MCPS closed tomorrow

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Good ol' DCUM managing overnight to create a 7 page snarky thread mostly full of troll comments and people replying to them.

1. Please use the report button in lower right for off-topic and troll comments, rather than replying to them.

2. No the teacher's union doesn't make or influence these decisions. Nor is this decision made just to give teachers an extra day off. It's a big disruption to everyone's plans. People suggesting such a thing are trolling. Report those comments.

3. Power outages affect buildings, and it takes time to go and assess that the HVAC, internet, phones, safety (fire alarms and PA) and security systems are functioning properly. I've been in a school that had a power fluctuation in the area. The area came back up, but the building did not. After 1 hour trying to resolve, they dismissed the school early.

4. I'm surprised they actually decided to close the evening before. They could have said 2 hour delay with reassess in morning. While the message about updating in the morning may have been unclear, they won't reverse a system closure. What they were checking is to see if buildings could open for daycare and if offices could be open. Since they remained closed, that says that a lot of buildings were not ready this morning.

5. It's not just buildings. The state of the roads and traffic signals matters in order to run the buses safely. Montgomery County government (including police and fire dept.) will have a say in whether or not they want MCPS to be running buses. A closure decision is not made in isolation by MCPS.

6. It's not just buildings and roads. There are other support services that are critical to the functioning of the system. They mentioned that food services lost power and they needed to assess impact. If the main servers are down and the system has no internet, it's hard to be effective. Etc.

7. They can't just close schools in part of the system and keep other schools open. There are too many students (~15% in choice programs, not sure how many in SPED programs) that attend school other than their home school. The bus network transporting students covers a significant area.

8. Be prepared. This is the exact same conversation that is going to happen when there is some sort of iffy weather event. No need to rehash the stupid comments. Just recognize how the system works and have back-up plans in place so you can adapt.

I agree with most of this except #7. That's a dangerous argument to make. Families know which school their child attends. Each school has a principal and staff that know who attends their school should be able to communicate with parents. I hear that there are other reasons why they needed to close all the schools but this should not be one of them.

Do they know where their teacher parent who has to take off works too?

When teachers are sick do they not call in? JFC.

[Anonymous]

I think what people cannot understand is the poor decision making. I called it last night in a post around 10 pm that MCPS would close schools before midnight and power would be back on shortly thereafter. It's not fathomable how they could make such a hasty decision. Why not wait a few hours until more information is available? Then they justify it after the fact with poor excuses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Good ol' DCUM managing overnight to create a 7 page snarky thread mostly full of troll comments and people replying to them.

1. Please use the report button in lower right for off-topic and troll comments, rather than replying to them.

2. No the teacher's union doesn't make or influence these decisions. Nor is this decision made just to give teachers an extra day off. It's a big disruption to everyone's plans. People suggesting such a thing are trolling. Report those comments.

3. Power outages affect buildings, and it takes time to go and assess that the HVAC, internet, phones, safety (fire alarms and PA) and security systems are functioning properly. I've been in a school that had a power fluctuation in the area. The area came back up, but the building did not. After 1 hour trying to resolve, they dismissed the school early.

4. I'm surprised they actually decided to close the evening before. They could have said 2 hour delay with reassess in morning. While the message about updating in the morning may have been unclear, they won't reverse a system closure. What they were checking is to see if buildings could open for daycare and if offices could be open. Since they remained closed, that says that a lot of buildings were not ready this morning.

5. It's not just buildings. The state of the roads and traffic signals matters in order to run the buses safely. Montgomery County government (including police and fire dept.) will have a say in whether or not they want MCPS to be running buses. A closure decision is not made in isolation by MCPS.

6. It's not just buildings and roads. There are other support services that are critical to the functioning of the system. They mentioned that food services lost power and they needed to assess impact. If the main servers are down and the system has no internet, it's hard to be effective. Etc.

7. They can't just close schools in part of the system and keep other schools open. There are too many students (~15% in choice programs, not sure how many in SPED programs) that attend school other than their home school. The bus network transporting students covers a significant area.

8. Be prepared. This is the exact same conversation that is going to happen when there is some sort of iffy weather event. No need to rehash the stupid comments. Just recognize how the system works and have back-up plans in place so you can adapt.

Thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Good ol' DCUM managing overnight to create a 7 page snarky thread mostly full of troll comments and people replying to them.

1. Please use the report button in lower right for off-topic and troll comments, rather than replying to them.

2. No the teacher's union doesn't make or influence these decisions. Nor is this decision made just to give teachers an extra day off. It's a big disruption to everyone's plans. People suggesting such a thing are trolling. Report those comments.

3. Power outages affect buildings, and it takes time to go and assess that the HVAC, internet, phones, safety (fire alarms and PA) and security systems are functioning properly. I've been in a school that had a power fluctuation in the area. The area came back up, but the building did not. After 1 hour trying to resolve, they dismissed the school early.

4. I'm surprised they actually decided to close the evening before. They could have said 2 hour delay with reassess in morning. While the message about updating in the morning may have been unclear, they won't reverse a system closure. What they were checking is to see if buildings could open for daycare and if offices could be open. Since they remained closed, that says that a lot of buildings were not ready this morning.

5. It's not just buildings. The state of the roads and traffic signals matters in order to run the buses safely. Montgomery County government (including police and fire dept.) will have a say in whether or not they want MCPS to be running buses. A closure decision is not made in isolation by MCPS.

6. It's not just buildings and roads. There are other support services that are critical to the functioning of the system. They mentioned that food services lost power and they needed to assess impact. If the main servers are down and the system has no internet, it's hard to be effective. Etc.

7. They can't just close schools in part of the system and keep other schools open. There are too many students (~15% in choice programs, not sure how many in SPED programs) that attend school other than their home school. The bus network transporting students covers a significant area.

8. Be prepared. This is the exact same conversation that is going to happen when there is some sort of iffy weather event. No need to rehash the stupid comments. Just recognize how the system works and have back-up plans in place so you can adapt.

I agree with most of this except #7. That's a dangerous argument to make. Families know which school their child attends. Each school has a principal and staff that know who attends their school should be able to communicate with parents. I hear that there are other reasons why they needed to close all the schools but this should not be one of them.

Do they know where their teacher parent who has to take off works too?

I thought school wasn’t child care. Are you saying teachers don’t have back up plans?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Good ol' DCUM managing overnight to create a 7 page snarky thread mostly full of troll comments and people replying to them.

1. Please use the report button in lower right for off-topic and troll comments, rather than replying to them.

2. No the teacher's union doesn't make or influence these decisions. Nor is this decision made just to give teachers an extra day off. It's a big disruption to everyone's plans. People suggesting such a thing are trolling. Report those comments.

3. Power outages affect buildings, and it takes time to go and assess that the HVAC, internet, phones, safety (fire alarms and PA) and security systems are functioning properly. I've been in a school that had a power fluctuation in the area. The area came back up, but the building did not. After 1 hour trying to resolve, they dismissed the school early.

4. I'm surprised they actually decided to close the evening before. They could have said 2 hour delay with reassess in morning. While the message about updating in the morning may have been unclear, they won't reverse a system closure. What they were checking is to see if buildings could open for daycare and if offices could be open. Since they remained closed, that says that a lot of buildings were not ready this morning.

5. It's not just buildings. The state of the roads and traffic signals matters in order to run the buses safely. Montgomery County government (including police and fire dept.) will have a say in whether or not they want MCPS to be running buses. A closure decision is not made in isolation by MCPS.

6. It's not just buildings and roads. There are other support services that are critical to the functioning of the system. They mentioned that food services lost power and they needed to assess impact. If the main servers are down and the system has no internet, it's hard to be effective. Etc.

7. They can't just close schools in part of the system and keep other schools open. There are too many students (~15% in choice programs, not sure how many in SPED programs) that attend school other than their home school. The bus network transporting students covers a significant area.

8. Be prepared. This is the exact same conversation that is going to happen when there is some sort of iffy weather event. No need to rehash the stupid comments. Just recognize how the system works and have back-up plans in place so you can adapt.

I agree with most of this except #7. That's a dangerous argument to make. Families know which school their child attends. Each school has a principal and staff that know who attends their school should be able to communicate with parents. I hear that there are other reasons why they needed to close all the schools but this should not be one of them.

Yes, this. Especially when they have closed small groups of schools in the past due to power outages, water main breaks, etc. For future reference, I would like them to specify the threshold of how many schools need to affected by a situation like this in order for them to decide to close all 210 schools.

Nice “I want to speak to the manager NOW vibes”

Take a xanny.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Just a reminder that a PLANE flew into the power lines of a community and thousands, 120,0000 + were affected and this is what you focus on?
Come on, people. Show some compassion and understanding that it was a freak accident and those people are lucky to have their lives and we are lucky the community didn’t get hurt. The blame game is getting old. They might the right call at the time.

The pilot and passenger are fine. The entire county has power. This is a bad call and they had the ability to reverse it at 5am but they didn't. We can have compassion and anger simultaneously.

Power was back by 1 AM. PEPCO had been able to reroute power around the damaged tower. No reason for schools to be closed.

Safety checks have to run at the schools that lost power.

I don’t understand why this can’t be done in a few hours, and just do a delayed opening.

Also, why are care programs not allowed in unaffected schools? Seems like an overreach blanket decision by MCPS

I am a parent impacted by the child care closure. No I don't think on this case they should open child care programs. It would not make any sense to say they are assessing the buildings for safety but go ahead and send your infant in. This is an unprecedented event, let's give them a day.

It’s not an unprecedented event to lose power for ~6 hours. Don’t be ridiculous. From the perspective of MCPS, the only thing that was unprecedented was the decision to close.

It's major damage to the area's energy infrastructure. They have rerouted power but are still assessing the damage. This is not regular downed power line.

Ahh yes. I mean, what if Pepco is serving up the wrong kind of electrons?

From the perspective of MCPS, we're not in an unusual situation. Power was restored after a ~6 hour outage. You seem to be forgetting what Pepco is like if you think that is an "unprecedented" situation.

I've lived in MoCo for over 30 years. I've seen power outages. I've been frustrated with Pepco. I have not seen a plane crash into high tension lines.

Interesting. I wasn’t aware MCPS had to work on the high tension lines. I thought they just had to operate their schools in buildings that have already had utilities restored.

Try to keep up, you were arguing this situation is not unprecedented. It is unprecedented, which makes this a genuinely difficult decision for MCPS. I know Pepco is saying everyone has their power back, but I'm hearing of continued power outages. It is a hard situation for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Good ol' DCUM managing overnight to create a 7 page snarky thread mostly full of troll comments and people replying to them.

1. Please use the report button in lower right for off-topic and troll comments, rather than replying to them.

2. No the teacher's union doesn't make or influence these decisions. Nor is this decision made just to give teachers an extra day off. It's a big disruption to everyone's plans. People suggesting such a thing are trolling. Report those comments.

3. Power outages affect buildings, and it takes time to go and assess that the HVAC, internet, phones, safety (fire alarms and PA) and security systems are functioning properly. I've been in a school that had a power fluctuation in the area. The area came back up, but the building did not. After 1 hour trying to resolve, they dismissed the school early.

4. I'm surprised they actually decided to close the evening before. They could have said 2 hour delay with reassess in morning. While the message about updating in the morning may have been unclear, they won't reverse a system closure. What they were checking is to see if buildings could open for daycare and if offices could be open. Since they remained closed, that says that a lot of buildings were not ready this morning.

5. It's not just buildings. The state of the roads and traffic signals matters in order to run the buses safely. Montgomery County government (including police and fire dept.) will have a say in whether or not they want MCPS to be running buses. A closure decision is not made in isolation by MCPS.

6. It's not just buildings and roads. There are other support services that are critical to the functioning of the system. They mentioned that food services lost power and they needed to assess impact. If the main servers are down and the system has no internet, it's hard to be effective. Etc.

7. They can't just close schools in part of the system and keep other schools open. There are too many students (~15% in choice programs, not sure how many in SPED programs) that attend school other than their home school. The bus network transporting students covers a significant area.

8. Be prepared. This is the exact same conversation that is going to happen when there is some sort of iffy weather event. No need to rehash the stupid comments. Just recognize how the system works and have back-up plans in place so you can adapt.

I agree with most of this except #7. That's a dangerous argument to make. Families know which school their child attends. Each school has a principal and staff that know who attends their school should be able to communicate with parents. I hear that there are other reasons why they needed to close all the schools but this should not be one of them.

Do they know where their teacher parent who has to take off works too?

When teachers are sick do they not call in? JFC.

Yes and when a certain % call in they close schools. JFC. Are you new here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think what people cannot understand is the poor decision making. I called it last night in a post around 10 pm that MCPS would close schools before midnight and power would be back on shortly thereafter. It's not fathomable how they could make such a hasty decision. Why not wait a few hours until more information is available? Then they justify it after the fact with poor excuses.

m


At a certain hour it doesn’t matter if power is back on schools are closed.

If power was on at 7:50 can they open at 8? 7? 6? No so midnight was the time they thought they could open DF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Good ol' DCUM managing overnight to create a 7 page snarky thread mostly full of troll comments and people replying to them.

1. Please use the report button in lower right for off-topic and troll comments, rather than replying to them.

2. No the teacher's union doesn't make or influence these decisions. Nor is this decision made just to give teachers an extra day off. It's a big disruption to everyone's plans. People suggesting such a thing are trolling. Report those comments.

3. Power outages affect buildings, and it takes time to go and assess that the HVAC, internet, phones, safety (fire alarms and PA) and security systems are functioning properly. I've been in a school that had a power fluctuation in the area. The area came back up, but the building did not. After 1 hour trying to resolve, they dismissed the school early.

4. I'm surprised they actually decided to close the evening before. They could have said 2 hour delay with reassess in morning. While the message about updating in the morning may have been unclear, they won't reverse a system closure. What they were checking is to see if buildings could open for daycare and if offices could be open. Since they remained closed, that says that a lot of buildings were not ready this morning.

5. It's not just buildings. The state of the roads and traffic signals matters in order to run the buses safely. Montgomery County government (including police and fire dept.) will have a say in whether or not they want MCPS to be running buses. A closure decision is not made in isolation by MCPS.

6. It's not just buildings and roads. There are other support services that are critical to the functioning of the system. They mentioned that food services lost power and they needed to assess impact. If the main servers are down and the system has no internet, it's hard to be effective. Etc.

7. They can't just close schools in part of the system and keep other schools open. There are too many students (~15% in choice programs, not sure how many in SPED programs) that attend school other than their home school. The bus network transporting students covers a significant area.

8. Be prepared. This is the exact same conversation that is going to happen when there is some sort of iffy weather event. No need to rehash the stupid comments. Just recognize how the system works and have back-up plans in place so you can adapt.

I agree with most of this except #7. That's a dangerous argument to make. Families know which school their child attends. Each school has a principal and staff that know who attends their school should be able to communicate with parents. I hear that there are other reasons why they needed to close all the schools but this should not be one of them.

Do they know where their teacher parent who has to take off works too?

When teachers are sick do they not call in? JFC.

Yes and when a certain % call in they close schools. JFC. Are you new here?

OKAY SO THAT IS A DECISION THAT CAN BE MADE SCHOOL BY SCHOOL. ARE YOU NEW HERE?

[Anonymous]

Wow, so many of you have no idea how to deal with adversity. Incredible how everyone is so inconvenienced but have time to blame everyone in the world for a freak accent by incessantly posting on here. Please be a better example for your children on how to respond when something doesn't go your way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People with jobs might have to take the day off. Pretty sure most bosses won’t be thrilled but will understand; that is life, kids get sick, people die, planes crash, and sometimes you can’t work because YOU chose to have kids and there are other extenuating circumstances. It sucks but guess what, accidents happen and how you handle it is how your kids learn to deal with setbacks in life. So get it together, put on your big boy/girl pants, and deal with it. That’s the best education they can get today and probably more important than whatever was planned in schools. Turning it around on the school system and placing blame isn’t going to get you (or your kids) anywhere so shut it and move onto something else to complain about. You all are getting real annoying with the same old crap.

+1. Thank you for saying this. Life happens. It doesn’t always go as planned. Deal with it and move on.

[Anonymous]

All these people that are complaining about schools being closed bc schools are childcare, don't you have kids to take care of or work that is calling your name?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Just a reminder that a PLANE flew into the power lines of a community and thousands, 120,0000 + were affected and this is what you focus on?
Come on, people. Show some compassion and understanding that it was a freak accident and those people are lucky to have their lives and we are lucky the community didn’t get hurt. The blame game is getting old. They might the right call at the time.

The pilot and passenger are fine. The entire county has power. This is a bad call and they had the ability to reverse it at 5am but they didn't. We can have compassion and anger simultaneously.

Power was back by 1 AM. PEPCO had been able to reroute power around the damaged tower. No reason for schools to be closed.

Safety checks have to run at the schools that lost power.

I don’t understand why this can’t be done in a few hours, and just do a delayed opening.

Also, why are care programs not allowed in unaffected schools? Seems like an overreach blanket decision by MCPS

I am a parent impacted by the child care closure. No I don't think on this case they should open child care programs. It would not make any sense to say they are assessing the buildings for safety but go ahead and send your infant in. This is an unprecedented event, let's give them a day.

It’s not an unprecedented event to lose power for ~6 hours. Don’t be ridiculous. From the perspective of MCPS, the only thing that was unprecedented was the decision to close.

It's major damage to the area's energy infrastructure. They have rerouted power but are still assessing the damage. This is not regular downed power line.

Ahh yes. I mean, what if Pepco is serving up the wrong kind of electrons?

From the perspective of MCPS, we're not in an unusual situation. Power was restored after a ~6 hour outage. You seem to be forgetting what Pepco is like if you think that is an "unprecedented" situation.

I've lived in MoCo for over 30 years. I've seen power outages. I've been frustrated with Pepco. I have not seen a plane crash into high tension lines.

Interesting. I wasn’t aware MCPS had to work on the high tension lines. I thought they just had to operate their schools in buildings that have already had utilities restored.

Try to keep up, you were arguing this situation is not unprecedented. It is unprecedented, which makes this a genuinely difficult decision for MCPS. I know Pepco is saying everyone has their power back, but I'm hearing of continued power outages. It is a hard situation for everyone.

It is an unprecedented situation for Pepco, not for MCPS. For them, this is just like resuming after a power outage caused by weather. Easier, actually, since they don’t need to be worried about weather-related damages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Good ol' DCUM managing overnight to create a 7 page snarky thread mostly full of troll comments and people replying to them.

1. Please use the report button in lower right for off-topic and troll comments, rather than replying to them.

2. No the teacher's union doesn't make or influence these decisions. Nor is this decision made just to give teachers an extra day off. It's a big disruption to everyone's plans. People suggesting such a thing are trolling. Report those comments.

3. Power outages affect buildings, and it takes time to go and assess that the HVAC, internet, phones, safety (fire alarms and PA) and security systems are functioning properly. I've been in a school that had a power fluctuation in the area. The area came back up, but the building did not. After 1 hour trying to resolve, they dismissed the school early.

4. I'm surprised they actually decided to close the evening before. They could have said 2 hour delay with reassess in morning. While the message about updating in the morning may have been unclear, they won't reverse a system closure. What they were checking is to see if buildings could open for daycare and if offices could be open. Since they remained closed, that says that a lot of buildings were not ready this morning.

5. It's not just buildings. The state of the roads and traffic signals matters in order to run the buses safely. Montgomery County government (including police and fire dept.) will have a say in whether or not they want MCPS to be running buses. A closure decision is not made in isolation by MCPS.

6. It's not just buildings and roads. There are other support services that are critical to the functioning of the system. They mentioned that food services lost power and they needed to assess impact. If the main servers are down and the system has no internet, it's hard to be effective. Etc.

7. They can't just close schools in part of the system and keep other schools open. There are too many students (~15% in choice programs, not sure how many in SPED programs) that attend school other than their home school. The bus network transporting students covers a significant area.

8. Be prepared. This is the exact same conversation that is going to happen when there is some sort of iffy weather event. No need to rehash the stupid comments. Just recognize how the system works and have back-up plans in place so you can adapt.

Thank you.

I think making the decision last night gave families more time to try to make childcare plans or give notice at work. My high schoolers are currently entertaining 3 ES neighbors. The mom knows I am a teacher and speaks just enough English to knock shyly on my door and ask me to watch her kids. I’m using today to grade, but my son and daughter were happy to volunteer. I’ll feed everyone waffles and eggs in about 15 min and then my kids will take our guests out for a few hours. If the decision had been made at 5 AM, it would have been harder for families to make backup plans.

[Anonymous]

I’m old enough to remember when MCPS made decisions to close schools at 5am. Everyone complained about the timing of the decisions (and the decision itself) saying MCPS didn’t give enough notice for closures.

The new superintendent started announcing closures the night before. Now we have the issue of things can change overnight and schools may not need to close after all.

Stop complaining - if MCPS waits until 5 am to make the call so they have a current idea of the situation, people will complain. If MCPS makes the call the night before even though a situation can change overnight, people will complain.