After Monday

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The high temperature in Rockville today will be 34, so the roads and sidewalks tomorrow will essentially look the same as they look today. MCPS has trapped itself into waiting and waiting. They will probably close Tuesday to help justify the decision to close today.

Bus stops don’t need to be exactly where they usually are. If the usual spot is blocked by ice, just walk 20 or 30 feet to the spot that isn’t blocked. Kids who walk have been walking around my neighborhood without a problem since last Tuesday. For kids with IEPs, if the family hasn’t cleared a path to the street, then they won’t get picked up. How is this different from any other dangerous situation on a student’s property? If your kid needs literal door to door service, then people have to be able to get to your door.

I posted on another thread that when my kid was getting picked up by the special ed bus, it tried going down our one-way street on the first day of school, and then the rest of the year, decided to pick up my kid on the main street at the nearest intersection, to avoid a lengthy detour through our neighborhood. Kid had to walk to the stop. It wasn't door-to-door.

So while MCPS may have just used a language shortcut and said all kids with disabilities when it meant kids in wheelchairs... I understand it to mean that they're using their special needs population as an excuse. And that's offensive to me.

Regardless, MCPS and FCPS will just have to come to the realization that they can't clear all the bus stops this week. Pressure will grow every day for them to re-open. They will end up re-opening tomorrow, or Wednesday, and claim that they made excellent improvements to bus stops, when in reality nothing will have changed from today.

It's all just incompetence and then trying to save face.

[Anonymous]

You all griping about missing school but see no problem missing the last week of school or a few days during the year to extend your vacations

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You all griping about missing school but see no problem missing the last week of school or a few days during the year to extend your vacations

That’s because most people here are hypocrites. They really don’t care about education. They need babysitting and only when it doesn’t interfere with vacation plans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You all griping about missing school but see no problem missing the last week of school or a few days during the year to extend your vacations

My kids don’t do that. Stop generalizing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The high temperature in Rockville today will be 34, so the roads and sidewalks tomorrow will essentially look the same as they look today. MCPS has trapped itself into waiting and waiting. They will probably close Tuesday to help justify the decision to close today.

Bus stops don’t need to be exactly where they usually are. If the usual spot is blocked by ice, just walk 20 or 30 feet to the spot that isn’t blocked. Kids who walk have been walking around my neighborhood without a problem since last Tuesday. For kids with IEPs, if the family hasn’t cleared a path to the street, then they won’t get picked up. How is this different from any other dangerous situation on a student’s property? If your kid needs literal door to door service, then people have to be able to get to your door.

I posted on another thread that when my kid was getting picked up by the special ed bus, it tried going down our one-way street on the first day of school, and then the rest of the year, decided to pick up my kid on the main street at the nearest intersection, to avoid a lengthy detour through our neighborhood. Kid had to walk to the stop. It wasn't door-to-door.

So while MCPS may have just used a language shortcut and said all kids with disabilities when it meant kids in wheelchairs... I understand it to mean that they're using their special needs population as an excuse. And that's offensive to me.

Regardless, MCPS and FCPS will just have to come to the realization that they can't clear all the bus stops this week. Pressure will grow every day for them to re-open. They will end up re-opening tomorrow, or Wednesday, and claim that they made excellent improvements to bus stops, when in reality nothing will have changed from today.

It's all just incompetence and then trying to save face.

I agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You all griping about missing school but see no problem missing the last week of school or a few days during the year to extend your vacations

Really? How do you know who is posting on the Internet and what their vacation schedules are like and what their kids' school attendance has been? Did you talk to your doctor about your "magic abilities" to know these things?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You all griping about missing school but see no problem missing the last week of school or a few days during the year to extend your vacations

My kids don’t do that. Stop generalizing.

Mine don’t either. We travel plenty but never take our kid out of school for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Virtual would likely not be the virtual you had during Covid. From talking with a family friend, her third graders virtual last week was pretty much two quick assignments each day the kid did independently. But the teacher did have an "office" time that a student could log on for help if needed. No class instruction given.

They could do it like the MVA where they had regular full classes. Teachers taught and gave assignments no issue. MCPS has done it for four years. That’s not virtual, that’s independent assignments which is very different. Virtual is a teacher teaching a class online.

Yes, I know what they did during covid, but the county also gave out wifi and had tech services open for families that needed it at that time. They won't do all that for a one off or several day "virtual" emergency day. Due to the equity issues, many counties doing virtual also don't hold the requirement of logging on but instead just submitting the assignments within a reasonable time, often not the same day. So when talking about virtual for emergency days, I think it's better to frame it as what it is, not what it was when there was extended virtual.

That's literally what MCPS was asked to produce by MSDE but didn't do it:
1) Virtual Education Plan During a Prolonged State of Emergency
2) Virtual Education Plan for Severe Weather Condition
Here's the document where they said they would do it in 2024.
https://www.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/D5BTY7799A4A/$file/2024-2025%20SY%20Virtual%20Education%20Plan%20240523.pdf

Other Maryland school districts did it...but not our MCPS!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You all griping about missing school but see no problem missing the last week of school or a few days during the year to extend your vacations

My kids don’t do that. Stop generalizing.

Don't feed the troll. They just want to blame parents for their own failures to plan appropriate for snow days and their failures to educate students. This is all MCPS Central Office's mess.

[Anonymous]

There's a dozen public school districts in the close-in DMV area open today. MCPS is not the ONLY county closed, but 7 days after the storm, it's close to the bottom of the barrel, if not THE bottom of the barrel. MCPS is completely closed. It has no virtual learning option. It has no prospects to do virtual learning because it neglected to submit the plan it promised to do in 2024 to MSDE. And it was so dumb it only included 1 snow day in the calendar, even though we had a deficit of 3 snow days last year and a disaster 3 days of "in person learning" tacked on at the very end of June.

[Anonymous]

Any ACTUAL predictions???? I hate how many tangents there are on this thread.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any ACTUAL predictions???? I hate how many tangents there are on this thread.

I think they’ll open 2h late tomorrow. I think traffic will be a nightmare but it is what it is

[Anonymous]

Are they doing test bus runs today? That seems like something that would be an important part of the decision making process and it would allow bus drivers to identify areas that need immediate attention. I live a few doors down from a bus stop and I have not seen any mcps busses go by, but curious to know if anyone else has seen/heard anything.

I think tomorrow is 50-50.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any ACTUAL predictions???? I hate how many tangents there are on this thread.

I think they’ll open 2h late tomorrow. I think traffic will be a nightmare but it is what it is

I will take it if it is 2 hour delay tomorrow with horrible traffic or drop-off. I bet many parents are going to do dropoff or carpool if possible instead of waiting at bus stop.

[Anonymous]

Did they say when they're going to announce? 4 pm or the wee hours of tomorrow morning so they can verify that the storm did in fact end 7 days ago?