Emails reveal contempt by MoCo health dept for nonpublic schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gayles should step down or be fired immediately! He was wrong in his actions and in the unintelligent and inappropriate emails. Private schools opened and educated their students just fine. Not public schools - and this is his problem. He has no idea how to do his job and these email revelations should be the nail in his coffin. He is terrible at his job, divisive, and prejudiced. Time to Go!

He's not going to be "fired" and will not step down. You don't like his emails. Oh well.

You are wrong, he should be? People are fired for inappropriate emails and not doing their job all the time. He is not serving the people of his county. He intended to harm them and disregard them. He made them jump through hoops and then didn't even bother to review their plans - that equates to not doing your job. Not to mention he was wrong. And you oy care about public school children, well he did wrong by them as well. He failed in his job across the board 100%.

[Anonymous]

Confirms what many of suspected at that time. He should be fired. I will be voting against elrich for employing this incompetent idiot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gayles should step down or be fired immediately! He was wrong in his actions and in the unintelligent and inappropriate emails. Private schools opened and educated their students just fine. Not public schools - and this is his problem. He has no idea how to do his job and these email revelations should be the nail in his coffin. He is terrible at his job, divisive, and prejudiced. Time to Go!

He's not going to be "fired" and will not step down. You don't like his emails. Oh well.

I’m not the PP, but — his emails demonstrated a total and complete disregard for constituents’ valid concerns about the criteria he was using to make decisions about whether their children could access in-person education. He also requested that private schools make plans for safely reopening and then proceeded to ignore the plans and try to institute a blanket closure.

You mean a select few constituents who, because they have money, think they should get whatever they want. Hence, arrogance.

Many of the schools that opened are parochial schools that run on shoestring budgets and have large numbers of families getting financial aid. It’s disingenuous to say that people who wanted their schools open all came from positions of wealth and privilege.

Exactly. 55% of private schools in Maryland are religious schools; that figure is 44% in MoCo. The average tuition is $10K for ES and $16K for HS in MD. That’s Catholic diocese school tuition levels.

Gayles and people like PP act like all these parents are full-pay at Sidwell or Holton.

https://www.privateschoolreview.com/maryland/montgomery-county

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gayles should step down or be fired immediately! He was wrong in his actions and in the unintelligent and inappropriate emails. Private schools opened and educated their students just fine. Not public schools - and this is his problem. He has no idea how to do his job and these email revelations should be the nail in his coffin. He is terrible at his job, divisive, and prejudiced. Time to Go!

He's not going to be "fired" and will not step down. You don't like his emails. Oh well.

I’m not the PP, but — his emails demonstrated a total and complete disregard for constituents’ valid concerns about the criteria he was using to make decisions about whether their children could access in-person education. He also requested that private schools make plans for safely reopening and then proceeded to ignore the plans and try to institute a blanket closure.

You mean a select few constituents who, because they have money, think they should get whatever they want. Hence, arrogance.

Many of the schools that opened are parochial schools that run on shoestring budgets and have large numbers of families getting financial aid. It’s disingenuous to say that people who wanted their schools open all came from positions of wealth and privilege.

Yes, he's an idiot and doesn't even understand the population he serves. Ignorant and prejudiced. He does not deserve to work in the county any longer. Calling for his immediate resignation or else he should be fired.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There wasn't any spread in moco privates, so he was wrong. Ours tested every week.

You must be racist to criticize him. Not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many of the schools that opened are parochial schools that run on shoestring budgets and have large numbers of families getting financial aid. It’s disingenuous to say that people who wanted their schools open all came from positions of wealth and privilege.

Exactly. 55% of private schools in Maryland are religious schools; that figure is 44% in MoCo. The average tuition is $10K for ES and $16K for HS in MD. That’s Catholic diocese school tuition levels.

Gayles and people like PP act like all these parents are full-pay at Sidwell or Holton.

https://www.privateschoolreview.com/maryland/montgomery-county

+1. Both of my kids attend Catholic school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gayles should step down or be fired immediately! He was wrong in his actions and in the unintelligent and inappropriate emails. Private schools opened and educated their students just fine. Not public schools - and this is his problem. He has no idea how to do his job and these email revelations should be the nail in his coffin. He is terrible at his job, divisive, and prejudiced. Time to Go!

He's not going to be "fired" and will not step down. You don't like his emails. Oh well.

You are wrong, he should be? People are fired for inappropriate emails and not doing their job all the time. He is not serving the people of his county. He intended to harm them and disregard them. He made them jump through hoops and then didn't even bother to review their plans - that equates to not doing your job. Not to mention he was wrong. And you oy care about public school children, well he did wrong by them as well. He failed in his job across the board 100%.

It's OK. He was making fun of rich people. Now if he was making fun of poor or non-white people, different story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He’s just speaking the truth. That’s why everyone on this thread is upset. Why not acknowledge your privilege and then have a conversation?!

What privilege? I work hard to afford private for my kid. So? You made other choices. People that bash others using the tired “privileged” label sound like envious middle school children. Get over it. People are more successful then you.

The privilege is not going to private school. It’s suggesting to public health officials during a global pandemic that your school is special and deserves special rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Everybody's an effin expert in hindsight.

Yep. This.

Though his emails were pretty blunt and not written for public consumption they reflected fact. Folks think that because they have money they deserve special privileges. Keeping the community safe was the priority. Did he put in more restrictions than necessary? Perhaps, but he was doing what he could at the time.

Right. No one knew in advance that it would be “right” to open schools, and honestly we still don’t know that in isolation of so many factors that influence community spread. As for parents writing to him asking him to examine their particular school, I don’t know what to say. The guy is not like a private school principal who is paid to field requests from individual parents regarding their own specific case. His job was public health during a pandemic and he did his job to the best of his ability. How many of you would want to sit in that seat while a new virus ravages the world?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Confirms what many of suspected at that time. He should be fired. I will be voting against elrich for employing this incompetent idiot.

I'm all for voting against Elrich, but rich doesn't employ Dr. Gayles. Gayles is a State of MD employee.

[Anonymous]

That was August of 2020. Covid was about to take off. He made the right call to resist school reopening over the objections of you anti-mask, reopen-now dummies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He’s just speaking the truth. That’s why everyone on this thread is upset. Why not acknowledge your privilege and then have a conversation?!

What privilege? I work hard to afford private for my kid. So? You made other choices. People that bash others using the tired “privileged” label sound like envious middle school children. Get over it. People are more successful then you.

I’m sure you do work hard, but that doesn’t mean you are not privileged. I’ve worked hard too, but I was given more chances and has more help than a lot of people have had. Too many people are barn on third base but think they hit a triple.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He’s just speaking the truth. That’s why everyone on this thread is upset. Why not acknowledge your privilege and then have a conversation?!

What privilege? I work hard to afford private for my kid. So? You made other choices. People that bash others using the tired “privileged” label sound like envious middle school children. Get over it. People are more successful then you.

The privilege is not going to private school. It’s suggesting to public health officials during a global pandemic that your school is special and deserves special rules.

But this wasn’t what it was. There is no question that private schools have smaller class sizes and the ability to pivot to meet CDC guidelines in a way the public schools did not. Our son has 12 kids in his class. They were set-up to be 6 feet apart with plexi-glass dividers, windows open, classes outside where possible. Why were these facts not considered? Instead, he dismissed all private schools without regard to meet safety measures. We are very cautious. But this was never about keeping kids safe because, if it were, he would have looked at what schools were capable of. This was always about closing down the private that could comply with safety recommendations because the public could not. And the data support this: private schools, with these measures, have been open for months, safely. And now the publics are starting to do what they have been doing since the fall, albeit slower and for fewer days. Please don’t make this a class way, because the fact is that all of our children deserved better - the private didn’t deserve to be labeled spoiled kids of rich people and shut down for basically that fact when they prepared plans demonstrating their ability to safely bring kids back; and the public school kids deserved more than solving the problem by saying “see, the privates are home too” rather than working to try and implement similar safety measures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He’s just speaking the truth. That’s why everyone on this thread is upset. Why not acknowledge your privilege and then have a conversation?!

What privilege? I work hard to afford private for my kid. So? You made other choices. People that bash others using the tired “privileged” label sound like envious middle school children. Get over it. People are more successful then you.

I’m sure you do work hard, but that doesn’t mean you are not privileged. I’ve worked hard too, but I was given more chances and has more help than a lot of people have had. Too many people are barn on third base but think they hit a triple.

This privilege argument is a red-herring, don’t fall for it. Again, this wasn’t about privileged parents wanting special treatment (I’m sure some did, but lets be clear, MoCo has their fair share of those folks in public school too). This was about using that privilege as a basis to dismiss a group because although they could comply with safety measures, the other group could not, and that just wasn’t fair. Imagine if that were reversed.

[Anonymous]

He should be fired.