available through the COVID-19 open data catalogue.
These data are updated weekly on Wednesdays during the 10 a.m. hour. MDH is continuously evaluating its data and reporting systems and will make updates as more data becomes available.
MD. HEALTH DEPARTMENT REPORTS TWO COVID-19 CASES AT ST. ANDREW’S EPISCOPAL SCHOOL
Maryland Department of Health has started reporting COVID-19 outbreaks at public and nonpublic K-12 schools in the state.
On Thursday, the state health department reported 13 outbreaks in schools, which included one school in Montgomery County: St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac. The state health department reports two positive COVID-19 cases at St. Andrew’s, as of Thursday.
St. Andrew’s is where President Donald Trump’s teenage son, Barron, attends school.
On Oct. 14, two weeks after the White House confirmed the President and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for coronavirus, the First Lady penned an essay. In the essay, she described the symptoms she experienced with coronavirus and admitted that her son was also diagnosed with the virus. By the time she published the essay, she said Barron had since tested negative and he “exhibited no symptoms” when he had the virus...
https://www.mymcmedia.org/md-health-department-reports-two-covid-19-cases-at-barron-trumps-school/
NYC Schools: keeping windows open in rooms with poor ventilation
NYC's Pandemic Ventilation Plan For Winter In Public Schools Involves Space Heaters, Air Purifiers, And Lots Of Layers
Following complaints from NYC public school teachers about uncomfortably chilly temperatures in some classrooms, the city Department of Education has put forth a plan intended to keep classrooms warm even when windows must remain open to slow the spread of COVID-19. The plan will include air purifiers, space heaters, and filters to ensure proper airflow, in addition to keeping windows open in rooms with poor ventilation.
The approach will vary depending on the needs of each school, according to a three-page memo drafted by the DOE and obtained by Gothamist. The plan states that 13,700 more MERV-13 filters will be ordered and installed in school HVAC systems to help keep the virus out of the air in classrooms. These filters -- adding to an already existing supply -- are ordered in accordance with guidelines set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommends high-quality filters to combat COVID-19...
Friday, November 6, 2020
Speak Up! Nov 12, 7pm
This is a reminder that the Montgomery County Delegation will be holding its Joint House and Senate Priorities Hearing on Thursday, November 12 at 7:00 p.m. This hearing is an opportunity for the public to discuss any issue of importance for the 2021 Legislative Session and bring it to the attention of the legislators.
Any individual or group wishing to testify at the Joint House and Senate Priorities Hearing should be aware of the following protocol:
With the current circumstances, all hearings and briefings are held virtually. If you wish to testify please sign up by 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 11; please click here to sign up - or you may e-mail: RStryer@house.state.md.us. Those registering later than that may be taken on a "virtual walk-in" basis the day of the hearing at the discretion of the Chairs. Information on how to testify virtually will be provided closer to the meeting date.
Written testimony is not required, but if you choose to have it distributed, please email it at least one day in advance to RStryer@house.state.md.us to allow time for proper distribution to the Delegation Members.
Individuals will have two minutes in which to speak; representatives of organizations will have three minutes. Organizations will be limited to one representative speaking for three minutes. There is no ceding of time.
Please note that the order of testimony is at the discretion of the Chairs and is not necessarily based on numerical order.
The meeting will be live streamed via the Delegation's YouTube page for those interested.
Rebecca Stryer
Montgomery County Delegation Administrator
Maryland House of Delegates
Lowe House Office Building
6 Bladen Street, Room 219
Annapolis, MD 21401
301-957-6332
Deschenaux and Meyers: How COVID Affects the Budget and How We Can Prepare for Future Shocks
The COVID pandemic has presented us with a string of important medical questions to which we initially had no answers, such as: How contagious is the disease? And which therapies might prevent deaths? We are still uncertain about when a safe and effective vaccine will be widely distributed enough to allow a return to economic and social normality. All this uncertainty has affected and will affect Maryland’s budget.
After we learned that COVID is especially contagious, we took a series of dramatic steps to reduce cases, starting with an unprecedented shutdown of economic activity. This pandemic was guaranteed to hurt the state’s fiscal position, in part because we had to make unanticipated purchases of medical supplies, but most importantly by reducing revenues...
Massachusetts Voters Said No to Ranked Choice Voting
Voters of Massachusetts on Nov. 3 said “no” to a reform that would have dramatically altered the way voters choose their elected leaders, rejecting a ballot question backed by a number of current and former political leaders from both parties that would have allowed voters in future statewide elections to rank candidates in races with three or more choices on the ballot...
...With 80 percent of precincts reporting, the ranked choice voting question trailed with 45.5 percent supporting the initiative and 54.5 percent opposed, despite proponents raising nearly $10 million and vastly outspending opponents who raised just over $3,500...
https://masslawyersweekly.com/2020/11/04/voters-embrace-auto-repair-question-reject-voting-reform/
Thursday, November 5, 2020
Montgomery County Civic Federation, Inc.: Louis Wilen - Our MCCF Community Hero
In November, the Montgomery County Civic Federation is proud to recognize Louis Wilen of Olney as our Community Hero.
Louis is a member of the Cherrywood Homeowners Association Board of Directors and a delegate to the Greater Olney Civic Association. He has served as a member of the MCCF Executive Committee and Chair of its Public Utilities Committee.
We honor Louis Wilen for his tireless advocacy on behalf of the citizens of Montgomery County where he has lived since 1994. A career software developer and technical support specialist for IBM Corporation, Louis has taken special interest in examining complicated public policy issues and identifying the underlying problems that require solutions by elected officials and public sector experts.
One of Louis' more recent analyses revealed that the State of Maryland has been improperly removing millions of dollars (in the aggregate) of property tax credits from homeowners. According to an October 2020 state government audit, Maryland has been miscalculating a tax credit for homeowners for years. Last year alone, just in Montgomery County, the error led to thousands of taxpayers losing significant amounts of money. Auditors found Homeowner Tax Credits (HTC) awarded to 5,388 applicants were improperly reduced by $4.4 million, and that’s just in Montgomery County, for fiscal year 2019. The error dates back to at least 2005, according to the report. The State does not plan to return the money.
Wilen's analysis revealed that the Maryland State Department of Assessment and Taxation (SDAT) has wrongly been deducting other tax credits from the HTC, which benefits low and moderate income families, seniors and people who may have lost their jobs, thereby improperly increasing their tax bills.
His longstanding and continuing efforts to get State and County officials to address the issue were ignored and dismissed for over three years. Finally, however, after contacting the Maryland State Office of Legislative Audits, the state performed its own audit of SDAT which confirmed the scale of the miscalculations and overcharges to residents.
His work also caught the attention of Montgomery County State Delegate Al Carr. Carr plans to introduce legislation in the upcoming Annapolis session that will require the state to pay back a portion of the improperly removed credits.
This is not the first time that Louis has received recognition for his community service. In 2007, Louis received the President's Award from the Greater Olney Civic Association for his work in spurring passage of the Homestead Credit Verification Act of 2007. In 2020, the Civic Federation is proud to recognize Louis Wilen again for his service and advocacy and to honor him as our Community Hero.
Click here to see Fox5’s coverage of this issue.. https://www.fox5dc.com/news/maryland-shortchanges-taxpayers-millions-of-dollars-according-to-state-audit
Exclusive: Board of Education Still Charging Students Illegal Curricular Fees Even While Students are at Home. Because Why Not Rip Off Students During a Pandemic!
We checked to see if the Montgomery County Board of Education was going to take this opportunity to provide a free public education for all Montgomery County Public School students, or if they were still going to charge students illegal curricular fees to attend public school classes.
We looked at just one school.
Just one and we immediately saw that the Board of Education illegal practice of charging students fees to attend public school classes is continuing. Even during a Global Pandemic where students are learning online from home, the Board of Education is happy to deny students their right to a free public education.
The illegal curricular fees are clearly labeled as fees for "at home during virtual learning."
The Maryland Attorney General's statement on these fees is reproduced, once again, below a sample of Board of Education "at home during virtual learning" illegal curricular fees from the MCPS website.
Wednesday, November 4, 2020
Montgomery County Election Results
Available through the Maryland State Board of Elections website:
https://results.elections.maryland.gov/county_status_page_root.html
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
Local governments are tightening their belts. But Montgomery County is going on a spending spree.
STATE AND local governments are tightening their belts, having laid off or furloughed hundreds of thousands of workers in the pandemic. Meanwhile, in Maryland’s biggest and wealthiest locality, pro-union officials are lavishing major pay increases on thousands of county employees — with no clear way to pay for them.
Braced for a pandemic-related hit to revenue last spring, Montgomery County lawmakers rejected a package of nearly $30 million in raises for public workers, negotiated by County Executive Marc Elrich (D). Weeks later Mr. Elrich, whose backing from public employee unions was key to his election two years ago, struck a deal with county labor leaders to give emergency pandemic bonuses projected to cost Montgomery $72 million by the end of this year. The bonuses cover nearly two-thirds of the county’s 10,000 employees, including general workers as well as police and firefighters, and are among the most generous in the nation...
Taiwan celebrates record 200 days with no confirmed local coronavirus transmission
The United States recorded more than 80,000 new coronavirus infections and more than 1,000 related deaths Wednesday amid a nationwide surge in new cases. Taiwan, meanwhile, reached a milestone: 200 days without recording a single locally transmitted coronavirus infection.
The island of more than 23 million people has officially confirmed 550 cases and seven covid-19 fatalities. Given Taiwan’s density and proximity to China — they are neighbors and locked in a sovereignty dispute — Taiwan’s successful handling of the pandemic has been closely analyzed by health experts...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/10/29/coronaviurs-taiwan-200-days-local-transmission/
Taiwan’s Weapon Against Coronavirus: An Epidemiologist as Vice President- a Johns Hopkins-trained epidemiologist and an expert in viruses.
TAIPEI, Taiwan — The calls come at night, when Taiwan’s vice president, Chen Chien-jen, is usually at home in his pajamas. Scientists seek his advice on the development of antiviral medications. Health officials ask for guidance as they investigate an outbreak of the coronavirus on a navy ship.
Like many world leaders, Mr. Chen is fighting to keep the coronavirus at bay and to predict the course of the pandemic. He is tracking infections, pushing for vaccines and testing kits, and reminding the public to wash their hands.
But unlike most officials, Mr. Chen has spent his career preparing for this moment: He is a Johns Hopkins-trained epidemiologist and an expert in viruses.
That experience has thrust Mr. Chen from behind the scenes to the forefront of Taiwan’s response to the crisis. He has embraced his rare dual role, using his political authority to criticize China for initially trying to conceal the virus even as the scientist in him hunkers down to analyze trends in transmission...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/09/world/asia/taiwan-vice-president-coronavirus.html
Frosh seeks justices’ help in placing offender on sex registry
Maryland’s attorney general is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to review and overturn the state high court’s decision that being placed on the sex offender registry is “punishment” that a judge must order and not a mere listing of offenders that an agency compiles to alert the public to potential sexual predators.
In papers recently filed with the justices, Brian E. Frosh said the Maryland Court of Appeals’ erroneous ruling struck down a state agency’s valid determination that a convicted human trafficker must register because his victim was a child.
Because registration is administrative and not punitive, the agency’s ordered registration was constitutionally permissible, Frosh added in the state’s request for Supreme Court review...
Killer of graduating MCPS teens appeals conviction in Md. high court
The attorney for a convicted killer of two Montgomery County teenagers on the eve of their high school graduation urged Maryland’s top court Thursday to overturn the first-degree murder conviction, saying the state’s failure to disclose the investigators’ interview with a witness’s parents denied the convict a fair trial.
Nancy S. Forster pressed the appeal of Jose Canales-Yanez, who was found guilty after a bench trial in the shooting deaths of Northwest High School seniors Artem Zibarov, 18, and Shadi Najjar, 17, as they sat in a car in a Montgomery Village cul-de-sac on the night of June 5, 2017...
Monday, November 2, 2020
Montgomery County Inspector General Again Raises The Alarm On Data Security Breaches
Montgomery County’s Inspector General is raising concerns for the second time this year about personal information of children being at risk of a security breach.
Megan Limarzi released a report Tuesday concerning at least 529 child victims of sexual or physical abuse or neglect at the Tree House Child Advocacy Center in Rockville. Their names, biographical data, medical information, clinician, notes and details of their abuse were available to any county employee or contractor that had access to a shared platform as of late September.
The Inspector General didn’t say whether the data was actually accessed by unauthorized users, but that the question should be pursued.
Limarzi reported on another set of unsecured documents in May. That case involved Medicare benefits applications stored on a shared platform at the county’s Department of Health and Human Services, involving social security numbers, date of birth, Medicare numbers, bank checking account numbers, and applicants’ addresses.
Limarzi says county agencies aren’t taking seriously recommendations to either delete the sensitive information or restrict access to personal documents on the shared platforms...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)