Washington Post article about Former Farquhar Administrator

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has McKnight made a statement at all
about the article?

I imagine she is consulting with her lawyer who will dictate exactly what she should say. Which is what beidleman did. Originally he refused to comment on the article, but apparently last minute his lawyer told him to respond with all that “there’s no evidence” bs

I also find this whole innocent to proven guilty so frustrating!

No one is talking abt making a citizen’s arrest!

[Anonymous]

There are a lot of people who want to tear down McKnight and MCPS generally. Clearly there has to be accountability and maybe that should reach McKnight and maybe it shouldn’t but i really doubt that firing every person working in the central office is going to improve MCPS (although I know there are lots of people who post here who think that it will)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKnight's silence is deafening

Terrible she has said NOTHING yet

Doesn't this date back to long before McKnight's tenure? I mean most of this went on under Smith right?

Starr approved his first promotion to become principal at Farquhar, even though he already had a record of bad behavior at Clemente and Lakelands Park.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:[quote/] "My former principal brought vodka to school and was just as vindictive as this guy. Just as many complaints. He is going to be admin at a different school now. We are scared of retaliation so in same position.

Hi, Alexandra Robbins here. If any of you on this thread would like to share your experiences with admin or central office for a potential future article, please feel free to email me at [e-mail]

Even if an anonymous email is sent, people can track the IP address and names can still be gathered from the information indirectly. I'll share my story here. I'm a former MCPS student who went to an East County school from K-8, and a W school from 9-12 (parents got a promotion so we moved).

My first month of freshman year, I was elected to a student council leadership position, and a couple of people decided it was OK to call me (a non-White but straight male) a "monkey" in a group chat one weekend. Someone sent it over to me. Needless to say, I had prepared to non-violently but firmly & loudly confront the two individuals. It's not my fault that I simply wanted belonging in a new environment and wanted to hone/share my talents. So, I confronted them the minute I got to school that Monday, and, of course, it was a whole scene where people were confused and "calling me angry", which feeds into long-standing stereotypes. The AP of my grade (who was a Black man) chastises me for being angry at them, even when I was literally attacked. He promises to do an investigation and loop me in, but he never speaks to the 2 perpetrators. Instead, he thinks it's a good decision to say "turn the other cheek" and play kumbaya. He was also the sponsor for the Minority Scholars Program at my school, which I also belonged to, and we worked together on student council stuff. So for all 4 years, I had to deal with his indignant, passive aggressive, quick to blame, snarky attitude -- all because he wanted to look good for our new principal and not ruffle any feathers. He became an AP at another school and pushed out of the county because he was also creepy in his mannerisms. Nobody liked him, but hey, MCAAP is a powerful union and almost every school needs a token POC administrator. He was totally ineffective otherwise. Did I probably have the ability to handle it better? Yes, but it was warranted as I stand by the substance behind it. In my time of need and in the face of blatant racism, a culture of looking the other way reared its head, and to this day, I have been scared to speak about things. This long, drawn out process has also driven me to constant depression, anxiety, binge eating, etc. and I am always reminded of it.

Then, at the same school, there was a Pre-Calculus teacher who was older and very racist. Everyone reported her form every background. She would barely help the Black kids or be very short with them. One time, I had a personal issue and tried to go to her with some homework I had made up. Keep in mind that math is not my strength due to ADHD - I'm more of a humanities person, especially English and History. It's bad enough that I hate math and only took that class because it was part of the math pathway for college. When I try to see her at the end of the day, she literally barks at me "I'm tired of grading" and shoos me out of there. I reported her to my AP and counselor, but because it's very hard to find a pre-calc teacher, she knew she was protected. "Oh, I'm conservative, people of color should work for what they want" OK, with your wrinkly ass. You know nothing about me. I used to be proud of MCPS, but we are absolutely slipping as a system because of good old boy behavior, tenure rules, half-assed processes, etc.

I ain’t reading all that. I’m happy for you, or sorry that happened to you

I hope nobody actually emails this fake troll gmail account. Pretty sure robbins would have a post email

She doesn’t work at the post. She is an author who submitted an article that the post fact checked and ran.

Please ignore the MCPS spin machine that wants to silence complaints to be reported to the media. It takes the media to investigate and link multiple sources to bring these allegations to the public.

If you have a similar experience as the victims in the Washington Post article, please reach out to the Post directly or the email above. MCPS will continue the coverups unless the media reports on problems.

Toxic environments in MCPS schools affect employees and students. As long as MCPS controls the investigations and offers up victims to be retaliated against, bullies and sexual predators will flock to work for MCPS.

That is not mcps spin it is fact. This story broke because a freelance author sourced it, not the post. The post would never have written this article by themselves because they run their articles by the mcps pr department.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKnight's silence is deafening

Terrible she has said NOTHING yet

Doesn't this date back to long before McKnight's tenure? I mean most of this went on under Smith right?

Starr approved his first promotion to become principal at Farquhar, even though he already had a record of bad behavior at Clemente and Lakelands Park.

Therefore it was ok for McKnight to approve his promotion again?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of people who want to tear down McKnight and MCPS generally. Clearly there has to be accountability and maybe that should reach McKnight and maybe it shouldn’t but i really doubt that firing every person working in the central office is going to improve MCPS (although I know there are lots of people who post here who think that it will)

McKnight is one person, the highest paid and clearly was aware of the issue. Firing her doesn't mean firing the "entire central office". Allowing her to stay sends a signal they can just keep covering this sh$t up. Biedleman is not the only one, let's be absolutely clear about that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKnight's silence is deafening

Terrible she has said NOTHING yet

Doesn't this date back to long before McKnight's tenure? I mean most of this went on under Smith right?

Starr approved his first promotion to become principal at Farquhar, even though he already had a record of bad behavior at Clemente and Lakelands Park.

Therefore it was ok for McKnight to approve his promotion again?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKnight's silence is deafening

Terrible she has said NOTHING yet

Doesn't this date back to long before McKnight's tenure? I mean most of this went on under Smith right?

Starr approved his first promotion to become principal at Farquhar, even though he already had a record of bad behavior at Clemente and Lakelands Park.

I wanna know who hired him in MCPS to begin with. And how well did he behave in Fairfax and PG?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of people who want to tear down McKnight and MCPS generally. Clearly there has to be accountability and maybe that should reach McKnight and maybe it shouldn’t but i really doubt that firing every person working in the central office is going to improve MCPS (although I know there are lots of people who post here who think that it will)

McKnight is one person, the highest paid and clearly was aware of the issue. Firing her doesn't mean firing the "entire central office". Allowing her to stay sends a signal they can just keep covering this sh$t up. Biedleman is not the only one, let's be absolutely clear about that.

Well it’s not entirely clear how much she knew and whether others were more culpable than her or not. I don’t know how many people need to go but asserting she has to go without knowing more suggests to me that you care more about getting rid of her than fixing the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of people who want to tear down McKnight and MCPS generally. Clearly there has to be accountability and maybe that should reach McKnight and maybe it shouldn’t but i really doubt that firing every person working in the central office is going to improve MCPS (although I know there are lots of people who post here who think that it will)

McKnight is one person, the highest paid and clearly was aware of the issue. Firing her doesn't mean firing the "entire central office". Allowing her to stay sends a signal they can just keep covering this sh$t up. Biedleman is not the only one, let's be absolutely clear about that.

Well it’s not entirely clear how much she knew and whether others were more culpable than her or not. I don’t know how many people need to go but asserting she has to go without knowing more suggests to me that you care more about getting rid of her than fixing the problem.

To fix the problem, the Board of Education has to be more than just extremely part time, which means the salary has to be much higher, and they absolutely have to have their own, independent staff who work for the Board of Education, not MCPS. The Board of Education is supposed to set policy and provide oversight for MCPS, but right now, they're just a rubber stamp for MCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of people who want to tear down McKnight and MCPS generally. Clearly there has to be accountability and maybe that should reach McKnight and maybe it shouldn’t but i really doubt that firing every person working in the central office is going to improve MCPS (although I know there are lots of people who post here who think that it will)

McKnight is one person, the highest paid and clearly was aware of the issue. Firing her doesn't mean firing the "entire central office". Allowing her to stay sends a signal they can just keep covering this sh$t up. Biedleman is not the only one, let's be absolutely clear about that.

Well it’s not entirely clear how much she knew and whether others were more culpable than her or not. I don’t know how many people need to go but asserting she has to go without knowing more suggests to me that you care more about getting rid of her than fixing the problem.

Heard of the buck stops here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKnight's silence is deafening

Terrible she has said NOTHING yet

Doesn't this date back to long before McKnight's tenure? I mean most of this went on under Smith right?

Starr approved his first promotion to become principal at Farquhar, even though he already had a record of bad behavior at Clemente and Lakelands Park.

I don’t know if MCPS will ever recover from Josh Starr’s tenure. With that said, McKnight has been in MCPS leadership for long enough to own this, so she should.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:McKnight's silence is deafening

Terrible she has said NOTHING yet

Doesn't this date back to long before McKnight's tenure? I mean most of this went on under Smith right?

But who is in charge now? Who supervises the department that closed this case? Who supervises the people that gave this guy a promotion? Who???

+1 what did they do about the numerous complaints over the 7 years? Nothing? No one investigated?

Where's the accountability here from MCPS? Super frustrating.

That would be Michaele Simmons and Greg Edmonson. Time to clear house

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are a lot of people who want to tear down McKnight and MCPS generally. Clearly there has to be accountability and maybe that should reach McKnight and maybe it shouldn’t but i really doubt that firing every person working in the central office is going to improve MCPS (although I know there are lots of people who post here who think that it will)

McKnight is one person, the highest paid and clearly was aware of the issue. Firing her doesn't mean firing the "entire central office". Allowing her to stay sends a signal they can just keep covering this sh$t up. Biedleman is not the only one, let's be absolutely clear about that.

Well it’s not entirely clear how much she knew and whether others were more culpable than her or not. I don’t know how many people need to go but asserting she has to go without knowing more suggests to me that you care more about getting rid of her than fixing the problem.

I'm not sure how you argue she didn't know enough to at minimum not promote the guy based on the Wapo article. Did you read it?

[Anonymous]

People were writing directly to McKnight about complaints being ignored. How do you not fire.spmeone who got those emails and is like "hey guys, is this for real? No? Ok ignore"