Shake Up at SSMA?

[Anonymous]

Wait. Did they not "make" payroll, like they didn't have the cash available, OR did they forget to "submit" payroll, meaning checks weren't processed.

Those are two VERY different things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait. Did they not "make" payroll, like they didn't have the cash available, OR did they forget to "submit" payroll, meaning checks weren't processed.

Those are two VERY different things.

Definitely different in terms of how to prevent them from happening in the future, but the same for the bank accounts of the staff. The Department of Employment Services has wage theft reporting available at https://does.dc.gov/page/how-file-claim and there's a law firm in DC that specializes in it (mostly for restaurant workers, but no reason SSMA staff couldn't reach out...https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/food/young-hungry/article/20845471/two-wage-theft-lawyers-cash-in-on-dcs-restaurant-boom)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait. Did they not "make" payroll, like they didn't have the cash available, OR did they forget to "submit" payroll, meaning checks weren't processed.

Those are two VERY different things.

I'm sure Shining Stars isn't bankrupt. But the person who oversees payroll is the same person who oversees nap. So you can't expect processes to be smooth. I have no idea why this person keeps getting more responsibility. Doesn't have the degrees. Doesn't have the training. It makes no sense

[Anonymous]

All of this back and forth on Shining Stars being disorganized has made me decide to post here.

The school has three jobs up on the AMS website, one of the first places where Montessori teachers go to find jobs. And Shining Stars is not representing itself well at all. Look at the formatting of these jobs:

https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21016
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21147
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21148

Who posted these? There are no paragraphs. It's so unreadable this way that it's basically gibberish.

Look, I know a lot of people on here have been tearing the school down. But Shining Stars has some pretty good guides. That's my experience at least.

So if a bunch of guides are leaving, the school needs to recruit top caliber replacements. But it can't recruit anyone this way. It's embarrassing.

SSMA Admin: I hope you're reading this. PLEASE fix those ads. It makes the school look disorganized and a place where people won't want to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of this back and forth on Shining Stars being disorganized has made me decide to post here.

The school has three jobs up on the AMS website, one of the first places where Montessori teachers go to find jobs. And Shining Stars is not representing itself well at all. Look at the formatting of these jobs:

https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21016
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21147
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21148

Who posted these? There are no paragraphs. It's so unreadable this way that it's basically gibberish.

Look, I know a lot of people on here have been tearing the school down. But Shining Stars has some pretty good guides. That's my experience at least.

So if a bunch of guides are leaving, the school needs to recruit top caliber replacements. But it can't recruit anyone this way. It's embarrassing.

SSMA Admin: I hope you're reading this. PLEASE fix those ads. It makes the school look disorganized and a place where people won't want to work.

One more thing to SSMA Admin. PLEASE change the education requirement from "High School" to "Bachelor's Degree". You won't get good candidates otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this back and forth on Shining Stars being disorganized has made me decide to post here.

The school has three jobs up on the AMS website, one of the first places where Montessori teachers go to find jobs. And Shining Stars is not representing itself well at all. Look at the formatting of these jobs:

https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21016
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21147
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21148

Who posted these? There are no paragraphs. It's so unreadable this way that it's basically gibberish.

Look, I know a lot of people on here have been tearing the school down. But Shining Stars has some pretty good guides. That's my experience at least.

So if a bunch of guides are leaving, the school needs to recruit top caliber replacements. But it can't recruit anyone this way. It's embarrassing.

SSMA Admin: I hope you're reading this. PLEASE fix those ads. It makes the school look disorganized and a place where people won't want to work.

One more thing to SSMA Admin. PLEASE change the education requirement from "High School" to "Bachelor's Degree". You won't get good candidates otherwise.

It actually reads at the end of the block text: "Education and Experience: Bachelor’s Degree (or higher) from an accredited college or university in Early Childhood or Elementary Education required; Master’s Degree preferred; AMS or AMI certification/Diploma in Primary Education from a MACTE recognized or affiliate tep required. Prior experience in a Montessori) classroom environment preferred. "

As usual, SSMA administration also fails the test on proofing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The nap room issue was that program assistants were forcing three year olds who didn’t fall asleep to stand and press their faces against the wall as punishment (for not sleeping, I guess). There was also something about a parent witnessing a PA yanking a sleeping child up by the arms and dangling her in the air before dumping her on the floor.

I'm not defending how the Director of Compliance handled nap here, but it has to be said: the nap room setup is not conducive to a good nap time. I mean what do you expect when you put 45 3-year olds in the same room and expect them to fall asleep? It's not going to happen. Some of the kids will wake up the others. And then they will start running around.

If you haven't been trained properly, that's really stressful. So people end up doing bad things: yelling at kids, yanking them up by their arms, making them stand against the wall, face to the wall.

What SSMA needs to do is train the Director of Compliance or re-assign her and get someone with daycare experience who knows how to deal with nappers. It needs to train the PAs too so they aren't constantly yelling at kids to be quiet and go to sleep. That's not going to work...EVER. And they need to split the nappers up into two or three different rooms. 45 kids in one room is where the problems start.

As a daycare, Shining Stars would fail.

Just my two cents.

A good daycare can totally get 45 kids to nap in one room. Ours did at least. They should help train these nap people.

[Anonymous]

I find it fascinating that OSSE has required that people who work in daycares are required to have college degrees - but the person who is interacting with children for a dedicated amount of time each day at a school is not required to have similar education experience.

[Anonymous]

SSMA is a sinking ship as long as the ED is around making personal rather than professional decisions, as long as the Board continues to be her rubber stamp, and as long as the staff has few other viable options. It’s toxic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SSMA is a sinking ship as long as the ED is around making personal rather than professional decisions, as long as the Board continues to be her rubber stamp, and as long as the staff has few other viable options. It’s toxic.

This thread is so depressing.

How is it that so many people know that Shining Stars is a toxic work environment, yet nobody does anything about it? Was it always this bad or has the principal's leaving made it like this?

[Anonymous]

It must be great to be the ED at this school. You get a salary, have no day to day responsibility, hire and fire principals if things go wrong, surround yourself with friends, creating a toxic situation and still have a line of people waiting to get into your school. What a gig.

The ED must be smiling right now. It doesn't get any better than that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not making payroll is the stuff that geta dcpcsb involved

I can't believe Shining Stars isn't making payroll on the last day of school. That's scandalous. Who in admin is responsible for payroll?

Did they screw up the payroll processing (bad) or are they out of money (worse and a DCPCSB issue)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All of this back and forth on Shining Stars being disorganized has made me decide to post here.

The school has three jobs up on the AMS website, one of the first places where Montessori teachers go to find jobs. And Shining Stars is not representing itself well at all. Look at the formatting of these jobs:

https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21016
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21147
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21148

Who posted these? There are no paragraphs. It's so unreadable this way that it's basically gibberish.

Look, I know a lot of people on here have been tearing the school down. But Shining Stars has some pretty good guides. That's my experience at least.

So if a bunch of guides are leaving, the school needs to recruit top caliber replacements. But it can't recruit anyone this way. It's embarrassing.

SSMA Admin: I hope you're reading this. PLEASE fix those ads. It makes the school look disorganized and a place where people won't want to work.

Please contact the school about this instead of assuming they’ll get the message from an anonymous message board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All of this back and forth on Shining Stars being disorganized has made me decide to post here.

The school has three jobs up on the AMS website, one of the first places where Montessori teachers go to find jobs. And Shining Stars is not representing itself well at all. Look at the formatting of these jobs:

https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21016
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21147
https://amshq.org/Impak/Content/Job-Detail?jobid=21148

Who posted these? There are no paragraphs. It's so unreadable this way that it's basically gibberish.

Look, I know a lot of people on here have been tearing the school down. But Shining Stars has some pretty good guides. That's my experience at least.

So if a bunch of guides are leaving, the school needs to recruit top caliber replacements. But it can't recruit anyone this way. It's embarrassing.

SSMA Admin: I hope you're reading this. PLEASE fix those ads. It makes the school look disorganized and a place where people won't want to work.

You don't criticize anything admin does at Shining Stars if you know what's good for you.

Please contact the school about this instead of assuming they’ll get the message from an anonymous message board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It must be great to be the ED at this school. You get a salary, have no day to day responsibility, hire and fire principals if things go wrong, surround yourself with friends, creating a toxic situation and still have a line of people waiting to get into your school. What a gig.

The ED must be smiling right now. It doesn't get any better than that.

Says more about parents than anything...a culture of low expectations. Oh yeah, it's free!