What’s going on at Wootton?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MoCo Show is reporting principal placed on leave anfter something racist was written on a desk, and also that a sub used the N word. I can’t figure out how the three are connected

There’s been a series of anti-Black incidents at Wootton that the principal, Doug Nelson, has not reported and failed to act on. There is an anti-Black culture that has been allowed to fester his leadership.

That’s how they’re connected.

Nelson turned a blind-eye to racist because he’s racist. He going to be fired. Too bad so many people had to suffer under his “leadership”.

Okay what are these series of events he has turned a blind eye to this year? Is anyone or any news source or better yet MCPS going to actually specify anything besides the desk incident.

Your reading comprehension is garbage. The numerous incidents have been stated and restated in this thread and in news reports.

Not the PP but I haven’t seen them anywhere except the desk incident and a substitute teacher saying it, which has nothing to do with Wootton or the students.

Why can’t people just list them instead of replying like this.

Two things that I've heard.
1. There has been a lack of communication to the general community when various incidents have occurred. This complicates things because there are rumors of other racially-related incidents (that I won't repeat) that have not been communicated. (So we don't really know how may/how severe/if there were any at all.)
2. There was mandatory training of all staff/teachers that was ignored/not done. The superintendent mentioned this in the interview/video that is linked earlier in this thread.

Taking these things together, it seems like there was a pattern of not taking racial incidents seriously enough (which sounds like a judgment call, but perhaps ran counter to instruction/mcps policy on these incidents). Along with more formal violations of policy such as ignoring the requirement to have staff training.

My kids don't go to Wootton, but I know that the black student alliance advisor at our school has been mad as heck about what's been going on/being ignored at Wootton for most of this academic year. (The advisor has been encouraging kids at our school to rally on behalf of Wootton, but I don't know the details of what they are supposed to be rallying about!!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Washington Post is covering this now too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/12/10/wootton-high-racial-slur-desk/

This is a significant black eye for MCPS. Taylor needs to roll up his sleeves and get to work.

I am going to let you in on something I know you already know. Vulgar words and hate are committed every day at every high school in every state in every decade.

My God, People are overreacting to this and it’s utterly ridiculous. The principal is not an omnipresent force in the school that can prevent a misbehaving student from writing hateful language on a desk with a pencil. The whole crisis counselor thing is stupid too. HS students will pretend to be traumatized just to skip their classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MoCo Show is reporting principal placed on leave anfter something racist was written on a desk, and also that a sub used the N word. I can’t figure out how the three are connected

There’s been a series of anti-Black incidents at Wootton that the principal, Doug Nelson, has not reported and failed to act on. There is an anti-Black culture that has been allowed to fester his leadership.

That’s how they’re connected.

Nelson turned a blind-eye to racist because he’s racist. He going to be fired. Too bad so many people had to suffer under his “leadership”.

Okay what are these series of events he has turned a blind eye to this year? Is anyone or any news source or better yet MCPS going to actually specify anything besides the desk incident.

Your reading comprehension is garbage. The numerous incidents have been stated and restated in this thread and in news reports.

Not the PP but I haven’t seen them anywhere except the desk incident and a substitute teacher saying it, which has nothing to do with Wootton or the students.

Why can’t people just list them instead of replying like this.

The information about the other incidents is in this thread. Read.

If you’re going to engage in this conversation but can’t be bothered to read all of the relevant information that is available, in THIS VERY THREAD, then that’s on you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:WTOP said Wootton will have an interim principal starting tomorrow.

As a parent, we have not even been notified the principal is on leave or fired or that there is an interim principal coming in. So this is all concerning.

I too want to know what incidences that the media is saying happened this year that caused this. To just say well he is being put on leave because of multiple things this year? Why so vague?

Check your spam folder. As a Wootton parent, I’ve received multiple emails that are coming from MCPS

Not one email said thd principal was on leave until this afternoon.

And none have said the reasons why.

If you have otherwise, post it

The original email from MCPS didn’t use the word leave but implied that Dr Moran was stepping in to oversee things. I put 2+2 together as did many others. DS came home yesterday and said he was on leave as well.

One should not need to “put 2+2 together” communication should be clear and transparent.

In McPs? What are you hiding under?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Washington Post is covering this now too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/12/10/wootton-high-racial-slur-desk/

This is a significant black eye for MCPS. Taylor needs to roll up his sleeves and get to work.

I am going to let you in on something I know you already know. Vulgar words and hate are committed every day at every high school in every state in every decade.

My God, People are overreacting to this and it’s utterly ridiculous. The principal is not an omnipresent force in the school that can prevent a misbehaving student from writing hateful language on a desk with a pencil. The whole crisis counselor thing is stupid too. HS students will pretend to be traumatized just to skip their classes.

Agree. Putting a successful principal on leave for an incident he had no control over while we struggle to hire and retain decent
admins is another sign of the political sickness mcps suffers.

Intelligent adults used to know that pouring attention on misbehavior encourages it.
You can understand the student group pressuring him to do more because they're young minds. Central office should have known better.

We continue to circle the drain.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Washington Post is covering this now too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/12/10/wootton-high-racial-slur-desk/

This is a significant black eye for MCPS. Taylor needs to roll up his sleeves and get to work.

I am going to let you in on something I know you already know. Vulgar words and hate are committed every day at every high school in every state in every decade.

My God, People are overreacting to this and it’s utterly ridiculous. The principal is not an omnipresent force in the school that can prevent a misbehaving student from writing hateful language on a desk with a pencil. The whole crisis counselor thing is stupid too. HS students will pretend to be traumatized just to skip their classes.

Please watch the video of Taylor discussing why the Principal was removed. He stated that there was mandated staff training required by MCPS that the Principal had chosen not to have the Wootton staff do. Taylor found out the Principal had not done his job and had staff do the required before school opened training. This is not about the Principal needing to be “omnipresent” but about basic job expectations. For any job if you fail to do a large required task you can loose your job. Add to this that Wootton had not followed required MCPS reporting protocol and that Wootton students had testified recently at the BOE about racism not being properly addressed at Wootton.

I am thrilled MCPS has a Superintendent who will follow policy and impose consequences on staff rather than hiding administrative incompetence. Not protecting incompetent staff is a good start to improving MCPS again. Just because some people think the Principal was a nice guy is not an excuse to keep him when he failed to do his job of following MCPS policy including the mandated training. There can be no discipline if administrators do not follow rules. I hope this heralds more stringent discipline and accountability at all schools. For folks following along the issue causing his removal was not that a student drew the N word on another student’s desk. (That hopefully is now being handled with consequences given to the offending student.) The issue was that this Principal ran the school like a fiefdom where he did not have to follow rules or meet his job requirements. And yes that should get him fired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Washington Post is covering this now too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/12/10/wootton-high-racial-slur-desk/

This is a significant black eye for MCPS. Taylor needs to roll up his sleeves and get to work.

I am going to let you in on something I know you already know. Vulgar words and hate are committed every day at every high school in every state in every decade.

My God, People are overreacting to this and it’s utterly ridiculous. The principal is not an omnipresent force in the school that can prevent a misbehaving student from writing hateful language on a desk with a pencil. The whole crisis counselor thing is stupid too. HS students will pretend to be traumatized just to skip their classes.

Please watch the video of Taylor discussing why the Principal was removed. He stated that there was mandated staff training required by MCPS that the Principal had chosen not to have the Wootton staff do. Taylor found out the Principal had not done his job and had staff do the required before school opened training. This is not about the Principal needing to be “omnipresent” but about basic job expectations. For any job if you fail to do a large required task you can loose your job. Add to this that Wootton had not followed required MCPS reporting protocol and that Wootton students had testified recently at the BOE about racism not being properly addressed at Wootton.

I am thrilled MCPS has a Superintendent who will follow policy and impose consequences on staff rather than hiding administrative incompetence. Not protecting incompetent staff is a good start to improving MCPS again. Just because some people think the Principal was a nice guy is not an excuse to keep him when he failed to do his job of following MCPS policy including the mandated training. There can be no discipline if administrators do not follow rules. I hope this heralds more stringent discipline and accountability at all schools. For folks following along the issue causing his removal was not that a student drew the N word on another student’s desk. (That hopefully is now being handled with consequences given to the offending student.) The issue was that this Principal ran the school like a fiefdom where he did not have to follow rules or meet his job requirements. And yes that should get him fired.

Which training?

We are adults. We went to school (not MCPS, thankfully.)

Present the information in a coherent document with cited sources, like our English students are supposed to do. Publish it so it can be shared and referenced.
Don't tell us to watch a TikTok.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dr. Bostic, who is a AP and just started his principal internship at Northwood, will be acting principal at Wootton starting tomorrow.

Huge loss to Northwood and the Silver Spring community. Very respected former teacher at SSIMS. There was some hope he would get Blair.

Big pickup for Wootton.

So who's going to be the acting principal at Northwood then? Bostic was supposed to be running the school for the next 2 months as principal intern, while Garrick was at Einstein supporting its principal intern.

Garrick is probably going back to Northwood and someone else will support Einstein. Strange that wasn’t made clear.

It said they will identify an "acting principal" - it didn't say that Garrick would come back.

Northwood letter says they will work with Dr. Garrick to find an acting assistant principal (not principal). I think it is implied Garrick is back at Northwood although they should have been clearer on that.

Maybe Dr. Fine who was supposed to be visiting principal at Northwood will now move over to Einstein.

Yup, this is what is happening. Just got the letter from Einstein.

Bostic: Northwood to Wootton
Garrick: Einstein to Northwood
Fine: Northwood to Einstein

Dr. Bostic is too good for Wootton. They don’t deserve him. What a horrible thing to do to put him in such a hostile racist environment not to mention he’s already a beloved member of the Gladiator community. This is a massive loss for Northwood.
-Northwood parent

The fact that you're slandering 2,000 kids is pretty bad. But that's what your intent is, right? You don't hide it well.

What are you babbling about?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MoCo Show is reporting principal placed on leave anfter something racist was written on a desk, and also that a sub used the N word. I can’t figure out how the three are connected

There’s been a series of anti-Black incidents at Wootton that the principal, Doug Nelson, has not reported and failed to act on. There is an anti-Black culture that has been allowed to fester his leadership.

That’s how they’re connected.

Nelson turned a blind-eye to racist because he’s racist. He going to be fired. Too bad so many people had to suffer under his “leadership”.

Okay what are these series of events he has turned a blind eye to this year? Is anyone or any news source or better yet MCPS going to actually specify anything besides the desk incident.

Your reading comprehension is garbage. The numerous incidents have been stated and restated in this thread and in news reports.

Not the PP but I haven’t seen them anywhere except the desk incident and a substitute teacher saying it, which has nothing to do with Wootton or the students.

Why can’t people just list them instead of replying like this.

Because they don't know what they are talking about, but they want to be angry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Washington Post is covering this now too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/12/10/wootton-high-racial-slur-desk/

This is a significant black eye for MCPS. Taylor needs to roll up his sleeves and get to work.

I am going to let you in on something I know you already know. Vulgar words and hate are committed every day at every high school in every state in every decade.

My God, People are overreacting to this and it’s utterly ridiculous. The principal is not an omnipresent force in the school that can prevent a misbehaving student from writing hateful language on a desk with a pencil. The whole crisis counselor thing is stupid too. HS students will pretend to be traumatized just to skip their classes.

Please watch the video of Taylor discussing why the Principal was removed. He stated that there was mandated staff training required by MCPS that the Principal had chosen not to have the Wootton staff do. Taylor found out the Principal had not done his job and had staff do the required before school opened training. This is not about the Principal needing to be “omnipresent” but about basic job expectations. For any job if you fail to do a large required task you can loose your job. Add to this that Wootton had not followed required MCPS reporting protocol and that Wootton students had testified recently at the BOE about racism not being properly addressed at Wootton.

I am thrilled MCPS has a Superintendent who will follow policy and impose consequences on staff rather than hiding administrative incompetence. Not protecting incompetent staff is a good start to improving MCPS again. Just because some people think the Principal was a nice guy is not an excuse to keep him when he failed to do his job of following MCPS policy including the mandated training. There can be no discipline if administrators do not follow rules. I hope this heralds more stringent discipline and accountability at all schools. For folks following along the issue causing his removal was not that a student drew the N word on another student’s desk. (That hopefully is now being handled with consequences given to the offending student.) The issue was that this Principal ran the school like a fiefdom where he did not have to follow rules or meet his job requirements. And yes that should get him fired.

Which training?

We are adults. We went to school (not MCPS, thankfully.)

Present the information in a coherent document with cited sources, like our English students are supposed to do. Publish it so it can be shared and referenced.
Don't tell us to watch a TikTok.

A mandated (likely DEI) training that is useless and takes time away from teachers actually doing their job of teaching kids. This training is completely irrelevant to the incident and they were just looking for a reason to fire him so they can make the bad PR go away. Good luck hiring anyone that is actually a good principal when MOCO throws competent employees under the bus for political expediency.

[Anonymous]

There is an awful lot of energy being spent by MCPS to blame this principal, who by all accounts made a career as a successful educator and leader and then all of a sudden decided to turn villain. Rigghhhhhhttttt.....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is an awful lot of energy being spent by MCPS to blame this principal, who by all accounts made a career as a successful educator and leader and then all of a sudden decided to turn villain. Rigghhhhhhttttt.....

Watch and see who they replace him with. 👀

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Washington Post is covering this now too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/12/10/wootton-high-racial-slur-desk/

This is a significant black eye for MCPS. Taylor needs to roll up his sleeves and get to work.

I am going to let you in on something I know you already know. Vulgar words and hate are committed every day at every high school in every state in every decade.

My God, People are overreacting to this and it’s utterly ridiculous. The principal is not an omnipresent force in the school that can prevent a misbehaving student from writing hateful language on a desk with a pencil. The whole crisis counselor thing is stupid too. HS students will pretend to be traumatized just to skip their classes.

Please watch the video of Taylor discussing why the Principal was removed. He stated that there was mandated staff training required by MCPS that the Principal had chosen not to have the Wootton staff do. Taylor found out the Principal had not done his job and had staff do the required before school opened training. This is not about the Principal needing to be “omnipresent” but about basic job expectations. For any job if you fail to do a large required task you can loose your job. Add to this that Wootton had not followed required MCPS reporting protocol and that Wootton students had testified recently at the BOE about racism not being properly addressed at Wootton.

I am thrilled MCPS has a Superintendent who will follow policy and impose consequences on staff rather than hiding administrative incompetence. Not protecting incompetent staff is a good start to improving MCPS again. Just because some people think the Principal was a nice guy is not an excuse to keep him when he failed to do his job of following MCPS policy including the mandated training. There can be no discipline if administrators do not follow rules. I hope this heralds more stringent discipline and accountability at all schools. For folks following along the issue causing his removal was not that a student drew the N word on another student’s desk. (That hopefully is now being handled with consequences given to the offending student.) The issue was that this Principal ran the school like a fiefdom where he did not have to follow rules or meet his job requirements. And yes that should get him fired.

Which training?

We are adults. We went to school (not MCPS, thankfully.)

Present the information in a coherent document with cited sources, like our English students are supposed to do. Publish it so it can be shared and referenced.
Don't tell us to watch a TikTok.

A mandated (likely DEI) training that is useless and takes time away from teachers actually doing their job of teaching kids. This training is completely irrelevant to the incident and they were just looking for a reason to fire him so they can make the bad PR go away. Good luck hiring anyone that is actually a good principal when MOCO throws competent employees under the bus for political expediency.

These are two different things. It is reasonable to question/debate the utility of DEI training. I haven't seen the training (nor certainly have you), so I don't express an opinion about how useful it is. FWIW, I'm strongly in favor of DEI generally, but I've seen a lot of evidence suggesting this type of training isn't very useful. So this is a reasonable thing to debate (among people who know what they're talking about, which is not either of us).

It's not reasonable to argue that a principal can unilaterally waive the required training in their school. For any reason, really. But particularly if the school has known issues with this specific topic. The principal is welcome to question/debate/challenge the utility of the training to their boss. But they aren't welcome to just skip such a requirement on their own. They shouldn't expect to retain their job if ignore the requirements of their job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Washington Post is covering this now too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/12/10/wootton-high-racial-slur-desk/

This is a significant black eye for MCPS. Taylor needs to roll up his sleeves and get to work.

I am going to let you in on something I know you already know. Vulgar words and hate are committed every day at every high school in every state in every decade.

My God, People are overreacting to this and it’s utterly ridiculous. The principal is not an omnipresent force in the school that can prevent a misbehaving student from writing hateful language on a desk with a pencil. The whole crisis counselor thing is stupid too. HS students will pretend to be traumatized just to skip their classes.

Please watch the video of Taylor discussing why the Principal was removed. He stated that there was mandated staff training required by MCPS that the Principal had chosen not to have the Wootton staff do. Taylor found out the Principal had not done his job and had staff do the required before school opened training. This is not about the Principal needing to be “omnipresent” but about basic job expectations. For any job if you fail to do a large required task you can loose your job. Add to this that Wootton had not followed required MCPS reporting protocol and that Wootton students had testified recently at the BOE about racism not being properly addressed at Wootton.

I am thrilled MCPS has a Superintendent who will follow policy and impose consequences on staff rather than hiding administrative incompetence. Not protecting incompetent staff is a good start to improving MCPS again. Just because some people think the Principal was a nice guy is not an excuse to keep him when he failed to do his job of following MCPS policy including the mandated training. There can be no discipline if administrators do not follow rules. I hope this heralds more stringent discipline and accountability at all schools. For folks following along the issue causing his removal was not that a student drew the N word on another student’s desk. (That hopefully is now being handled with consequences given to the offending student.) The issue was that this Principal ran the school like a fiefdom where he did not have to follow rules or meet his job requirements. And yes that should get him fired.

I'm not thrilled and the board isn't doing it's job to keep this new superintendent on the path of righting the ship.
Wootton parents, draw attention to this latest mcps debacle and keep your voices heard when we go into the next election cycle.
Your neighbors don't know how bad mcps has become. NextDoor and local Facebook groups are good places to bring people's attention to how poorly mcps is being run.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Washington Post is covering this now too: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/12/10/wootton-high-racial-slur-desk/

This is a significant black eye for MCPS. Taylor needs to roll up his sleeves and get to work.

I am going to let you in on something I know you already know. Vulgar words and hate are committed every day at every high school in every state in every decade.

My God, People are overreacting to this and it’s utterly ridiculous. The principal is not an omnipresent force in the school that can prevent a misbehaving student from writing hateful language on a desk with a pencil. The whole crisis counselor thing is stupid too. HS students will pretend to be traumatized just to skip their classes.

Please watch the video of Taylor discussing why the Principal was removed. He stated that there was mandated staff training required by MCPS that the Principal had chosen not to have the Wootton staff do. Taylor found out the Principal had not done his job and had staff do the required before school opened training. This is not about the Principal needing to be “omnipresent” but about basic job expectations. For any job if you fail to do a large required task you can loose your job. Add to this that Wootton had not followed required MCPS reporting protocol and that Wootton students had testified recently at the BOE about racism not being properly addressed at Wootton.

I am thrilled MCPS has a Superintendent who will follow policy and impose consequences on staff rather than hiding administrative incompetence. Not protecting incompetent staff is a good start to improving MCPS again. Just because some people think the Principal was a nice guy is not an excuse to keep him when he failed to do his job of following MCPS policy including the mandated training. There can be no discipline if administrators do not follow rules. I hope this heralds more stringent discipline and accountability at all schools. For folks following along the issue causing his removal was not that a student drew the N word on another student’s desk. (That hopefully is now being handled with consequences given to the offending student.) The issue was that this Principal ran the school like a fiefdom where he did not have to follow rules or meet his job requirements. And yes that should get him fired.

Which training?

We are adults. We went to school (not MCPS, thankfully.)

Present the information in a coherent document with cited sources, like our English students are supposed to do. Publish it so it can be shared and referenced.
Don't tell us to watch a TikTok.

A mandated (likely DEI) training that is useless and takes time away from teachers actually doing their job of teaching kids. This training is completely irrelevant to the incident and they were just looking for a reason to fire him so they can make the bad PR go away. Good luck hiring anyone that is actually a good principal when MOCO throws competent employees under the bus for political expediency.

These are two different things. It is reasonable to question/debate the utility of DEI training. I haven't seen the training (nor certainly have you), so I don't express an opinion about how useful it is. FWIW, I'm strongly in favor of DEI generally, but I've seen a lot of evidence suggesting this type of training isn't very useful. So this is a reasonable thing to debate (among people who know what they're talking about, which is not either of us).

It's not reasonable to argue that a principal can unilaterally waive the required training in their school. For any reason, really. But particularly if the school has known issues with this specific topic. The principal is welcome to question/debate/challenge the utility of the training to their boss. But they aren't welcome to just skip such a requirement on their own. They shouldn't expect to retain their job if ignore the requirements of their job.

Imagine firing a Principal with one of the higher test scores in the county because he decided not to waste his staffs time while allowing principals who's basic reading scores are garbage to persist.