MCPS closed tomorrow

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Responding to you takes 30 seconds. Your arguments are not super strong. Trust me, my kids are right here laughing with me because I never respond on these boards...we are evaluating what makes a sound argument.

You’re responding to multiple posters, PP. not surprised you bring your kids to this forum. That explains a lot.

Real life...yes, it does explain a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Responding to you takes 30 seconds. Your arguments are not super strong. Trust me, my kids are right here laughing with me because I never respond on these boards...we are evaluating what makes a sound argument.

OMG it's a beautiful day, take your kids outside rather than read them DCUM posts- yuck.

YUCK! HOW DO YOU KNOW WE ARENT OUTSIDE!!! HAHAHA! Come on, do better. You can.

"You see children, we don't need any sports equipment or games. Instead, we can sit outside and refresh and refresh. Then, and only then, can we be the winners of DCUM."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Classroom teacher here. We ALL could use this ordained-opportunity not to gripe and groan about a most unfortunate and potentially, catastrophic incident; but to offer Grace and Grow. Even if it's not in the curriculum or the parent handbook, everyday we are faced with "Pivot and Turn" moments. This is one of them. For those folks who are so quick to move on from "Giving Thanks" Thursday:

1. Make a moment to check in with a family member
2. Prepare a meal for one of families in Gaithersburg who are still seeking shelter. PTA?? Boosters???
3. Gather some neighborhood kids and rake an elderly person's yard.
4. Create a learning pod for 2 of your kids friends
5. Library visit anyone?
6. Watch a neighbor's kids for 1 hr so they can go to the grocery store or pick up a prescription or even Go To Work.

Or how about unplug, decompress and just go outside an Breathe ......release from this whirlwind season and allow Our children to be THEIR BEST for the rest of this week?....just a thought. SEL starts at home, we're here to enhance what the children already know.

1 Father = 100 Teachers

It’s quite telling that it didn’t even occur to this teacher that other people actually have to work today.

Maybe they assume that if you have this much time to post on an anonymous forum surely you can channel that into time with your family. All of those options can still be done after work.

Not if your kids are young.

Yes, even then.

How late do you keep your kids up? 6-8PM is already hectic without throwing in raking in the dark.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Classroom teacher here. We ALL could use this ordained-opportunity not to gripe and groan about a most unfortunate and potentially, catastrophic incident; but to offer Grace and Grow. Even if it's not in the curriculum or the parent handbook, everyday we are faced with "Pivot and Turn" moments. This is one of them. For those folks who are so quick to move on from "Giving Thanks" Thursday:

1. Make a moment to check in with a family member
2. Prepare a meal for one of families in Gaithersburg who are still seeking shelter. PTA?? Boosters???
3. Gather some neighborhood kids and rake an elderly person's yard.
4. Create a learning pod for 2 of your kids friends
5. Library visit anyone?
6. Watch a neighbor's kids for 1 hr so they can go to the grocery store or pick up a prescription or even Go To Work.

Or how about unplug, decompress and just go outside an Breathe ......release from this whirlwind season and allow Our children to be THEIR BEST for the rest of this week?....just a thought. SEL starts at home, we're here to enhance what the children already know.

1 Father = 100 Teachers

It’s quite telling that it didn’t even occur to this teacher that other people actually have to work today.

So, if you work and have children in school, what is your emergency backup plan if they are sick and can't go to school? What is your emergency backup plan if there was a snow storm and they couldn't go to school?

All parents should have an emergency backup plan if school is not available. Just because you don't have one is not a reason to blame the school or teachers. They had nothing to do with this decision. The problem is that an accident happened that has caused an emergency in the eastern seaboard power grid. The power company has a lot of work to do and at some point will likely have to shut power down again and the schools have as little control over that scenario as you do. So, rather than getting all those kids into schools where the power, HVAC, telephones and all operating equipment in the facility may go out an any time today for an unpredictable amount of time, the school system is closing today to ensure all children are safe at home. It is easier for parents to take care of their own children at home if the power goes out again than trying to handle hundreds or thousands of students at school in that situation.

[Anonymous]

Ha! You have no idea what we're doing. I think when a group of people get together and create arguments that are illogical and everyone mindlessly jumps on, we should start questioning. Again, your arguments are silly and lack a foundation. You know nothing about me and your personal attacks show how weak your arguments are. This isn't elementary school. I do have to go now, but this was a great time. The kids should have been in school today.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you imagine the outcry if at 5am they took back their message that schools were closed???

Yes, and that would have been wrong. The message last night could have said that schools would have been on 2-hour delay the following day, with an update by the following morning. Then this morning's update could have been: all schools will open 2 hours late as expected, or, all schools except the following: [list of still-closed schools].

are you the parent of a kindergartner or an early elementary student? You know there would be an outcry if last night they said 2 hour delay with an update the following morning. I do believe they tried that approach with snow closures and guess what...there were threads complaining about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ha! You have no idea what we're doing. I think when a group of people get together and create arguments that are illogical and everyone mindlessly jumps on, we should start questioning. Again, your arguments are silly and lack a foundation. You know nothing about me and your personal attacks show how weak your arguments are. This isn't elementary school. I do have to go now, but this was a great time. The kids should have been in school today.

Nobody was arguing with you. Just laughing at you

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Classroom teacher here. We ALL could use this ordained-opportunity not to gripe and groan about a most unfortunate and potentially, catastrophic incident; but to offer Grace and Grow. Even if it's not in the curriculum or the parent handbook, everyday we are faced with "Pivot and Turn" moments. This is one of them. For those folks who are so quick to move on from "Giving Thanks" Thursday:

1. Make a moment to check in with a family member
2. Prepare a meal for one of families in Gaithersburg who are still seeking shelter. PTA?? Boosters???
3. Gather some n⁵eighborhood kids and rake an elderly person's yard.
4. Create a learning pod for 2 of your kids friends
5. Library visit anyone?
6. Watch a neighbor's kids for 1 hr so they can go to the grocery store or pick up a prescription or even Go To Work.

Or how about unplug, decompress and just go outside an Breathe ......release from this whirlwind season and allow Our children to be THEIR BEST for the rest of this week?....just a thought. SEL starts at home, we're here to enhance what the children already know.

1 Father = 100 Teachers

It’s quite telling that it didn’t even occur to this teacher that other people actually have to work today.

So, if you work and have children in school, what is your emergency backup plan if they are sick and can't go to school? What is your emergency backup plan if there was a snow storm and they couldn't go to school?

All parents should have an emergency backup plan if school is not available. Just because you don't have one is not a reason to blame the school or teachers. They had nothing to do with this decision. The problem is that an accident happened that has caused an emergency in the eastern seaboard power grid. The power company has a lot of work to do and at some point will likely have to shut power down again and the schools have as little control over that scenario as you do. So, rather than getting all those kids into schools where the power, HVAC, telephones and all operating equipment in the facility may go out an any time today for an unpredictable amount of time, the school system is closing today to ensure all children are safe at home. It is easier for parents to take care of their own children at home if the power goes out again than trying to handle hundreds or thousands of students at school in that situation.

Oh no, another silly argument.where is the school's back up plan? So what if the power goes out? Power didn't even flicker in our cluster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ha! You have no idea what we're doing. I think when a group of people get together and create arguments that are illogical and everyone mindlessly jumps on, we should start questioning. Again, your arguments are silly and lack a foundation. You know nothing about me and your personal attacks show how weak your arguments are. This isn't elementary school. I do have to go now, but this was a great time. The kids should have been in school today.

Nobody was arguing with you. Just laughing at you

My kids too, honestly. They told me these forums were dumb with people trying to talk in circles. I thought parents would be better. But we enjoyed all the circular, illogical arguing that ended with a personal attack. All good, ok, yes I'm walking out door. Adios!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP here. Good ol' DCUM managing overnight to create a 7 page snarky thread mostly full of troll comments and people replying to them.

1. Please use the report button in lower right for off-topic and troll comments, rather than replying to them.

2. No the teacher's union doesn't make or influence these decisions. Nor is this decision made just to give teachers an extra day off. It's a big disruption to everyone's plans. People suggesting such a thing are trolling. Report those comments.

3. Power outages affect buildings, and it takes time to go and assess that the HVAC, internet, phones, safety (fire alarms and PA) and security systems are functioning properly. I've been in a school that had a power fluctuation in the area. The area came back up, but the building did not. After 1 hour trying to resolve, they dismissed the school early.

4. I'm surprised they actually decided to close the evening before. They could have said 2 hour delay with reassess in morning. While the message about updating in the morning may have been unclear, they won't reverse a system closure. What they were checking is to see if buildings could open for daycare and if offices could be open. Since they remained closed, that says that a lot of buildings were not ready this morning.

5. It's not just buildings. The state of the roads and traffic signals matters in order to run the buses safely. Montgomery County government (including police and fire dept.) will have a say in whether or not they want MCPS to be running buses. A closure decision is not made in isolation by MCPS.

6. It's not just buildings and roads. There are other support services that are critical to the functioning of the system. They mentioned that food services lost power and they needed to assess impact. If the main servers are down and the system has no internet, it's hard to be effective. Etc.

7. They can't just close schools in part of the system and keep other schools open. There are too many students (~15% in choice programs, not sure how many in SPED programs) that attend school other than their home school. The bus network transporting students covers a significant area.

8. Be prepared. This is the exact same conversation that is going to happen when there is some sort of iffy weather event. No need to rehash the stupid comments. Just recognize how the system works and have back-up plans in place so you can adapt.

I agree with most of this except #7. That's a dangerous argument to make. Families know which school their child attends. Each school has a principal and staff that know who attends their school should be able to communicate with parents. I hear that there are other reasons why they needed to close all the schools but this should not be one of them.

Yes, this. Especially when they have closed small groups of schools in the past due to power outages, water main breaks, etc. For future reference, I would like them to specify the threshold of how many schools need to affected by a situation like this in order for them to decide to close all 210 schools.

Nice “I want to speak to the manager NOW vibes”

Take a xanny.

It's a legitimate question. If the threshold is 25% of schools affected, it would be helpful to know that.

THIS

44 schools were affected. There are over 200 schools in MCPS.

So, maybe about 20% of the schools lost power. Why can’t the rest of the schools stay open?

Makes zero sense. And I can’t believe parents are just fine with this nonsense in such a supposedly ‘well-educated’ county.

Do you think each school is its own independent entity? Literally everything is controlled centrally, even heating systems and internet, not to mention buses and lunches.

Why have previous power outages only shut down the affected schools?

It’s apples to oranges. These aren’t typical power lines from a snowstorm buddy.

Which is relevant to Pepco, not MCPS. Pepco got the power back on to schools with plenty of time to reopen this morning.

Actually, it is. They don’t make decisions in isolation. Other agencies help determine if it’s safe to open ragrdinf transportation, etc.

Is any other business/school not open? Privates are open. I only know of one pool that can't open today because it's systems need more time to run filters. Please explain why only MCPS must close.

Name another operation in MoCo that runs on over 200 campuses involving 200K people?

That's not MCPS. They don't have over 200K people.

160,000 students plus 22,000 staff = 182,000. This person rounded up to 200k. They did not say over 200k. This nitpicking does not help your argument.

Rounded up to 200K? How about rounding up to 500K? Running a $3B organization requires facts and data not rumor and gossip.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ha! You have no idea what we're doing. I think when a group of people get together and create arguments that are illogical and everyone mindlessly jumps on, we should start questioning. Again, your arguments are silly and lack a foundation. You know nothing about me and your personal attacks show how weak your arguments are. This isn't elementary school. I do have to go now, but this was a great time. The kids should have been in school today.

Nobody was arguing with you. Just laughing at you

My kids too, honestly. They told me these forums were dumb with people trying to talk in circles. I thought parents would be better. But we enjoyed all the circular, illogical arguing that ended with a personal attack. All good, ok, yes I'm walking out door. Adios!

Why would you bring your kids to DCUM? Training ‘em up real good.

[Anonymous]

All parents should have an emergency backup plan if school is not available. Just because you don't have one is not a reason to blame the school or teachers. They had nothing to do with this decision. The problem is that an accident happened that has caused an emergency in the eastern seaboard power grid. The power company has a lot of work to do and at some point will likely have to shut power down again and the schools have as little control over that scenario as you do. So, rather than getting all those kids into schools where the power, HVAC, telephones and all operating equipment in the facility may go out an any time today for an unpredictable amount of time, the school system is closing today to ensure all children are safe at home. It is easier for parents to take care of their own children at home if the power goes out again than trying to handle hundreds or thousands of students at school in that situation.

I do have an emergency backup plan. But it's not easy and it's not cheap, and it is perfectly reasonable to be upset to have to activate an emergency plan when there is no emergency. Power has been restored. Pepco is not shutting the power down. This was a pointless closure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Classroom teacher here. We ALL could use this ordained-opportunity not to gripe and groan about a most unfortunate and potentially, catastrophic incident; but to offer Grace and Grow. Even if it's not in the curriculum or the parent handbook, everyday we are faced with "Pivot and Turn" moments. This is one of them. For those folks who are so quick to move on from "Giving Thanks" Thursday:

1. Make a moment to check in with a family member
2. Prepare a meal for one of families in Gaithersburg who are still seeking shelter. PTA?? Boosters???
3. Gather some n⁵eighborhood kids and rake an elderly person's yard.
4. Create a learning pod for 2 of your kids friends
5. Library visit anyone?
6. Watch a neighbor's kids for 1 hr so they can go to the grocery store or pick up a prescription or even Go To Work.

Or how about unplug, decompress and just go outside an Breathe ......release from this whirlwind season and allow Our children to be THEIR BEST for the rest of this week?....just a thought. SEL starts at home, we're here to enhance what the children already know.

1 Father = 100 Teachers

It’s quite telling that it didn’t even occur to this teacher that other people actually have to work today.

So, if you work and have children in school, what is your emergency backup plan if they are sick and can't go to school? What is your emergency backup plan if there was a snow storm and they couldn't go to school?

All parents should have an emergency backup plan if school is not available. Just because you don't have one is not a reason to blame the school or teachers. They had nothing to do with this decision. The problem is that an accident happened that has caused an emergency in the eastern seaboard power grid. The power company has a lot of work to do and at some point will likely have to shut power down again and the schools have as little control over that scenario as you do. So, rather than getting all those kids into schools where the power, HVAC, telephones and all operating equipment in the facility may go out an any time today for an unpredictable amount of time, the school system is closing today to ensure all children are safe at home. It is easier for parents to take care of their own children at home if the power goes out again than trying to handle hundreds or thousands of students at school in that situation.

Oh no, another silly argument.where is the school's back up plan? So what if the power goes out? Power didn't even flicker in our cluster.

How often do you coordinate the schedule of 200 campuses, 22K employees and 165K students? The plan is what they did. They closed schools and had staff report and do safety and equipment checks on all facilities.

Trying to plan different schedules for 44 out of 200 schools becomes a logistical nightmare. Especially when the next major event and partial closing comes around and a different set of schools has conditions where some schools can open and some schools have to close. If they used these scenarios, then by the 3rd quarter, you'd have like 100 different plans in place and trying to juggle which school has this problem and which school has that schedule and so on. You can still open when you have only a few schools that have an issue, but by the time you get to 10 schools impacted, you close to avoid creating a huge logistical explosion.

[Anonymous]

When do we find out this dudes BAC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

All parents should have an emergency backup plan if school is not available. Just because you don't have one is not a reason to blame the school or teachers. They had nothing to do with this decision. The problem is that an accident happened that has caused an emergency in the eastern seaboard power grid. The power company has a lot of work to do and at some point will likely have to shut power down again and the schools have as little control over that scenario as you do. So, rather than getting all those kids into schools where the power, HVAC, telephones and all operating equipment in the facility may go out an any time today for an unpredictable amount of time, the school system is closing today to ensure all children are safe at home. It is easier for parents to take care of their own children at home if the power goes out again than trying to handle hundreds or thousands of students at school in that situation.

I do have an emergency backup plan. But it's not easy and it's not cheap, and it is perfectly reasonable to be upset to have to activate an emergency plan when there is no emergency. Power has been restored. Pepco is not shutting the power down. This was a pointless closure.

You really have no idea what is involved when you take out one point of the eastern seaboard power grid, do you? The tower that was hit was a major point in the grid. They've diverted power around that tower so that they could shut it down. After they get the plane disentangled from the tower and the work crews repair all the damage to the tower and the power cables and ensure that the tower is safe to power on, they are going to have to put the tower back into the grid. Do you think they can do that without another major power outage? Unlikely. There is likely to be another scheduled power outage whenever they return to the power grid to the design configuration and they don't want to have the kids in school when that happens because they don't know when it will happen and for how long. Power, HVAC and phones will likely go out (mostly because not one uses phones that don't require power anymore). And transportation will be logistical nightmare if they have to cope with a power outage affected 20% of the schools in the system, even if it is scheduled. Most likely when it is scheduled there will be maybe an hour's notice, but that's not enough to get all students out of the building and on their way home.