Forum Index
»
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)
School board - who to vote for
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
That's really the crux of the issue, isn't. Do you agree with that statement? At this point, nobody is going to change their mind. You either think they handled it well or they handled it poorly. This election will a reflection on that question |
Anonymous
I can tell you're allergic to him, but for others who haven't made up mind, I would emphasize that Joftus is an ed policy expert and teaches ed policy at gw.... we are very lucky to have him serving, people like this don't usually end up on school boards. If you want someone who's going to be obstreperous more than someone who's substantive, he's not your guy. but i don't know anyone who's engaged with him personally who came away with the idea that he thinks MCPS is functioning just fine.... |
Anonymous
+1000 |
Anonymous
Oh so you have to talk to him quietly behind closed doors to figure out if he is any good. Good to know. How long for him to have secret meetings with all 160K parents? Backroom board members work out the best for the Whitman cluster, exactly who he represents. The rest of us can just forget about him. |
Anonymous
What are you going on about? He's even posted on DCUM before and shared his phone number for anyone who had questions for him. |
Anonymous
He's a good guy. But I'm not looking to 'stick' it to anyone. So many are blinded by their rage over the pandemic. Please try to look past that and just vote for some who can actually DO the job. Not just someone who is great at signing up for board meetings and screaming at people. It's embarrassing. We are better than that here. We MUST be better than that for our children. |
Anonymous
It's interesting (odd) to me that you think his opponent, Julie Yang, a person backed by the teachers' union / MCEA, is going to shake things up and bring in oversight and accountability....... Whatever you think of teachers' unions they aren't exactly associated with those things.... |
Anonymous
The tension is obviously that Joftus is criticized for being a rubber stamp for Dr. Knight (many suspect he was brought into the Board precisely for that reason); versus Yang who is criticized for being an MCEA supported candidate. A lot of folks are currently unimpressed with both, so it’s a hard decision. |
Anonymous
Both of them are likely to make it onto the general election ballot in November, so there is still plenty of time to decide. |
Anonymous
The union literally held a vote of no confidence in MCPS leadership earlier this year. Symbolic, sure, but it's not like the union/MCEA and MCPS administrators are aligned on everything. I don't think there's any love lost between MCEA and McKnight. If I had to choose one group to win - teachers, and a candidate who is supported by them vs. MCPS administrators, and a candidate who rubber stamps whatever they propose - the teachers would have my vote 100% of the time. |
Anonymous
Your tired, anti-union and anti-teacher talking point about how teachers don’t want to be held accountable and therefore would prefer a rubber stamp candidate who won’t conduct oversight assumes that MCPS administrators do what’s best for teachers. They do what’s best for MCPS administrators. At a time when teachers were struggling to fill in open jobs, roles, etc. due to the lack of substitutes across the county, MCPS/McKnight created tons of new highly paid positions on MCPS staff to fix the system’s problems. Joftus, of course, rubber stamped his approval. Hopefully someone who values the importance of teachers over more and more policy makers and administrators will be able to highlight the wrong direction that system leadership often takes to problems. If it takes an MCEA backed candidate to stop spending money and time on more administrators and PowerPoint slides, then so be it. |
Anonymous
So true. There seems to be a lot of disconnect between the board and teachers. I do hope that people are wise enough to seperate the policy-makers from those who are forced to enact those policies. Whatever you vote for, just please don't punish the teachers. We need good ones to stay! |
Anonymous
NP. I've read all the pages in this post and want to thank everyone for chiming in with the kind of insight that I can't get from the endorsements/candidate statements. Based on these posts, I decided to vote for Yang instead of Joftus. I do note a PP who said that her interaction with Yang was off-putting, including that Yang didn't engage PP's daughter who is also a voter. This was a significant minus to me. However, I think that given the misgivings about Joftus (=serving as a rubber-stamp for the MCPS admin), if he wins by a relatively narrow margin, it will indicate to him that he'll need to raise his game between now and November to show that he can be a force for change and improvement. (I'm also not happy with the Kid Museum relationship situation...I see that the funds were approved before his BoE appointment, but it strikes me that this couple's network/overlapping circles of influence may be a 'negative' --in that I'd prefer the political circles to not be overlapping with people who run high-profile local organizations. |
Anonymous
The only thing those three people give a crap about is advancing their insane clown posse agenda. They don't have any substantial experience working in education |
Anonymous
| This was an interesting vote for me this year. It was not easy and I had a lot of conflicting emotions about the candidates. It’s a mixed bag for sure. |