New Superintendent to be named on February 8th

[Anonymous]

The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

There is literally nothing Dr. McKnight could have done or not done that wouldn't have caused some stakeholder to scream. That's the nature of managing a 160,000 person school system in the middle of completely polarizing pandemic. I am glad that schools stayed open and think the conversation is being dominated by the loud disgruntleds who seem to want school closed. I suspect that the majority is more like me -- quiet and just want to stay focused on our kids' learning and their routines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

There is literally nothing Dr. McKnight could have done or not done that wouldn't have caused some stakeholder to scream. That's the nature of managing a 160,000 person school system in the middle of completely polarizing pandemic. I am glad that schools stayed open and think the conversation is being dominated by the loud disgruntleds who seem to want school closed. I suspect that the majority is more like me -- quiet and just want to stay focused on our kids' learning and their routines.

Correct but they should have gone virtual for 3 weeks coming back from break given the surge. The outbreak was not her fault but she could have handled it better. Kids went weeks without an education between students/staff being out sick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

Its her job not to stay silent and lead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

There is literally nothing Dr. McKnight could have done or not done that wouldn't have caused some stakeholder to scream. That's the nature of managing a 160,000 person school system in the middle of completely polarizing pandemic. I am glad that schools stayed open and think the conversation is being dominated by the loud disgruntleds who seem to want school closed. I suspect that the majority is more like me -- quiet and just want to stay focused on our kids' learning and their routines.

Correct but they should have gone virtual for 3 weeks coming back from break given the surge. The outbreak was not her fault but she could have handled it better. Kids went weeks without an education between students/staff being out sick.

There are what ~160 schools in MCPS? If you are following the daily case counts, you would see that many had very low rates of covid among both students and staff. No reason to close all schools because a few were suffering from staffing shortages. Or put another way, my kids' school was unaffected by teacher absences, why would I be okay with going virtual?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

There is literally nothing Dr. McKnight could have done or not done that wouldn't have caused some stakeholder to scream. That's the nature of managing a 160,000 person school system in the middle of completely polarizing pandemic. I am glad that schools stayed open and think the conversation is being dominated by the loud disgruntleds who seem to want school closed. I suspect that the majority is more like me -- quiet and just want to stay focused on our kids' learning and their routines.

Correct but they should have gone virtual for 3 weeks coming back from break given the surge. The outbreak was not her fault but she could have handled it better. Kids went weeks without an education between students/staff being out sick.

There are what ~160 schools in MCPS? If you are following the daily case counts, you would see that many had very low rates of covid among both students and staff. No reason to close all schools because a few were suffering from staffing shortages. Or put another way, my kids' school was unaffected by teacher absences, why would I be okay with going virtual?

And by the way, LOTS AND LOTS of schools throughout the country stayed open for in-person school. Dr. McKnight did not pick a path that put MCPS out of the norm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

There is literally nothing Dr. McKnight could have done or not done that wouldn't have caused some stakeholder to scream. That's the nature of managing a 160,000 person school system in the middle of completely polarizing pandemic. I am glad that schools stayed open and think the conversation is being dominated by the loud disgruntleds who seem to want school closed. I suspect that the majority is more like me -- quiet and just want to stay focused on our kids' learning and their routines.

Correct but they should have gone virtual for 3 weeks coming back from break given the surge. The outbreak was not her fault but she could have handled it better. Kids went weeks without an education between students/staff being out sick.

You are one of those "loud disgruntleds" that PP was talking about.

Going to virtual for 3 weeks would have pissed off THOUSANDS more people.

Honestly, she screwed up the roll out of the color coded metrics. But the approach was sound: school by school basis of closure. No system wide closure

[Anonymous]

As far as I'm concerned, the people who insisted that the schools be closed to in-person learning for over a year - for whatever arbitrary reason - caused many of these problems (widening learning gap between the FARMS and non-FARMS, students suffering socially and mentally, etc.) and McKnight is doing her best to clean up. Clean up will take more than the few months she's been superintendent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to wait to give my opinion on McKnight since she's new to the position. Her communication needs tremendous improvement but I'm glad she was a huge proponent of keeping schools open.
I will wait to see what she does to make sure our schools are safe and whether or not she listens to teachers and principals.

She's not new. She's been around a while, which is why the parents that have had the opportunity to see how she operates aren't happy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

There is literally nothing Dr. McKnight could have done or not done that wouldn't have caused some stakeholder to scream. That's the nature of managing a 160,000 person school system in the middle of completely polarizing pandemic. I am glad that schools stayed open and think the conversation is being dominated by the loud disgruntleds who seem to want school closed. I suspect that the majority is more like me -- quiet and just want to stay focused on our kids' learning and their routines.

Correct but they should have gone virtual for 3 weeks coming back from break given the surge. The outbreak was not her fault but she could have handled it better. Kids went weeks without an education between students/staff being out sick.

There are what ~160 schools in MCPS? If you are following the daily case counts, you would see that many had very low rates of covid among both students and staff. No reason to close all schools because a few were suffering from staffing shortages. Or put another way, my kids' school was unaffected by teacher absences, why would I be okay with going virtual?

9% of the student population was sick in January. The bus and teacher issues were so bad that they tried calling the National Guard to drive kids in, and still had to shut down 31 schools for two weeks. She had two no-confidence votes already. This is not good at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

There is literally nothing Dr. McKnight could have done or not done that wouldn't have caused some stakeholder to scream. That's the nature of managing a 160,000 person school system in the middle of completely polarizing pandemic. I am glad that schools stayed open and think the conversation is being dominated by the loud disgruntleds who seem to want school closed. I suspect that the majority is more like me -- quiet and just want to stay focused on our kids' learning and their routines.

Correct but they should have gone virtual for 3 weeks coming back from break given the surge. The outbreak was not her fault but she could have handled it better. Kids went weeks without an education between students/staff being out sick.

There are what ~160 schools in MCPS? If you are following the daily case counts, you would see that many had very low rates of covid among both students and staff. No reason to close all schools because a few were suffering from staffing shortages. Or put another way, my kids' school was unaffected by teacher absences, why would I be okay with going virtual?

209 schools in MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm waiting on the explanation as to why she's a horrible choice and she focuses on other stuff. Anyone?

You could just take the banana out of you ear and read this and the other many threads.

They may have not read pages 11 through 13 of this thread?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The situation is too tough to manage. It's best to stay silent sometime. I can honestly say I wouldn't know what to do either if in this situation. It's an entire county school system, not just your family. It's harder than you think to make decisions that involve thousands of people vs our own 4 nuclear family members.

There is literally nothing Dr. McKnight could have done or not done that wouldn't have caused some stakeholder to scream. That's the nature of managing a 160,000 person school system in the middle of completely polarizing pandemic. I am glad that schools stayed open and think the conversation is being dominated by the loud disgruntleds who seem to want school closed. I suspect that the majority is more like me -- quiet and just want to stay focused on our kids' learning and their routines.

Correct but they should have gone virtual for 3 weeks coming back from break given the surge. The outbreak was not her fault but she could have handled it better. Kids went weeks without an education between students/staff being out sick.

There are what ~160 schools in MCPS? If you are following the daily case counts, you would see that many had very low rates of covid among both students and staff. No reason to close all schools because a few were suffering from staffing shortages. Or put another way, my kids' school was unaffected by teacher absences, why would I be okay with going virtual?

Agreed.

It made sense to close schools on a school by school basis. Mine was an ES that did NOT close. And we were immensely grateful for that.

No good reason for a random 3 week closure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As far as I'm concerned, the people who insisted that the schools be closed to in-person learning for over a year - for whatever arbitrary reason - caused many of these problems (widening learning gap between the FARMS and non-FARMS, students suffering socially and mentally, etc.) and McKnight is doing her best to clean up. Clean up will take more than the few months she's been superintendent.

Yep.

McKnight inherited a MESS thanks to Jack Smith. He was a disaster.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm going to wait to give my opinion on McKnight since she's new to the position. Her communication needs tremendous improvement but I'm glad she was a huge proponent of keeping schools open.
I will wait to see what she does to make sure our schools are safe and whether or not she listens to teachers and principals.

She's great for the don't do anything open at all cost parents who want zero accountability.

I’m confused who those people are. I guess they are people who just see schools as day care for their kids and don’t care if their kids are learning anything or not.

What is there to be confused? We just had a huge surge and she did nothing. NOTHING.

Schools that needed to take a pause took a pause. End of story. The era of virtual for all is over. Find something else to whine about.