Council hearing on MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Glass: BOE requires full-time status. They need to be paid more than $25K per year - it's not a living wage. A 2019 recommendation recommended $60 K. We need the BOE to succeed in overseeing a $3.2 billion budget and we need adequate resources for this.

I’m all for a full-time board if they also get the authority to determine the schools portion of the property tax. Then the council won’t be able to claim they’re funding schools when they’re actually raising taxes for something else and people will take BOE elections more seriously.

That is not going to happen. It's not how local government in Maryland is structured. So does that mean you oppose a full-time board?

If they’re not going to have full responsibility it doesn’t need to be a full-time job. I don’t need to pay for them to get more briefings on the minutiae of third-grade math curriculum.

There’s no reason government has to keep the same structure. This isn’t working.

DP. Right. Because approving a good curriculum isn't important and we should keep them to rubber-stamping whatever MCPS puts in front of them.

Have you watched many BOE meetings? Noticed how much gets dumped into presentations, there, but how many key pieces of information are left out? Seen the breadth of concern in public testimony that they rarely have time to discuss?
Realized that that is a fraction of the public's desired interaction because of a 2-minute limit and limited signup slots (that tend to get booked within hours of their being available)? Extrapolated the time it would take to make properly informed decisions?

It would be at least a full time professional's job (not talking just 40 hours, here) to do what we expect them to be able to do. That's if they had a full staff. And without the additional work of a taxing authority, though I don't think your idea, there, isn't worthy of consideration.

$25k is insulting versus the expectation and $60k is little better. If we want them to do an amount of work similar to that performed by the Council, pay them like it.

Do you really want elected individuals making detailed decisions about what the school teaches rather than professionals? Have you seen the sort of people that get elected to the BoE? Or even the county council?

We need a teacher on the board. If there can be a student there can be a teacher and enough of the conflict of interest bs, it’s time

There are two former teachers on the board (Harris and Yang).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is that April Key still works in HR in light of the Walker allegations? Shouldn’t she be on leave now?

Could say the same about Hull.

Have we figured out who the numbered employees are in the “less” redacted report? I’m specifically curious about Employee 5 since they also received sexual advances from Beidleman but didn’t report anything.

And what about all these staff members engaging in sexual relationships with their boss? How are they still employed by MCPS? Is this not against a code of conduct?

Staff needs to report these issues. Now would be a good time to do that, because if ever something was going to be done about it, it would be now when MCPS is on fire.

We already reported it! They are named in this “less redacted” report but still work in their same positions. No way we would risk reporting it again.

I'm sorry. The lies continue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thursday at 3 PM. The Council's hearing staff is a former MCPS administrator. Why can't the Council find someone who didn't work for MCPS to run the hearing?

Committee hearings are run by the County Council member who is chair of the committee. Kate Stewart is chair of the audit committee. Will Jawando is chair of the education and culture committee.

And a former MCPS associate superintendent put together the packet for the hearing and runs the discussion.

ESSIE MCGUIRE

Yes, she's COUNCIL STAFF.

And was high-level MCPS staff before. We'll have to see if she utilizes that insider experience to shine light on the issues or to cover them up. My guess, with her being a political operator, would be a targeted amount of the former and lots of the latter. Nice for the council to have plenty of $ not only for their own salaries, but for a relative host of staff, who don't exactly make a pittance.

MCPS has those positions, too, but not the BOE, who rely pretty mich entirely on thoae reporting to the Superintendent and whose compensation accounts for less than 10 hours a week for a skill set that we might hope to be, at a minimum, on the level of a mid-level financial analyst or an assistant school principal. Maybe 3-4 hours a week if you want a principal-level equivalent.

Should be an education and experience requirement to run for Board. At least a Bachelor's if not a grad/professional (e.g. JD) degree plus some years of relevant work experience. Anyone know if MCPS is a bully towards the BOE? Is that the reason the BOE members do not ask questions or press back when given crap info from MCPS? Who here can answer this honestly?

BOE members are told not to bother MCPS staff. That from multiple BOE members.

That don’t have to bother staff. They just need to send notice to the Super of the information they want and when. The Super can then bother whatever staff they want in order to deliver what is requested by the BOE. Since it’s their performance that will be evaluated.

Evaluated by the Superintendent and/or those under that person. Who have many objectives for those folks besides responsiveness to BOE inquiry. Some of which may be in conflict with that elected oversight body or the legitimate inquiry aims of individual board members.

So things get hidden in glossed-over presentations, dragged out, etc., with the filtering bottleneck of upper MCPS management. If you do contact MCPS staff who are not at the top, say to try to get some info to support public testimony, some hint strongly towards presenting the issue a certain way in the hopes that it gets the BOE to ask a follow-up precise enough for the upper administration to have to let real info through -- the kind that might not lead to a rubber-stamp BOE approval.

And that kind of info, if it ever does see the light of day, typically is provided weeks or months later, not at the time of discussion and with no opportunity for verbal back-and-forth to support nuanced understanding for a BOE decision, unless yet later put on a meeting agenda, perhaps.

Compounding that, there are, sometimes, outright lies in the verbal responses that upper management provides to the board when a follow-up question is asked. Curriculum comes to mind. If the BOE can't go directly to the specialist who knows the answer more directly than the executive responding, how are they supposed to call these out?

That's not to say that the MCPS initiatives are all wrong, but the lack of sunlight that would allow effective stakeholder input and nuanced BOE direction is problematic, and the way it is set up to make that the default is just disgusting.

If they are acceding to no-direct-inquiry rules pushed by MCPS, the BOE's majority has, pretty much, abandoned their obligation to the community. I can hope the composition of the board shifts, but I'm not sure if the seats of enough of those who tend to rubber stamp are up for election this year.

This is the most important post on this boat. The rules of engagement have to change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thursday at 3 PM. The Council's hearing staff is a former MCPS administrator. Why can't the Council find someone who didn't work for MCPS to run the hearing?

Committee hearings are run by the County Council member who is chair of the committee. Kate Stewart is chair of the audit committee. Will Jawando is chair of the education and culture committee.

And a former MCPS associate superintendent put together the packet for the hearing and runs the discussion.

ESSIE MCGUIRE

Yes, she's COUNCIL STAFF.

And was high-level MCPS staff before. We'll have to see if she utilizes that insider experience to shine light on the issues or to cover them up. My guess, with her being a political operator, would be a targeted amount of the former and lots of the latter. Nice for the council to have plenty of $ not only for their own salaries, but for a relative host of staff, who don't exactly make a pittance.

MCPS has those positions, too, but not the BOE, who rely pretty mich entirely on thoae reporting to the Superintendent and whose compensation accounts for less than 10 hours a week for a skill set that we might hope to be, at a minimum, on the level of a mid-level financial analyst or an assistant school principal. Maybe 3-4 hours a week if you want a principal-level equivalent.

Should be an education and experience requirement to run for Board. At least a Bachelor's if not a grad/professional (e.g. JD) degree plus some years of relevant work experience. Anyone know if MCPS is a bully towards the BOE? Is that the reason the BOE members do not ask questions or press back when given crap info from MCPS? Who here can answer this honestly?

BOE members are told not to bother MCPS staff. That from multiple BOE members.

That don’t have to bother staff. They just need to send notice to the Super of the information they want and when. The Super can then bother whatever staff they want in order to deliver what is requested by the BOE. Since it’s their performance that will be evaluated.

Evaluated by the Superintendent and/or those under that person. Who have many objectives for those folks besides responsiveness to BOE inquiry. Some of which may be in conflict with that elected oversight body or the legitimate inquiry aims of individual board members.

So things get hidden in glossed-over presentations, dragged out, etc., with the filtering bottleneck of upper MCPS management. If you do contact MCPS staff who are not at the top, say to try to get some info to support public testimony, some hint strongly towards presenting the issue a certain way in the hopes that it gets the BOE to ask a follow-up precise enough for the upper administration to have to let real info through -- the kind that might not lead to a rubber-stamp BOE approval.

And that kind of info, if it ever does see the light of day, typically is provided weeks or months later, not at the time of discussion and with no opportunity for verbal back-and-forth to support nuanced understanding for a BOE decision, unless yet later put on a meeting agenda, perhaps.

Compounding that, there are, sometimes, outright lies in the verbal responses that upper management provides to the board when a follow-up question is asked. Curriculum comes to mind. If the BOE can't go directly to the specialist who knows the answer more directly than the executive responding, how are they supposed to call these out?

That's not to say that the MCPS initiatives are all wrong, but the lack of sunlight that would allow effective stakeholder input and nuanced BOE direction is problematic, and the way it is set up to make that the default is just disgusting.

If they are acceding to no-direct-inquiry rules pushed by MCPS, the BOE's majority has, pretty much, abandoned their obligation to the community. I can hope the composition of the board shifts, but I'm not sure if the seats of enough of those who tend to rubber stamp are up for election this year.

This is the most important post on this boat. The rules of engagement have to change.

And who will change the rules? They count on voters moving on after the recent MCPS news settles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sayles: Is the Damascus HS principal and football coach still employed by MCPS, during the time period when the assault case occurred, for which $10 million was awarded to the affected football players and families.


Answer: Yes, they are still employed by MCPS.

They should have both been fired but they were white. Case closed!

[Anonymous]

Employee 5 is probably the current QO principal that sexually harassed Beidleman back in 2012.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Employee 5 is probably the current QO principal that sexually harassed Beidleman back in 2012.

I hope there are complaints against this principal that they haven't lost the paperwork on. I hope the county council has this name so they can push for investigation and dismissal. I have heard this name continually and still..crickets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sayles: Is the Damascus HS principal and football coach still employed by MCPS, during the time period when the assault case occurred, for which $10 million was awarded to the affected football players and families.


Answer: Yes, they are still employed by MCPS.

They should have both been fired but they were white. Case closed!

You're right. The principal is in HR, which the COO promised today to rehabilitate and staff with employees who are actually HR professionals, not just employees who are sequestered into an HR corner and kept on salary. I think the other one is still teaching.

No words for this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sayles: Is the Damascus HS principal and football coach still employed by MCPS, during the time period when the assault case occurred, for which $10 million was awarded to the affected football players and families.


Answer: Yes, they are still employed by MCPS.

They should have both been fired but they were white. Case closed!

This is the one point McKnight and her supporters have a point on. MCPS let a lot of admin and staff get away with murder, so you can see why she thought she’d be extended the same grace as her predecessors.

The Damascus principal and coach need to be fired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sayles: Is the Damascus HS principal and football coach still employed by MCPS, during the time period when the assault case occurred, for which $10 million was awarded to the affected football players and families.


Answer: Yes, they are still employed by MCPS.

They should have both been fired but they were white. Case closed!

You're right. The principal is in HR, which the COO promised today to rehabilitate and staff with employees who are actually HR professionals, not just employees who are sequestered into an HR corner and kept on salary. I think the other one is still teaching.

No words for this.

Thank god. I cringe when I see an email from her. Plus they are 100% incompetent if any issues arise with your pay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Glass: BOE requires full-time status. They need to be paid more than $25K per year - it's not a living wage. A 2019 recommendation recommended $60 K. We need the BOE to succeed in overseeing a $3.2 billion budget and we need adequate resources for this.

I’m all for a full-time board if they also get the authority to determine the schools portion of the property tax. Then the council won’t be able to claim they’re funding schools when they’re actually raising taxes for something else and people will take BOE elections more seriously.

That is not going to happen. It's not how local government in Maryland is structured. So does that mean you oppose a full-time board?

If they’re not going to have full responsibility it doesn’t need to be a full-time job. I don’t need to pay for them to get more briefings on the minutiae of third-grade math curriculum.

There’s no reason government has to keep the same structure. This isn’t working.

DP. Right. Because approving a good curriculum isn't important and we should keep them to rubber-stamping whatever MCPS puts in front of them.

Have you watched many BOE meetings? Noticed how much gets dumped into presentations, there, but how many key pieces of information are left out? Seen the breadth of concern in public testimony that they rarely have time to discuss?
Realized that that is a fraction of the public's desired interaction because of a 2-minute limit and limited signup slots (that tend to get booked within hours of their being available)? Extrapolated the time it would take to make properly informed decisions?

It would be at least a full time professional's job (not talking just 40 hours, here) to do what we expect them to be able to do. That's if they had a full staff. And without the additional work of a taxing authority, though I don't think your idea, there, isn't worthy of consideration.

$25k is insulting versus the expectation and $60k is little better. If we want them to do an amount of work similar to that performed by the Council, pay them like it.

Do you really want elected individuals making detailed decisions about what the school teaches rather than professionals? Have you seen the sort of people that get elected to the BoE? Or even the county council?

We need a teacher on the board. If there can be a student there can be a teacher and enough of the conflict of interest bs, it’s time

Students aren't employees of the organization the Board oversees. That's a ridiculous suggestion. MCEA has far too much power as it is.

There is that stupid conflict of interest argument. You can’t tell me there’s a simple way to ensure an active teacher is on the board?

And who says we have to listen to mcea if we are onthere any more than any other member

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Employee 5 is probably the current QO principal that sexually harassed Beidleman back in 2012.

I hope there are complaints against this principal that they haven't lost the paperwork on. I hope the county council has this name so they can push for investigation and dismissal. I have heard this name continually and still..crickets.

Kimball had the paperwork on this one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Glass: BOE requires full-time status. They need to be paid more than $25K per year - it's not a living wage. A 2019 recommendation recommended $60 K. We need the BOE to succeed in overseeing a $3.2 billion budget and we need adequate resources for this.

I’m all for a full-time board if they also get the authority to determine the schools portion of the property tax. Then the council won’t be able to claim they’re funding schools when they’re actually raising taxes for something else and people will take BOE elections more seriously.

That is not going to happen. It's not how local government in Maryland is structured. So does that mean you oppose a full-time board?

If they’re not going to have full responsibility it doesn’t need to be a full-time job. I don’t need to pay for them to get more briefings on the minutiae of third-grade math curriculum.

There’s no reason government has to keep the same structure. This isn’t working.

DP. Right. Because approving a good curriculum isn't important and we should keep them to rubber-stamping whatever MCPS puts in front of them.

Have you watched many BOE meetings? Noticed how much gets dumped into presentations, there, but how many key pieces of information are left out? Seen the breadth of concern in public testimony that they rarely have time to discuss?
Realized that that is a fraction of the public's desired interaction because of a 2-minute limit and limited signup slots (that tend to get booked within hours of their being available)? Extrapolated the time it would take to make properly informed decisions?

It would be at least a full time professional's job (not talking just 40 hours, here) to do what we expect them to be able to do. That's if they had a full staff. And without the additional work of a taxing authority, though I don't think your idea, there, isn't worthy of consideration.

$25k is insulting versus the expectation and $60k is little better. If we want them to do an amount of work similar to that performed by the Council, pay them like it.

Do you really want elected individuals making detailed decisions about what the school teaches rather than professionals? Have you seen the sort of people that get elected to the BoE? Or even the county council?

We need a teacher on the board. If there can be a student there can be a teacher and enough of the conflict of interest bs, it’s time

Students aren't employees of the organization the Board oversees. That's a ridiculous suggestion. MCEA has far too much power as it is.

Private schools have faculty on their boards

Some do, but it isn't the norm.

But do you know what private schools don't have? Teachers unions.

Journalists have done more to protect me in MCPS than MCEA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Employee 5 is probably the current QO principal that sexually harassed Beidleman back in 2012.

I hope there are complaints against this principal that they haven't lost the paperwork on. I hope the county council has this name so they can push for investigation and dismissal. I have heard this name continually and still..crickets.

Kimball had the paperwork on this one.

Sorry, I don't understand. Why would Kimball have the paperwork? Her latest job was acting chief in the Office of School Support and Well-Being.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sayles: Is the Damascus HS principal and football coach still employed by MCPS, during the time period when the assault case occurred, for which $10 million was awarded to the affected football players and families.


Answer: Yes, they are still employed by MCPS.

They should have both been fired but they were white. Case closed!

This is the one point McKnight and her supporters have a point on. MCPS let a lot of admin and staff get away with murder, so you can see why she thought she’d be extended the same grace as her predecessors.

The Damascus principal and coach need to be fired.

Why didn’t McKnight fire them?