I need feedback about Somerset Elementary School! URGENT please!

[Anonymous]

Since nothing recently has been heard from the negative parent's post about Somerset in this thread, another thread and other public forum such as city-data and great schools we may as well assume he or she was just on a rampage tying to cause harm to the school's reputation and any and all allegations, which are most likely trumped up, are not being listened to by any authority that could take this seriously. Chances are the next time you hear from this parent it will to add in some additional preposterous claims against at least 4 staff members of this school (the two teachers that taught the daughters, a gym teacher, a retired principal and an acting principal that has since been hired as principal.) and possibly some new info to stoke the fire. Check other forums for this forum. This Somerset ES is a good school and it is hard to find bad things being said. This parent is clearly out for attack and this parent is the one who should be sued for flaming the school. Hopefully this parent will just go away and the daughters get put in another school. Good luck to that school dealing with what sounds like an unstable parent looking for a fight at the daughters' and a school's expense.

[AngryTeacher]

As one in the system, I call BS.

There is a process called PAR in place. http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/development/resources/projover/docs/PARteacher.pdf

Any underperforming teacher is under scrutiny.

Of course, we - as teachers - have our own styles and use different strategies that fit our lessons and personality. I find it difficult to believe that a teacher in an elementary school - where there are IDAs collecting data on a regular basis - could continue on w/o being placed on PAR.

It only takes one difficult parent with an axe to grind to create chaos.

Anonymous wrote:Dear All,

We are about purchasing a house in Somerset Elementary School District to specifically send our kids to this school (one will be in grade 3, one in grade 4 and on september 2012 one will go to kindergarten) and I just read this terrible post from a mum who has kids there :

We have two children at Somerset Elementary, and have been with the school for three years now.

While some individual teachers have been just fine, others have been disasters.

Since the school does not have a permanent principal right now (and the previous principal was not very good), there doesn't seem to be anyone around with the authority to solve problems when they arise, or hold the bad teachers accountable for their performance. This is a big deal in this school system (I just discovered, from talking to the current temporary principal) because MCPS leaves all pedagogy decisions -- how to teach -- entirely up to the schools and individual teachers. Therefore, if a particular teacher doesn't know what she's doing, or has any other problem, there doesn't appear to be anything in place for her to fall back on.

Our kindergartener comes home with worksheets where she's required to label shapes as "cylinder" or (I swear to God) "rectangular prism" -- yet the kids in that class have never yet been systematically taught to read, write, or even draw their numbers and letters correctly. Our daughter at times comes home with other children's classwork, so we can see that multiple kids in the class need to be taught these fundamentals, which is just not happening.

We would love to get out of this school, but are stuck until we can sell our house to get out of the area. While we are grateful for the few positive experiences our daughters have had here, we are overall very disappointed with the school.

I really start freaking out and I am wondering if we are about making a HUGE mistake. So please I would love to receive other comments from parents who currently have kids at Somerset Elmentary School. Either on this forum or at this email addres I just created [e-mail]

Many many thanks in advance. I am so worried.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since nothing recently has been heard from the negative parent's post about Somerset in this thread, another thread and other public forum such as city-data and great schools we may as well assume he or she was just on a rampage tying to cause harm to the school's reputation and any and all allegations, which are most likely trumped up, are not being listened to by any authority that could take this seriously. Chances are the next time you hear from this parent it will to add in some additional preposterous claims against at least 4 staff members of this school (the two teachers that taught the daughters, a gym teacher, a retired principal and an acting principal that has since been hired as principal.) and possibly some new info to stoke the fire. Check other forums for this forum. This Somerset ES is a good school and it is hard to find bad things being said. This parent is clearly out for attack and this parent is the one who should be sued for flaming the school. Hopefully this parent will just go away and the daughters get put in another school. Good luck to that school dealing with what sounds like an unstable parent looking for a fight at the daughters' and a school's expense.

You sound like an employee of MCPS because of all the name calling. "Unstable parent" is often used to discredit parents who question the status quo.

[Anonymous]

I'm wondering if this is the same person who posted on that earlier link. It sounds like there's been an incident with cps before.

vanyali, on April 19, 2010 at 22:40 said:
If you do this with a 7-year-old in Maryland, you will be breaking the law. Child Protective Services can then come and investigate you as a neglectful parent. They can go to your work and your kid’s school and tell everyone they can find that you’re under investigation, leaving them to imagine that you’re burning your kids with cigarettes.
Children here may not be left on their own, anywhere, for any length of time, until they are 8 years old. Someone younger than 8 must be left with a babysitter (or whatever) who is at least 13 years old.
Want to leave your 6 year old with your 12 year old to play in your front yard while you run to the corner store? If you’re here in Montgomery County, your neighbors will rat you out, CPS will knock on your door and threaten you. No kidding.