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Anonymous wrote:This lawsuit is absurd. The SMOB doesn’t rule by fiat but is rather one vote.
People can disagree with an individual SMOB’s views and/or how the SMOB does their job—just as you can disagree with any other elected. But disagreement should NOT prompt an effort to strip students of their representation.
Goodness.
I think the point of the lawsuit was to break the stalemate. Nothing good comes from zero movement on either side. The lawsuit fixed the glitch.
I'm sorry, what? This is some bizarre spin. The point of the lawsuit was to take away the student's voting rights, after the student cast a vote against returning to in-person instruction. Further, this ongoing suit hasn't "fixed" anything.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/readers-respond/bs-ed-rr-howard-school-board-letter-20201230-vwa446ay2rfupleoxhx5owinbm-story.html
When there is a stalemate and adults are counting on teens to be a deciding vote because they themselves cannot agree, I think it’s time for progress to be made in some way.
If the adults had agreed one way or the other, this wouldn’t even be a scenario. It is though and clearly an unforeseen consequence of a SMOB voting. I don’t think anyone ever anticipated a pandemic and a student being a deciding vote for thousand and special needs students and their education.
I think it highlights a real issue in how the schools are run and the total lack of effective leadership. Of course someone used the legal system and a loophole to finally force action. At some point, you can’t back thousands of parents and students into ineffective and inappropriate education programs and force parents to be unpaid special education teaching assistants and then hope they don’t get desperate enough to sue.
If your child is doing well with DL, you aren’t the desperate one who is calling up a pro bono lawyer and begging for an angle.
Lol, I'm sorry, did you really just link to an opinion piece to try and justify your point? Yes, I'm aware of how the two women's attorney has framed the suit in the press, particularly as they have gotten pushback for the bullying the poor SMOB is undergoing. But in court, the filings--not talking points--matter.
And let's be clear what the suit would accomplish, if successful. This suit doesn't challenge the fact that the board is even numbered. The suit doesn't challenge the process being undertaken to determine reopening. The suit challenges the SMOB's right to vote, declaring his or her ability to do so unconstitutional. If the suit is successful, students will be stripped of their representation across the board. Perhaps, if successful, these parents may get the political outcome they want and end this instance of "gridlock"--but the impact will be much more far-reaching than that. And those far-reaching impacts are the point of the lawsuit, even if the women and their attorney don't want to own up to true repercussions of their actions here.
Further, at least one of the two women who (in my opinion) foolishly attached their name to this stunt have also mocked the right for a student to vote in board proceedings writ large: "Even if the student voted for me I don’t think I want his vote, he’s a child," said Kim Ford.
https://foxbaltimore.com/news/local/former-howard-county-student-members-of-the-board-band-together-to-protect-voting-rights
Well, I stand by any action is better than none. It's been gridlock and since they two women wrote this commentary, I don't have any reason to not believe it's what they want to get across. The system is clearly flawed since the board can't get anything done.
Why would people care how the gridlock is fixed, as long as it is fixed?
Woah, this is dangerous short-term thinking. The "how" always, always matters.
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At some point, you back special needs parents into a corner with ineffective and inappropriate education for their children. You require them to work as unpaid teaching assistants while also trying to hold down their own jobs and/or help other children with education. You watch as their children fall further and further behind both academically and socially. You only provide virtual therapies which are hit or miss. As a system, you post how parents must feign positivity at all costs lest they deter their children from “doing well.”
It’s a pandemic, after all. Unprecedented. Do you want teachers to DIE??
Meanwhile, your office is open. Federal contractors who employ more parents in your school system than any other industry have had parents back in offices for months.
Not the schools problem. Unpaid teaching assistant, parent, therapy provider and overall household manager is now your full time second job.
You watch board meetings virtually as time and time again, no one can make any actually actionable progress towards a plan.
Over and over again.
Your child isn’t doing well with DL. Those who are, bless you. This isn’t about your experience. It’s just not. Other kids are suffering and not doing well. Kids who are already struggling in school to begin with. Parents who have already been to the IEP circus more than once and spent time with advocates and lawyers. We know the schools can ignore us all they want, but they don’t ignore the lawyers.
When you push desperate people, you get desperate methods. It’s just the way things go. Special needs parents are often very experienced with the loopholes and legal system because we’ve learned the hard way that it’s the only way the public schools listen in the majority of cases.
No one has ever gotten private placement by saying, “Hey, do you think he would do better if you paid 40K a year for him to get a proper education?”
The why and how matters. I agree. I also think you have a very desperate and frustrated population of parents who aren’t going to be easily gaslighted by a whole bunch of social media posts which say, “my teachers are going above and beyond!” Or “distance learning is amazing!!”
It may be for your child and with your teacher. You aren’t the parents desperate enough to sue.
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