[Washington Post] Ex-Montgomery superintendent McKnight to get $1.3M in separation deal

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m mad about this. Funds are frozen and we cannot buy any classroom supplies because of the budget shortfall and our office manager keeps screeching that we should not do paper assignments in class because paper is expensive and it turns out MCPS is just blowing through stacks of cash for legal settlements. It is depressing how far MCPS has fallen

If your principal is saying you can’t buy needed instructional materials they are NOT following guidance from the Central Office. Call them out! Find out who your principal reports to and tell them what is going on at your school. Contact the interim super. Contact every BOE member and then copy those emails and addresses and post them on your personal social media accounts and ask everyone else to call out your principal as well. What your principal is doing is absolutely contrary to guidance from above.

Kindly post that guidance from Central Office. You don't have it, do you? You don't have it because you're not an MCPS employee. Anyone who works for MCPS knows just how laughable your advice is. Do not tell teachers, who are on the bottom rung, to call out their principals and financial directors, with admin. That changes none of their personal access to resources. It just gets them into serious trouble with their supervisor and gets them bullied from above.

Are you sure you're a MCPS teacher?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m mad about this. Funds are frozen and we cannot buy any classroom supplies because of the budget shortfall and our office manager keeps screeching that we should not do paper assignments in class because paper is expensive and it turns out MCPS is just blowing through stacks of cash for legal settlements. It is depressing how far MCPS has fallen

If your principal is saying you can’t buy needed instructional materials they are NOT following guidance from the Central Office. Call them out! Find out who your principal reports to and tell them what is going on at your school. Contact the interim super. Contact every BOE member and then copy those emails and addresses and post them on your personal social media accounts and ask everyone else to call out your principal as well. What your principal is doing is absolutely contrary to guidance from above.

Kindly post that guidance from Central Office. You don't have it, do you? You don't have it because you're not an MCPS employee. Anyone who works for MCPS knows just how laughable your advice is. Do not tell teachers, who are on the bottom rung, to call out their principals and financial directors, with admin. That changes none of their personal access to resources. It just gets them into serious trouble with their supervisor and gets them bullied from above.

The guidance was emailed to all staff on Thursday.

As a parent I’ve been to theee different meeting with CO staff and the Interim Superintendent have said supplies for doing the job are not frozen. Schools can buy paper and teachers can print.

This is not true at my school. I just asked if I could buy some supplies for an upcoming science lab and was told all money is frozen. I would have to fill out a special exemption form detailing why I need the supplies and why they are important and my school admin discouraged me from doing that saying MCPS does not want schools to spend money

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The BOE has a large staff. The problem is they hire people who don't know what they are doing. More people won't help if the people are idiots.

What staff besides the Superintendent, the one person they have answering phones, etc., and ad hoc legal/consulting for limited-scope lawsuits/projects? What large staff whose job it is to facilitate their oversight? Any with broad imquiry authority to dig into MCPS testimony/presentations or to act in the same capacity at the direction of a BOE member on bahalf of citizen-raised concerns?

The BOE does not have a large staff. They just recently hired a senior financial analyst and a deputy chief of staff.

I consider 17 people to support 8 people a large staff.

They have a chief of staff, coordinator of legislative affairs, an audit department of 7 people, a communications specialist, another coordinator, ombuds, multiple administrative staff. And they just hired a deputy chief of staff, and financial analyst.

The Internal Audit Unit is its own separate thing, they're not really providing support to board members.

And I doubt someone titled "Asst to Associate Supt" doesn't fall under the Superintendent. It would seem that administrative placement in that "office" doesn't mean direct support to the BOE. Maybe two, four with the incoming hires?

Again, how many FTEs are reporting directly to the BOE to facilitate their oversight? How many have the authority to compel MCPS staff to provide direct information at a BOE member's request? Outside the Superintendent's line of reporting?

[Anonymous]

Internal audit staff are not going to provide an effective check on the MCPS Superintendent because their work is not public.

The Montgomery County Council which has extremely limited authority over MCPS, but which does exercise authority over the county government including public safety, transit, solid waste, HHS and much more, has a much larger staff. Each of 11 councilmembers has 3-4 individual staffers. On top of that there is a comms staff, admin staff and central staff analysts. That doesn't even account for the IG and OLO. 17 staffers is nothing for a multi billion dollar annual budget. To some it may seem like a bloated bureaucracy and there is some of that but on the analytical side council staff are actually stretched quite thin especially since they added 2 seats to the council.

[Anonymous]

It's bizarre to have an "internal audit" unit as part of the BOEs staff. The whole point of it being "internal" is that it reports to the head of the agency, and not the governing board which is external to it. But I see from their description that they also manage the external financial audit which should go to the BOE.

I agree with the PP that it's highly unlikely these 7 staff are actually providing any analytical support for the BOE.

[Anonymous]

The budget is indeed frozen, per the guidance memo that was sent out in January. Some money was excluded for essentials but it was very small and I imagine some schools might blow through that quickly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m mad about this. Funds are frozen and we cannot buy any classroom supplies because of the budget shortfall and our office manager keeps screeching that we should not do paper assignments in class because paper is expensive and it turns out MCPS is just blowing through stacks of cash for legal settlements. It is depressing how far MCPS has fallen

If your principal is saying you can’t buy needed instructional materials they are NOT following guidance from the Central Office. Call them out! Find out who your principal reports to and tell them what is going on at your school. Contact the interim super. Contact every BOE member and then copy those emails and addresses and post them on your personal social media accounts and ask everyone else to call out your principal as well. What your principal is doing is absolutely contrary to guidance from above.

Kindly post that guidance from Central Office. You don't have it, do you? You don't have it because you're not an MCPS employee. Anyone who works for MCPS knows just how laughable your advice is. Do not tell teachers, who are on the bottom rung, to call out their principals and financial directors, with admin. That changes none of their personal access to resources. It just gets them into serious trouble with their supervisor and gets them bullied from above.

Ask your principal if they have gotten that guidance. I can assure you with absolute confidence they have. Whether they are following the guidance is another matter. There is no freeze on the purchase of materials necessary for instruction. If your principal denies this, they are lying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The BOE has a large staff. The problem is they hire people who don't know what they are doing. More people won't help if the people are idiots.

What staff besides the Superintendent, the one person they have answering phones, etc., and ad hoc legal/consulting for limited-scope lawsuits/projects? What large staff whose job it is to facilitate their oversight? Any with broad imquiry authority to dig into MCPS testimony/presentations or to act in the same capacity at the direction of a BOE member on bahalf of citizen-raised concerns?

MCPS has a large staff, the BOE does not. They are overwhelmed by MCPS staff who, too often, don’t provide materials/presentations to BOE until the day of a presentation before the Board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m mad about this. Funds are frozen and we cannot buy any classroom supplies because of the budget shortfall and our office manager keeps screeching that we should not do paper assignments in class because paper is expensive and it turns out MCPS is just blowing through stacks of cash for legal settlements. It is depressing how far MCPS has fallen

If your principal is saying you can’t buy needed instructional materials they are NOT following guidance from the Central Office. Call them out! Find out who your principal reports to and tell them what is going on at your school. Contact the interim super. Contact every BOE member and then copy those emails and addresses and post them on your personal social media accounts and ask everyone else to call out your principal as well. What your principal is doing is absolutely contrary to guidance from above.

Kindly post that guidance from Central Office. You don't have it, do you? You don't have it because you're not an MCPS employee. Anyone who works for MCPS knows just how laughable your advice is. Do not tell teachers, who are on the bottom rung, to call out their principals and financial directors, with admin. That changes none of their personal access to resources. It just gets them into serious trouble with their supervisor and gets them bullied from above.

Are you sure you're a MCPS teacher?

Continuing to complain to each other is t going to change things. I acknowledge that it takes guts to speak up, given how complaints have been dismissed or ignored, but if staff members complain AS A GROUP is is much more difficult to simply ignore them.

[Anonymous]

But please keep telling me why we need higher property taxes for schools.

[Anonymous]

“In lieu of close of business today, the date/time of the Expenditure Restrictions will be tomorrow January 17th, at 5pm. Principals will have until 5pm. this Friday to approve those items that were submitted timely.” The memo was quite clear that this was a freeze, afterwards, and nothing has changed. We can send printing jobs to Copy Plus, mind you. There was also a memo that was just sent out three days from Brian Hull, reiterating the restrictions.

[Anonymous]

“To All MCPS Employees,

During the past year, MCPS has not been immune to the effects of inflation. As costs have continued to rise, including dramatic increases related to healthcare, we found it necessary in January 2024 to restrict expenditures in many areas to avoid running a systemwide budget deficit. These expenditure restrictions will continue through the end of the school year (June 30).

For MCPS central offices, the expenditure restrictions continue to impact vacant positions, contractual services, supplies, materials, and equipment, with exemptions for grant-funded activities and emergency overtime.

For MCPS schools, restrictions only affect supplies, materials, and equipment.

No staff members should be required to purchase school supplies with their personal funds.

All supplies, materials and equipment (with the exception of building service supplies) require submission of the Expenditure Exception Request form signed by the school principal. Expenditure requests will be reviewed by a committee.

Copy-Plus service is available, free of charge, to all staff for large print jobs.

Submitted exception requests will be reviewed within 5-10 working days. Between now and June 30, 2024, every effort should be made to wait until the new fiscal year to make non-essential purchases.

We appreciate your understanding and support regarding these financial constraints. Your patience and cooperation until the end of the fiscal year are essential in sustaining our savings efforts.

Thank You
Brian Hull
MCPS Chief Operating Officer”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She must have been a special kind of awful for them to be willing to spend that amount to be rid of her.

She is the meanest person I have ever met. Central Office was a highly toxic work environment under her. I suspect that the BOE had no idea who they were truly dealing with until they tried to get rid of her. Then they saw the real person that McKnight truly is.

I don't even know how she in her soul can accept this ridiculous amount of money knowing that it would eventually come out publicly and that people would be outraged and disgusted by it all.

She has convinced herself that she did everything right and that she’s just the scapegoat/sacrificial lamb being blamed because everyone is racist. Her echo chamber is reinforcing this idea. She truly feels entitled to this money after all she’s endured.

Obviously everyone else (including the BOE) has a different perception of her abysmal leadership and job performance. If she were honest with herself about her ongoing failures, I agree she would feel great guilt and regret and would be mortified to accept this sum. This just shows us one more example about her character.

She was scapegoated for the board's failings. It's that simple.

[Anonymous]

The original memo went out January 12th, from Brian Hull, to principals, and effective January 18th, throughout the rest of the school year. I have a screencap. It froze everything except for building supplies. Everything else must be approved, first by the principal, and then the regional superintendent, and only then does it go to a committee for further evaluation.

[Anonymous]

“A committee comprising the associate superintendent of finance, director of the Division of Management and Budget, and representatives from the offices of the chief operating officer, the deputy superintendent of schools, and the chief of staff, will make a recommendation to the chief operating officer regarding all exception requests. The decision of the chief operating officer will be final.”