Support the Montgomery Virtual Academy (MVA) from Budget Cuts!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

You have no clue what's best for others and you need to respect their choices just like you want others to respect yours. It's kinda sad you spend your days posting on multiple social media platforms vs. spending that time with your kids. They may have done better in virtual if you were more involved.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

And, you are confusing covid virtual with the MVA which are two very different things. The MVA students are there because they want to be there.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Your obsession with this family is a sadder situation.

This poster wonders why the bullied kids want to stay virtual. They should look in the mirror. Bullies raise bullies, except if their kid is a fluke and becomes a nice kid, and they have no care or concern for the harm they are doing. MVA need to stay for kids who were treated poorly by others like this poster.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

You have no clue what's best for others and you need to respect their choices just like you want others to respect yours. It's kinda sad you spend your days posting on multiple social media platforms vs. spending that time with your kids. They may have done better in virtual if you were more involved.

Once you respect the decision to close MVA, others will respect your decision to homeschool your kids, apparently as you wait for covid to "go away."

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

And, you are confusing covid virtual with the MVA which are two very different things. The MVA students are there because they want to be there.

They're there because the parents want them at home. Will those parents respect the decisions of their kids to return to school once they get old enough to realize what their parents are doing to them?

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

You have no clue what's best for others and you need to respect their choices just like you want others to respect yours. It's kinda sad you spend your days posting on multiple social media platforms vs. spending that time with your kids. They may have done better in virtual if you were more involved.

Once you respect the decision to close MVA, others will respect your decision to homeschool your kids, apparently as you wait for covid to "go away."

Virtual school is not homeschooling and the MVA families will continue to fight till it is funded. We are not giving up. . It's not about covid but about how kids learn best. Go take some time to spend with your kids. All your multiple platform posts must take so much time away from them and your family.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

And, you are confusing covid virtual with the MVA which are two very different things. The MVA students are there because they want to be there.

They're there because the parents want them at home. Will those parents respect the decisions of their kids to return to school once they get old enough to realize what their parents are doing to them?

You truly don't know the MVA population. So you ramble, as that's the only way you stay relevant as your career has failed and you are desperate for attention.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

You have no clue what's best for others and you need to respect their choices just like you want others to respect yours. It's kinda sad you spend your days posting on multiple social media platforms vs. spending that time with your kids. They may have done better in virtual if you were more involved.

Once you respect the decision to close MVA, others will respect your decision to homeschool your kids, apparently as you wait for covid to "go away."

Virtual school is not homeschooling and the MVA families will continue to fight till it is funded. We are not giving up. . It's not about covid but about how kids learn best. Go take some time to spend with your kids. All your multiple platform posts must take so much time away from them and your family.

But all available data says that kids don’t learn best in MVA and, conversely, that the MVA does a significantly worse job educating kids, particularly the poorest and youngest. So if it’s really about how kids learn best, MVA needs to be closed.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

You have no clue what's best for others and you need to respect their choices just like you want others to respect yours. It's kinda sad you spend your days posting on multiple social media platforms vs. spending that time with your kids. They may have done better in virtual if you were more involved.

Once you respect the decision to close MVA, others will respect your decision to homeschool your kids, apparently as you wait for covid to "go away."

Virtual school is not homeschooling and the MVA families will continue to fight till it is funded. We are not giving up. . It's not about covid but about how kids learn best. Go take some time to spend with your kids. All your multiple platform posts must take so much time away from them and your family.

Not according to MVA's spokesperson. Sterling has been quite clear this is about covid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

You have no clue what's best for others and you need to respect their choices just like you want others to respect yours. It's kinda sad you spend your days posting on multiple social media platforms vs. spending that time with your kids. They may have done better in virtual if you were more involved.

Once you respect the decision to close MVA, others will respect your decision to homeschool your kids, apparently as you wait for covid to "go away."

Virtual school is not homeschooling and the MVA families will continue to fight till it is funded. We are not giving up. . It's not about covid but about how kids learn best. Go take some time to spend with your kids. All your multiple platform posts must take so much time away from them and your family.

Not according to MVA's spokesperson. Sterling has been quite clear this is about covid.

That is one family's reasoning. The news puts its spin on it. I'm sorry you are so unhappy that you spend your days on social media to trump up business as yours failed due to your poor views and advice.

Time for you to move on and stop your attack on the MVA and go spend time with your kids. Maybe spending time with them and putting them first over social media will give your family a happier home life and make you happier.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

You have no clue what's best for others and you need to respect their choices just like you want others to respect yours. It's kinda sad you spend your days posting on multiple social media platforms vs. spending that time with your kids. They may have done better in virtual if you were more involved.

Once you respect the decision to close MVA, others will respect your decision to homeschool your kids, apparently as you wait for covid to "go away."

Virtual school is not homeschooling and the MVA families will continue to fight till it is funded. We are not giving up. . It's not about covid but about how kids learn best. Go take some time to spend with your kids. All your multiple platform posts must take so much time away from them and your family.

But all available data says that kids don’t learn best in MVA and, conversely, that the MVA does a significantly worse job educating kids, particularly the poorest and youngest. So if it’s really about how kids learn best, MVA needs to be closed.

Can you please show me the MVA 2023-2024 school year data. Can you really tell me that 100% of kids learn best virtually? Can you break down the testing to how many kids actually tested, how many had SN and better, compare it to each and every school in MCPS?

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

You have no clue what's best for others and you need to respect their choices just like you want others to respect yours. It's kinda sad you spend your days posting on multiple social media platforms vs. spending that time with your kids. They may have done better in virtual if you were more involved.

Once you respect the decision to close MVA, others will respect your decision to homeschool your kids, apparently as you wait for covid to "go away."

Virtual school is not homeschooling and the MVA families will continue to fight till it is funded. We are not giving up. . It's not about covid but about how kids learn best. Go take some time to spend with your kids. All your multiple platform posts must take so much time away from them and your family.

But all available data says that kids don’t learn best in MVA and, conversely, that the MVA does a significantly worse job educating kids, particularly the poorest and youngest. So if it’s really about how kids learn best, MVA needs to be closed.

Can you please show me the MVA 2023-2024 school year data. Can you really tell me that 100% of kids learn best virtually? Can you break down the testing to how many kids actually tested, how many had SN and better, compare it to each and every school in MCPS?

No sorry. This isn’t a bring me a rock exercise. The 2023-2024 school year isn’t over, so of course I can’t provide you with this year’s data today. But you know that.

Pinning your hopes on a dramatic turnaround this year in the program’s performance when it has demonstrated for several years that it is significantly worse at educating kids is not a winning strategy. Is your argument that the hemorrhaging enrollment numbers (down 67% overall and losing 40% of its participants two years in a row) has trimmed the fat and now the MVA population finally has enough kids that won’t do so poorly on the academic measures that we need to fund it another year just to see this miraculous turnaround?

Also, no one is going to provide you with data to combat your conspiracy theories that somehow the data is so bad for the MVA because all of the smart kids decided not to take the academic assessments that track their learning progress.

I also cannot tell you that “100% of kids learn best virtually”. Assuming you meant to ask me to confirm that 100% of kids DON’T learn best virtually, I also of course cannot do that. But I hope you realize that this is a really poor argument to make for a $5 million program. You’ll need to do better than these poor excuses for rhetorical arguments and random theories about why the data regarding academic success is so bad for the MVA.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok. The MVA advocates are nuts and shooting themselves in the foot.

According to this MoCo 360 article, they're planning on staging a student sit-in: https://moco360.media/2024/05/31/mcps-decision-to-close-virtual-academy-a-gut-punch-for-families-students/

Academy families say they are planning to advocate for the program by staging a student sit-in Monday at the school board headquarters in Rockville

If students are capable of showing up to Rockville to participate in a sit-in, then clearly they're capable of showing up to a school building regularly. This undercuts their point that the MVA is an ESSENTIAL solution because otherwise, their children have no way to learn.

Good for them. I would support any family whose program got pulled last minute. They should have pulled the plug earlier if this was always going to be the case. This doesn’t affect anyone complaining. I don’t know why you are running your mouth. But you know, this change could pull resources now from all of your kids’ schools. This is essentially the size of an entire (small) middle school that is being displaced. Now everyone has to figure out accommodations with only a few days left in the school year before most staff leave. Good job MCPS. Good job. Spineless idiots.

No, this means there's over $4M in cuts that *won't* have to come out of our schools.

And the size of MVA is insignificant once you spread the kids back out to their home schools.

Totally went over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t get to tell people what to be passionate about. This is important to them. I support them because this was done irresponsibly. I would do the same for any program because it’s the right thing to do. I can’t say the same for anyone here. The lack of empathy in the area is astounding. You all should be embarrassed of yourselves. I grew up in the Midwest; we took care of each other, even if we didn’t agree all the time.

DP. They're allowed to be passionate about whatever they want, but so are the rest of us. I work with parents of kids with special needs, and I've seen what happens when parents enroll their kids in online schools. Often parents think it's working, but virtually all of them are doing their kids a disservice. The education is ineffective, it exacerbates social problems and school refusal, and kids suffer. The one or two possible success stories that advocates can trot out don't trump the data and, for me, they don't trump my personal experience of the majority of cases.

I've written (again, like I did in February) to the school board to voice my opinion as a voter that this program needs to end. I do that because of my empathy for the kids who are in it. You can decide that that's embarrassing, but I'm not remotely ashamed to be advocating for ending an ineffective program.

No, no you aren’t. You are assuming you know what’s best for these families. How embarrassing for you to spend all of this time trying to take down what works for somebody else. How bizarre would it be for MVA families to write to the board to advocate for shutting down other programs? It’s just so odd. You are odd.

MVA families are doing that. It's a zero sum game and they're advocating to keep their program at the expense of others. I'm being honest that I'm advocating for a program to end.

And I'm not "assuming," I'm advocating for what works both based on data and in my experience. If MVA proponents are allowed to advocating based on their experience, I'm allowed to advocate based on mine, and our elected representatives will decide who to support.

How is it at the expense of others? You have no idea what you are talking about. Go away and give your own kids some attention.

Money from the budget goes to MVA rather than other programs that serve other students. Do you understand how budgeting works?

Meanwhile the insistence that people who disagree with you must be bad parents is embarrassing. If your program could stand on its merits, you wouldn't need to resort to such silliness.

No, a good chunk of money does not serve students directly. The MVA does.

It is a good program. One could argue in person is bad because look at the numbers within the schools. We have no current data.

The MVA’s academic results are significantly worse than in-person schools. Especially among the youngest and poorest members of the virtual program. Its enrollment has declined by more than 67% since it started. It is not a good program. Maybe for some based on anecdotes but based on the objective data, it’s failing its mission and hemorrhaging participants.

Please do make the case to the BOE that, as an alternative to shutting down this program, we instead close brick and mortar schools that are underperforming.

No it’s not worse and new data has not been released. Likewise many students choose not to test for a variety of reasons making the data inaccurate.

Enrollment was expected to decline as some were in it for Covid and went back and others choose long term. There is a waitlist but without more teachers they could not let students in.

Let Dawn fight to close all schools that don’t perform to her satisfaction. Let’s stop educating the children in RICA, in prison, in low performing schools, all the children that do not show up to her brick and mortar buildings, dump all the home schooled children. Time to clear the deck for her. Let’s discriminate like in the good old days. Never mind that children all over the USA are and have been attending online schools long before the pandemic. Never mind that MCPS has been buying technology for 15 years to do this exact type of virtual school. Let’s keep MCPS in the 1950’s.

I'm really looking forward to your testimony, Sterling. You're going to do great-- but for the other side.

Who is this sterling you are obsessed with?

Haven't you followed along at all? He and his wife are pretty much the only supporters of MVA.

It's a sad situation. The parents are hypochondriacs while subjecting their kids to munchausen by proxy. The poor girl was begging for friends at one of the earlier Board meetings, but the parents don't care.

Very wrong. Why are you so obsessed with it? It has no impact on your life. It has an impact on a lot of students lives.

You are fortunate you have no health issues nor do your kids. You'd probably ignore your kids concerns vs. they being good parents and getting the kids the help and medical care they need.

Stay blessed as health only lasts so long.

Unfortunately, I wasn't making this up. Look up the past BoE meetings and read some of the articles that have been posted about them.

You have no clue what's best for others and you need to respect their choices just like you want others to respect yours. It's kinda sad you spend your days posting on multiple social media platforms vs. spending that time with your kids. They may have done better in virtual if you were more involved.

Once you respect the decision to close MVA, others will respect your decision to homeschool your kids, apparently as you wait for covid to "go away."

Virtual school is not homeschooling and the MVA families will continue to fight till it is funded. We are not giving up. . It's not about covid but about how kids learn best. Go take some time to spend with your kids. All your multiple platform posts must take so much time away from them and your family.

But all available data says that kids don’t learn best in MVA and, conversely, that the MVA does a significantly worse job educating kids, particularly the poorest and youngest. So if it’s really about how kids learn best, MVA needs to be closed.

Can you please show me the MVA 2023-2024 school year data. Can you really tell me that 100% of kids learn best virtually? Can you break down the testing to how many kids actually tested, how many had SN and better, compare it to each and every school in MCPS?

No sorry. This isn’t a bring me a rock exercise. The 2023-2024 school year isn’t over, so of course I can’t provide you with this year’s data today. But you know that.

Pinning your hopes on a dramatic turnaround this year in the program’s performance when it has demonstrated for several years that it is significantly worse at educating kids is not a winning strategy. Is your argument that the hemorrhaging enrollment numbers (down 67% overall and losing 40% of its participants two years in a row) has trimmed the fat and now the MVA population finally has enough kids that won’t do so poorly on the academic measures that we need to fund it another year just to see this miraculous turnaround?

Also, no one is going to provide you with data to combat your conspiracy theories that somehow the data is so bad for the MVA because all of the smart kids decided not to take the academic assessments that track their learning progress.

I also cannot tell you that “100% of kids learn best virtually”. Assuming you meant to ask me to confirm that 100% of kids DON’T learn best virtually, I also of course cannot do that. But I hope you realize that this is a really poor argument to make for a $5 million program. You’ll need to do better than these poor excuses for rhetorical arguments and random theories about why the data regarding academic success is so bad for the MVA.

So, you are admitting you are making things up to push your own agenda. Come back when you have actual facts to present. We are not taking about all kids. You are ranting over things that are not relevant. Go spend some time with your kids and leave others alone. My smart kids did not test. First year we were not allowed. Second year we refused as they’d miss too much school. .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Please stop bickering and sign. More cuts are coming. Classes are to be increased - more unwanted changes are coming


https://actionnetwork.org/letters/demand-montgomery-county-elected-officials-stop-cuts-to-mcps?source=direct_link&link_id=1&can_id=cd2f477074f693ec0ea4129f4f857a05&email_referrer=email_2339662&email_subject=urgent-message-act-now-fight-mcps-cuts

Exactly and this makes no sense with the budget increases. Mcps needs transparency in every dollar spent. Enough is enough. Our hs classes already have 35+ students and in portables. So now what, 40+ students?